Swimming in July

Eiseley’s essay about this experience is called “The Flow of the River.” In it, he’s not only describing the Platte; he’s describing how he felt he was merging with the river. He recounts a sort of open awareness of the connections between all creatures, all nature. He wasn’t swimming in the river. He wasn’t investigating the river. He was accompan

This water was something more than food. It was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, as a gift.

To believe that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life—like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.

“Water is versatile. It can be big and powerful, it can quench thirst, it can be healing, it can drown us. It finds its own level, always. That is, water is always seeking balance and has a place it has to go. It can be scarce, it is necessary. We’re utterly, devastatingly dependent on it. It’s beautiful and tragic and it feeds us sometimes. When w

His first safety lesson was very simple: When you fall into the water at a set of rapids, be sure to keep your feet out in front of you and your head up out of the water, then relax and enjoy the ride. What if we approached our lives like this, and instead of resisting, we simply sat back and enjoyed the ride along the rapids of universal flow?

pas attrapé un seul poisson en six heures. « C’est agréable de ne rien prendre, m’expliqua le maître, nous ne sommes pas là pour cela. » Alors, à quoi bon ? ! Le pêcheur s’efforce d’être, et si vous y mettez trop d’ardeur, vous échouez. Pour Yates, on fusionne avec l’eau, on s’abandonne à la contemplation du monde mystérieux sous la surface de l’ea

As Democritus said so simply many centuries ago: “Water can be both good and bad, useful and dangerous. To the danger, however, a remedy has been found: learning to swim.”