Saturday was the last day the State of North Carolina allowed alcohol on the Green River near Saluda so I went along with a colleague and a broo-ha of his neighbors from McDowell Street to spend an afternoon tubing down this quaint mountainy fleuve with a cooler of suds. Wicked hot, Saturday; er J-Sica might say hella hot, though I'm not much sold on either regionalism. Half way when I and those abreast had eyes peeled for a rope swing a storm blew in out of nizzle and the bright vernal sun got covered with bizzare dark like volcano ash. A squall line the size of eddies blew down the gorge ripping leaves off of hemlocks and sundry river bank species. The water was warm and until it rained I stayed in breathing the air which smelled of universal summertime. The rain came like swallows, chilled and abrupt, and urgent and deep. We huddled on the bank for some time before determining that the storm was not a typical temperate rainforest mountain storm like we often see but a real front, and by majority returned to the river road in the rain. this is what life is about i told the veterinarian and he nodded that's exactly right. i wouldn't want anything else right now he said and i watched the texture on the water change in torrent waves. Now the rain had grown temperate and came constant and smooth. shivering the afternoon progressed until we reached the landing point some hour later. The river ran higher and littered with leaves and branches. The water thickened with chalky muds and sand runoff from the banks hiding the oldest rocks in the world from the surface. All out, some without clothing or towel, and ruined keys upon the news of dinner at Green River Barbeque. Heather the Richly Accented gave an ode to sides. All came to Saluda, and ate, and rested, and returned to Asheville for books, and honeys, and lazy summer sleep among the dew and the crickets and the breezes in the trees outside of the windows.
