Hate Speech on the Bitterroot

“For reasons I still don’t understand, I told almost no one about the incident at Poker Joe. After all, why taint the hundreds of memories I have of that treasured place with one disgraceful episode? The river there is handsome in all seasons. Our family has picnicked there, swum there, skipped stones, drunk wine. It’s where I trained my first Lab to retrieve, where I once spent two hours tempting an extraordinarily large trout to a dry fly (only to botch the hookset), where a young moose once galloped so close that I dove into a rose thicket.”