August 24

It has been raining, really, since I woke up this morning aboard the Malaspina. It rained in the waters off southern British Columbia, it rained in Bellingham and it is raining now, just east of Northern Cascades National Park. But I can’t say that I’ve minded; it just comes with the territory. Here galoshes aren’t a fashion statement.

There are a few things that can make rain downright pleasant. One is a good rifle and the freedom to stalk through the whitetail woods on leaves that will not crunch. Another is a warm woman who will dance through puddles to slow Willie Nelson songs. Another still is a good cowboy hat on which the raindrops drum and trickle off the brim. Today I’ve had one of three, and that ain’t bad.

I won’t take the hat off, even now as I’m sitting under a tarp. I made camp here a few hours ago along the Skagit River, which is to say that I raised Squatter’s roof and tied one side of my tarp to the camper and the other to a Forest Service sign. It’s a pleasant camp, if damp. The Skagit is boisterous with adolescent vigor, as are most northern rivers at this time of year. One might more properly say that it is turgid with glacial runoff. It eagerly whisked away the macaroni I washed out of my dinner bowl. Its greenish water bounds over the weary boulders in its streambed, leaps over the gravel where the river runs shallow and shoves leaves and sticks along its surface in its haste to reach Diablo Lake, where it will come almost instantly to a near halt, bruising its shoulder on its seat belt, to swirl in gentle eddies with other glacial waters like a cowboy who has rushed to a dance to twirl softly with his sweetheart.