My grandfather bought a five-acre piece of property on the Stilliguamish, meaning to use the land for fishing, but mostly we went for family picnics. The first time I remember going was when I was about two-and-a-half. I don’t remember driving up past Arlington and then east, toward the mountains, through the long green valley. I don’t remember my grandfather unlocking the gate or driving on the road to the edge of our property. I don’t remember walking—maybe I was carried—through the thick stands of cottonwoods to our narrow strip of beach. I’m guessing my grandmother had made a lunch of fried chicken and bread and butter sandwiches. (“That’s what you make for a picnic,” she says, which may have been true once.)
All I remember is standing on a big mossy rock and then slipping into the cold river.
“You fell into the current and I thought, there goes my first son,” my mom says when I ask her if I was actually in any danger. This seems awfully breezy, but my mother was younger then than I am now. John had died long before. There was no real reason to be superstitious, no reason to think that there might be an extra element of danger for the males of the family.