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We'd just driven for two days from California. Jimmy, who's been leading raft trips professionally for 25 years, described the Salmon to me as one of the great rivers of the West. It is the longest undammed stream in the Lower 48 and runs through the largest roadless region: the River of No Return Wilderness, so named because of the difficulty of navigating upstream against its current (though somehow the fish for which the river was named still managed to "return" every year--at least until they were blocked by dams downstream on the Columbia). Heeding the advice of their Indian guide Sacajawea, who was born along a tributary nearby, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark avoided the Salmon altogether in 1805 on their journey to the Pacific Northwest. But Jimmy said that, while the Salmon did possess several serious rapids, it also had placid swimmable stretches and broad, baking beaches where one could bask in high summer style.

Unfortunately for us, the weather was as soggy as it could get: in a region that had been suffering from a drought, rain would fall on all five days of our trip. I guess we should have expected the worst after we ran into the owl; after all, one of the world's most common superstitions is that you'll have bad luck if you see one. What then could be the consequences of hitting an owl with a truck? We were destined to find out.

The Middle Fork of the Salmon is a legendary whitewater stream, blessed by a wealth of waterfalls, hot springs, and petroglyphs. It empties into the Salmon's main stem, which we would be running--an even more forceful river dotted with Class III and IV rapids. In high water, the Salmon's heaviest runs--distinguished by such charming names as Growler, Gunbarrel, Whiplash, Elkhorn, and Big Mallard--have hydraulics capable of flipping big boats. We had three gear rafts with single rowers: a lively young boatwoman named Roz Laurenzato, her quiet boyfriend, Doug Givens, oarsman/folksinger Grady Keystone, and oarsman/naturalist Roger Luckenbach. We also had a paddleboat, in which six to eight participants were commanded by a guide, and three inflatable kayaks, which allowed plucky individuals to try the river on their own. Since there wasn't much of a snowpack, most of the runs were manageable, so I spent most of my time in a kayak, attempting as artful a performance as possible. This consisted mainly of catching eddies, enabling me to sit stock-still in the middle of a rapid--for me, far more thrilling than the splashes that make tip 99 percent of river-trip photographs.

The main Salmon is characterized less by enormous views than by a sense of quietude, of being far removed. The banks contain only occasional evidence of human occupation--for example, Mackay Bar, a dude ranch with an airstrip. In other isolated spots, squatters had established hermitages. One such stubborn individual--"Buckskin Billy" by name--had built a 100-foot-tall fortress to defend himself against the federal government, which eventually agreed to leave him alone if he greeted boating parties coming downriver. Another pioneer had left behind a plum orchard, which we interrupted our trip to harvest. It was, we noted without much cogitation, littered with bear scat.

On the fourth night of our trip, Jimmy wanted to camp in a special place--a beautiful bower where the river receives the outflow of its south fork. He considers stream confluences to be power spots, marking the "merger of two spirits." The natural forces were powerful indeed, as the goodsize tributary, surrounded by steep mountainsides, hurried past to add its energy to the main river. Excavations along the Salmon have yielded prehistoric human artifacts at almost every confluence, indicating that many were year-round settlements. In all likelihood, this was once the site of a Shoshone or Nez Perce camp, with easy pickings of salmon migrating up the tributary. Our problem was that it was hard to get to: the campsite was on the far side of the river junction, and the only place to tie the boats was upstream on the South Fork. Thus we had to wade ashore, tow the rafts up the near bank, then ferry across the tributary without getting washed back out into the main river. There was a small island in the middle, making things even more complicated.

As it turned out, we completed the operation without mishap. I took one of the kayaks across, pointing upstream and paddling like crazy to reach the far side; the oarsmen did likewise with the rafts, and soon we had all the tents set up in the shelter of the grove. The sun had even come out for a change, imparting a sense of security

In the time that remained before dinner, I decided to go for a walk. Just behind camp was a sizable hill--the flank of a mountain, really--so I climbed up for a view. I sat there for sometime, taking in the feel of the place and listening to the river. It wasn't until I came back down that I saw the bear.

It was ambling insouciantly along the far shore of the South Fork. Not a grizzly, but a black bear--the much more common, relatively innocuous Ursus americanus. I say "relatively" because such creatures can still cause people trouble, especially in places like Yellowstone or Yosemite, where they're not only accustomed to humans but skilled at breaking into coolers and cars. Here in the Idaho backcountry, though, hundreds of miles from a national park, it wasn't likely that this bear saw very many people.

In any case, the animal was paying us no mind at all. Another group from our rafting party had come strolling upstream and was watching the bear across the tributary, walking roughly parallel with it on the opposite shore. Still, the animal didn't register the slightest surprise or sign of alarm at our presence--it simply went about its business, foraging for berries in the bush. This behavior continued as we returned to camp. Eventually, in full view of our kitchen, the bear waded into the South Fork and crossed to the island at the confluence. Jimmy didn't like the fact that the animal was coming closer, and when it took the final step--diving into the water again and braving the current to emerge on the near bank--he and the crew went running toward it, whooping and yelling and throwing rocks to drive it away

Reluctantly, the bear finally did what it was "supposed" to do, turning away and moving off. But now it was on our side of the river--and some time later we glanced up to sec it staring down from the hill behind us, black eyes shiny and unfathomable above its bestial brown snout. Obviously this bear wasn't planning to go away--and, what was more, it was soon joined by a couple of equally indiscreet cousins. We were beginning to feel surrounded.

Jimmy and Roger the naturalist conferred. Then came a stunning announcement. "These are the most aggressive black bears I've ever seen," Jimmy said. "They might keep their distance while it's still light, but as soon as it gets dark, they're going to come into camp, and we're going to have to stay up all night to keep them away from the food. If they get frustrated enough, they might stick their heads into some tents, which is when people could get hurt. So we're going to finish dinner, pack everything up, get back in the rafts and go downstream. We need to separate ourselves from these bears."

I suppose that was an understatement. Never before had I been on a river--much less a wild whitewater river--at night. Loading the rafts in broad daylight commonly took a couple of hours; now we would have to strike camp completely and float down the river in the dark. To make matters worse, there was no moon. We'd be running the River of No Return in utter blackness.

Initially, Jimmy just planned to ferry across the main river. As fast and strong as the Salmon was flowing, the bears wouldn't follow us to the other side. At 11 . the rafts were once again fully loaded (kayaks in tow) and pushed off into the South Fork current, where they began moving slowly toward the main Salmon.

I say "slowly," but I couldn't really tell. The way to gauge your speed in a current is to watch how fast the shore goes by, but our flashlights illuminated only small segments of bank. That was enough, however, to reflect the eyes of the bears standing by the shoreline, watching us float away.

The oarspeople did their best to stay together on the water, yelling back and forth in the dark to maintain contact and communication. But once we hit the main channel, it was every boat for itself in the effort to cross the river. Once we'd finally succeeded, the rafts were scattered up and down the bank over a couple of hundred yards. Roz and Doug had come ashore somewhere upstream, where they hunkered down and waited while the rest of us lined the boats along the bank. And it was from their direction that we soon heard the high-pitched yells: "Bear! Bear! Bear!"

The impossible had apparently occurred: one of the bears had swum the main channel to come after us. A few seconds later, when we shone a light on a raft we'd unloaded, we saw the animal standing in it, looking for food.

Again the bear was dispatched by screaming and banging. A quick scan of the immediate area revealed one junior member of our party, pants down around her ankles. The kid was literally scared shitless.

Under the circumstances, Jimmy decided to get back on the water. He later told me he had the confidence to do this only because the next few miles were among the gentlest on the Salmon. In the dark, though, they could have fooled me. It was unbelievably eerie and unsettling to descend a wild river in the dark, where every riffle against a rock foretold an approaching rapid. Directing a light on the water itself was an experience in disorientation, showing only a swirling patch of foam in a spotlight surrounded by a void.

After several minutes, Jimmy realized he couldn't tell if his boat was aimed upstream or down. At that point he decided he had "no business being out there" and started looking for another takeout. Most of the banks were too steep and stony, but finally we found a bouldery beach with narrow sections of sand between the rocks. Somehow, at 2 or 3 ., we managed to get everyone ashore, tie up the boats, shovel out some sleeping spots until they were level, and crawl into our bags. The bear did not reappear.

In the morning, as people roused themselves and set about making breakfast, Jimmy fished out a piece of anthropological literature and read it to the group. Included in The Practice of the Wild, a collection of essays by poet (and Jimmy's occasional rafting partner) Gary Snyder, it was a transcription of a Native American legend called "The Woman Who Married a Bear." It told the tale of an Indian girl who, while out collecting berries in the woods, is befriended by a handsome stranger. After spending the night with him, she forgets about going home and instead accompanies him "from mountain to mountain" looking for berries and gophers. In the fall, when her new mate starts digging a den, she realizes that he is actually a bear. She goes underground with him for the winter, but makes sure to leave her scent outside so her brothers can find her in the spring, by which time she has borne a baby boy and girl.

When her brothers appear outside the den, she begs her husband not to hurt them. "I'm going to do something bad!" he warns, putting knives into his mouth to form teeth. But ultimately he is killed by the brothers, and the woman returns to her family. By this time, though, she is half bear herself--and when her brothers tease her by throwing a bear skin over her back, the transition is complete. With tears streaming down her face, she kills her brothers and mother and withdraws to the mountains with her cubs.

The story is told by Tlingit people about a grizzly bear, but its ideas were provocative to ponder as we sat by the Salmon. As Jimmy noted upon closing the book, bears and humans occupy the same omnivorous interface in nature.

Snyder writes in his commentary:

 For a long time only the bears and birds were at the berry thickets and
 the rivers. The humans arrived later. At first they all got along. There
 was always a bit of food to share.... Later they seemed to drift away.
 [People] got busy with each other ... and got more and more stingy. They
 learned a lot of little stuff, and forgot where they came from.

 [Bears] are the closest of all animals to humans.... They make love for
 hours. They are grumpy after naps.... They are forgiving.... They like
 human beings, and they decided long ago to let the humans join them at the
 salmon-running rivers and the berryfields.... But that period is now over.
 The bears are being killed, the humans are everywhere, and the green world
 is being unraveled and shredded and burned by the spreading of a gray world
 that seems to have no end.

Later that day, drifting downstream, we were passed by a government jet boat heading upriver, carrying a couple of rangers. When we came off the river the next day, the local newspaper bore a small headline: Two Bears Killed at Mackay Bar. The article reported that, because of the drought, there was little forage at higher elevations and bears had been entering the river corridors in search of berries and food. We were just one of several parties to have been bothered near the South Fork of the Salmon that week. When the bears broke into a walk-in cooler at the Mackay Bar resort, their fate was sealed.

Jimmy and I were depressed as we walked back to the truck. There was no question as to who the intruders were in this watershed; by virtue of our devices (Snyder's "little stuff"), we'd maneuvered ourselves into the animals' habitat, heralded our arrival by clobbering an owl, and--in our urge to occupy a "power spot" that was also a popular foraging place--gotten into a standoff that would contribute to the killing of two bears. We hadn't purposely done anything wrong; finding ourselves at odds, we'd done our best to withdraw. Still, we had played a role in the destruction of a place that we meant only to enjoy.

I'm not going to recommend that we all quit taking vacations in the woods. By definition, wilderness is a place where things are beyond our control--even, apparently, when our desire is to have no effect. As the Tlingit legend shows, the fates of people and animals are intertwined, and part of our reason for visiting wilderness is to relearn this lesson. But the fact remains that, even if bears and humans are kin, we're the ones with the most powerful implements of annihilation. That's why the gray world is so pervasive, and why what's left of the green one must remain unspoiled. Even boasting the best intentions, we can't trust ourselves to do no harm.

David Darlington is the author of The Mojave: A Portrait of the Definitive American Desert (Henry Holt, 1996) and Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles (Henry Holt, 1997).