River Mom
That night Cort plays a tape of an interview given by Reho Wolfe who lived in the canyon with her husband
George. Big Mallard Creek was running high one spring, and George instructed their five-year-old son to
wait on the bank while he took the horse across. But while his father’s back was turned, Norman tried to
make his own way atop a log. George heard a cry and by the time he got to the bank, the boy’s body was
swept from the creek into the river.
George walked up the porch steps alone and Reho said, “Did he drowned?” She seemed to already know.
The couple left the canyon, but in 1958, Reho returned with her seven other children. She didn’t like the
influences they were exposed to at Grangeville schools and wanted to teach them herself; she thought they’
d learn more on the river, without distractions. One photo from Cort’s book shows the seven Wolfe
children sit amidst the tall grasses on the bank, each playing violin while their mother, standing behind them,
sings.
I’m not surprised that even though the river claimed the life of one son, Reho would turn to it for the
salvation of the others. I too might choose the swift current over some of the cruelty in our culture.
We live, not in a canyon, but in the mountains where more elk and deer than people wander up to our
porch, where we have no television reception and the cell phones are out of range. I try to walk some line
of moderation, saying yest to iPod, no to Xbox.
For the past six years, Gabe and Dylan have attended a community school where they have never had
more than 18 classmates per grade and they take field trips to watch raptor fledglings leave the nest.
Monday they will go to a middle school in Boise, where 1,300 kids fill the halls. Gabe and Dylan are
excited. They will get to run cross-country and play in the orchestra.
I’m with Reho. I want the three of us to stay in this canyon, where my sons sleep next to me in soft sand
with our hearts open to the sky. I want to stay here, where the people are kind and the challenges at least
make sense, the way nature ultimately does. Who can say that about the sixth grade?
And it occurs to me why there are few love poems addressed from mother to child because, well, how
redundant? What mother feels the need to “count the ways”? Instead we cut to the business of tempering
our love, choosing which maternal pulls to answer, and which are getting in our children’s way. So much of
parenthood seems to be about this—an attempt to find a balance between protecting too much and risking
the wrong things. How often I need to remind my heart that the point is to help my children not need me.
That night Cort plays a tape of an interview given by Reho Wolfe who lived in the canyon with her husband
George. Big Mallard Creek was running high one spring, and George instructed their five-year-old son to
wait on the bank while he took the horse across. But while his father’s back was turned, Norman tried to
make his own way atop a log. George heard a cry and by the time he got to the bank, the boy’s body was
swept from the creek into the river.
George walked up the porch steps alone and Reho said, “Did he drowned?” She seemed to already know.
The couple left the canyon, but in 1958, Reho returned with her seven other children. She didn’t like the
influences they were exposed to at Grangeville schools and wanted to teach them herself; she thought they’
d learn more on the river, without distractions. One photo from Cort’s book shows the seven Wolfe
children sit amidst the tall grasses on the bank, each playing violin while their mother, standing behind them,
sings.
I’m not surprised that even though the river claimed the life of one son, Reho would turn to it for the
salvation of the others. I too might choose the swift current over some of the cruelty in our culture.
We live, not in a canyon, but in the mountains where more elk and deer than people wander up to our
porch, where we have no television reception and the cell phones are out of range. I try to walk some line
of moderation, saying yest to iPod, no to Xbox.
For the past six years, Gabe and Dylan have attended a community school where they have never had
more than 18 classmates per grade and they take field trips to watch raptor fledglings leave the nest.
Monday they will go to a middle school in Boise, where 1,300 kids fill the halls. Gabe and Dylan are
excited. They will get to run cross-country and play in the orchestra.
I’m with Reho. I want the three of us to stay in this canyon, where my sons sleep next to me in soft sand
with our hearts open to the sky. I want to stay here, where the people are kind and the challenges at least
make sense, the way nature ultimately does. Who can say that about the sixth grade?
And it occurs to me why there are few love poems addressed from mother to child because, well, how
redundant? What mother feels the need to “count the ways”? Instead we cut to the business of tempering
our love, choosing which maternal pulls to answer, and which are getting in our children’s way. So much of
parenthood seems to be about this—an attempt to find a balance between protecting too much and risking
the wrong things. How often I need to remind my heart that the point is to help my children not need me.
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