The River

by Peter Heller

For Jack, stuff like cold and hunger didn’t have a value, good or bad, they just were, and it was best if they didn’t last that long; but if they did, as long as one survived them, no harm, no foul. It gave Jack a strength, a temper, that Wynn admired.

There’s always relief in committing to a decision, even when there’s no choice.

he liked to curse when he was climbing, it gave him a kind of a rhythm.

The unspoken reason for having a gun was that neither felt comfortable going for a long trip into the northern wilderness without one.

Shane said that Lloyd had once told him that a great storyteller had to know when never to lie. “Hunting and fishing’s so much fun,” he said, “only a pissant needs to lie about it.”

trusted his brother more than any other person on earth. Jack knew that Lloyd made life more fun, it was that simple, and without ever compromising the dead seriousness of it. That was a person to ride the river with.

He liked to be good at what he did—both his mother and father had instilled the value of that; there was nothing really more important other than treating animals and people with decency and respect—but not a lot of people had to know about it.

The classics and the canon were one kind of animal, but sometimes a trashy yarn that ran headlong with no pretensions was just as good. Or at least as fun.

they truly began to run the river, they didn’t think about anything but making it into the wide eddy pool along the right shore so they could scout the falls. But every river story they had ever read was just beneath the surface of their imaginations and must have fired them with extra energy and braced them, too, because at least half of those stories did not have happy endings.

Lake paddling was one thing, but it was good to be on a stream. It had always been that way for him: he’d string his favorite four-weight fly rod and step into a brook and feel the current pressing his knees and the rhythms, even the natural laws, of pedestrian life were suspended and he felt immediately uplifted.

there was a principle in aesthetics: the more you prettify something, the more you risk undermining its value. Its essential value.”

It was an achievement-free zone, which Wynn was coming to realize is where most of his joy happened.

Jack took his minute and said, “Your problem is you’ve got faith. In everyone, in everything. The whole universe. Everyone is good until proven bad. You’re kinda like a puppy.”

The canoe was Kevlar but it had an extra layer like a bow plate for that purpose. They never treated it like an eggshell, or a canvas canoe. It was made to get beat up, which is a little how they saw themselves. Okay to get roughed up, but not by each other. That’s what Wynn thought as he ran the painter to an alder and tied it off. They’d always been back-to-back.

With everything seeming to fall apart, good habits were one thing to hold on to.

“I think she comes from a world I don’t understand. That shit about competing publications. Why would you live like that?”