My father loves a challenge. The rivers offer that challenge, and he accepts. Some of the "wildest river rats" consider him a little crazy for "shooting the rapids" of the salmon River in his two-man canoe. He spent most of the trip on top of the overturned canoe or floundering after it. He left the canoe on a rock about three-fourths of the way down where it hit, shattering the ribs and knocking a hole in the bottom. But he came home content to mow lawns and take out tonsils for another year. My father wants us kids to be independent and to accept the challenges, too. On my twelfth birthday, my father gave me a slightly broken three-year-old gelding. My father, being brought up in the city, knew very little about horses, but unafraid, he rode the horse as it reared and bucked across the foothills. After three days the horse stopped bucking; so my father tied a rope around the horse's neck for me to hold on to. Then he set me on the horse and told me to learn to ride. After he had set my broken arm and put five stitches in my face from accidents on the horse, he bought me a Western Saddle. My dad's pretty stubborn and loses his temper easily when he's tired. Once, our family got a real late start on a camping trip. Being irritated with us for not being prepared, he drove the car faster than he should have in fact, twice as fast. He drove down a street where the policemen had set up radar for the day. As the policeman walked toward the car after flagging us down, my dad swore. "Now, Aaron," my mother said, trying to sooth him. "Fifty miles in a twenty-five mile- per-hour zone," the officer said in a mono tone. He took a pencil from his ear and a pink citation book from his pocket. "Name, please," he asked. "Hell," my father exploded, "can't you see I've got my family?" He gestured violently towards us in the back seat. "We're trying to get off on a vacation." "I'm sorry, sir," the policeman said, not even pretending to be. "Now I need your name." "I'll be dammed if I'll tell you," my dad said. "Disrespect for an officer," the policeman said in syllables as he wrote it on his pad. My father swore again and said something about slow drivers causing all the accidents. My mother told the officer my dad's name. When the officer asked for the address, my dad ground the gears into low. "I'll be dammed if I'll stand for this," he shouted, and squealed past the surprised officer and down the road. Of course, the officer had his motor-cycle near by. He chased us with the siren going full blast. I guess my dad felt pretty embarrassed in spite of his stubborness, because he stopped. The policeman pulled up to the side of the car and looked in the window. "That's resisting arrest," he said. "Maybe you'd better follow me down to the police station." This is a "river rat." This is my dad. His desire to share the river, his stubborness and determination to make us like "river ratting," his love of nature and joy of the challenge, combined with his youthful outlook on life to me seems to be the reasons behind Dr. Aaron B. Ross and his "Frightening River Trip." 8 Crossing the field this morning, I thought a giant snail with purple feelers Curled against the sun had found its way to a puddle of sky rain left clogged into the wheel ruts of the road, Until I saw the sparrow lying dead. Across the field, white rocks Like a scattered flock of white sheep, clung to the hill. I listened to the sun sucking the sap from the still stream, Hidden beneath a lichen crust of ice, And the wind straining through a cling sack of reeds Some bird once knotted to the swollen branch of last Aprils' elm. The sparrow lying at my feet A piece of wood tossed off the wood pile To sink into the ground, brittle sap shatters to amber glass; A sodden fist of feathers, with eyes like two burls of a bleeding In spring I wanted to hold it in my hands. I felt it deeper than the wind-fall light in a winter elm grove, Deeper than the stillness of the stream, or the sound of an elm. I turned way, leaving no marks, and thought of sun-soaked pearls, And amber quince, and red ripe currents MARCH 20, 1961 OLIVIA BERTAGNOLLI