Dear of Troy:

What an ox-bowed river we follow so often here on AWAD! Hearing you bring in wapiti and the elk--while my mind is thinking of oysters and pearls and looking now at the lovely pearl ring my daughter found in Japan -- this lustrous, nacreous, pearly river (to be in an overdone kind of disposition today) makes me think of:

My dentist. (Pearly whites! Not really...) But: My dentist! He goes elk hunting once a year in Wyoming in some great mountains there that look like huge jagged molars of a great giant. And he took a wapiti tooth say that three times and turn around: wapiti tooth/wapiti tooth/wapiti tooth... and had it made into a ring for his wife. I don't think I'd like a wapiti tooth ring, however--sad to think of such a great beast slain, though these hunters always say they're preserving nature by doing so.

Anyway, just interesting to see how things go around and flow around from pearls to oysters to elk and back a little to wapiti rings of elks' pearly whites.

WW