Rain tapped the canoe like quick fingers. Elias tucked his notebook beneath his coat. If the pages got soaked, the careful marks he had made all morning could blur into nothing. “Why stop to draw every bend?” asked Niska, who knew the river’s moods better than any paper could. “The current changes after the narrow rocks. Keep close to the left bank.” Elias looked up from his rough sketch. He was helping record the river’s course, but he knew that a line on a page could never tell the whole story. Niska pointed out a gravel bar hidden just below the surface. Elias added a small warning mark. When the rain eased, they checked the sketch against the river. One bend was too wide. Elias rubbed it out and drew it again. Niska nodded. “Better. Someone travelling here later will need the truth, not a tidy guess.” That evening, Elias copied the notes carefully. He added the gravel bar and wrote that the river could change with the season. The map would not show every sound, smell, or story of the place. Still, it might help another traveller prepare—and remind them to listen to people who knew the land. Factual note: David Thompson was a surveyor and mapmaker whose work helped document parts of western North America. This story’s characters and events are invented; it does not claim that this scene happened on July 22, 1796.