January 30, 2007

Not Ready Yet….

Category: Miscellaneous :: Permalink

You don’t need to be in a canoe to have this experience:

Because of the offset in the shore at the creek mouth, there was a large eddy turning in the river where we put in, and we began our drift downstream by drifting upstream.  We went up inside the row of shore trees, whose tops now waved in the current, until we found an opening among the branches, and then turned out along the channel.  The current took us.  We were still settling ourselves as if in preparation, but our starting place was already diminishing behind us.

There is something ominously like life in that.  One would always like to settle oneself, get braced, say “Now I am going to begin” — and then begin.  But as the necessary quiet seems about to descend, a hand is felt at one’s back, shoving.  And that is the way with the river when a current is running: once the connection with the shore is broken, the journey has begun. — Wendell Berry, “The Rise,” The Long Legged House, p. 96.

Posted by John Barach @ 1:40 pm | Discuss (0)

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