BELOW SAND ISLAND

By Ryann Savino


Photography: Mike Norton, VisitUtah.com

The first time I met this river I took my teacher, with blossoms of gray in her hair, into and through a Russian olive tree. The river turned left and my boat, named Ellen, stayed straight. My hands and body moved in fluster while spiked branches reached for us and crunched. “So sorry,” I said. To which Karla raised her right hand and showed me a map of cracks, no larger than a bud of globemallow. Her first time on the oars, she told me, just like mine, she took her teacher through elaeagnus angustifolia. My shoulders loosened as she turned, her eyes looking back downstream. Back to the moment, back to the flow. Her voice faint in the wind, “You should see his scar.”

Ryann Savino is a river guide, writer and storyteller who centers her work on the belief that preservation of place is inextricably tied to the preservation of its stories. She is a board member for the Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers and calls Southeastern Utah one of her homes.