Weekend at the Russian River

I've been wanting to write a post about Ed Jew and the trouble he's gotten himself into. However, I've been rather busy with work and the story has been raging without me, so I'll write about my fun weekend at the Russian River instead.



T and I and a bunch of other folks rented two houses by the river and spent a long weekend eating, swimming off our dock, boating with small craft through very shallow water, and soaking in the hot tub. When you live in a one bedroom apartment, pretending (for a weekend) to live in two houses is really fun. Many things happened, including lots of margaritas, various mental breakdowns, talented musicians playing, and three sizes of dogs. Most of us also said goodbye to Adrienne and Fahr, which was sad.

I think I'll focus on just one story, though. T and I were canoeing down the river, our friends Sonya and Eric a ways behind us. In the middle of the river was standing a fully clothed teenage boy with a dirty blonde pageboy haircut. Because of the low water levels, he was about up to his waist. He was holding a piece of metal, and as we drew near, he said to us "Look at this. It's a car antenna. I found it in the water." He gestured towards the shore, where a large piece of metal sat. "And look at that," he said. "It's a (here I'm forgetting what he said, perhaps car chassis?) I dragged it out of the river myself." Then he gestured to his left: "And there's a washing machine down there. It's white." He appeared to be delivering this speech to every one of the considerable number of canoes that was passing by. I would have photographed him, but our camera had fallen into the river a few miles back.



Since we passed him by, I have been wondering why he did it. Was it out of concern for the environment? (I didn't otherwise notice a lot of debris along the river, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough). Pride in his scavenging skills? A desire to share his acquaintance with this stretch of river? I guess I'll never know. T said it seemed like something out of Deliverance.

And for those who were there, and those who weren't, a truly excellent gazpacho recipe I had some requests for. I felt especially decadent just throwing away the sprig of thyme.