The River Will Provide

Tubing down a river is an element of summer that is gracelessly human, and utterly worth the sun-beaten, dehydrated, and freckled aftermath. If ever you find yourself in a panic because your tube has been beached, or your entire crew has gotten caught in a whirl pool that is slowly, but surely keeping you off track- fear not, because the river will provide. It will provide beaches of molten river stones, and deliciously sticky sand. It will provide cold water, and elements of quiet that are so pure I scarcely realized they were missing. And it will provide opportunities to laugh, pee uncomfortably, and fearlessly subject your whole self to premature aging (with a shit-eating grin on your face the entire time).

A journey of misfitting chaos. In awe of rolling hills, hawks, trout, and crystal clear water; we sat in rubber tubes, covered in sunscreen, drinking beer from tin cans. We were thrilled like five-year-olds to be in the river, but we clashed with the serenity that rose around us on all sides. Mountains, hawks, and bending river banks. Beer, sunglasses, and hopelessly wandering thoughts. We were free. We were outside. We were just as clueless as the day before (and the one that followed, too), but it didn't matter so much with the sun shining like that- blatantly devouring the day in gold, summer light.

Amen.

The river, so boldly carving an age-old, familiar snake into the land, once again provides for us the perfect metaphor for lost souls. This metaphor is up for interpretation, but I took it as a dose of common sense that has,as of late, been severely lacking in the day-to-day:

May we experience the days like the flow of a river. Sometimes hasty and riddled with bumps, sometimes slow, nearly stagnant. But always, no matter the color of the sky, or the ache of the heart, may we feel ourselves constantly moving forward; past the beaches, past the trees, and through the mountains. Believing whole heartedly in the beauty of the day and the reality of the journey (with all its views and its stubborn commitment to keeping going).