The River

by Peter Heller

And so they could admit that they’d both read probably every Louis L’Amour pulp western extant, even the ones that mysteriously appeared years after he died. Wynn read them because the aspen forests, the sage meadows, the sandrock canyons of the West were as exotic and enticing as anything he could imagine. And because the characters rode horseback through that landscape, and splashed across ice-rimed creeks, and pushed through herds of elk, and calmed their quivering horses when they picked up the scent of a lion or the blood trail of its kill. The heroes made camp in the ferns beside a stream spilling from snowcapped peaks and rubbed down their horses with halms of wheatgrass, and they kept their fires small and “smokeless” so they didn’t alert their enemies. Jack read them because everything in them was familiar but shiny-familiar, not quite like the life he knew but the way things ought to be. Especially the part about killing all the bad guys and getting the girl.

It lightened their spirits, enacting this simple routine, the steps of a ritual—piece together the rod, screw tight the locking ring against the reel, string the guides, pick a fly—the steps of a lifelong discipline that promised joy.

Still, the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.