The water pulls in all directions, folding and unfolding, layered with white foam that spreads like spider-webs. It flickers against the cedar trees, painting dappled sunlight over their trunks, bathing them in the same milky quality as light threaded through fog.

And on the shore there are fine-haired stalks of cow parsnip, and spiraled bracken ferns tying the wind into knots, their lace shadows beating against the marsh-grass, everything slick with mud and moss, the river stones buried deep in beds of gritty, orange sand.

A far-off wind moves the Douglas-firs at their crowns, their trunks revolving around themselves, tracing circles against the sky, long threads of lichen waving out like flags, their bark furrowed into the shapes of rivers.

And all the while the water moves, scouring its way over the rocks, dimpling here and there, catching in corners, its percussion as steady and ancient as the mountainside beneath it.