Soul Stance River - 19

Through April and May not a single Indian has been noticed along all the serpentine bends of this rambunctious river, however I feel we are being espied by a jealous warparty immortal in it's protection of this pristine country where nothing but the raw material of life abounds, a natural creativity of survival that has elluded the machinery of Man, sometimes it pangs me to know we will interrupt this grace, as for now interruption has been the purview of this river with it's turgid currents, ransacking waves, harpooning logs, boulders that were born to bash the brazen boatman and that stiff, lampooning wind, yesterday the pirogue that carries our journals and scientific equipment nearly flipped due to Charbonneau's cherry hysteria, after entering cascades the bow took a heavy dip forward got turned like a compass needle then the sail was punched by a nasty squall that brought her to lay sideways and take on turbid waters, as I watched from shore, priceless baggage and tools were beginning to float in the unforgiving foams, alas, Sacagawea, with a hawk's poise in a stormfront managed to salvage almost everything herself except for one of my journals, the one from Spring 1804 through this March, devastated is an understatement, to know that the observations of my soul, the paintings of my thoughts and all of those amazing emotions and experiences of the group are soaking away into the amnesia of an illiterate riverbed is heartbreaking, but several of the men, including Clark are filling journals so many moments are being recorded, but mine have perished, The riverbanks are beginning to grow higher and steeper as we proceed, the roots of cottonwood trees snake in and out of the soft soil walls, avalanches of brownish red clay break and slide abruptly as if detonations set by water demons are discharging, Sergeant Gass' canoe was nearly clobbered this morning in the narrows, approaching a slim bend ahead with tall bluffs is a vision of carnage that spoils the splendor of utopia and seemingly portends the extinction of a noble species, wolves, in gypsy numbers scavenging the scattered and piled corpses of buffalos that fell through the frozen river a month ago, my memories of weeks past with buffalo so docile that I'd walk amongst them as they grazed on the grass running my hands over the wooly silk fur of their backs not the slightest suspicion of threat in their eyes of marbled serenity and to see them now, victims of calamity and the bite of k9's is disturbing, the wolves are so preoccupied with gorging themselves, their faces lathered in bloody foam, easy marks for us who desire the delicacy of their leg marrow and the prize of their pelts, in this sequence of mishap opportunist gnaw, and sharpshooters steal I wonder to what, and when Fate will stop our steps, J.A.B.