Come to the River

If you get tired of the city, come to the river.

If you weary of bathing in electricity and eating plastic and drinking oil, there’s a place where the water flows clean and cold from the northern wetlands and there is a magic forest where food emerges from the ground by the power of the sun and the faithfulness of the river and by the sweat of animals that have abandoned their enclosures in search of a place to be wild again.

If you get tired of metal and plastic and focus-group-tested glyphs crowding the horizon as far as you can see, there’s a place where a tall oak tree leans crooked over a road of grass and sunlight, a tree so big you can’t fit your arms around it. From there you can watch the sun fall from the sky into the trees beyond swirling stream.

If you get tired of the grind and screech and howl of relentless humanity struggling against the cogs of the enormous machine, I want you to know there’s a place where you can sit on a half-rotted stump with your back against a maple and watch the moon clear in the cold air above you and hear only your breath, and silence.

If you get tired of the suburbs, come to the river. I know you always meant to be “in the suburbs but not of the suburbs”. I know you intended to hover above those asphalt surfaces without getting oil on your soul. I know you cursed the shopping malls and car dealerships and ice rinks, always pledged your allegiance to the crooked oak trees and the deer and the creek and the wild geese. I know you had faith that an acorn could become a treehouse, and you hoped there was enough soil left between parking lots and cul de sacs to find a place your roots could find purchase. You had to learn the hard way that the soil in the suburbs is dead, that the water and the trees aren’t much better off. Mismanaged garden plots, broken fences, dense clay, and a fifteen minute commute to the garden. You cannot commute to a garden. You cannot commute to the forest. You cannot commute to reality. You can try — in the suburbs, you have no choice but to try — but when you’re “home” again in your enormous pretty enclosure, you won’t be able to wash the oil off your soul. You don’t be able to shake the feeling that the most essential part of your being is still there: in the garden, in the forest, in the river — and your organism is distinctly less alive than you had hoped it would be.

You tried, goddamn it you tried. Countless ellipses in the minivan — to the garden, to Menards, to IKEA, to Yellowstone, to the lakes and rivers. But the neighbor cut down the old trees and the creek dried up and you cannot commute Reality no matter how sturdy your minivan.

If you get tired of the suburbs, come to the river. If you get tired of wi-fi passwords and 5% redbird discounts, if you get tired of leaf blowers and garages full of toys and a big TV full of streaming services and the constant presence of Amazon trucks and Amazon doorbells and wondering “where should we drive to today?” and if you get tired of standing in an empty dead-end street wondering why people never let you into their kitchens or venture into yours, come to the river.

There’s a white pine high on its banks, a hundred years old and as tall as the sky. There’s a sea of aspen trees, united by underground magic invisible to human eyes. There’s a bog where strange tamaracks grow straight and tall in a sea of moss and lose their golden needles every fall. There are beavers and wolves and deer and eagles and enough soil and sunlight to keep a family or a village busy for a lifetime or two.

If you get tired of being lonely, come to the river. You won’t be the only one there. The surgeon general calls it an epidemic, this alienation that has settled heavy on our souls. But there’s a rumor of a river... Dip yourself in it seven times and see if it doesn’t wash away this sickness that has become as close as your own skin. Not by any invisible magic, but by the ordinary miracle of living things, the beloved community of humans, the very real ground beneath our feet. 

If you get tired of trying to be perfect, come to the river. You’ll have to leave most of your old stories behind to reach her waters, and by the time you arrive you’ll be on your way to mostly free. If you get tired of parallel lines and right angles and artificially perfect planes devoid of texture or dirt or energy, come to the river.

The river doesn’t know your name. It doesn’t know your pronouns, or your job title or you student loan debt or who you voted for or whether you’ve done everything the self-appointed morality police demand of you. The river doesn’t know the expectations you carry, the stories you keep repeating.

Everything is entangled here — history and potential, organism and environment, humanity and nature. Everything grows crooked here, and we like it that way — branches, vines, buildings, streams, cultures, identities.  

If you are tired, come to the river.

There is wisdom here older than anything you can imagine, and deeper than any words.