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{ 2 0 6 } As the sun gained its zenith, it transformed dark water into a highway of polished silver, sparkling sporadically whenever the wind riffing through overhanging trees touched down on the river’s surface. The banks were often eroded, illustrating where the current rubbed up against the shore in high water. A large oak worthy of Druid worship stretched its thick, muscular limbs and seemingly pushed all other trees away as it reached for the sky and created its own clearing along the bank. A rope swing hung from a branch leaning over the water. A few shirts, some trousers, and the underwear of intrepid swimmers were sprinkled beneath it in daubs of blue, yellow, and red on the leafy forest floor. Modest houses appeared occasionally on both banks. Piles of lumber , children’s bicycles, a tree fort, a small boat pulled up on the grass, barbecue grills, and other objects around them hinted at the lives of people within. The river was broad, slow, and pondlike, the power of its current visible in small, swirling thumbprints of motion welling up from below the surface, andin the tree trunks, barrels, broken-off pieces of buildings, and other flotsam tossed onshore by spring freshets. Before long, the breeze became a steady headwind strong enough to balance out the slight downstream tug of the river and hold us in What Floats Your Boat At a meeting of the Mayor and Aldermen yesterday: Petitions of Nathaniel Greene, postmaster, for the use of the whole of the lower floor of the building he now occupies for the Post Office, that the public may be better accommodated; referred to the committee on public buildings, to be joined by the City Council. Boston Courier, September 10, 1839 Chou and Kosygin Confer Manchester Union Leader, September 12, 1969 Mentally ill overwhelm hospital ERs Lowell Sun, September 2, 2003 w h a t f l o a t s y o u r b o a t 2 0 7 stasis when we stopped paddling. Neither driven back by strong wind nor pulled along by the river, we fell into a steady, hypnotic tempo with our paddles. Transforming us into a single entity, the canoe became an extension of our bodies, supplely responding to our will as readily as arms and legs. Not merely a leaf on the current, we passed through the landscape strictly by the effort we put into each stroke. Following in Thoreau’s wake on the Sudbury, almost literally, Teale felt more alive in a canoe, which signaled adventure and projected him back to the days of Indians and French Voyageurs. He felt suffused with buoyancy, freedom, and grace, enjoying the duality of the vessel’s instability, which repelled some people and lured others through a sense of controlled danger. With the wind and sun against my cheek, I at last understood that galvanizing mélange of liberation, fluidity, and vulnerability. Though our arms and shoulders grew tired and our backs began to cramp, Alan and I pressed on, sharing an almost musical synchronicity , a giddy endorphin rush urging us forward. The contours of the river became our own, and I felt as if the moods of the sky, the banks, and the water were my moods. I felt as deep into the scene as the Cooper’s hawk glaring at us from a dead willow branch, or the fish rising in the shallows for a mayfly that had fallen into the river. I had fallen, too. I fell into the time machine of my own childhood, the wind in the hawk’s willow recalling the adventures of Ratty and Mole that were read to me as my head lay securely on a pillow in the far safety of youth. Forty years later, at last my heart was full with Kenneth Grahame’s dictum that “there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.” We passed a tidy little cornfield, a reminder of the farms that one of the Thoreau brothers would run to for a sip of water or milk while the other handled the boat. I wasn’t sure whether this productive little slice of agriculture, which enjoyed the rich, alluvial silt gifted by regular flooding, was a sign of hope that rural living still survived in this suburbanized landscape or was a sad, remnant reminder of what once was. Regardless, the neat rows were welcome relief to the eye, standing in stark contrast...

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