Book club book on New River

Sometimes when I am reading three or four books at the same time I realize I just have to chose one and read to the end, finish that story and put that book down. Today I read the last page of Far Appalachia, by Noah Adams.  The reporter from NPR’s All Things Considered took off for a season to travel along the New River from North Carolina to its end in West Virginia in 1994.

 I grew up in NC and lived in West Virginia for six years, crossing the New River Gorge on the New River Bridge quite often.  Driving across that bridge was the highlight of each trip in and out of the state, and many times we would stop at the park to look out over the river before crossing. If we had time we would hike the trail, and eat lunch on the picnic tables.  My deep regret was that I never rafted on the river, and also that I never walked on the bridge during the festival called Bridge Day.

 Once a year one side of the bridge is closed to vehicles, and a festival is set up along the road.  Pedestrians can walk along the bridge, and crazy people can sign up to do the bridge jump, sailing off the bridge with only a parachute to stop them from crashing into the ground or the racing river.  I wanted to go, to watch, but hated the idea of so many people and so I never did get to see that.

 When I was in the 4^th or 5^th grade I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper, begging the world to save the New River.  My Aunt sent the letter in, and it was published, so I view the river as part of me.  I’m not even sure what I was saving from, perhaps another dam for hydroelectric power.

  In this book the author travels along the waterways.  He visits people that live along the river, he paddles in spots with a canoe, a kayak, and of course he goes on all the white water rafting trips.  I deeply enjoyed the book, and I am determined to drive along that bridge again, and hopefully attend Bridge Day very soon.

Walking to think - walking to create

The other evening I was feeling restless, and I decided to take a walk.  Usually I prefer to walk alone, but this time I asked my husband if he wanted to join me.  He turned me down, and I started outside.  Before I was off my porch my daughter had stopped me, asking me to wait.  She ran back inside, put on shoes, and soon we were walking into the night.

We walked along the streets of a nearby neighborhood, listening to the cicadas and the other insects.  Almost right away we noticed lightning bugs flitting about near the ground.  We both reacted with joy and began sharing memories of our childhood thoughts.  Laura told me she had thought lightning bugs were filled with little bits of stars.  Maybe we should call them star flies.  I remembered the first time I caught a firefly, I expected the little body to be warm, like the head of a lit match.  We walked as the sun was setting, the fireflies grew braver and the nearly full moon looked down on us.  Bats zoomed around searching for their dinners, and we hoped out loud that they didn’t eat lightning bugs.  Laura shared with me some ideas she was mulling around in her head.  She is writing a fantasy novel, and was stuck, but with the walk ideas began to flow again.  I shared some thoughts from the reading I was doing on Mindfulness.  With each step I felt my mind settling down into a rhythm.  As I walked, my feet moved, stepped, lifted and stepped once again.  I swung my arms lightly, the legs swished back and forth, and my thoughts felt clear and easy, like a flowing stream. 

Walking outside is a great way to release creative energy.  If I can’t think, can’t solve an idea, or am just in a mental rut, I love to walk.  When I was in college I had to walk from one class to another, from the dorm to the cafeteria and from the library to anyplace I needed to go.  I miss that physical break that fell between each activity, the have to of walking from place to place.  Now I may sit down to write, or read, and not get up until my aching self complains.  My body hurts, my mind stiffens up and I need to move.  I have things I need or want to do, but I take a break, walk around the block and come back invigorated and better able to do the things on my list.  Why do I feel guilty about stopping my work to walk, when the walk always makes the work easier?   

There is something in the steady rhythm of walking that imitates the steady reading of words.  Both fuel the mind, both have a measured beat and both are necessary for physical and mental health.  Is the answer in the measured pace?  Perhaps that is part of the answer.  In reading on mindfulness, I am learning about paying attention to my surroundings and to my own inner self.  Walking can be a type of meditation, a mental release that allows our thoughts to rest and refocus.  Reading has some of the same qualities for me.  The words generate ideas and feelings, and set my mind moving, but at the same time the looking at each word on the page, saying the word in my head and moving on to the next word have the same step by step feeling as walking.  I begin to feel the same way about living.  I am living minute by minute, stepping through life along the pathway.  I participate in this second, and the next second and the next one as well.  On a walk I can’t just skip steps, starting on the beginning of the nature pathway and skipping the muddy section to only cover the dry leafy ground.  Life is like that too, we have to take each step, and splash through the muddy ground, climbing the soaring heights and scramble through the briar covered sections.  Instead of dreading sections of life, I remember to just live, just keep moving and participating, step by step in the life I have been given.

Walking, reading, living, this is my life.  I would not have it any other way.  In the special times that I feel my daily life as a moment by moment meditation I feel like I have been given a special gift, and I don’t want it to end. These moments can happen any time but they don’t last.  I remember years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with my second child.  I was walking up the stairs in our home, I think, to tuck in our first child.  I felt like my life was like walking up the stairs.  As I walked I could see our future stretching up along the stairway, with children, new homes, new friends and all sorts of adventures along the way.  I clearly remember that moment, even if I can’t describe it well.  We now have 3 children, all adults, and we have lived in new homes, made new friends and had many adventures, both good and bad.  I wasn’t seeing the future, but seeing the movement of life.  There have been many times like that stairway moment, with crystal clear feelings that I was a part of something, a river moving forward on this planet, so to speak.   There have been so many more times when I didn’t feel that way, when we were just existing in life.  And, with depression there have been times that the ribbon of existence in front of me was overwhelming, and I wanted to turn away from it.  Walking is a way of quantifying those feelings, physically and mentally.  I can compare life to walking and know that the path is in front of me whether I take it or not.  I can remember many walks when I wanted to stop, either it was too hot or too cold or too steep or whatever, but when I continued despite my feelings, the walk was worthwhile.  I can actually go out and walk, and live the metaphor of life as pathway, and somehow this putting into motion these ideas helps in a way that can’t be explained.

I am so glad my daughter joined me on that walk.  We connected, enjoyed the night sounds, the lightning bugs, and the movements.  We both returned feeling good.  I also learned later that bats rarely eat fireflies.  A recent study found that bats avoid the flashes, and that when they did eat a firefly they coughed and rubbed their snouts as if the food was bad for them.  A study of bat feces showed almost no firefly remains, but instead mostly beetles.  So, happily, we know now that bats do not eat lightning bugs.