I wrote this a few months ago and forgot to post it, so since I haven’t posted anything in a while here it is. It’s not even really a story, just sort of a… music. I hope you enjoy it regardless.
There was a river down by my old apartment.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking: “there’s rivers lots of places, what’s so special about this one that made you write this whole thing about it?” And, in the grand scheme of things, you’re right. It was just this little spot on the Chagrin River, underneath a busy overpass. Hell, I lived in that apartment for eight months or so and didn’t even know about that spot until my ex brought me there on a whim one day. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing special.
But it was special to me.
Going down to the river became something of a ritual to me. If I was feeling sad or stressed or anxious (all of which happen very frequently) I could go down to the river. The beaches were rocky, the Bedford Shale on full display, but the cliff made a beautiful view. The water was just deep enough for wading, as long as you stepped carefully, and you could go down there to skip rocks or just take a stroll down the beach. Sometimes you would see a heron or a deer.
Something about that spot on the river was always so powerful to me. It wasn’t just being out in nature, though that certainly helped. I think, looking back on it now, that a big part of what made it stick with me so much was the consistency of it. Sure, the river changed moods sometimes: if it had rained a lot recently, the water was higher and faster and wading was dangerous. If it hadn’t rained in too long, it was shallower and slower, in some parts not even ankle deep. But it was always there, no matter what. Even if I didn’t go to the river, I knew it would be there.
The constancy of nature has been on my mind a lot recently. My partner and I recently went on a brief trip to one of our favorite places, this little cabin Airbnb in southern Ohio. There’s hiking trials, the whole thing is off-grid, and the owners are this lovely seeming older lesbian couple. While we were there, we went on one of those hiking trails. I got pretty high, and I was really struck by the trees and the cliffs and the streams.
I’d just finished reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it by the way, it’s a phenomenal book. But anyway, the relevant bit is that it takes place in a world ravaged by climate change even worse than ours is. The world in that book is, quite literally, burning and parching to death. But even through all of that, nature persists. There are pockets of nature, pockets of life, struggling to remain. The Earth persists, and she always will.
In the past few years, my life has been repeatedly and, seemingly constantly, rocked by a series of violent upheavals. From losing jobs, to having several relationships fall apart rather spectacularly, to having to move multiple times in the space of a year (once to flee hundreds of miles from political persecution!), very little in my life has been constant. Hell, even before that was college and covid lockdowns and figuring out that I’m not even a boy.
But, while I lived in that apartment, the river was always there.
Even now, a year and a half after I moved a six-hour drive away, I know the river is still there. I know the cliff that overlooks it, that face of crumbling shale. I know the trees, and birds, and water flowing through, and I know that all of it will be there long after my pains have faded forever.
Sometimes, when things get to be too much, I imagine myself back there. I can’t literally see any of it in my head (you should look up aphantasia if you don’t know what it is), but I can imagine the other sensations. The cold water rushing past my legs, the slick and mossy stones underfoot, the sound of rushing water and the songs of the birds… it’s a beautiful thing to imagine, isn’t it?
I find a strange amount of comfort in that. No matter how badly things are now, and no matter how agonizingly everything hurts, the Earth persists. She always has, and she always will. Long after I’ve found my way back into Her arms, that river will still be there, in one form or another.
And that certainly is something special, isn’t it?
Cambria's Corner 
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