35 -

A quick piece of toast & some coffee, and I was headed towards town to meet at my friends, L & D's house. It was her sister's 35th, which seems a fun, youthful age. She walks in hillbilly like in long cut off jeans, a crop top and an Idaho cap. A symbol of 35 that is endearing. She manhandles the large black tubes to her subaru, takes a shot of Vodka straight & drives us to the Nooksack casino. I, like her, don't really like the attention of a birthday, Unless, Unless, and then there's always Unless...We meet a big group of her friends, all married, with children, who want to remember something. Or maybe they're a new breed of mid-30's I was ignorant to. We buy more, more ice, more tequila, double check to make sure everyone has a straw hat. We're off to the Everybody store, which everybody knows about, and we fill our tubes, a long line of us. I thought this was a dead event, a dead sport, for years I've thought the salmon-lovers had us banned from the slow flow of the sack's browngreen water. Maybe this is our last year they think. There's hoards of groups of sunburned lines of red and white and river rats and coolers shunked into tubes filled with american flagged bud's and chips and jars of smokes sealed from the water. Finally, there's no phones, something that feels like magic, relief, old time innocence. We get transported to the start, a shorter length, and dip into the river. Which is refreshing & cool & see through & we crack the bud's and giggle as we drag asses across the shallow. Every sandbar is an excuse to pass around goods, drink more. Several times there's a capsize, which is the best; to see someone go full force in a completely passionate dive towards a can of beer. We float for hours. We nap. We find the spot on the bridge to disengage from the sack, and we're back, exhausted, brown, and hungry for a full meal. I enjoy celebrating life. I enjoy seeing couples. I enjoy a possible Last. And for all that I enjoy, I am softly sad.