At the River

I went to the river alone. I’d asked my kid if he wanted to come with, and he didn’t, which might have been the best outcome that day. I needed quiet.

It was a short drive from my house, and a short walk out of the parking lot and onto a trail where other people were sparse enough that I could hear my sandals crunching on the sandy/rocky ground. Blackberry bushes walled me in on both sides, smelling of late-summer fruit. I scanned their branches and picked off some not-yet-shriveled berries to put in my mouth. The river coursed along to my right. I walked until I found an opening in the vegetation that would let me veer off the path and find a spot to sit. A rock with just enough flat surface area, or a smooth patch of dirt, would do fine.

I had brought a book—In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson—but left it closed. Lately I’d been losing myself in his travel books, which are sort of my “comfort reads” in times of stress, but today, after finding a seat with a view, I didn’t need to travel any farther. The walking path had gently sloped up so that I found myself on a sandy cliff above the wide and swirling Willamette River. It was high enough that the fish jumping out of the water might have been silvery insects, but low enough that I could hear gentle waves slapping the shore.

The water’s surface was forest green dappled with autumnal orange and yellow, reflecting the senescent trees that populated the island across the waterway from where I sat. The long, tapered tip of the island was in view, cutting a V shape in the water just like the occasional boat that motored past. A few people ventured onto the gravelly beach below me to cast fishing rods. I noticed some small fish at the river’s edge and wondered what they were. A couple of them wriggled so hard that they flipped out onto the shore, just out of reach of the lapping water, then somehow flopped their way back in.

Birds glided back and forth. The sounds of voices and bicycle tires periodically reached me from the trail at my back, fading as quickly as they came. The river flowed, and I tried to let it carry away some of the thoughts that had been unsettling me. It helped; I relaxed. I felt like I could have stayed to watch the river all day, if I had something softer to lie on and didn’t feel obligated to return home fairly soon. I was already thinking about how to replicate this sense of tranquility. I wanted to demand to my husband that we go camping next to a body of water before the season was over.

Calmness had found its way into me readily. I must have been on the verge of it, only needing the presence of something deep, steady, and quiet to show me exactly how to be.