Seine River

It was April when I hit the breaking point. I looked him in the eye when I told him he is impossible to work for. I’m typically one to keep my two cents to myself when I’m getting paid enough but a person can only handle so much bullshit. It was long since time to leave. The stress was too much. It had taken over my life, coming home with me everyday. Keep the money, it ain’t worth it.

I didn’t think about the next step but here I was taking it. I knew I’d need to find a new job. Consider this bridge gladly burned but there are still bills to pay. I thought I should fix up my resume. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

And then tomorrow came and I felt the same. Before I knew it the first week went by, then another. Soon enough I had started to regularly lose track of time. I was gradually becoming untethered from the clock and the calendar. Before you know it, noon was the new 6:30.

What’s there to do when there’s nothing to do? Soon enough I found myself caught in a cycle of losing days watching random, senseless videos about nothing. At least two weeks went by with my phone hovering in front of my face. It reminded me of when I used to drink. I wasted so much time back then. But there were at least some perks to being up all night. Watching the sunrise was my favourite thing to do on party nights. It felt like the first breath of a new day. It felt like another chance to be better.

One morning I woke up early and watched the sunrise and got that feeling again. Soon enough I woke up early every day to watch a new sunrise, one I will never see again. That’s when I started going for walks. I would take the fastest way through the neighbourhood to the forest which goes along the edge of the Big River and I’d walk over the roots of trees and fallen branches on a trail that narrowed and veered every now and then.

Spring came on slowly then one day the spuds of the new season were on the tips of a few shrubs and trees. Watching the Earth wake from a hard winter calls for patience. While I’d love to see the luscious colours of spring it was still early in the season and most days were still cold. I was walking on paths through a quiet grey forest. It was like walking among skeletons. I could see through all of it, the river visible at every point on the path. One morning I saw a pair of mallard drakes with dark green heads floating down the Big River. No one else in the world saw what I saw. No one else on earth stood where I stood as the drakes swam by.

One night in June a storm rolled in and didn’t roll out for some days. Three, maybe four. I saw videos of flooded streets around the city. The rain poured relentlessly and then chaotically. Like nothing we had ever seen before the branches and rain tore sideways from bestial gusts. We heard the boom when a nearby tree was struck by lightning. The storms left branches big and small in yards on every street.

It happened like this again a week later. Then it just stopped and the sun came out midway through June. The paths were mud for another week. Once I made it back spring had erupted on every side of the trail. The trees and bushes carried miraculous colours, deep vibrant green life blossoming everywhere. The birds sung and the squirrels chased each other from one tree to the next along the highest branches. Life had returned.

When I got a bike the walks became joyrides. The trails skirting the river were no longer carrying me past the sights, they had suddenly become what I watched most closely. Before long I started looking for more paths along the rivers. Three rivers run through the city, two big and one small, and each has paths on the banks. When I rode the trails I often felt like I was no longer in the city. The quiet trees and birds coming and going, singing their way by. I was in an ecosystem surrounded by a city, a place within a place.

I remember the first time I went down to the Quiet River. I found my way down to the waters edge, as near as I could get before there’s more mud than dirt to stand on. I stood and watched it, listening closely as it carried on. The next time I went to a different stretch of its shore and sat at its edge. A buck with four points watched me nervously from across the river for some time before walking off downstream.

I sat in that spot for 10 minutes. Then 20. I don’t know how long I sat there. Nothing else mattered then and there. It is not just the plants and animals living here but also the silence that comes from being far enough away from everything. The edge of the Quiet River is a living serenity bound by the concrete straitjacket of metropolis.

But while this time near the river was like a dream there was still the bitter truth that money was a real factor. I had some money put away, a little here a little there. Whether it was enough to walk away from a job was another question. One day I went down to the River and came back feeling decompressed, like I had recovered. I spent the night figuring out my finances. It was the end of June now and I had enough to cover the bills through November. Good enough.

All summer I kept going out for rides. Sometimes just from point A to point B on the paved bike paths to get some fresh air. But then you notice a trail veering off the road that goes up a hill and into the bush so you hit it with some effort in low gear and get over the incline to find yourself riding a trail system through the forest leading down to the Quiet River.

Not too far down from where you came into the forest there is a section of dirt ramps and steep hills that feel like mountains if you don’t hit them fast enough. Don’t think the job is done when you get to the top because you’ll need to come down hot if you want to get up the next one. So you drive hard down the other side and barely get to the top of the taller hill. You step down hard on the peddles and reach the top and come to a momentary stop, both feet on the pedals. You drive hard down the other side to get enough speed for the next hill. There were five, maybe six good ones.

I could only go around the whole circuit twice before my legs turned to jelly. Halfway up a steep hill is the last place you want to lose steam. On one ride I’d done my two laps but wanted to hit the tallest hill one more time before heading out. My front tire was all that made it to the top when I came to a stop. I held the front brake and grabbed a tree at the top to pull myself up enough to get a foot on top. It was awkward but I got up there without too much trouble. Beats going backwards downhill with a bike.

But the Big Rivers had plenty of good trails, too. Those were the trails that got a little dodgy. Snowy winters lead to spring rivers rising high enough to chew away the bank near the trails, taking more every year. The path is already pressed close to the edge bellow which is a substantial drop. As the years pass the path only grows narrower. On certain corners you can see the erosion beneath the path ahead. Some spots leave an inch between being on the trail and a 20-foot drop to the riverbed.

You can’t help but feel something while weaving along these precarious routes. A surge of life goes through your veins on those corners and stretches. The ones where the bush is pressing your shoulder while the path itself is hardly wider than both your feet pressed together. At one point is a fork in the trail, one path leading back up and the other going down. The drop down is at least 12 feet, almost straight down and aimed directly at the edge. At the bottom of the quick drop is a tree, small enough to get your arms around but sturdy enough to win in a collision. The turn at the base is sharp and you can’t help but hit it fast. If you can’t make the turn you’ll fall a couple seconds before hitting the shallow edge of the Big River.

One night when I was riding just to be lost I went to a point I’d never been to before. I rode streets near the Quiet River looking for a break in the tall grass. Sometimes it only looks like a bit of broken tall grass but there’s a reason it’s bent. It’s the doorway to somewhere only the curious can go.

I rode up a mound then down a hill, not too steep, until it suddenly dropped off and I was moving fast. So long as you don’t end up in the bush or the river a downhill ride is a good one. I pulled the breaks hard and sat in some short grass at the bottom, some 50 yards from where I rolled off the beaten path. I had come down to a bend in the Quiet River, a spot where it turns back like a horseshoe around a grassy outlet.

I felt so far away from everything that took up so much of my life. Work, the fear of not getting another job. The fear of wasting my life. I felt distance from all of it. It all felt far enough away that I could breathe. I couldn’t hear a car, a person, a thought. Just the birds, the water. Silence. At the Quiet River there is no worry. It is the most alive I ever feel. Moments lost in the moment listening to the wind in the trees.

I sat there for quite a while, watching the Quiet River gently go by. I was there long enough to notice the sun had moved a fair bit across the sky. It was soon time to leave. I’d told myself to get up and go home a few times before I finally stood up. Two ducks with shining green heads floated around the bend without a sound. Eventually I left.

I was gone for quite a while. Not just on that ride but every ride. I was gone enough to lose track of an entire summer. I went to these places every day. I needed to fill my lungs with the summer air and my ears with the silence only nature knows. I had found peace.

It was the start of August when we got our first chilly day since the storms back in June. Soon after the breeze had begun to cool. It was time to carry on. It wasn’t clear what I was headed for but the direction felt right. I felt ready to move forward. I wasn’t sure where the next step would go, but I was ready to take it.