River’s End

have been like coming home after a trip away, like waking up after a dream.
    And it had been summer, he reminded himself, when the peaks were snowcapped, but the body of them green with the pines and firs that marched up their sides to give them the look of living, growing giants rather than the cold and still kings that reigned over the valleys.
    He’d done his research, he’d studied photographs, the brochures, the travelogues, but somehow he knew they couldn’t have prepared him for this sweep, for the contrasts of deep, silent forest and wildly regal peaks.
    He continued the climb long after he passed the turnoff for River’s End. He had time, hours if he chose, before he needed to wind his way down to the lowlands, the rain forest, the job.
    Choices again. And his was to slip into a pull-off, get out of the car and stand. The air was cold and pure. His breath puffed out, and had little knives scoring his throat on the inhale. It seemed to him that the world was spread out before him, field and valley, hill and forest, the bright ribbon of river, the flash of lake. Even as a car grinding into low gear passed behind him, he felt isolated. He couldn’t decide if it was a feeling he enjoyed or one that troubled him, but he stood, letting the wind slap at his jacket and sneak under to chill his body, and studied the vast blue of the sky, with the white spears of mountains vivid against it like a design etched on glass.
    He thought perhaps he’d stopped just here with his parents all those years ago, and remembered standing with his mother reading the guidebook.
    The Olympic Range. And however vast and encompassing it seemed from this point, he knew that at lower elevations, in the forest where the grand trees ruled, it didn’t exist. You would walk and walk in that dimness, or clatter up rocks on the tumbling hills and not see the stunning scope of them. Then you would take a turn, step out on a ridge, and there it would be. The vast sky-stealing stretch of it snatching your breath as if it had sneaked up on you instead of the other way around.
    Noah took one last look, climbed back in his car and started down the switchback the way he’d come.
    The trees took over. Became the world.
    The detour took him a little more than an hour, but he still arrived at the lodge by three in the afternoon. He traveled up the same bumpy lane, catching glimpses of the stone and wood, the fairy-tale rooflines, the glint of glass that was the lodge. He was about to tell himself it hadn’t changed, when he spotted a structure nestled in the trees. It mirrored the style and materials of the lodge, but it was much smaller and not nearly as weathered.
    The wooden sign over the double doorway read river’s end naturalist center. There was a walking path leading to it from the lane and another from the lodge. Wildflowers and ferns appeared to have been allowed to grow as they pleased around it, but his gardener’s eye detected a human hand in the balance. Olivia’s hand, he thought, and felt a warm and unexpected spurt of pride. It was undoubtedly man-made, but she had designed it to blend in so well it seemed to have grown there as naturally as the trees.
    He parked his car, noted that the lot held a respectable number of vehicles. It was warmer here than it had been at the pull off. Warm enough, he noted, to keep the pansies and purple salvia happy in their long clay troughs near the entrance. He swung on his backpack, took out his single suitcase and was just locking his car when a dog loped around the side of the lodge and grinned at him. Noah couldn’t think of another term for the expression. The dog’s tongue lolled, the lips were peeled back and seemed to curve up, and the deep brown eyes danced with unmistakable delight.
    “Hey there, fella.”
    Obviously seeing this as an invitation, the big yellow lab pranced across the lot, plopped down at Noah’s feet and lifted a paw.
    “You the welcoming committee, boy?” Obligingly, Noah shook hands, then cocked his head. “Or should I say girl. Your name wouldn’t happen to be Shirley, would it?”
    At the name, the dog let out one cheerful woof, then danced toward the entrance as if to tell Noah to come on, pal, get the lead out.
    He was charmed enough to be vaguely disappointed when the dog didn’t follow him inside.
    He didn’t see any dramatic changes in the lobby. Noah thought perhaps some of the furnishings had been replaced, and the paint was a soft, toasty