So this is a river

messing about in boats and streams

(the Haw in late winter, after a rain)

This week, we spent an average amount of time at the river—meaning, we were there almost every day. The girls and I went together. Harriet and I went by ourselves while Bea was at school, and we found some frogs and toads. I went on a jog and saw a large black snake stretched out in the grass. I had a picnic next to the river with my friend Cat Warren, who also entrusted me and my family with her childhood copy of The Wind in the Willows, which Richard describes as “maybe the greatest children’s book ever.”

We’re taking turns reading it with Bea—he does the all the voices, but I’m not great at English accents, so my reading is maybe not as enticing. But I do really get what Rat says when he enthuses about rivers. I read this part with feeling:

"I beg your pardon," said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. "You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So—this—is—a—River!"

"The River," corrected the Rat.

"And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!"

"By it and with it and on it and in it," said the Rat. "It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times we've had together! Whether in winter or summer, spring or autumn, it's always got its fun and its excitements. When the floods are on in February, and my cellars and basement are brimming with drink that's no good to me, and the brown water runs by my best bedroom window; or again when it all drops away and shows patches of mud that smells like plum-cake, and the rushes and weed clog the channels, and I can potter about dry shod over most of the bed of it and find fresh food to eat, and things careless people have dropped out of boats!"

One of the reasons I live here, and not in Raleigh or Durham or even Carrboro, is that it’s emotionally important to me to close enough to water that I can walk to it every day. I grew up on the Mattaponi River, in Virginia, which thanks to the efforts of the Mattaponi tribe and the Pamunkey tribe to enforce treaties protecting the river and its watershed, is one of the cleanest rivers in Virginia. The Mattaponi is wide and tidal, and when my family moved to Walkerton (also on the river), we could sometimes hear the river’s frozen sheets breaking apart in the coldest part of winter.

I’ve lived near the Pacific Ocean (in Long Beach, CA), close to the East River in New York, and close enough to the Los Angeles River to walk there, though I didn’t do that much. I think a stream would do, if I could hear it from my best window, but I’m pretty enamored with the Haw, which is so changeable, and, despite its PFAS levels, full of life. On and along the Haw we’ve seen eagles, herons, turtles, river otters, minks, snakes, fish, crawdads, frogs and toads, deer, and once—at dark, in late winter—a beaver slinking into the water.

Yesterday I took two of my graduate students, Alex and Ali, kayaking from Old Greensboro Bridge to Chicken Bridge. It was at times a comedy of errors (some of us fell in the water a few times), and we lost our bag of clementines (careless humans!), but overall we had a great time messing about in boats. We didn’t see as much wildlife as I hoped, but we did hear someone’s pet (?) peacock from the shore, which for reference sounds like this:

Today Bea and Harriet and I are going to explore the stream with our friends Robin, Jeff, Jude, and Colin, who are also nature/river/frog/toad/turtle enthusiasts.

I’m curious, in what kind of environment do you feel most at home? What do you need in your surroundings to feel at peace, or most like yourself?

I hope you all have a great Sunday. See you Tuesday with some more “oldest, best things.”

Fun fact: a group of peacocks can be called on ostentation.

Joke from Bea:

Q: What do you call a food that rules?

A: Farro!