River Guide: Pawprints on the Riverbank

Fishy River

The morning was beautiful. The sky was bright blue, with a few little puffy clouds slowly floating across the landscape. Cherish went out to get water for the day. Getting water was one way of putting it. It was a long walk upstream, nearly a mile, and a short walk to the river. The pathway was rustic, to describe it with a word. Her home was on a hillside and safe from the spring thaw floods that often made the nearby river rage for a month or two. Any homes or cabins along the river gorge were built well above and away from the apparent water crest line along the river canyon walls. There might be no home to find next season otherwise. Getting water for Cherish consisted of going upstream nearly a mile until the stream met her pathway. The river upstream from her home came up and out of its rough-carved valley. It rose to the plain above and on toward its distant mountain sources. There she could fill the water jugs and stack them back on the plow frame for the ride home. The plow was turned upside-down when used for transporting water or goods and right-side-up when plowing. You use what you have in a rustic world. A working wagon would have been nice to own, and the family had worked long at making a good path for one. The pathway they had been working toward finishing was less than half complete. Also, the current family wagon was in a state of total disrepair. It was closer to a rotting pile of lumber and firewood now.

Cherish was just eighteen, had been in school on and off during her childhood, and learned her reading and math when a teacher was available. She had to work at home with her mother to make ends meet. That was typical of families living in the area. Most of the kids in school represented the entire basin population. The children were lucky if they got more than a few years of schooling. For most families, this meant the ability to go to market and not get taken advantage of when buying or trading. Counting money and reading labels were basic needed skills in every single family. Often the children were better at such things than parents who typically had no formal education. Cherish was teaching herself more advanced reading now, going to the school only to ask the current schoolmarm about words or phrases she couldn't figure out all by herself. Cherish was given an old dictionary as a birthday gift from the last school teacher a few years back. The teacher had purchased a new one and passed the old one along to her only worthy student. Cherish lived in its pages as often as she could. It made her feel somewhat smarter than her peers and sometimes even the teachers. She prided herself on being better than others. All others. It was a profound ego issue for her, but she loved feeling better than others. Many people did. It was a common disorder.

Horses and mules were the primary forms of local transportation. This small flatland was in mountain country. There was no place here for fancy carriages like those seen in pictures hanging in the saloon or general store. Cherish loved reading about places with ornate carriages and the like. She fancied herself living in a big city, wearing beautiful clothes and attending great feasts or balls with handsome and young gentlemen callers. She would smile at those imaginings but frown at the local boys in loose pants, boots, muddy shirts, torn hats, and layers of sweat with stiff hair that looked like a mad porcupine sleeping on their heads. How uncivilized these things were to her. They were no more than wild vermin pretending to be humans by her way of seeing things. She'd be happy if she became the new schoolmarm! She'd happily straighten those horrible boys out. She didn't suppose they'd ever stop saying "Yes, Ma'am" in her presence from the start to the end of each school day. 'Manners' was her mantra, but she couldn't yet realize she was the worst of them in her snobbery. In her mind, she was a lonely bright star in the dark sky of this remote and backward mecca.

In truth, this was the only life Cherish had known. That still didn't stop her from becoming profoundly snooty. The more books she read about other places in the world and how civilized they were, the more she despised where and how she had to live now. She kept to herself while in town, always clinging close to her mother. She wouldn't give those rowdy boys half a chance to approach her with their immature and lustful ways. Mother often explained what those boys wanted from her. Cherish was fully prepared to defend her honor against any of those unkempt self-seeking monsters. If that's what it came to, of course. It never did, but her upbringing didn't help her social skills or truly horrible manners. Uppity is uppity. Her mother always wore a scowl, even when smiling. It was hard to tell those two facial gestures apart, even for Cherish. Mother wasn't intentionally mean, but she was always abundantly pessimistic. She had some real street smarts about her too. Mother never gave an inch to anyone trying to trick her out of so much as a nickel. She was the same even when they weren't dishonest swindlers, just traders plying their wares or services.