River vs. Pool

plus tell UNC: Follow your own rules, hire Dr. Asher

We’re lucky to belong to a neighborhood pool, which we joined a few years ago. It’s about a twelve minute drive away, technically in Chapel Hill, and is where we see a lot of the country kids who go to Harriet’s school. It’s not fancy but we love it: the snack bar serves Impossible burgers, BLTs, and KitKat cones; there are loungers and umbrellas; and the high dive is finally fixed. People at our pool have interesting tattoos, and sometimes we see a teenager who looks exactly like Billy from Stranger Things.

To celebrate the end of end-of-grade testing, we had a plan on Friday to go with some friends. The weather was perfect, mid-80s, and I had our bags all packed with swimsuits and towels and goggles, and plans to pick up the girls at the bus stop, and Bea’s friend from her house. But at the bus stop I double-checked—the pool isn’t open this year on Fridays before school lets out. Bummer.

We decided to go to S&T’s for Coke floats and fried pickles, then rafting in the river. We carried our two big rafts down Chicken Bridge Road, then up the gravel drive to the private path that leads to the river. We saw another hatched-out turtle nest, and Harriet spotted two river otters, which followed us as we drifted along. Bea and her friend floated on one raft, Harriet and I on the other. The water was shallow but cool and clear, and we bumped along the riffles and currents until we made it to the small beach by Chicken Bridge.

The next day was also perfect—sunny, mid-80s. The girls and I went to the Climate Solutions Fair at The Plant, and after making sunprints and meeting some ravens and talking with people at different booths, I texted with our friends: river? or pool? I decided to leave it up to Bea and her friend who’d floated on the Haw River yesterday.

Everyone chose river.

Back home, we changed into swimsuits and topped off our rafts. The girls wanted towels and I wanted to read at the end, so we stuffed our things into our car and my friend Claire’s car and parked by the bridge. There were tadpoles in an almost-dried-up puddle, so we rescued them, then carried the rafts again down the gravel road in Indian Orchard.

Immediately on arriving at the riverbank, a majestic bald eagle flew overhead. Then we all saw a river otter frolicking in a shallow, rocky current and onto the banks of the narrow, forested island that sits across from the easement. We knew we’d made the best choice.

Or had we? I suggested (I am always suggesting things like this), what if we hike upstream, and go on the other side of the island where the river otters lived—maybe we could sneak up on them and get a better view? Claire looked around at our party and said, “I don’t think we’re sneaking up on anything today.” Bea liked the idea and led us down the weedy, overgrown path.

We had to put in before we got to the end of the island, then drag our rafts upstream. Claire kept falling: she hadn’t counted on a big hike, and it turned out she was wearing Rothy’s. The two rafts weren’t quite enough for all six of us (though Harriet surfed on the big one), and there was a lot of stumbling and scraping before we got to water deep enough to float or swim. Some of us may have cried because we were hungry and scraped up. We did not see the otters again.

Sometimes you do pool, and sometimes you do river. I like the river, especially putting in at one spot and winding up at another, because it’s a challenge, and emerging at the end feels like (is) an accomplishment. My goal is to keep the girls, as long as possible, sometimes opting for the rocky Haw even when they have the choice of easy swims and KitKat cones at the pool. As Bea said to her friend, “there’s no adult swim at the river.”

How are you spending your weekend, Frog Troublers? I hope you can take a moment to sign and share this petition asking telling the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to reverse their embarrassing and harmful decision not to hire Dr. Kiran Asher as Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. Professor Asher, a woman of color whose research centers on feminism and social justice, was chosen by the Women’s and Gender Studies faculty and leadership, approved by the provost, but then rejected by UNC’s politically-appointed Board of Trustees. This is not the first time the Board has violated faculty governance and broken their own university rules—they did this back in 2021 with Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, and last year with 33 of their own faculty members awaiting tenure. In both cases public outcry led to a reversal of their bad decisions.

As Dr. Asher said in an interview with WUNC’s Brianna Atkinson, “If the BOT did this once, they could do it again. [W]hat if they decide they're going to deny tenure to other folks who do social justice related work?”

So far, the petition has 291 signatures—we want to collect at least 1,000 before we deliver it to the Board. It is for every member of the UNC community—that means any faculty, staff, student, alumni, and community members who care about a strong public university system in North Carolina.

What’s your weekend like? Pool, river, something else? Looks like another beautiful day. Lots of love from us.

My friend who kept her Rothy’s on her feet for the whole journey