Writing Rivers
I’m currently teaching a place-based writing class at the small college where I teach. My class is called “Writing Rivers” — an intentionally ambiguous phrase with at least a couple meanings that I think fit the theme of the class: the students are writing about rivers, and the rivers themselves are also doing the writing which we are trying to learn to read.
Indeed, the places we spend time are not just the best possible classrooms, but also are really the best teachers. Each week, in addition to 2.5 hours in an indoor seminar room discussing writing, river ecology, and various works of literature including scientist Kurt Fausch’s book “For the Love of Rivers”, philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore’s beautiful book of reflections “Riverwalking”, poet, novelist, essayist and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry’s essay “A Native Hill” (one of my favorite of his), Norman Maclean autobiographical novel “A River Runs Through it”, and my own book “The Voices of Rivers” to name some. We also take a 2.75 hour field trip each week out to a local river, many of which have been in a nearby national forest.
[Below, a photo of a few of my students sitting beside a river and writing on a recent field trip.]
The students don’t have computers with them. They aren’t allowed to use AI — and in fact, they couldn’t if they wanted as most of the places we visit have little or no cell service. They write with pen on paper and submit a photo of their work.
I usually take the time to do some writing also — often trying to follow the same writing prompt I have given them. It is unpolished work. Some of their writings will be incorporated into a more formal essay. Some won’t, though we might talk about it in class. They are writing to learn, and learning to write. Also, to ask questions. To think. To be attentive. That’s part of why I also do the assignments. I want to continue to learn those things.
Below is my own little fragment of writing from our field trip yesterday. This has not been edited, refined, or revised except fixing typos of punctuation and spelling. It might find its way into something else some time, like one of my newspaper columns. Then again, it might not. Either way, I consider the time as having been well-spent.
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No thundering falls or noises rapids. The river murmurs quietly in the background. Somewhere on the hill across the water, a blue jay peeps its nasal call. But even these sounds fail to disturb the sense of quiet here. The floor is blanketed with a dense layer of old brown pine needles, along with a few scattered leaves of maple and oak, and I’m sure the deep needle bed muffles the sounds that do break through.
Thin moss on an old dead pine branch shows a hint of green along with a few ferns that poke through the leaves. Pine cones in myriad sizes lie on the floor like Lego — though less painful to step on and without the vivid colors. So do broken pine branches now dry and brittle. The pine trees themselves, with their flaked bark, tower high above the stockier hemlock, but it is the shorter hemlocks with braided and grooved bark that really sets the pensive, still mood. Some behind me rise straight up, but in front they lean out over the river, risking the precarious pose to catch the sunlight over the water.
It feels like a thin place where the barrier between the worlds is just a gauzy veil. A holy moment. I pause and breathe deeply. For a few breaths I close my eyes and hear again the murmur of water from around the bend below the falls. For a moment, even the 15 students here with me are quiet — listening, observing, writing. Or maybe napping. God knows they might need it.
I wonder what stories have unfolded in the spot. Abenaki peoples, traveling by boat long before the falls became a dam, stopping here to spend the night before continuing up or down. Colonists gathering food. Maybe somebody got engaged here once. Families picnicked. If I needed a fire to cook a fish or warm my hands I’d have no problem finding dry kindling.
I think of Pierce Pettis song “Little River Canyon” set near the southern rather than northern extreme of the country, close to the Gulf as we are to Canada. I think of rivers where my own story has taken me. Rivers and creeks and streams that have taken over my story and shaped me. The Allagash, Tanalian, and Koktulii rivers. Funnel Creek. Salmon River. Boulder Brook where I waited for the school bus every day for 12 years by the little stone bridge and firehole. Even the seemingly tame and lowly New Haven River.
I think of the people who shared those experiences. Or made them possible. Or just made them so much richer. My father. My brothers Jody, Ted, and Thanh. Dave O’Hara. Glen Alsworth. Phil and Rich.
Even in the shelter if the hemlocks, the breeze coming off the water feels raw on my hands. I’m glad I brought my warmer 3-season coat. Several feet of bare gravel along the river give evidence of the dry summer and autumn and resulting low water. It’s really stick season now. Not only no sign of color in the trees, but not even many dead brown leaves still cling.
This morning I picked what I’m sure will be the last raspberries of the year. Five days ago the vines still had leaves. Today they were gone. The fact that I picked and ate some in November is evidence of the changes we have wrought in our climate. So are the tall dead ash standing a few long steps to my right and the other ash lying on the ground like the last remains of a corpse becoming a skeleton as its flesh falls away.
