Mourning loss and ascending the Lochsa

As I brought the fish to the net, I was overwhelmed with its weight, length and textbook coloring.
As I resuscitated this fish in the slow but moving waters along the side of the Lochsa, I thought of Mark, and I wished that he could have seen this. 
Summiting Lolo Pass, I stopped along the side of the road, taking in the wilderness below me, now to the east and south, and thought about all that I was leaving behind.

Five hundred miles of river memories in three states

“The elders told us there is no point in building a visitors center if we don’t restore the land,” said Brad Parry, a tribal member leading up conservation work on the neglected landscape. “They told us they want this land back to the way it was when the massacre happened. For those who died to have a peace we need to restore the land to as natural as possible.”