The ride was a gripping experience.

Last Saturday, May 20, as the river crested to 9.7 feet the ride on that torrent was heightened by an intense, thick fog providing two-wave visibility in all of the big drops. As if the twenty-foot high wave trains, deep sleeper holes, mobile wood, and surging laterals weren’t enough. From Fish Creek to Split there were only three eddies worth trying to put a raft in. It was a big-water experience of a lifetime.

Lochsa Rendezvous raged earlier in the month. It’s always a good Lowbagger event. Within hours tents, batwings and backs of trucks abound the Lochsa Lodge compound. Community kitchens and make-shift bars spring like mushrooms from the forest floor. Bonfires, back-porch music, and dancing boaters fill the air on the flat above the river winding through the cedars. The mighty Lochsa held around four feet that weekend. But that didn’t stop Ten Pin Alley, Lochsa Falls, and Terminator from claiming boats and bolstering the Lochsa’s legacy.

The Lochsa crowd embodies the word Lowbagger somehow. To make it on the ‘Sa you have to get cold and dirty, and you have to like it. Imagine crawling into a wet set of river gear at 7 a.m. after sleeping on a porch all night and rafting twenty-two miles of 34 degree Class IV whitewater in the pouring rain. Then do it all again. It’s worth it.

While the river types don’t always have the means, they usually find a way. They poach commercial propane blasters at dawn to dry gear. They drink bacon grease for breakfast, and spend the day scamming on their buddy’s beer. Their buddy in turn scams beer back and the economic machine rolls on.

It really is a supply and demand issue when it comes to Lowbagger river congregations. Whenever there is a surplus of soft-skinned types in a certain wilderness sector, Lowbaggers tend to accumulate. The feeding density for Lowbaggers in this case is six wilderness visitors per Lowbagger. Like grizzlies in a blue-bell patch they spend the day together. The thing about this tourist resource is that it dries up come the regular work week.

This does not bode well for remaining Lowbaggers. With resources terminally diminished, the Lowbaggers begin to Indian leg wrestle, and try to mooch burgers and women off of fellow Lowbaggers. The fragile balance of the Lowbagger economy implodes under its own weight resulting in scrappy dog fights until everyone packs up and goes home until the next weekend.

On top of that we’ve formed the Lowbagger Foundation to publish the website and support excellence in the field of environmental journalism. Now we’ll be able to get a few pennies out to our hard-working contributors who have been delivering first-rate, exclusive stories for Lowbagger readers in the name of an informed public. Already we’ve been able to help a journalist in West Virginia write about the extensive damage being caused by mountain-top removal. And we’ve helped a journalist in Montana research the coming of a 500mv power line that will run north of Great Falls and up through some of Montana and Canada’s most productive wheat fields.

As Lowbagger expands, adding staff members and office space, it will continue to need your help. We’re working on a PayPal system for donations and merchandise purchases. Until then we still have our old-fashioned and trusty P.O. Box 8751, Missoula 59807. Now you can make those checks out to the Lowbagger Foundation.

Two-hundred and seventy articles later we are still the scrappy, fun-loving journalists who think that the environmental movement is an exciting, vibrant community of patriotic and passionate individuals who are either under-reported on or outright misrepresented when they do get some ink.

Keep tuning in because this show is just gettin’ going.

Josh Mahan says don’t forget to bookmark Lowbagger in your favorites.