Take Me To The River

Ah, the Eel River. I've had some of my better days in that water. I remember after one draining hot day in the Dos Rios area getting in that river and feeling my soul itself revived. The river is so tied to visits to Dos Rios (I mean , it's in the name for fuck's sake), that it would be wrong to not get into that coursing snow melt, even if it's the first day of a very cold January.

Yeah, seemed like a good idea at the time...

A brief note on rivers: A river is a large natural waterway. The source of a river may be a lake, a spring, or a collection of small streams, known as headwaters. From their source, all rivers flow downhill, typically terminating in the ocean. The mouth, or lower end, of a river is known as its base level. A river's water is normally confined to a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks. Most rainfall on land passes through a river on its way to the ocean. Smaller side streams that join a river are tributaries. The scientific term for any flowing natural waterway is a stream; so in technical language, the term river is just a shorthand way to refer to a large stream.

When we first arrived, we went to the river. We had been warned that it was still high, still swift, still cold. We had been told that a few weeks before some other foolhardy soul had lost his life attempting the raft it without experience. I would not be deterred.

The level had gone down, but that shit was cold and not hard to imagine as snow not very long ago. The current as well was still strong, strong enough to see. I tried to make the most of it, and after going numb stayed in the water longer than was probably smart. On getting back to the house I had a chill that I simply could not shake. Only after putting on socks and sitting in the Honda, a virtual oven as it had sat parked in the sun all day, did I finally begin to feel comfortable. Still, I knew it would not be the last attempt into the water.

See here's the thing, I love being in water, I love swimming. And it's not like a, "hey, wouldn't it be fun to get in the water" sort of thing, it's an imperative. It's something my brain pushes me to, and has since I was a child. It's something I need. But above that, the river teaches me something every time I enter it. It's different every time, depending on what it is I'm bringing to the river. I won't say a lot about it as it was my lesson and meant specifically for me, but I will say...

Hang on for a second. I went hiking and camping in Sedona, Arizona when I was a younger man and had a profound experience there. A short while after I got a framed picture of one those glorious Sedona bluffs with a Wordsworth quote beneath. It hung in my apartment for many years, but it wasn't until now that I finally, clearly understood this fairly simple thought that Wordsworth felt strongly enough to pass on:
Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.

So there's that. After a week of hot weather, the river thinned out a bit, warmed up a bit, and made for a glorious Sunday afternoon. There was beer, there was laughter, there were dives off stone edifices, there was jumping with abandon into deep and rushing rapids only to have the force of the river whip you around the bend and show you no matter how strong you think you are there's always a force greater. There was love, there was the bittersweet knowledge that we would be leaving this place for probably a long while to come, and there was uplifting knowledge the river had seen fit to give me even though I didn't know I needed it.

Were these short hours better than seeing those pigs? Were they better than seeing that young bear just peering out the forest, seemingly to just see what the hell was going on out there? Were they better than feeling that immediate closeness of old friends, of taking part in that rush of overlapping conversation that was just another movement in a huge jazz symphony? Was it all better than the warm tears of realizing how much love you are blessed with this go around?

Nope. But all of it, all of it was a part of this miraculous and meandering voyage.