Morning was gentle. A slight breeze brought odors of cool crisp fall. Worldly cares vanished as bodies sought a closeness to the water. Kayaks and Zodiacs meandered with the course of a river moving with hardly a ripple.
Reach back twenty thousand years, barely a trickle existed here. Fifteen thousand or so years ago the land trembled, a roar unknown to mankind and unimaginable even now swept across the west. Hundreds of cubic miles of water rushed across the land, snatching everything in its path. Blocks and columns of basalt were plucked from their moorings and carried away. Thousands of feet deep the water ran where it willed and at the end all was changed. A new river ran where the trickle had been. The Palouse River, locked between steep dark cliffs, today shared its life with us.
