Part two in a series by Tully Thibeau.  Read Part One.

But it’s the emptiness that makes the wheel work (Lao Zi, Dao De Jing, No. 11)

Missoula hometowners and lifetime transplants, according to custom, are fully predisposed to speak deadly philosophically but, on occasion, might liken their burg as it once had been by some in pioneer days to the axis of a wheel on a covered wagon around which radiate, like its spokes would, five river valleys. Set erratically, these spokes seek each other out and then meet in a succession of confluences staggering to the west into Lake Pend Oreille, positioned atop the base of the Idaho panhandle. At the east end, the lake shore offers itself up to receive the flood pushing down on it, an incessant sliding of waters in due course unhurriedly finishing off its swelling through the Clark Fork Valley, the westward spoke, out of the other four: the Bitterroot Valley, falling alluringly downhill from the south; and to the east and northeast, the Deerlodge and Blackfoot Valleys, jutting en route for this side of the Divide; and lowering from the north, the Flathead Valley, spreading wide to engulf the broad plain.

Conspicuously, Evaro Pass disturbs this circle, interrupting its consummation, and has doubtless always beheld plenty of this kind of traffic between the hub where Missoula congregates and the spoke to the north, likely way far back before grizzlies and wolves first became attracted to its undulant spine. They cross over it and then follow along the ridge northward to the Ninepipe Valley. Or, if heading in the direction that the highway follows, they descend the pass into the Jocko Valley instead, spreading more than 500 square miles to the northwest.

Newtons, Model Ts, and a stream of other, post-modern vehicles have meandered the 40-mile distance of this conduit along a path like the one taken by the Jocko River. Further up the pass, the Jocko is just a creek but increases in tumescence until it spills out into a stretch of the Mission Mountains that gapes enormously and continues to flow steadily into better weather.

Anything traveling the riverbank’s length too closely faces up to streamside thickets, heavily vegetated. But there are also various trees, mostly willows, as well as the shrubs and tall grasses extending valuable protective cover from predation for a range of species and abundant fodder for bear, deer, and especially beaver. Beaver visit riverbank tangles habitually yet constantly come back home to the wetland, returning for the saturated soil among cousins wearing similar coats, the mink and muskrat. None of them can make it without damp quarters, which are incidentally shared by a mixture of visiting ducks and sandhill cranes indulging themselves on insects, aquatic animals and plants, berries, seeds, and, when providence would have it, a lifeless rodent slumped over the spongy surface of the wild marsh: Like the ducks, the cranes do not establish permanent residence, but they do breed in the bog.

Up the steep, slick incline of the Arlee hills to the north, fescue grows coarsely, and all year long flocks of woodpeckers, chickadees and jays soar above the Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir that dominate the mountain forest and light upon them to feed. Once replete, they alight, spread their wings, and swoop across the sprawl of the Jocko, diving southerly then rising in parallel to the arid slopes cloaked beneath bluebunch wheatgrass. On high, they lasciviously regard elk, whitetail and other untamed mammals below either foraging or using the woods to hide from view.

If this were the last ice age instead of the new century, then right about now his car would be rising out from under the surf lapping at the northeastern shore of Lake Missoula.

Marlo Corcifisso