Area:	river_swimminghole
Face:	East bank (seen from the west)

Now that I have Smart Alek my fur-bragging can rise to new heights. He
is not yet 16 months old, you should remember throughout the following
story, and with me for little more than a year.

The weather Tuesday was good enough: windy, cold for April, and about
half sunny. For the rest of the week we expected temperatures colder
still with clouds and snainy periods. Therefore, out to the woods with
us.

The river this spring has been running high with periods of extreme
flooding which have rewritten the riverbed and channel course. As a
result Alek and I have spent most of our woods time on the north side.
This week the waters had receded enough that the river is only running
high and I hoped to find a way across. All stepping stones were both
moved and fully inundated whereas the rapids are running too deep for
even winter booted wading. But there is a log spanning the river near
the old swimming hole.

Now this log lies neatly east and west from north bank to south bank
(because real rivers know nothing of straight lines and compass
points). I don't understand why it wasn't washed away. Even now the
top of the log is dry but the underside is immersed to make a kind of
inverted dry dam, backing up a part of the excess flow when the river
runs higher than its average.

On the south side, at this tree trunk's branchy west end, there lies
another washed up tree whose double trunks lie parallel to the river's
bank. The two thus make capital T with its head double and its stem
crossing the water. I picked up an old dead branch as a prop and set
out across the creek. In this sphinxian 3-legged way I supernavigated
the limpid stream.

All well and good for the human, but Alek is not built near enough to
a fox to cross on top of the log. He thought at first to wade along
the upstream side. This proved unwise, for the channel under the log
runs too deep to wade and rather fast. Poor Alek grabbed onto the log
but without a foothold was unable to climb out.

Alek puzzled over this dilemma for some time making various attempts
to escape the water onto the log or to find a foothold nearby but all
in vain. His human, I, was ready to leap into the rushing waters to
rescue him at need but preferred to utter calm encouragement and let
the Smart Alek resolve the problem with his own resources. At last he
pushed himself away and tried to swim upstream and to the north (or
eastern) bank. The force of the water was too great; dogpaddling as
fast as he could barely held him in the same place. Switching tactics
Alek turned left across the stream and aimed for his master. At first
the cross-current route was hardly better but a few seconds of hard
swimming brought him out of the main channel and then into yet slower
waters and finally to the slack water where he could wade out on the
south side. Success!

So we explored the whole of the south side from one corner to another
keeping one eye open for any possible river crossing. We waded springs
and startled deer and pushed through cedar thickets but we did not
discover any other bridge or ford. At length we returned to the same
logbridge; I picked up my stick and headed back across.

Reaching the opposite bank I turned to look back. Young Alek stood on
the south bank asking, "How should I come across?" A repeat of that
unhappy swim was clearly not his first choice. Well it wasn't since a
return that way would have meant swimming into stronger and stronger
currents. But from my vantage on the higher north side riverbank I saw
an alternative route.

"Go around the log," I said to Alek, "and come back down on the other
side." Alek cocked his head and considered this advice. Then he turned
and raced upstream 10 feet, curved inland around the double log which
forms the top of the T, raced downstream along the double trunks and
around their downstream end back to the riverbank. Here he found an
easy entrance into the water and so began to wade across.

From Alek's position low to the water's surface it would be difficult
to see the river bottom and impossible to map the full path from bank
to bank. As he started across, Alek again looked to me, standing high
above the water. "Go this way first," I advised him, taking a step and
a half upstream, "and then turn and come downstream a little bit," as
I took 2 steps to my left. And so he did, fording the stream along the
most convenient available path and climbing out at a low spot in the
bank.

"Good dog!" I said to him as he shook the water off. "Smart Alek! What
other 16 month old would have solved the problem of crossing the river
so efficiently?" Alek smiled his dog smile and headed up the northside
river trail, his human praising him effusively as we went.