Coming Home To Ish River Country

North Fork of the Skagit River

Along the Columbia,

three more hours and I'm home.

But first

I close the car door

and walk in a field of mountain grass.

I lie down, drink

clear water, dream of old rituals

and what it feels to be pure of heart.

When I get back home to Ish River Country,

I'll open the barn door

and see the hides of white horses

shedding rain.

- Robert Sund, Ish River

Robert Sund was a poet who lived in the Skagit Valley. I met him just 

one time, briefly, back in the mid-70's, at a wilderness hearing in Port 

Angeles on the Olympic Penninsula. With his gray beard he looked 

ancient to me at the time, a young buck myself fresh out of the blocks. 

He had a gentle way about him. We both testified on behalf of a 

proposal to turn most of Olympic National Park into Wilderness. I 

was more than a bit in awe of him. I remember he congratulated me 

on my testimony. That was a big deal for me back then. Not long after, 

the Wilderness Designation was granted - a big victory - including 

Shi Shi Beach out on the northern Washington Coast. Those were 

heady days in the wilderness movement.

I stumbled on Sund's collection of Ish River poems again recently. Ish 

is the Salish word for river. Sund died in 2001, but his words live on. 

His poetry oozes sadness and nostalgia for an older, wilder Northwest, 

harking to the time of his own youth in Elma, when working the land 

and sea was still the main mode of existence in these parts.

This poem of his brings tears to my eyes every time I read it. There are 

tears in my eyes right now. What is it? If you have grown up here as I 

have and watched this great tide of change, it is hard not to feel 

this sadness, this longing for a stronger chord to tie self to land, and

community to place.

I lie down, drink

clear water, dream of old rituals

and what it feels to be pure of heart.

When I get back to Ish River country . . .

When I get back to Ish River Country . . .

Duwamish, Snohomish, Stillaguamish, Skokomish . . .

Where have these rivers gone? Where have the salmon gone?

Where have the old rituals gone that anchored us in place, brought 

us home to our selves, home to the land that fed us and kept us

whole?

Now even the climate is changing. Maybe this is a last-ditch effort by

the earth to bring us back to our senses, to get our feet on the 

ground again. Maybe it is our final homecoming invitation.