Canoeing on the Siletz

For starters, the word "canoeing" looks wrong, like it has too many vowels. It's a word to keep in mind for the next time I play Scrabble and am stuck with hardly any consonants.

 

 Anyway, yesterday we went canoeing (still looks wrong) on the Siletz River, which lies west of us, very near the Pacific coast.

This is the river on which Ken Kesey set his novel Sometimes A Great Notion. Yesterday we had an 11-mile stretch entirely to ourselves, not another person in sight.  The lush green temperate rain forest lying on its banks is reflected on the surface.

The Siletz is a beautiful, clear, fast-moving river, a perfect home for salmon and steelhead.

The banks are thick with flowers, grass, trees and berries.

Every time I look at a river like this, I can't help but think that water is like a super high-tech invention: a silvery, cold, reflective, moving substance thought up by geniuses who were paid billions of dollars for their amazing discovery. Water.

 

Shimmering with mystery.

We saw three bald eagles, two hooded merganser families, a kingfisher, and when a young bull elk crossed just in front of us we were all in awe.

 

He changed his mind and crossed back, so we had a good long look at him. This is what I call a really good day.