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Black River, WA

3/19/08

It's a Wednesday. I'm up well before dawn and on the interstate, heading south. It takes the better part of an hour to get from my house in Tacoma to the launch site on the Black River just south of Littlerock. I unload the canoe and stash it, along with the paddles, in the underbrush, out of sight. The drive from there to the take-out takes another 10 minutes and the sky is gradually turning light along the way. I park and lock the van, shoulder my daypack, and pedal back to the launch on my old orange Schwinn. Possibly the most dangerous part of the day.

The Black river is a slow-moving watercourse, and something of a rarity here in western Washington. Where most of our rivers start out as fallen snow, the Black has its beginnings in Black Lake, in the Olympia suburbs. The really interesting thing about the Black is that it's the river that divides the Olympic Peninsula from the mainland of Washington, meaning that the Peninsula is actually an island. You know, surrounded on all sides by water.

Mallards rise from the water as I paddle down the quiet river. The sky is gray but with hints of blue off to the west that promise sun later on. I can hear the sounds of the road even here on the water, but I can't see it. At some point, these sounds are gone too and I am left with the constant chatter of the birds all around. The buds are greening the tips of the alders along the shore and everywhere are signs of the beavers that frequent the area. Chewed sticks and gnawed stumps abound, and although I pass a few mounds that look like beaver condos, I don't see any of the animals until later in the afternoon. They are hard to find when they don't want to be seen.

The sun stops playing games and comes out for real. The warmth on my cheeks and back is a welcome thing, more like spring and less like the winter day that it really is. I drift slowly past the remains of some ancient bridge. Pilings emerge from the dark water and end in rusting iron and flaking timbers.

Re-winged blackbirds and robins argue in the brush. A red-tailed hawk circles me for a while and in the shallows, heron stand still as statues, waiting for the intruder to pass. There are even a few cormorant that stand on logs near the shore, wings outstretched in the sun. They seem out of place to me, a salt-water bird so far inland.

I come ashore on a dirt and wattle beach that has formed between the tight roots of the alders. Depositions of silt have made these little landing spots, years of water cycling slowly back to the sea. I stretch and rotate my legs and back. The sun feels wonderful. I smile at the thought that I am here, and not in some office or shop somewhere. It is a Wednesday and I am on a river.

Over the last 2 or 3 miles, the river starts to develop a little. The banks close in and the routes between rocks and fallen branches require a little more attention. The water picks up speed, still nothing serious but after the barely-moving water I've had all morning, it seems fast enough to me. I hear the traffic before I can see it and soon I am on the beach at the take-out, under a bridge on Highway 12. The river continues on its way and in 4 miles or so, it will link up with the Chehalis and wind on toward the sea at Grays Harbor. I will be stopping here, however. The rest of the river will have to wait for another day.

Ken Campbell