“We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.” —Gretel Ehrlich

In my little dinghy, I feel water spray into my face. I poke into grassy islands, meet river otters paddling about looking for dinner, and pass a great blue heron standing still as a statue, only its beady eye marking my passage. In a dinghy, sounds and movements—tiny ripples, even—that might escape me completely if I were standing on the deck of even a small ship now vividly demand my attention.

Something of the cold, clear current echoes inside me like a loud lilting. No longer do I feel like a spectator in the life of the river; now I am a participant. I accumulate images and sensations that become part of my body.

While the prow of my little dinghy shatters the waters, they fall back together, vast and pure, as though I had never passed. Though I come as an intruder, bursting into the waterways, the river smoothes over my recklessness with power and grace that leaves me feeling tamed. I join something awesome, possibly even divine. I’m swept away by an illusion of freedom that leaves me no choice, like a wild joy.