" Life is like the river, sometimes it sweeps you gently along and sometimes the rapids come out of nowhere."   --Emma Smith

    I have been thinking about rivers often lately.  As the title of this blog indicates, I grew up beside the Guyandotte River in Pineville, WV.  I went to sleep at night to the soothing sound of the water flowing over the rocks in that river.  I also learned that sometimes rivers have their ups and downs, for during those spring rains in Southern Appalachia, the creeks and rivers became less friendly sounds. Sadly, the Guyandotte ran black throughout the years of my youth due to the sludge pouring into the river from coal mines upstream.  Few swam or even ate the fish that swam in that contaminated river, which had run green during my parent's growing up years.  While most of the time, the river was only a few feet deep and moved rather smoothly over the rocks that we scattered in it, I also saw that river water behaving more like a black stallion attempting to rid itself of a saddle during those spring rains that would cause it to grow to almost twenty feet deep.  The more it rained, the higher the water became and the faster it moved.  It was hypnotizing to watch--yet fearful at the same time, often because the floodwaters had already invaded towns and homes upstream and was now carrying pieces of homes, furniture, trash, trees that were rushing by my home, which was only protected from the river's wrath and memory by the security of a riverbank that was actually the height of the roof of our small home. 

Even what my family referred to as vacations also always took place beside a river, but these were ones where we could fish and swim in them such as the New River or the Greenbrier River about two hours away from Wyoming County.  Many of my first lessons about life  utilized these rivers as metaphors for life.  By age four, I had learned how to fish based on the depth, speed, and even the color of the river. My father Ralph and his brother Shorty started out this journey on the New River near Hinton, WV.  Positioning my younger male cousin and me on the middle bench of a small fishing boat, bought from Sear's Roebuck, and the prize possession of these two brother-best friends, we were taught how to spend a day fishing.  The boat was powered by a 5HP Johnson motor that often sputtered and spit smoke before we ventured away from the bank of the river where we camped right above Sandstone Falls. My father ran the motor while my uncle kept his eye out for rocks or fallen trees that lay just under the surface.  We soon learned that it is always important to watch out ahead of us and to slow down until a way around an obstacle could be found.  Once during a moment when both my father and my uncle had been distracted by a tangled line, our boat hit one of those rocks, knocking me cousin and me off our seats. 

From sunrise to sunset, that same cousin and I were taught the fine art of angling.  We were introduced to the tools of the trade, the rods, the reels, and the tackle.  It wasn't long before we realized that people don't use the same lures to catch every type of fish.  Sometimes, we simply trolled, allowing our lures to run deep and at the same speed that the boat moved. We learned to hold onto our pole with one hand, while keeping a finger on the other hand on the fishing line as we let it out.  We also learned that if we let lose of the hold on the reel, then our line became a tangled mess.  Other times, we used a spinning reel and were taught to cast toward the bank, always with a smooth motion and an eye on the target of placing that lure right where a fish might be.  It didn't take long to learn that the task was harder than it looked when our dads did it. One thing was certain, if an angler is trying to catch a fish, then the lure has to ease into that water.  I recall many big splashes as well as a few trips close to the bank to try to cut a lure out of a tree.  The hardest lesson--actually losing the lure in the process. 

Perhaps, the most important lesson I learned during those years was that I needed to be prepared for the unexpected in life.  We never pulled the boat away from the shore until we were wearing our life jackets, even when it was one of those bulky orange ones that were uncomfortable and hot.  Even when we begged to remove them, the answer was always the same: No.  I recall being told that the New River was a powerful force to be reckoned with and that we always had to be prepared to survive it.  At first I didn't understand, for where we camped, the surface of the water appeared to be smooth, sometimes looking almost like the glassy surface of a lake.  One day as we trolled along the river, my dad and uncle told a story. I don't recall the name that was used by the first people who had guided their canoes on the river--the Native Americans--but my dad indicated that they had given it a name that meant one should not be fooled by the surface of the water on that river as many had been swept away by the current that ran strong and swift below in that river which ran deep.   Just like life sometimes things that look so smooth and inviting are more dangerous than they seem, for the unexpected and even death can lurk just underneath.

At one point, that lesson was put into practice when my cousin and I were just preschool age, for without much warning, our dads threw us out of the boat--with our life jackets on, of course.  I can recall the sensation of seeing that boat moving in one direction while I was going downstream with the current.  Soon, however, the boat had turned and was coming toward us. Instructions were being given, such  as never lose sight of the shore that that we needed to reach.  A second lesson followed:  swim at an angle to reach it as the river will move faster than you do.  Third:  recognize that sometimes you need to just float while looking for a rock or a tree branch that you can grab hold of a little further downstream, so always keep your head above water and observe your surroundings.  The most important lesson: DON'T PANIC; rely on the fact that you know how to swim and you do have a life jacket and just go with the flow.  My dad reminded me throughout this first time of being tossed into the New River that my uncle and he were right there in the boat near us and would get us out of the river if we needed him to throw out a rope.   Because he was there, I was willing to risk letting go of the boat to drift in that water until I figured out what to do.  I trusted him to save me if I needed for him to do that.  Sometimes, I compare that to the way that I picture God.  He sometimes asks us to let go of the shore--to step out of the boat--to launch into the deep.  Just like my dad, however, He has demonstrated throughout my life that His spirit is always nearby and will intervene on my behalf whenever I am too afraid or are even getting too close to the rapids lurking just out of view down river.

Growing up beside and in mountain river water has obviously taught me many life lessons.  Others besides me, however, have also made wise observations about rivers.  As a collector of quotes, I would like to share a few river water  quotes that have been meaningful to me:


You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.   Paulo Coelho

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.  Marcus Aurellius.

The logs of wood which move down the river together are driven apart by every wave. Such inevitable parting should not be the cause of misery.  Nagarjuna.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. 
Jorge Luis Borges

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.  Thornton Wilder

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Rainer Maria Rilke.

"Oh, Eeyore, you are wet! said Piglet, feeling him. Eeyore shook himself and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time."
A.A. Milne

Mountain Musings

Mountain Musings

   As my sixty-third New Year's Eve has now come and gone, I still find myself reflecting on past years while wondering what the year 2013 will hold.  At this age and still dealing with the unknowns of living with a type of bone cancer,  I am thankful for each new day when my body is cooperative and my mind is still functioning. 

Even after 40+ years of teaching English, I still look forward to another semester of introducing students to the literature of my Appalachian homeland as well as to the ins and outs of the English language in my Adv. Grammar class and the ups and downs of becoming a high school English teacher in my ELA Methods class.  Each new semester brings new students into my life who will leave their imprints in my mind.  Some will choose to learn while others will choose to criticize--that is just the life of a teacher.  

When I began my career in 1971 as one of the few white teachers in a high school in Lowndes County, Mississippi, I could never have anticipated where the journey would take me.  I just knew that I had loved learning about language and literature from the time I was a child in Pineville, WV.  My first priced possession had been a small easel type of chalkboard that became the center image in a school for my dolls.  Having received this gift from Santa in my preschool days, I suppose my only model for teaching had been in Sunday School and/ or Vacation Bible School at Cook Memorial Baptist. 

My mother had been the teacher for 4 and 5 year-olds, the first teacher I remember.  While life had never provided her with the opportunity to attend college and to have a career that she loved, she began the journey for me.  We had few books in our home: a Bible, a Bible story book, and a book of fairy tales.  We eventually received our neighbor's used newspapers.  Mom taught me my alphabet, using the letters on the countless coal cars that passed on the tracks behind our home on the Guyandotte River and in the shadow of a large rock formation called Castle Rock. 

When the train cars weren't passing, she used the letters in those few books and on that newspaper headline: Beckley Post-Herald.  She taught me about nature as we wandered about in the woods, finding dewberries or blackberries, or gathering different types of leaves or picking wildflowers.  In our small yard, we planted flowers, trees, and vegetables. watching how they grew from small seeds into full-grown plants.  I learned from her that life changes as do the seasons.  There are endings and beginnings, times for living and for dying and in that interval between, the importance of learning to cherish and / or endure the times when we rejoice and when we mourn.  Both her mother, MaMa to me, and she were readers, learners, and storytellers.  They taught me that life was really a series of blank pages just waiting to see what a person would write there.  They taught me to write the story of my life and to fill it with loving and learning and living as a person of faith.

As I now look forward to another year of being Gramma to my young grandchildren, ages 4, 7, and 11, I hope that I am passing on this legacy to each of them.  They have brought such joy into my life and allowed me to share my stories with them.  Each time they come through my kitchen door with "We're here, Gramma, " or ask "Tell us another story, Gramma," or inquire, "What do you want to do?" they make my life meaningful and rich.  While I am approaching the last chapters in the story of my life, they are just beginning.  On each New Year's Day, I pray that they will find life to be full of simple gifts, a life filled with love and learning.