Jules HoeptingI took an Environmental Literature course in the Fall 2020 semester. The final assignment? To write an essay about being immersed in nature an to include a few references to works we had read in class.
I wrote about water because I have always felt a connection with it. My professor submitted my essay on my behalf to the Terry Mosher Writing the Natural World Award; to my surprise, my essay won. (I still think it doesn’t “flow” as nicely as it could have).
Although the essay is far from the dorky, quirky spirited posts I usually post, I thought I ought to put it up on here for all the nature lovers out there. This essay is an example of what I do best: writing a river of metaphors.
“Water Like Man”
Creeks run along the surface of Earth’s land (and under it) like veins in a body. Like blood gives oxygen to cells, then rushes to the heart for more oxygen, water soaks the soil in rejuvenation, washes away debris, makes its way towards the river or a lake or an ocean, turns over, becomes anew, evaporates into the sky, lies on a cloud, falls to the ground, and rolls into a creek over and over and over again.
Water is embedded into life. The crisscross pattern it leaves as it resides down sandy slopes looks like the crisscross pattern of human skin. Most of our bodies are made up of water. Bodies of water make up most of the outer layer — the skin — of the Earth. People built towns around water, built their lives around water. People traveled on rivers before they paved roads. People dug canals before they laid down railroads.
I grew up in a town built around the Erie Canal, the manmade waterway connecting the Great Lakes to Buffalo to Rochester to Syracuse to Schenectady to Albany to the Hudson River to New York City to the Atlantic Ocean since 1825; it was the canal that built New York State. In the first place I ever remember living in, there was a creek on the edge of my backyard named Sandy Creek. I loved playing in its water and walking on “balance beam” tree trunks arching over the water. Years later, I discovered Sandy Creek cut through the Erie Canal; that they shared the same waters. It shouldn’t have surprised me, since the waterways were a quarter mile apart. It was the beginning of my realization just how interwoven water was with everything.
When I’d walk home from school. I’d always stop two places; on (or under) Brown Bridge of the Erie Canal and the bridge over Sandy Creek. I’d watch the water as it flowed, I’d absorb the wisdom of its presence, and tell it whatever I was thinking of that day because I thought it listened; even if it doesn’t, the magic lies in thinking it does. To me, water is holy. Being next to water, whether it be a creek or a lake, makes me feel more at peace than anything else. I find water to be the best place to self-reflect, even if the water is not perfectly still.
I am relentlessly attracted to water. I can always find a puddle or a tiny stream when walking in the woods. I got out of the CNN tower in Toronto and led my family to Lake Ontario by sense alone. Part of my reasoning for choosing to attend college in Fredonia was because the school was a five-minute drive to Lake Erie; I wanted to be able to have a place to escape to, if I ever needed it.
Like Sandy Creek leads to Lake Ontario, the town of Fredonia has Canadaway Creek, which makes its way to Lake Erie. I heard rumors of the creek, but never introduced myself personally until my third year at school. Turns out we are kindred spirits.
As soon as I met Canadaway, I adored it. The variety of rocks, the trees that hung on its ledges, the water that ran through it — it was perfection. At first, I tried to explore the creek by walking around its edges, by avoiding getting my toes wet. But that is like asking how someone is and wanting them to say no more than “good” You cannot get to know people, or water, without breaking the surface. So, I soaked my shoes, and wandered along Canadaway’s meandering path for a mile or two.
I agree with Thoreau, it is so much better to walk places because you cannot get there quickly. What you do with that extra time is up to you. Walking gives you a beat, allows you to tune out your surroundings and listen to the melodies in your head. If your thoughts run static, you can look around you and behold the world.
How beautiful your surroundings are depends heavily on your perception and the sun. Seeing a place in different lighting is like asking different people for their version of the same story. The golden hours — after sunrise and before sunset — are sacred; they compliment everything they touch. The harsh rays of mid-day are unflattering. Gray skies cast a bleak view on the world, but the gloom is not inherently pessimistic. The darkness of the night force the viewer to depend on senses besides vision. Every lighting is honest, just in a different way.
You know, Burroughs was right; we find the aspects of the natural world in which we seek out. What intricacies you notice in your surroundings depends on what you’re looking for. I seek out details that I can capture the magic of in image; shadows, textures, colors. I love going for walks with a camera in hand. You could argue that spending time looking at nature through a lens is not being in nature. I’d ask you to watch me crawl and stretch into awkward positions, trying to capture what I see. I’d ask you how sitting down in nature and writing everything you think and see is much different. Your eyes are fixated on a lens or a page. The intention is the same: to preserve your perspective.
The rocks in the creek are extraordinarily fascinating to me. Many of the rocks on the floor and on the edges of the creek are composed of layers and layers of smooth rock, of history. Constantly building upon itself. Constantly carving itself, reworking what it is willing to share about its history. There are smooth slabs of rock with nearly perfect, straight edges. There is an assortment of rounded rocks scattered simultaneously with no particular order and the most particular order. There’s a type of rock throughout the creek whose composition is so fragile, you can kick it lightly and watch it crumble in a honeycomb pattern. There are rocks so worn down they are no longer rocks, but sand and silt and clay, creating a soft, sinking basin.
The more I observed the creek, the more I thought about humans. Are men like water, or is water like men?
Like men, the creek moves at different paces. The water in the middle, just below the surface, moves the fastest. The water on the edge moves slower. Some molecules take breaks in in puddles as they make their way down the creek. It doesn’t matter how they ride the flow, they all end up in the same lake.
Like men, the trees cling to the rocky edges of the creek, the soil they originally grew in long since eroded away, their complex roots visible. Any layer of soil present had roots pierced through it, reaching towards the water, appearing ever parched and thirsty.
Like men, the creek is constantly pushing rocks and silt and whatever else it carries to the side in order to carve a path of least resistance. Like men, it is apparent most of this rearranging has been done in times of range and unclarity. There are sticks snagged in notches of trees, in the support beams of bridges.
When it rains hard, the creek doubles in size, and its turbidly increases from swirled-up particles — like emotions getting in the way of thinking clearly. It does whatever it needs to do to push that burden onto the lake. To return to its meandering tendencies. It is incredible how gentle or angry water can be depending on its slope and quantity.
It’s not just the creek that reminds me of mankind. When I try to think of a way to relay the sound of birds, I think of synthesizers, of bells, of a second of a slide whistle, of the squeak of playground rides, of the “click” in the “click-clack” of a train on a track. When I try to describe crickets and frogs, I think of tambourines and non-obnoxious sirens. When I try to describe how insects upon the water move, I think of snowmobiles.
Then again, I suppose the frame in which I use to see the world is made of concrete. I suppose my life is as free and natural as water in a canal, used to being restrained by locks and sluice gates. Or maybe a dammed-up river, not knowing what free flowing truly feels like. My true mother water is a revolutionary manmade waterway, after all.
As a kid, I rode my bike on the Erie Canal’s towpath. The water was brown or green or gray or saturated by sunset, depending on the lighting. In middle school, I collected plastic bottles trapped in its rip-rap banks. In fall, I walked down the slopes of the drained canal to collect zebra and quagga mussels shells off of sludgy floors. In winter, I walked on frozen water, taking steps around bicycles and shopping carts and whatever else people tried to dispose of. During the Coronavirus pandemic, I walked over 600 miles on its trail by myself, just to see where exactly the canal came from and where it went.
The New York State Barge Canal (the conglomerate Erie is a part of) is a master manipulation of a marvelous element. In the canal’s current state, the rivers of Niagara, Genese, Oneida, Oswego, Seneca, Mohawk, Hudson and the lakes of Eire, Ontario, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, and Champlain can all touch each other.
Perhaps formatting your ideas of what water is like through a canal is like learning a forest through a planted park. But, then again, most of today’s forests and waterways are managed by man. When we think of nature we think of purity, but every natural system has been affected by man.
There are several stream restoration projects in Canadaway Creek. Blocks of stone are piled up and curved in just the right way so that the fastest moving part of the creek is shifted, shifting the point banks and cut bars. Slabs of concrete are put in as walls under bridges to confine the flow. People try to prevent erosion, but the warn down bottoms of concrete slabs suggests they will forever be trying. Water is the universal solvent, after all.
Every time you touch water, you break it a part. Then it puts itself together around your hands. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of water because it is constantly moving. Adjusting. Adapting. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of water because you’ve never had to; every living thing on Earth knows the touch of water.
Water is embedded into life. Water is the blood of life.
