Hall Creek Canyon

When they returned from building the kay-dam (of logs and drift pins, to make again a place where salmon might yet spawn) they divvied up: each hauled a pack frame loaded with tools and sundries, twice down the canyon to its end, then up the old fire trails a mile and a half, ducking vine maples all the way, to the parked trucks. A third trip for each would end the business, but night came on, as it generally does; they might have come back another day, but as the moon was full, down they went.

One folded and refolded the old tent and packed it away, while the others sat, taking down the old sheepherder stove, dumping ashes, talking. She would walk ahead, she said, and slumped off down the scoured sandstone ledge of the dry wash, admiring, even in near exhaustion, the old moon drifting among the snags. She came upon the canyon with its pools and riffles, and, regarding the first fire trail as too steep, trudged on to the second, wading a beaver pond. Logs at the head, old growth, lay jackstraw piled, and she footed along them easily, as she had done in dozens of such draws. A big cedar sighed, turned lovingly in its sleep, and with an almost inaudible click, closed over her shoe.

There was with her no axe, no lever of any kind. She stood knee deep in black water, too far from the landing to be heard, neatly caught. What if her co-workers took that other trail? She looked back as she let slip her heavy pack, seeing no movement but the falling moon, knowing that one alone in such a place has, while there, no name at all.