Posting From Under a Bridge...

[elbert]

...so does that make me a troll? :twisted:
Sorry, guys, I couldn't resist! Don't have to be at my second job until 5:30, but it's close enough to my full time job that I didn't bother heading home. I was looking for a quiet place outdoors to read my book out of the sun--and the creek drew me ever downwards, until I found myself on its banks under the cool shade of a breezy overpass. A fine place to sit for an hour, if only I had my pipe instead of my book!
Alright, alright...I got you in the door, I'd better give you something good. One of my favorite passages on rivers, from my favorite writer.

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made; the weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but ere long to die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

-Henry David Thoreau

 

[prairiedruid]

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

 

[elbert]

We paddle our double craft into the current, ship paddles, lean back against the stern seats, which make good backrests and nothing much else, and smoke and talk. My anxieties have vanished and I feel instead a sense of cradle like security, of achievement and joy, a pleasure almost equivalent to that first entrance--from the outside--into the neck of the womb.

-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire. (Some good pipe smoking in this chapter!)
Funny story about that Maclean quote. I used it in a college essay once--in the margins of the paper, my professor noted impatiently that I should actually read the whole book. :nana: How DID he know!?

 

[brewshooter]

"Nobody told me the rapids would be this bad! We all gonna die!!!!"
-Brewshooter, A Quiet Sunday Float: Reflections on Life as I See It

 

[elbert]

"White water ahead," says Ralph quietly, with a sort of complacent satisfaction, as if he had invented the phenomenon all by himself. And instead of doing anything about it he reloads his cheap pipe.

Abbey again, this time inspired by a worthy addition from brewshooter!
Well, I'm off to work afterall.