Three hours to Edgar, Montana

Ruthie's got a pillowtop mattress. She cackles lightly, says 'Don't mind mah 70's bush. Mah Serta, heard? Mah sweet little pillowtop mattress.' She looks like she tears phone books apart, with her clothes off. Some tourists slow down and peer at her muscled legs from up above the rocks; they honk their horn.
I am freezing up against the cave when Kan whips around the rapids from the canyon proper. She slips under in the mess of kicking water. She comes up and kicks, and goes down, and works her mouth to scream, and doesn't, and comes heaving to a stop on some unseen boulder, breasts flying out of her bra, hair like seaweed cross her gasping mouth.
Ruthie, petrified with worry, lets out air like a tiny tire, and we all see that Kan's okay. The water's deep, and wicked; brown.
I have a large bruise on my ass- perfectly round, in fact, they say- I climb around the rocks and try not to scrape anything reproductive off. It is still raining. The Firehole is too high to be warm from the thermal pools. The mosquitos are fucking slaying, rising in great dumb clouds from every surface when they smell our carPressed sweat. It is freezing.
I drink another beer, and grin a lot.
Soon we'll pile back in, and open three more beers, and wander hopelessly along the wrong roads, wrong exits, wrong freeways, singing along to burnt cd's, buying bottled beer and gas at regular intervals, drinking Malbec from soda cups in straws, Sangria from a two-liter bottle, CocaCola lime Perrier coffee Moose Drool Corona white Zin- but no water- zipping mountain roads at 80 with the windows roaring potsmoke fumbling mountains like a Viking FistThrust Storm across whatever valley holds our fear of heights.
We stay up every night, and Kan is feared of bears, and brainRot bacteria in pools, but Damn! I have a picture of her screaming from a log across a waterfall, Ten million gallons of pierce-cold whitewall coming down at her like God, her Cuban sandals slipping on the bark as cowboys lead their cushioned city customers on horses through the sward and wood.
A bear would run in dickless fear from such a torrent- canyon walls squeezed into the mountain river, roar and fall like buildings crashing, Lord- a bear would hide its pretty face in paws.
Later, Ruthie and I had a pillowsex rodeo with Kan's momma's cowboy hat and precious throws. We laughed until our faces all came off.
So dogs and goatcheese, bearskin coats and silver bracelets, hitchHikers with chemical burns and drunk guitars, communal sunglasses, dead bison sunburned never got her panties on when rivers come And FUCK if Kan said it was three sweet hours to her uncle's ranch. I was so blissfull that the ten-hour truth was fine, pardner; jes fine.