Last Sunday I was in Rifton, my childhood home, and stopped for memories at the Walkill River, where I once swam two miles wearing a life jacket. The Walkill River drifts along slowly, its water the color and texture of milk chocolate someone accidentally left in their sweater pocket and sent through both a washing machine and a dryer. At one of its iconic (in my opinion) viewpoints, along route 213 and below Perrine's Bridge, I stood in the rain among some discarded beer cans and empty potato chip bags, some of which had probably been there since I was a kid.
I stood in the cold sleet and thought about rivers as a concept. You notice how philosophers and poets, songwriters and novelists, are always saying memorable things about them? One of my favorite pieces of river wisdom, second only to Pete Seeger's songs, is from Heraclitus--simple precise and undeniable: "No man ever steps in the same river twice for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
I love how Heraclitus leaves so much room for interpretation. He's talking about how the water always keeps flowing away and evaporating, I say to myself. What a cool thought. A man can never step in the same river twice, because after he steps in it, the water his foot touched will flow away or evaporate. And he's not the same man because…I guess because his cells are constantly dying and being renewed? But wait, it's got to be more metaphysical than that. First of all, the man technically is stepping in the same river, isn't he? What actually is a river, qua river? (Actually I just want to use the word "qua" 😁)
My brain became slightly chilled and soon my thoughts could no longer flow, stuck like the driftwood and clumps of trash at the river's edge. At any rate, I decided, the Walkill River as a concept, a whole entity made up of all the drops of water that had ever spent time between its banks, is still the same river it always has been, though I was not about to step in it that day.
I walked down to the place where my peers and I used to launch our canoes. When I was in seventh grade our youth group leader planned a camping trip for all of us in the Adirondacks in which we would canoe through several Adirondack lakes, carrying all our camping supplies in our canoes. In order to prepare ourselves for this trip, our group leader had us practice on the Walkill. He made us into crews of three people per canoe—two guys and a girl in each canoe. The two guys on my crew sat in the front and the back. They had nice bench seats. I was in the middle, where there was only a narrow metal rod to sit on. Most of the time I ended up perching precariously on our camping supplies. Nothing I did was ever right. When I rowed on one side the guy in the back would yell at me and when I rowed on the other side the guy in the front would turn around and smack his paddle against mine. If I didn't row at all they would both yell about how I was too heavy and they were going to throw me out.
The little rowboat with a motor that my family used to borrow for rides held much better Walkill River memories. We'd take this boat on the river with some good snacks, never throwing our trash in the water by the way, relaxing, laughing and enjoying summer afternoons. When I was really young, maybe third grade or so, my dad used to take all of us kids to the river just to play. We practiced skipping stones or threw sticks in the water from Perrine's bridge. We had to shove the sticks in between the cracks in the wood. Then we'd run to the other side of the bridge and peer through the cracks to watch our sticks come floating by. Anyone who's read AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh will know what we were doing. If you haven't read it, it's not worth me trying to explain. I could on and on telling about the old hydroelectric dam just downriver from where I was standing and how the ever present danger of falling off the edge of a waterfall always brought an extra thrill of excitement to our canoeing trips. I could recount the stories my dad told about the abandoned town now completely underneath the Walkill's muddy waters and the hundreds of fascinating and fun excursions my family went on both upriver and downriver from where I stood.
Ultimately, the Walkill is still the same river. The joy and the pain of humanity continues around it, but this river still exists. In fifty years, if some incredible environmental activist manages to get it cleaned up and it becomes clear, blue and sparkling with happy children playing in it, it will still be the Walkill River. There's got to be some things in life we can count on, regardless of what Heraclitus says.
If you think I'm wrong please comment! I would love to attempt some philosophical discussion.
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