It was a slow, drowsy morning at the confluence of the Clearwater and the Snake, where the two rivers fold into one another just outside Lewiston. A small group of birds had settled in the shallows there, resting on the sandy edge where the water laps out and disappears into dry ground. The sun was already warm, and the world felt unhurried.
They were hard to read, those birds, beaks tucked away, bodies loose and still, balanced somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. It was difficult to know what they made of the morning, or whether they made anything of it at all. The light shifted on the water and they barely stirred, leaving the moment suspended in a kind of pleasant uncertainty.
But this was never meant to be a permanent stop. The stillness was simply a pause, a quiet gathering of strength at the bend in the river before whatever came next. Where the waters met, so did the journey and the rest, and eventually, when they were ready, the longer flight would begin again.
We biked back to camp to do our own “pause”.
