Do we walk over the earth or does it spin under us? Some combination of both is a fair bet. When we have a deja vu experience, it hints that we revisit more than we think. Spending some time along a river bank can help to sort it out.
NEVER THE SAME RIVER TWICE
Do you get “the look”? If you’ve ever owned a dog, you know what I’m talking about. It happens to me soon after arriving at my Dad’s house in Mosinee. Plaintive, expectant, and impossible to resist; the look tells me, with absolute certainty – my dog wants to go for a walk. We take Fremont to the athletic field, then cut through the school grounds, crossing the highway to the cemetery, where it borders the river. There’s a nature trail of sorts, but the signposts the dog follows are mostly invisible to me. Instead, what I find striking is the joy she brings to this familiar ramble.
Naturally, dogs like to check out the neighborhood, but don’t they know novelty is the spice of life? One of advertising’s favorite adjectives is “new”, and with good reason – we are easily bored. Whole industries are built on our lust for adventure. We resort to cruises and fall for trips that undertake to take us anywhere we haven’t been. We empty our closets and trade our automobiles before the threads or treads are bare; often because we simply crave something different.
The dog loves outings and relishes each new escapade. Still, it’s when we revisit our old haunts that she’s most engaged. On the favored river route, she carries a picture in her head and leads with a practiced confidence that’s absent when the place is new. Romping up and down the trail, she reports back on what’s changed and what’s the same. In some way, her enthusiastic inventory maps a journey that echoes a deeper relationship.
It’s said that one can never enter the same river twice. The setting might appear the same, but the flow of water and time guarantees that each trip to the river’s edge presents something different. Like rivers, routines and traditions flow through our lives. When we practice them, the familiar template helps us unwind, sometimes enough to reconnect with our inner self, which might get left behind when we journey outward. In a world that comes at us – often faster than we’d like, it makes sense to stop chasing it.
The values we hold dear are found in the usual and ordinary aspects of our lives. Without thinking about them, we are drawn to the places and times that are most important to us. The ritual of a morning walk becomes our constitution and a family get-together, our salvation.