The town where I grew up was named Big Timber. It didn’t really have much big timber, at least not if you compare it to the Douglas Fir, Spruce, and Hemlock trees that grow near where I now live. I am not completely sure of the origins of the town name, but local legend is that a spot near the present townsite on the Yellowstone River gained its name from the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. On their return from the West Coast in the summer of 1806, the Corps divided into two groups. Lewis lead one group down the Missouri. Clark’s group took a southern route over to the Yellowstone River. Weary from the long trip, a discouraging winter near the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Coast, and over two months of overland travel, including waiting for snow to melt in the mountains so they could cross, they finally reached a place on the Yellowstone where cottonwood trees could be felled and hollowed out to make boats to enable travel downriver to the confluence of the Missouri and from there back to St. Joseph, Missouri on their way home. The site of the trees was named Big Timber.

In the late 1880s as the railroad pressed west a post office was established in anticipation of a train stop. At that time the land was part of the Crow Nation before the land west of the Boulder River was ceded to the United States Government in 1891. The townsite was called Dornix. When the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived, the townsite was moved up from the river bottom and renamed Big Timber. That was over eighty years after the visit of Captain Clark and his crew, so the origins of the name might not be exactly true to the legend.

Down next to the river, adjacent to the original townsite is a small triangle of land formed by the river, U.S. Highway 10, and the steep rise of the bluff next to the river. My parents bought that triangle of land when I was eight years old and from that time on we spent our summers down at the river, playing in the water, building tree forts in the cottonwoods, camping, fishing, and cooking over an open fire. Over the years my folks improved the cabins and shacks that were the remnants of a former motor court and our accommodations improved. Eventually my mother built a log home on the site. But more than the buildings what seeped into my soul from those summers was the river.

42 miles upstream from our place is the church camp where I was taken with my family when I was a couple of months old and to which I returned for at least a week every summer for the next 25 years. My family made frequent trips up to the camp to help with maintenance and for a few years in my early adulthood, we ran snowmobiles up the road in the winter to check snow depths for the weather service. During the first two summers of our graduate school years, Susan and I served as managers and cooks at the camp.

Upstream from the camp a dozen more miles is the Independence mining district. Gold had been discovered and claims had been staked in the area before the town of Dornix or Big Timber existed. Initially the US Government ushered the miners off the territory which was part of the Crow Nation, but as soon as the land was opened to miners, a gold rush began. By 1892, there was a town of 500 people in the high country. A telephone line was stretched up the river and a stage made three trips a week in the summer. An economic downturn resulted in a bust in 1893 and the mine closed in 1894. There never was a school or a church or bank in the town of Independence. Additional mines in the area including the Daisy, Poorman, King Solomon, and the Hidden Treasure operated off and on until about 1905. Over the years seven different stamp mills, a roller mill and a sawmill were built. All that remains are the remnants of several log cabins and the crumbling structures of the mills.

A hike of about three miles uphill from the old Independence townsite are the headwaters of the Main Boulder river. Although the glacier has since melted, when I was a young man we could stand next to it and listen to the drip, drip, drip of melting ice that formed the rivulets that merged into streams and flowed together to form the river. The glacier boasted algae blooms in the summer that turned the surface pink wherever we walked upon it.

I went away to college and although I spent several college and graduate school summers in Big Timber and in the mountains above town, I never returned to live. I’ve lived in four different states since that time. The river, however, continues to be a major theme of my story. When we go camping and are able to sleep next to a rushing river, I sleep better than in any other place. The sound of the river, even the rolling rocks at high water, calm my spirit in ways no other sound can. I’ve often slept where I could hear ocean waves at night, but it is not the same.

Etched into my memory and my spirit is the drip, drip, drip of the river’s source. It is an eternal gift of water, carried into the mountains by clouds, falling as snow to banks a dozen or more feet deep each winter and then melting and forming a river capable of flooding at spring runoff. It is a river where the trout spawn and will rise to a dry fly if cast by a skilled fisher. The river is eternal, but the water the flows through it is fresh every second. On average nearly 120 cubic feet of water flow by our old campsite every second. Although these days the water has been contaminated by human and animal activity, I remember when it was the purest and cleanest and best tasting water one could drink.

More than half of my body is water. Like the water in the river the water in my body is constantly changing. But I was formed drinking the water of the river. It has become a part of me and I am a part of it. No matter where I live I will always belong to that river.