“You cannot step in the same river twice,” says Heraclitus. I would add that you can never paddle the same river twice. Six weeks ago the St. George River was a shining filament amidst a winter forest stamped with deer trails. Four weeks ago, the St. George was a muddy torrent roiling with the weight of spring rains. Yesterday, the St. George was a glassy passage through a forest newly soft with spring buds.
Not just the river changes. At the put in, I am a bit tired and world weary, purpose-driven, edgy, wanting something I know not what. Just six and a half miles downstream, I have forgotten almost all of that. Time has folded over into a new dimension. Whatever it was, that was pressing on me is gone somehow. It is not the same man who pulls the kayak out of the river. And from the moment on, my life will never be the same, because in subtle ways I have changed. I am different for the time I have spent on the river.
One reply on “Different Day, Different River (Again down the St. George)”
How true. I walked my dog down by the Kenduskeag just yesterday. We scrambled along the banks and rocks heading towards the Shopping Cart rapids. The stream was nearly placid. I could see rocks on the bottom of the stream across the entire width.
Would have been no trouble at all to wade across the stream with impunity. But that couldn’t be said of the same section of stream just three weeks ago, when the swift raging current gave even the most seasoned paddlers a moment of hesitation.