Parts of my novel Seed take place in the far West during the beginnings of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. Lee Smith, a mountain man trapper, leads protagonist Gatlin Dunby westward, where Gat hopes to find answers to the frightening changes occurring within him.
One tidbit I stumbled on while researching where most of the action in that part of the novel takes place is Parting of the Waters, at Two Ocean Pass, located in the Teton Wilderness. Two Ocean Pass separates the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean drainage basins.
There’s a stream that runs down the spine of the Continental Divide named North Two Oceans Creek. It only runs a short way before splitting into two branches, each from 3′ to 6′ wide, depending on time of year and weather conditions. Water within Atlantic Creek flows down the Atlantic Ocean drainage basin, traveling 3,348 miles by way of the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico; water within Pacific Creek cascades down the Pacific drainage basin slope, into the Snake River and then on to the Columbia, arriving at the Pacific after a journey of 1,353 miles.
Mountain man and explorer Jim Bridger once said of these waterways: “A fish could swim all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” Folks laughed at him, but old Jim had the last laugh. I guess a fish could conceivably swim from one ocean to the other (if said fish could handle both salt and fresh water).
I wonder – if the water was deep enough during the wet season, when the creeks were 6′ wide, could a kayaker navigate from the Atlantic to the Pacific? That would be something.
Parting of the Waters is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sourcd: TheFurTrapper.com
