We humans are a needy bunch. When you compare us to our friends of feather or fur, we are high maintenance creatures, always on the prowl for another bauble to weave into our nests or secure our burrows. And that’s okay. We are an ebb and flow society, dependent on the persistence of supply and demand.
In these last many months, I suspect that you, much as myself, may have noticed your demands turning inward, toward your human essence, your soul. Once you had stacked your shelves to toppling with paper goods, canned foods, and disinfectants, you might have taken the opportunity to contemplate those things in life beyond physical needs and comforts. Things a little less sanitizing and a little more sanctifying. And understand this. I’m not accusing anyone of not embracing emotional and spiritual necessities before this pandemic. I know I did, though I wonder if your balance has shifted as mine has. From my hands to my heart. Less about what I need to grab and more about what grabs me.
With all the uncertainty of the present and future, perhaps today you are visiting the past more often in search of comfort. An inner connection. A touch of healing.
We all require spiritual sustenance. And I’m not referring to a formal religious experience as much as I am something more basic, yet something certainly as divine. Something that’s difficult to communicate. But when you do experience it, it heals you, at the times you most need the healing.
This happened recently. We decided to drive out into the country, to get out of the house, waylay our sheltering-in routine for a few hours. It was one of those special early autumn days. You know the ones, when everything comes together – the sun, the sky, the clouds, the breeze, the spice of earth and air. One of those days when the tilt of the globe is right near plumb. A time when you experience familiar places, but now, everything carries a subtle difference. The routine takes on fresh life. A sheen and shimmer, the way objects catch and spread the light. A cemetery of faded stones bearing dear and familiar names. An old train depot laboring through its last gasps, its fading yellow paint fighting valiantly to stay relevant. A field of cotton bursting from its bolls, stretching all the way to the silent woods, tiny white clouds on stiff, brown stems, patiently awaiting the picker. A two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, perched on its simple throne of land, reminiscent of when it was a poor man’s palace of chestnut logs crowned by a wood shake roof. All these things.
And a river.
It was the river that got me.
It’s called the Elk, a reluctant gift from the Chickasaw as they retreated farther south into Alabama prior to being herded west. The river my ancestors stumbled upon in the early 1800s and decided that here was a good place to stop. To settle. It was the Elk that started my healing yesterday. A few precious moments standing on a bridge staring down at that old river. A river that ran long before I was born and will run long after I’ve moved on. A river I’ve walked and fished and rested beside, asking difficult questions and sometimes finding difficult answers in the rush of its water against root-heavy banks and implacable sandbars.
When I was a kid, I trot-lined the Elk with my father and uncles, my job being to sit in the back of the little boat and paddle till my arms fell off. While Uncle Joe sat up front and “ran” the lines, slinging off old minnows and replacing them with fresh, live ones, and dip netting onto the floor of the boat a mess of twisting and flopping yellow cats and Mississippi blues that had been kind enough to stay hooked until we could get to them. But what I remember most about those days and nights were the moments when I could rest the oar on my legs in that sacred space between lines, when the river would take over and float us to the next spot, with the entire world framed between those opposing banks. The sounds of the slow water slapping against the boat, the incessant buzz and hum of katydids and treefrogs, and, late afternoon, the sun, and at midnight, a waning crescent moon, their reflections shimmering in the dingy mirror of water. Just a couple of fishermen submerged in air that struggled between humid and dry. Between sweaty and sweet. Between warm and cool. Nothing but the anxious trill of a pileated woodpecker breaking the spell. If there was a time when my existence and the whole of creation felt perfectly seamless, it was then.
Many years ago, I wrote a short story called “The Drowned Boy.” Set on this same river, it was my first published story since my college years, and the process of writing it informed me much more than the many hours I spent in classrooms. It was also the first time I realized how important that long flow of water was to me. In truth, the river wrote that story. One wide bend, one foaming rush of shallows at a time. I just transcribed the words it whispered in my head late into the night. And while the point-of-view voice was that of a young boy coming of age because of unthinkable tragedy, the real voice of the story was the river. It was then that I realized how crucial it is to have a connection and how you might not even know you need it until you find it. Or it finds you. That a connection to the rest of the universe is sometimes the only thing that works. To heal you and take you beyond all the chaos and clamor and uncertainty that bullies its way into your world.
I wish you all a river.
And you’re welcome to share mine if you like, for there’s plenty of it to go around. But you have to be willing to accept the haunting with the blessing, the questions with the truth. The rapids with the calm. And I wish you all fine autumn days like the one I had, whether it’s the autumn of the year or the autumn of your life. Or both. I wish for all of you a connection. A healing. When your life wobbles a little and takes you out of sorts, out of plumb. When circumstances have you adrift and the way back is clouded. When you need a river to point you home.
