Peace Like A River

 

Every year while I was growing up, well, at least the years when my parents were together, we would all fly back to the east coast and visit family. Dad’s folks lived in a small town in the Northeast. It was about as idyllic as a place could be, at least for a visitor from a city. I’d get up in the morning and have breakfast, then walk the quarter mile or so to the stream. You couldn’t see it from the road, or anywhere else for that matter until you were toes in the water. There was a cornfield fifty yards or so behind my grandparents’ house and we would walk along the side of this field heading toward what looked like a near vertical mountain face. Saying that makes me think of half dome or something like that, but it wasn’t like that at all. The entire face of the mountain was covered in trees of various kinds all growing at acute angles from the side of the hill. As a kid I had never imagined so many different shades of green were possible within one person’s panorama. The deep green of the grass next to the soft green of the corn stalks and then on to the mountainside speckled with dark greens, light greens, bright greens, yellowish greens all running up in the hillside like a Jackson Pollock study in green if he had ever painted such a thing.

The air was not like city air. You can taste city air. It coats your tongue, leaving a dusty, oily, dirty, rubber tire, street flavor. It clogs your pores, gets in your hair, and fills your nostrils. The city makes you a part of itself. It absorbs you until you turn as gray as the street. This wasn’t like that. I wanted to be a part of it but at best I only ever felt like a tolerated interloper. I could live with that, willing to take what I could get.

About half way to the river, I would hear a breeze rustle through the corn, the leaves on the stalks moving just enough so that a strained ear could hear. A low hushing sound, begging a listen but there was no wind to be felt. It was the river, billions of water molecules colliding and separating and recolliding as the river moved around boulders in its path, ran over bushes that grew too close, and ran by the shore creating that sound, that glorious sound, speaking to those who would listen of time and truth, nature, unyielding determination and fluidity. Was it any wonder that Siddhartha spent his time listening to a river?

As I neared, the cornfield would end and I would have to struggle through a thick patch of woods, not far, but a barrier, as if it were protecting the river from those of us who would impose on it. There was no turning back though and I climbed over a branch here, under one there until I sank into wet dirt and the river lapped my toes. Duck under one last bough and look up at the river. For a moment, and only for a moment I feel I’ve been welcomed in. Like the breeze that sounded as if it was blowing through the corn, spirit flowing along the top of the river, part of the current, moving around rock and over stones that were worn smooth in that spot before Columbus ever floated a paper boat in an Italian gutter. Then the moments gone, carried away like a leaf on a breeze, just gone.

Author's Note

Cut it up, but try to be a little gently about it. Not my normal style.

Reviews

[Noir]

I love it! ^^ I was there with you the whole time, walking through that stunning countryside. Well done, well done.