The River
A few days spent in my hometown of Durham involves a visit to the city park alongside the Eno River. The park is on the site of one of the first settlements in the area before Durham could have been called a town. Before railroads, grist mills along the river were places of gathering for farm families with grain to be ground into corn meal. I remember the wrecked timbers of the old mill when as a teenager I explored the banks of the river by the Roxboro Road bridge.
I like to visit the river because it reminds me of a time before my time when those who are long gone lived nearby. Indians displaced by the white settlers also lived by this river and used it for their purposes.
I follow a rocky trail along side the river for as long as the undergrowth permits. I like to pause after climbing a forty five degree angle rocky incline to rest upon a flat rock that affords a fine view of the river for some distance upstream. Comfort comes from 
knowing that others before me, even Indians who spoke another language, sat where I now sit and felt the same appreciation of the view.
The foliage is lush, can be tangled, thick, 
obstructing anyone who is not fit with sufficient strength to support one’s body weight, should one lose one’s footing. For the first time in my life, I hesitated, realizing that perhaps I am no longer fit enough to risk going to the end of the trail. I really didn’t need to tumble into the river.
When the water is high, the current running deep and strong, some fine swimming is afforded above the dam and below.
I envied these young people, welcomed into the cool current.
2 thoughts on “The River”
Time is a very strange and perplexing entity. Those who strolled along the river in days before the settlers were most likely gathering food and as you noted, perhaps stopping for a moment to enjoy nature’s visual bounty. But it was just yesterday that they walked the river’s edge, less than a blink of an eye in human evolution. I believe this is a part of the reason you can still feel their presence, for the rocks they stood upon continue to be intact and have not crumbled and washed to the sea. This passing of time should bind us together and allow us all the pleasure of knowing, feeling, sensing and seeing what they saw. Just like tethers to your sister that may be frayed but have not broken, these same tethers bind us to our collective past.
This connection should be celebrated and cherished, yet we find ourselves cast adrift in an unfamiliar ocean where civility, decorum and the survival of our species is in question because of madness. Could Mr. Trump stand on the rock and sense the beauty you so eloquently noted? Of course not. These thoughts are as foreign to him as are empathy and kindness. Not to make this overtly political, but we, those who can see the tranquil beauty of the Eno, must stand against this tide of insanity. Your river cannot speak for itself, so we must speak for it.
“Just yesterday…..” indeed!
Our lives are but a blink of an eye in the scheme of the earth’s timeline. Being along the river helps me to begin to have a sense of what that means. I feel close to my ancestors, the European yeoman farmers, and the Indians who came before. The river met their needs that of fish and game and for the settlers, power for their mills. The park is a sacred space it seems to me, where all are invited to come to remember and to have their needs whatever they happen to be in their time and place,– met by the flowing water, by the rock strewn, fern and moss covered banks. For me that part of my visit to my hometown is something of a pilgrimage, a dimension of the trip that never fails to meet my expectations.
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As to Trump, he is an emotionally crippled human being. I agree that we must oppose him for the sake of the well being of nature and for the sake of future generations. He and his party, every single member, must be removed from office.