For a couple of hours we drove north along a road that basically followed the Big Hole River. Almost everyone was asleep but Tomo and me. Tomo was reading a book. I was looking out the window. The river was pretty shallow but getting bigger all the time. Little streams kept feeding into it, mile after mile. The river gurgled its way through the valley. Sometimes you could see the river divide and come back together. Mostly it just went here and there, always taking the easiest path—just like the streams we saw in the mountains. The mountains were still there, too, on either side of us but kind of far away. Once we passed through a town called Wisdom, though the mountains felt closer again. Finally, we got to the put in. It was where Fishtrap Creek fed into the river. The river was a lot bigger here. I guess the other rivers and streams really filled it up. If you looked carefully you could see that there was a lot of water moving along.

Layla and I put on our life jackets, loaded our canoe into the water, and loaded our gear into the canoe. She wasn’t much for chatting with me, but we had to talk about who would steer. We both wanted to, no surprise. So, we flipped a coin. I won. She got in the front and I pushed off. Almost right away we started to squabble.

For almost half an hour she kept turning around to complain that I needed to keep in time with her paddling. Since she was in front I could see her and she couldn’t see me. “Don’t you understand that?” she kept asking.

Then, suddenly, I noticed that the mountains had moved in on us. We were now floating in the bottom of a canyon. I looked at my compass. “Layla, wasn’t the river going north? Why does my compass say east now?”