Up some fifty miles into the Rogue Wilderness the small jet-boat slows and idles so not to scare a rare white heron fishing by the riverside. The day is late September, sunny and brilliant with deep blue skies, as only early fall in Oregon can be, and around us there are only trees, hills and a hint of bears.  Only two weeks before terrorists had smacked into our country, announcing a clandestine war that will undoubtedly change our lives forever. And though this journey into a rare wilderness wasn’t an escape, it certainly seemed a most appropriate place to be at the time.

(Photo: Rogue River mail boat)        

I watch the bird until it spreads its wings and lifts off, its life unchanged by human circumstance, and consider once again how things will never be; how there have been other calamitous events in the lives of our generation, but never anything quite so shadowy and menacing, a feeling you have after your house has been probed by burglars. Not only have the burglars entered our personal space, but they remain living among us, taking advantage of our largesse, ironically, until they strike again, perhaps often. 

The Rogue is low after a drought summer, the boat winding and slowing often to  feel its way through elusive channels and rapids. We pass other boats coming down, late tourists drifting rubber rafts or drift-boat fishermen seeking the Rogue’s famous summer steelhead, the feisty “half-pounders,” which jump for flies on occasion, though I know the full harvest moon will make fishing slow.  I try to make myself feel at peace. I’m a native of Oregon, a fisherman who has been here before, though many years ago, and I know this is a good, best place and that I belong here. 

We have left Foster Bar, upriver from Agness, and our destination is Paradise Lodge, which is situated about midway through the Rogue’s “Wild River,” no-roads section. As we move upriver it is like entering a remote time zone, and I am reminded that in these up-and-down hills and narrow
canyons lived Indians who above all others in Oregon were noted for their tenacity and fierceness. Thoughts of those early Indians, arrowheads against Kentucky rifles, seems somehow both quaint and familiar against what has been going on: airplanes versus high-rise buildings.

Other thoughts come to my mind as it is cleansed and uncluttered by the surrounding wilderness. I recall that Western writer Zane Grey had a cabin along here--as he did on the North Umpqua River--where he could fish, think and hide away. Actress Ginger Rogers, an avid fly fisherman, lived
with her mother on a ranch she owned farther upstream, and there have been others more infamous who disappeared into the Rogue country on the lam or for their soul’s survival and sustenance.

Some forty years ago my first wife and I traveled to camp here in the fall, young, innocent and with no more concerns than nighttime noises my wife decided were hungry bears (actually birds stomping on dried fall leaves), or whether the bear-like forest ranger, a frequent visitor, would drink all of our
beer.

Moving upriver, taking the spray as we cut the rapids, the sun beginning to tingle into a burn, I thought how I shouldn’t be worrying so on a day so fine, in a place so remote and beautiful. I thought of my father, dead two years now, and how incensed he would be by all that had happened, remembering how, on Dec. 7, 1941, he had jumped from the roof of our woodshed, slammed through the back door and dived toward our radio that for the next four years would be solemnly announcing good and bad news.   I remember, too, the old man’s anger when, on June 15, 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea; when we became entangled in the frustrating madness of Vietnam; the Persian Gulf War, and God knows what else during that tense and surreal, potential missiles-from-the-sky conflict we knew as the “Cold War.”

Now this, with its “What’s next?” aspects, I ponder as we move upriver. At least with the Japanese and, with some exceptions, most of those other guys you could go after them. You knew where to find them or hunt them out, and then you could do away with them. Now we are hunting ghosts, though I know that somehow we will get them eventually.  Then, a short while after moving through Huggins Canyon, on a small beach just below Paradise
Lodge, my mood was changed suddenly when we came upon a party of river rafters who had pulled ashore to make lunch and fish a nice stretch of water just below.  It was a large party of both men and women of all ages, most of whom were  wearing white tee-shirts adorned with American flags. We stopped for a while and the conversation turned toward the inevitable: how people were angry and resolute, yet somehow cheerful, as if years of  indeterminate patriotism finally had a just cause and we might unselfconsciously become Americans again.

I recalled the feelings I had watching the responses to the events of Sept. 11, the selfless courage and honest compassion, and remembered how it was during World War II, when we were united in wanting to kick some ass. I hoped it was real, as I do know, and that our flag waving and purpose
aren’t diminished and ultimately dismissed as yet another fad.   The danger, as many older Americans know, is real, though we also know there is nothing to fear, as F.D.R. said, “. . but fear itself.”

Among the river rafters there were cries of “USA!” and “We’ll get the bastards. . !” and one of the guides said, “Hey, did you see that huge flag stretched across the river upstream?”

We hadn’t yet, of course, though I made it a priority for a long hike upriver the next day, when we set out after breakfast and hiked a sometimes precipitous trail through country that was spectacular, its quiet broken only by river sounds, though these were diminished by the season’s low water.   As a writer, I thought of other things as well. How, in these times, would writers adjust themselves to the reality of dangerous uncertainty? Writers of thrillers and novels of international intrigue would have to readjust, as they did after the Cold War, I imagined, and perhaps now, with truth once again
beating out fiction, there would a seeking of themes offering humor and resolve?

Whatever, it would be important for writers --and artists, musicians and playwrights, and especially poets--to seek out and express the strength and durability that too often lies hidden in the common hearts of men.  We must also remind those who are younger and have been indulged by a too- careful, politically correct society that there are times when survival dictates being mean and hard-nosed, and not to “wimp out” by pleading a need for mercy and understanding. 

And then, just past a gorgeous waterfall that dropped out of a remote canyon, stretched tightly above a narrow cleft through which the river poured in a rush, flew the flag: a 10-foot silken beauty that filled and luffed on the indolent wind currents to remind travelers of what awaited them downriver.  I watched and thought of the seasons moving toward winter, the weather turning cold and stormy, though seldom any snow here. I wondered who had set the flag, whether they would return to claim it; whether they meant for it to remain, watched over by deer, eagles and bears, until it had become a tattered and proud remnant.

The flag belonged there, as it remains in my mind, canceling that nightmare vision of one plane, then two, flying into our erstwhile lives. 

Things have changed. It’s all right to be a patriot once again.