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When I die, someone will fill my space but none can take my place.

Crooked Rivers and Crooked Men

During my formative years, my father often repeated a saying, “Following the line of least resistance made crooked rivers and crooked men.” This was good advice to keep me on the straight and narrow path while I was growing up. But an experience during the summer after my freshman year in high school showed me a different view.

Three of my buddies and I put two canoes in White river below Anderson. For five days we floated to Broad Ripple dam at Indianapolis and then paddled back to Anderson. It was a formative experience. By the end of the two weeks I found that I had absorbed the rhythms of the river.

Rivers have a pattern of rapids followed by longer stretches of drift water. Rivers divide its travelers into two kinds, whitewater people and drift water people. I was of the latter designation.

The white-waterers live for the excitement of the rapids and are rather bored by the long wait in between. The drifters relish the leisurely gift of the current and the chance to observe the wild life that accompanies the moving water. Coming around a bend might stir up ducks or grebes that would take flight down the river ahead of us and land again in the water. Sometime we would consume the whole morning playing tag with them.

Then there is the opportunity to witness the ravages of flood time still visible on the eroding banks, leaving the riverside roots of trees exposed. Some are so eroded that their trunks lean dangerously over the water. I marveled at the strength of the roots still in the bank to keep the trunks so suspended against the pull of gravity. Some eventually fall and change the flow of the water to the opposite bank. The river constantly remakes its path.

Then there are the eddies that often occur immediately below the narrow channel the rapids. There, a leaf or piece of driftwood may circle again and again as if resting before eventually being caught by the edge of the current to move downstream.
I came to see the river as a metaphor of life, my life, all of our lives. We start at the headwaters and continue to grow until we reach the ocean, our final resting place. There is no shortcut in the accumulation of living experience.

We all have our moments of rapids and our longer moments of tranquility. Sometimes we get caught in an eddy and spend time circling in moments of confusion or needed rest. Much like traveling on the interstates and pausing at a rest stop to let the rest of the traffic go on without you. Sometimes we are caught in flood stage and speed on without control only to be tossed on some elusive promontory saved by the grace of luck.

The river may not run a straight course yet it has understood through experience that some objects in its path cannot be moved even in flood stage and the water must flow around them to get to its destination. We discover that sometimes we must accommodate in order to move forward.

The river intuitively knows its destination and how to get there. It meanders endlessly, but because of its persistence and flexibility eventually reaches the ocean. I learned early in life to follow my river. I am closing toward the end of my journey. Unlike my experience in high school, I can’t turn around and paddle back to where I started. I must accept I am nearing my journey’s end. The river has been good to me; it has been a wonderful drift and continues.