Nature Noir by Jordan Smith (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

his fearlessness, or pity his foolishness, as the case may be. His camp lay on a delta of sand that Otter Creek had deposited around its junction with the Middle Fork. Nothing moved there as we approached, and there was no smoke. We rowed in and pulled our boat up on the beach. In front of us, nailed to a post made of a rough branch, was a hand-lettered sign on a piece of cardboard: THIS IS A MINING CLAIM. DON'T THROW YOUR GARBAGE ALL OVER OR ELSE.

We crossed the beach to the edge of the forest where a tent stood in the shade of an overhanging bay laurel. A rock fire ring had been constructed next to it. The ashes were cold to the touch. Around it were a couple of cheap pots and a few dishes, a gold pan, an aluminum sluice box, and a five-gallon bucket partially full of black sand and water—the last stage of the refining process by which placer miners recover gold dust.

Hoof prints could be seen everywhere, but there was no sign of hay and not a kernel of grain. There wasn't much for a horse or mule to eat in the surrounding woods but thorny buckbrush, wilted redbud, and the less spiny leaves on the tips of scrub oaks. The animals had trampled and torn at every inch of the adjoining canyon wall in their search for nutrition.

Inspecting the tent, I soon found a rent in one side big enough to walk through at a crouch. Peering through the shredded fabric I found the interior in a shambles: a disheveled sleeping bag, clothes, scraps of paper, and various personal items were scattered about, and over them had been spread a white dust like flour, the contents of several bags of macaroni, and some kind of dried goo—tomato sauce or beans. It looked like there'd been a fight.

Will and I split up to search for survivors. I went up Otter Creek, Will downstream along the river.

Otter Creek's canyon was as deep as the main one but far narrower. Its walls were even more precipitous than the Middle Fork's and its bottom so close and junglelike that the only practical way up it was to wade in the creek. The moment I left the beach and entered the shallow water, the world was reduced to a colonnade of gray alder trunks, their canopies obliterating even the narrow strip of sky visible between the canyon walls. The aloneness was intense. The creek sparkled like quicksilver in the dim light, and on either bank great tropical leaves of Indian rhubarb grew from corms that clung to the mossy rocks like the gnarled fingers of an old man's hand. There was no other world. After a quarter mile of wading I had found no trace of the miner or his animals, so I started back.

Back at the camp there was no sign of Will. I climbed through the hole in the tent to search for clues to what had happened among the disordered contents. I came upon a notebook, densely inscribed in a small hand. It was like a shopping list, or perhaps a journal from the manic phase of a bipolar life:

Get topographic maps ... set up solar battery charger ... learn tanning for hides ... latigo for saddle ... ammo ... needles and thread ... buttons ... get some books on minerals to read ... get fish hooks ... what kind of fish?

I leafed though it. More of the same. Near the back I came across a single observation, no doubt reflecting the miner's impression of the way into the canyon:

Trails not for the faint of heart.

Will came back up the beach, having found nothing. Leaving him to have one more look around the camp, I struck out across the beach to the mouth of Otter Creek. Halfway there I came upon an explanation for the torn tent, the mess inside, and the miner's apparent disappearance: a huge pile of fresh bear scat of a surprisingly large diameter. It seemed our intervention was no longer required here: A bear had served our eviction notice. Perhaps it had occurred at night, for bears tend to be nocturnal in the hot summer months. Thankfully there was no blood, but the encounter had no doubt left an impression on our man, for he'd obviously departed in a hurry, leaving his entire camp to the bear.

We got back into the boat. The remainder of that day's patrol passed without incident. Weeks went by, and the camp remained abandoned. In September Will and a couple of his seasonal aides went in and cleaned the place up, burned what they could, and carried the rest out in their raft. The miner was never heard of again on the American River.

Our other river, the North Fork, was a natural flow stream, its main channel undammed above Lake Clementine. The rafting and kayaking season began when the North Fork swelled with rain in January and continued as the snow in the high country melted in late spring. Then, as flows on the waters of the North Fork went down, boaters moved to the dam-release Middle Fork for the remainder of the summer.

The commercial guide industry on the American River had begun in the late 1970s, when young men and women who had been spending a lot of time on the river decided to try to make a living taking other people down it. Few wilderness activities are better suited for a guide business than whitewater rafting, in which novices lack both the equipment and the knowledge to negotiate a river safely yet, when properly outfitted and guided, are usually wildly enthusiastic about the experience. In those days any competent boater who could put together a raft, a few paddles and helmets, and an old school bus to get his or her clients to the river could clear $400 a weekend—not bad for people who'd been living in vans, following the spring