Impressions Left by the River

They are smooth, these three stones that I turn around and around in my palm as they click and rub against each other, calming me with their weight. After some time I realize I have been paralyzed by thought while the water runs clear and strong from the tap. I turn it off with my free hand and place these last three, rinsed clean, along the edge of the sink next to the other stones already gathered on a faded blue towel that I ripped up for rags before I left. Rocks from the river; rocks that the river tucked away in its mouth, licking them smooth and clean before I picked them up to carry home in my dry bag.

The Fraser River. There are no words to paint the impression it has had on me. I am in love for the first time with a river, and language, as a mere representation of reality, just as a painting or photograph becomes a representation of a sunset scene, does not hold enough room to explain. Words can describe a sunset, but they inherently lack the touch of the sun’s shallow warmth on exposed skin and the movement of dimming sky.

Even still, words and pictures are what I have brought back with me to tell the story of a journey down the Fraser River, as well as a small collection of rocks to root my memories to the river when I look at them collecting sunlight in the windowsills of my classroom and hold them in my hands.

It is impossible to measure the full impression the experience has on me, because it is impossible to know what sum I arrived with, and just how much was added to that sum along the way. Life is not a mathematical equation, and so it is hard to know how experiences impact us; it’s hard to know the amount we have taken from an experience to equal a new whole.

This trip down the river has changed me though, that much I know. Just how it will manifest itself in the path my life takes is another matter, one that I will never fully understand. What I do know is that my trajectory has been altered because of it, perhaps at this moment ever so slightly, but just a slight adjustment at a launching point can cause the final destination of a rocket ship to become dramatically altered.

Sorry to be so mysterious about the whole thing. Basically the trip was so fantastic that it’s hard to put it into words. I think I’m in the process of assimilating the experience at the moment, and I feel fuzzy and turned around because of it. The words will come, and the images will spark new words, and at some point it will evolve into an explanation that is at least a little clearer than the paragraphs above. Let’s just give it some time.

This morning I started cooking a soup made from fresh veggies I picked from a friend’s garden on my way home: kale, cabbage, carrots, eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, broccoli, corn, garlic, beets, green beans, tomatoes, peppers. What a luxurious opportunity I have for locally-sourced food. I filled my car with fuel at the First Nations owned and operated Lightfoot Gas in Lillooet, where I also bought some local eggs from the Yalakom Valley, also on the path home. It surprises me how few people have this opportunity. This afternoon I will buy some local bread at the Farmer’s Market in Bralorne, and I was gifted some fish for giving a friend a ride from Vancouver, topping off my grocery list. All local and organically-grown. Even the honey in my tea is from Lillooet, straight from honey man Bob’s. I think about this as I chop through the hole in the cabbage made by a worm, washing the shards and adding them, hole and all, to the soup.

Sustainability. It has become a catch-phrase, but what does it really mean to me? I suppose it means doing more of what I have just described. Asking for local products and choosing to pay a dollar more for local eggs rather than $3.75 at the grocery store for eggs shipped from Vancouver. It means getting coffee at the locally-run shop instead of Starbucks. I suppose it comes down to choices, and making conscious and deliberate ones that support local economy. If enough of us buy local products, more will be made to appease us, the consumers.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what options we have as a society, as individuals, to change things, and I suppose what comes to mind immediately is that we need to start conversations about the direction of our society. We need to ask questions and then think critically about the answers. We need to ask where the things that we buy came from, whether we are ordering fish at a restaurant or buying clothing in a retailer. We need to start re-using things, shopping at second hand stores instead of always choosing to buy new. (Plus you save a TON of money and forgo the packaging that gets thrown out immediately. For instance I bought wonderful new chocolate brown linen curtains for my bedroom for $5 and a new blender for $4 when I could have easily spent $40 buying both new!)

The trip down the Fraser has certainly been a transformative experience. On the second day while we were still at the headwaters beside Mount Robson in the Rocky Mountains (up near Jasper) I chose an animal spirit card. The spirit I chose was “butterfly” and the message was this:

You are changing.

Emerge into your new state of being.

Honour your transformation.

It may sound silly to some, but I think it can be useful to have a reference point for thinking of life while on a journey like the trip down the Fraser. While I didn’t notice much of a “change” on the raft, now that I am home something is brewing in my soul and I certainly do feel different. Perhaps this was a period of rapid growth, a summer thunderstorm, now followed by calm sunny skies where my roots can absorb the rain that has come and gone, assimilating it all into a new self. 

A view of Cathedral canyon during the solo hike, a couple of rafting days south of William's Lake on the Fraser River. One of my favourite views, watching the river wind down the canyon from both sides. To the right of the tree, where the panorama stops, the river sweeps itself steadily down the wide-mouthed canyon.