Confluence

“The Maumee River does not begin. Formed out of the confluence of the St. Joseph River from the north, and the St. Marys River from the south, it is a continuation…”

-Ryan Schnurr “In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River

Convergence of three rivers / Convergence of three griefs…

I wrote this in November of 2017, not realizing how many more griefs would follow. I won’t share the rest of it. It’s shit. I use the word “nunnery” later. I only want to hear that word when I’m watching a production of Hamlet, why would I subject anyone else to it?

The point is, I’ve been thinking about confluence, about convergence, for years now. I walk by the confluence of Fort Wayne’s three rivers almost daily. I observe the changes in motion, season to season – how the ice forms in winter, the water rushing through tree branches in spring, the lazy pond-like days of late summer, the grey-brown in-between of fall.

When the Maumee is slow, it’s easy to forget her power. Walking above and distant from her along Edgewater, it’s easy to dismiss her as that dirty river over there. But there are flowers growing this year. More than last year.

My friend told me about a shaman who moved to Fort Wayne in part because of the spiritual power associated with the joining of three rivers. I don’t know if I buy into that myself, but I can’t deny the power of confluence as metaphor, as a way of experiencing life.

I have taken turns being the water, ever-moving, the bank staying put, and the debris floating along wherever the water flows. I’ll be the first to admit that I identify more with the water or the debris than the earth that stays behind.

I am never anywhere
Anywhere I go
When I’m home I’m never there
Long enough to know

Ketchum, ID – Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers

I consider the confluence as presence. In this moment, I am not beginning, I am formed from the confluence of elements behind and around me, I am a continuation stretching forward. Society may build dams, people may pollute me, but I persist. I find the planters of flowers and the watchers, the ones who renew the water. I learn their ways so I can become one of them. I take the confluence of griefs and joys, tap into the energy of what is and move forward.

Looking out over the confluence, I recognize a culmination of forces creating this exact moment. Before the sidewalk I’m standing on was here, there were the rivers alone, and before the rivers, glaciers. The rocks embedded in them were pulled along and deposited, altering landscapes. People came along and shaped the earth in our own pattern. But our streets still run along the river, defying the grid system that makes logical sense. For all we’ve done to manipulate and destroy, there’s part of us that still understands flow. We cannot be so easily disconnected from raw nature.

I’m approaching this all too directly. Ebb, flow, combination of elements, passing through, impermanence – it’s all there, has been there, doesn’t need explaining. I’ve been conscious of it since I was a child. At the prompting of society, I try to harness the power, change the direction of the river, wrestle nature to fit a gridded, mapped-out version of life. Well, I’ve lost the energy for that fruitless wrestling match. Living in presence embraces change.

There is beauty in brevity. In this moment, be the merge of two river-flows into a third, carried all the way to Lake Erie or to be deposited on the bank a mile down. In the next, be a funeral flower dropped in commemoration on Mother’s Day – out of one sight, into another. They say you don’t step into the same river twice. And it’s true, but how often do we wish it weren’t. How often do we long for home in a place without recognizing that it’s in us, we carry it along. More and more often, I look into the mirror and recognize in the brown pools looking back a homey comfort. I recognize: Only this person looking back knows it all and chooses to carry forward, being water, being earth, being the stuff carried along. What a gift to be present to a life with such perspective. What a gift to be confluence embodied. 

There is peace like a river, but it has less to do with tranquility than it has to do with acceptance of motion. We accept the changes, the flow, the shifts in the earth under us. We join in the shaping and molding. We find the solid places within. We flow onward, welcoming the confluence.