Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin

19. Final Thoughts

Chapter 19 finaL thoughts Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” I returned to the Nantahala River liminal zone in the summer of 2010, three years after that first trip when I entered the cool fog bank, and the carp swam up to my boat in the suddenly clarified water. It was this place that got me started on these quests, the memory of it sustaining my curiosity about other similar places. The disorientation of going from one world to another in just a few paddle strokes, the border between the two so distinctly defined, gave me a sense of traveling from a world of stasis and artificiality to one that was pure and alive. On my return, three years later, I wanted to recapture that wonder, hoping that it would be the same, but knowing, in my heart, that it would not be so. Nothing is. In what ways, I wondered, would this visit be different? Would my memory of the place distort the possibilities of this second visit? Memory made it impossible not to expect some of the same sights and sounds, some vestige of the original emotions, even though the element of surprise, which made the first trip so remarkable, would probably be absent on this one. At least I thought so. As on my previous visit, I hiked to the transitional zone before paddling there, starting out at the Nantahala Outdoor Center parking lot, where kayakers and rafts and canoes appeared and disappeared in the roaring whitewater , dipping and charging and rolling in the current. Down the trail beside 210 Final Thoughts the makeshift campsites I hiked, next to the diminishing current, and suddenly, in just a few minutes, I’d left the crowds behind. I was alone. At one point, the trail disappeared, and I continued on the railroad track until I reached a point where it veered into the woods away from the river. Below me, at what I thought was the same spot where I’d come upon the willows and the fog bank and the fragments of the bridge, a jet boat sped past two kayakers who bobbed up and down in his wake. No fog, no willows, no bridge ruins. The transitional zone of 2007 was buried underwater. On the walk back, I came across a woman sitting on the bank, as if studying the river. “Can I ask you a question about the river?” She had tattoos on both arms, and she was smiling as she turned away from the water to face me. “Does the level fluctuate daily?” I asked, hoping that the water level, controlled by a dam upstream, might descend ten feet by morning, when I was set to paddle. She said it would go down a bit but not much. I told her what I’d seen three years earlier. “That was at the end of a ten-year drought,” she said. Having confirmed that the place I sought no longer existed other than in my memory deflated my enthusiasm for waking at 5:30 and being on the water at first light. I did it anyway, telling myself not to expect much and to concentrate on exercise and the joy of being on the water during what I estimated as a six-mile paddle—three miles each way on flat water. Anything could happen , I knew, and even though you might think life predictable, as soon as you became convinced of its predictability and let your guard down, something of interest would rise up. I slogged along in the cool of the morning, and I reached the last bend before the railroad tracks faster than I remembered. Here at the former transitional zone, a lone fishing boat zoomed past me on upriver. The fog alone would have stopped him three years earlier. Now there was nothing to indicate the river’s resurrection except some half-submerged trees: big sycamores and oaks, no willows. Where were the willows? Onward I went, up the river, far beyond the place where the current stopped me three years ago. The waterway narrowed, trees reaching out from both banks, an island up ahead. I passed a tent with a clothesline in front of it, the door open, languid movement within. Somebody lit their first of the day, its blue smoke wafting Final...