Missoula News

Dark Acres

Pulled Under: The Start of Summer on the Devious Clark Fork

By Bill Vaughn, 7-02-07

In our cold and remote Montana, July 1 has always been the real start of summer. The air finally warms to 90, and much of the snowmelt that swelled the rivers all spring has been accepted by the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico.

This is when Kitty and I put on our swim suits and river shoes and fill our inner tubes from the compressor. Our little stock dogs, Clara the Border Collie and Lyndon Baines Johnson the Corgi, know what’s about to happen, and sprint toward the Clark Fork River, then back again, trying to make us hurry.

The walk across Dark Acres to the river is a few hundred yards, over our long footbridge spanning a slough and under canopies of dogwood and hawthorn. We’re sweaty when we get there, which is good because the water is a cold green shock. And it’s still high enough to make us careful about the crossing to Radish Island, a hundred yards away. Before we step into the water we always remind ourselves that rivers are devious, and you can drown in a bathtub. The dogs are less cautious, heaving themselves into the flow, instantly swept away with the righteous abandon of children who grasp that Swimming Season has just begun. Until the first frosts of October the Radish Crossing will be a daily event.

We’re always curious about how the high water has carved the 40 acres of the island into a new shape. For a few years, after we moved to Dark Acres, the sandy spit on the downstream point of the island was indented by a lagoon. The languid current went round and round, and Radish, a red heeler who was our head dog at the time, liked to paddle in this lazy whirlpool while we took the sun, throwing sticks for him to chase, waving at floaters shooting by in rafts and inner tubes.

But over time the current rushing through the two channels of the endlessly changing river filed away the spit and erased the lagoon. And this abrupt confluence had created a series of harmless-looking riffles. Last September, as we floated beyond the island toward the ruins of the old Harper’s Bridge, which lie just below the beach where I drank beer with my Delta Sigma Phi fraternity brothers in the 1960s, I didn’t think much of it when Lyndon entered these eddies. Clara avoided them, and swam to the bank, looking for dead fish.

But the water here, as we discovered when it tugged at our tubes with a force that left us shaking, was being driven downward by the energy of the collision, gouging a deep hole in the bed of the river and creating a fierce whirlpool.

The moment Lyndon swam into this vortex he disappeared.

I cried out. And so did Kitty. But there was nothing we could do. Our little dog was gone.

And then, just as quickly, he was back, shot from the depths of this churning maelstrom as if he’d bounded onto a trampoline. When we got our hands on him we cried and held him and let him lick our faces. What’s the big deal? he said. Let’s swim.

So yesterday when we paddled out to the island on our tubes we got the dogs out of the water as soon as we could, and walked straight to the end of the island. The spit had been honed to a dagger point during the spring runoff. And now there was a series of whirlpools just off the tip, each one more ferocious than the one that tried to steal Lyndon. While Kitty held the dogs I heaved a hunk of cottonwood into them. It immediately vanished. We watched. But it didn’t reappear.

We walked upstream to a sunny spot on the right bank where the current had piled a mound of scrubbed, blinking sand, and lay down on it while the dogs explored a little spring-fed stream nearby. Ospreys and hawks wheeled overhead, and an eagle checked out Lyndon to see if he might be light enough to cart away for dinner.

Then it was dogs all over. Four big beautiful high-bred beasts, dripping water, eyes insane with the pleasure of swimming away a hot Sunday afternoon, suddenly issued from the rushing channel on the left, and bounded across the sand toward us. They were past us in a beat and loping toward the tip of the island as their masters, five twenty-somethings in tubes, three women and two guys, arms linked, shot by us in the rush. I stood up and pointed at the whirlpools.

“Don’t worry, they’re real friendly,” one of the guys shouted.

“Stay away from those whirlpools!” I shouted back, pointing. “We almost lost this one in there last year.” But it was too little and too late. The dogs—a Husky, a yellow lab, a Doberman, and a black lab—were already at the water’s edge, our dogs on their heels, yapping. The big dogs dove into the water, following their masters, who were already bobbing and twirling in the maelstrom. As we shouted at Clara and Lyndon they hung back, knowing better.

The Doberman and the black lab somehow made it through the whirlpools with little effort. But the Husky disappeared, and then the yellow lab. Kitty and I ran to land’s end. The floaters had felt the power of the water and knew something was wrong. They furiously paddled to shore, jumped from their tubes, and called for their animals. Finally, a figure popped out of a whirlpool. It was the yellow lab. After some very scary touch-and-go, the exhausted dog finally paddled into the arms of his mistress.

She stood up and began yelling and sobbing at the water. “Max! Max! Where are you?”

Shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun, the guys edged back into water, trying to see inside it. One of them ventured too far, and had to swim for his life to get back to the grasping hand of his friend, who pulled him from the current.

For a half hour Kitty and I stood on Radish Island watching, and the big dogs and their masters stood on the shore. But Max never appeared.
Finally, on both sides of the water, we called off the watch. Heads down, everyone went home. Kitty and I plodded up the island, paddled back across the river with Clara and Lyndon, and collapsed into our patio chairs. The dogs curled up next to each other at our feet, and fell into a happy sleep.

In a few minutes the sun drove the river from their coats.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.