Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

No Finnish farm family was foolish enough to waste the endless summer twilight. Those who didn’t prepare for winter never saw spring.

There are moments in life when everything is changed and there is no changing back.

The majestic westward-flowing river went without a name for millions of years, but for nearly four thousand years she was called Wimah, Big River, by the first immigrants to her shores. Since 113 years before Aino’s arrival, she has been called the Columbia.

the sadness the two felt for a sister who existed only in their memories, for a world that could hurt their beautiful fiery sister so badly, sat with them at the table and shared their coffee. They both knew it would be a long time before that unwanted guest departed, if ever.

Warmth seemed to flow from deep inside, out through her blue eyes. The two girls regarded each other, just enough for each to know that for some inexplicable reason, here was someone who could be a friend, even though you’d known her no more than a minute.

Reminded me of Marlo

She never imagined getting married would make her lonesome.

Why was she always outside, looking in?

The ifs and buts of a crisis endure forever.

“Everything changes,”

“How you look at things determines where you’re standing to look.”

Time seemed to stand still, punctuated by holidays that themselves seemed to never change, and Aino, now thirty-seven, sorted the seeds of a woman’s life.

this vast animated soul of a river, a flowing, vibrating, moving stillness.

Both feel ashamed for not being competent. So now we play hide-and-seek.” “Hide-and-seek?” Aino asked Kyllikki laughed. “That’s what I call it. The men hide their feelings and the women seek to find them.”

With those you love, you accept that there are only two ways you will not get hurt when you lose them. You stop loving them or you die first.

The spring Chinook would be running, but the Chinook were a third of the size they had been when she and Aksel launched the Aino. The June Hogs, evolved to survive the immense journey to their spawning grounds at the headwaters of the Columbia and the Snake, had been made extinct by the watershed’s more than sixty dams. The river was now a series of warm lakes. Its only remaining wild stretch ran through the nuclear waste storage site at Hanford, Washington.