Monday, the last night Luke and I were at Anne’s cabin on the Priest River, a Moose and her calf appeared on the path between the river and the deck.  I’ll never forget the muscles around her shoulder blades, the way she moved quickly to protect her calf when Gus barked.

Osprey were daily visitors, flying over the river’s curves and rapids as tight as stitching a quilt. 

Luke and I rafted down the river and saw two ruby-necked turtles on opposite ends of a tree limb, the tree felled by beavers.  Keith caught six trout early in the morning and we ate them for breakfast three hours later.  Two Bald Eagles soared over the river pines as proud as severe Inca carvings.  Bats careened over our heads on the nights we sat on the deck late.  

Two fawns splayed their legs then jumped on the rocky banks of the river like modern dancers as their watchful parent stood guard and grazed on the grassy patch next to the water.    

A wild turkey family landed in the branches of the pine and poplar trees next to the cabin after the moon rose one evening.  They
were surprisingly patient as we crept beneath them, watching and listening even though the tom was a looming presence, as high in the tree as his width and girth could be held, ready to attack if he sensed aggression toward his chicks.

Next morning in bed, I heard the wild turkey family wake up, stretch their wings, speak to one another and fly off, all before I could get to the window.

Canadian and other geese and ducks quacked up and down the river but as geometrical as their V-shaped flying patterns can be, I quickly learned that on the river where people have homes, geese have few friends.  They shit more per square inch of their body weight than any bird I’ve ever encountered.  (A hummingbird shit on my arm this afternoon after I refilled its feeder and its shit was smaller than half of half a tear.)  Geese and ducks shit as much as a cow.  

Oh, I almost forgot the dragonflies.  Along about four in the afternoon, if I found myself on the deck reading, here would come a dragonfly or two, long as my thumb and high as my forefinger, black and silver in the sun’s shade, as if wearing a cocktail dress, flying in a pattern from one end of the deck to the other, an arm’s reach from me but never closer.  One afternoon Luke and I decided to wait them out, watch them fly back and forth in front of us like a rhythmic pendulum on a Grandmother Clock.  We were hypnotized long before the dragonflies flew toward the river. Or did they fly toward the sun?

As much as I have railed against President Obama during the debt ceiling Republican coup d’etat and last December’s Bush tax cuts coup d’etat — there is no question that he is the only qualified and desirable candidate for the Presidency in 2012.   

Definition of COUP D’ÉTAT - Merriam-Webster online -

I have the honor next week of hiding out at a cabin on a river for 2 weeks.  No computers, no cell phones — just scripts and novels.  And the river.  I will ride the rapids, I will swim, I will catch fish and eat them. 

Hat Tip:  “Andrew Sullivan/Daily Dish” for sharing the following email from a reader of ”Daily Dish” after the Debt Deal was passed by the House today…

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Email:

For the first time today, I got an e-mail from my little sister who does not follow politics closely at all. She was a first time voter in 2008. She is exactly the profile of the type of voter Obama will need again in 2012.

Her e-mail to me had the subject line: “I am done.”

I opened the e-mail and she had written only one line: “I cannot support a President who seems incapable of standing up to bullies.”

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…  David says Amen to that, sister.  I had Watergate going on during my college years.  In many ways this Obama betrayal is worse than that — I suspect it will have a longer-lasting impact on the country.  And that is just plain bewildering.