Just Let the River Flow

Behind the Mill I share company with crickets and ducks. The air sways and dances without restriction or the help of man.
The Mill, my quiet place by the river. There I learned to listen for crickets, to bait my own fishing hook, and to walk through the water without creating waves or current as to better catch minnows and salamanders. The Mill, where life’s lessons are really learned. The simple ones: don’t swim alone, always tell someone where your going. Practical and useful. Also learning life’s harder lessons, which only a lonely river can teach. To get over your first crush, sit on the large rock in the middle of the river and watch the current run by, what to do when you feel unloved, sit and watch the river’s current. If you watch long enough, if you sit still enough. Like the debris in the river your problems can float downstream never to be seen again.
Having lived all my life in my small mountain town people would think me to be sheltered and misinformed. However I know more of the world than most think at first glance. My youth often gives me away as a high school student. Young and naïve, still I refuse to succumb to those descriptions of myself.
I have seen large skyscrapers; I have walked the clogged streets of New York City. I’ve seen Times Square, I’ve enjoyed Broadway. I’ve seen the trash. I’ve inhaled thick smoggish air that weighs heavily on my lungs. Also choked on and sucked in the treated air in large department stores recycled and dry, too light to give my brain any real oxygen. So many people press upon me and surge through enclosed areas. This adds to my panic of not being able to breathe.
I have seen these things and they do not impress me. Why take what man has created as beauty when I’m in the middle of God’s creation?
Sure sometimes the humid heat makes me cranky, and the bitter cold of my Vermont’s winter makes me as bitter as the cold. But without the hardship of these days how can I really love the fall calm and beauty? Or a summer day spent tubing down my mighty New Haven? With climate control air conditioned, oil heated homes and buildings how would I know the joy that comes from drinking hot cocoa in a cold kitchen for the sole reason of warming up? Not that the chocolate taste doesn’t bring my taste buds great pleasure.
I’ll take my river, my running current, the crickets and salamanders, over the bustle of the city.