The fire from last night still burns at my face. My skin still hot to the touch. I still smell it’s smoke in my hair and beard. Lingering, reminding.

The lake has done its job and I feel the urge to ramble on. The fishing slow but there were a few to hand. Needed and wanted. Striking camp I look at the ring that held the fire on the prior eve. It’s smolder gone, cold ash it’s remnants. May I not rage in its absence.

The woods usher me out of the mountains. And I see the river. It is high. The turmoil and torment of its flows familiar to me. How can such a cold and ever moving thing have more rage than the flames I gazed into the night before? But it does.

More powerful than it’s heated opposite, the river rages onward, carrying all that come into its grasp further downward. Sinking, spinning, rolling, rapidly through the cold green water down the current ocean bound eventually. Washing all in its path, cleansing through its angry rage.

I see the Yakima, higher than she has been in a decade! Her banks swollen, roads washed away, yards flooded, trees snapped and pulled down yonder. She is angry, the fire last night does not compare in any sense. The largest and hottest of wildfires does not compare to the flow I bare witness to. Able to quench and quell the rage filled flames that try to burn the world, if only she could escape her dams and banks.

Rage river, with your torrent of current. Make a new path, without care or concern, flow the direction you choose, carve, weather, wear down the rocks, sand, dirt, and earth that hold you. Charge ever forward, surge with might and ferocity… rage…river…rage and let me drink it in.

I stand knee deep in its frigid embrace and welcome the numbness that works its tendrils through my nerves. Stinging and burning with icy fingers, reminding me I am here and offering me a fraction of the rage within the river.

This water I can navigate, I can understand, feel its movements, unlock its language, unlike the fire. Even at this humongous flow I can still decipher her thoughts and feelings….angry, cold, spiteful, unrelenting, revenge filled, tormenting, tortured…all encompassing rage. Or are those mine? The river and I speak similarly and familiarly. So rage river…and let me feel it…hit my chest and make me breath deep against the cold. My heart races and my blood quickens, trying to battle against the chill. But it is wanted and I beg for it. Slow me down, make me view time differently. Take away the feelings and add them to yourself. Cleanse with your rage…so that I may feel it leave me.

Rage river…so that I may simmer. Rage…river…and take mine away.

Tamarack