{"id":3969,"date":"2018-05-19T07:13:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T14:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=3969"},"modified":"2026-11-02T18:11:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T18:11:36","slug":"notes-from-a-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/notes-from-a-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes From a River"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The river runs downhill but this course isn&#8217;t the low road. On the contrary, a river, if a person decides to flow with it, represents the highest possible road a human being can take. Most don&#8217;t; most can&#8217;t. Following a river&#8217;s metaphors is a road rarely taken. I invite everyone to try. Rivers are everywhere around us. Watch one flow. It never costs a cent.<\/p>\n<p>I pity people who look at the river and see nothing but extraction and commerce.<\/p>\n<p>Did Narcissus gaze into his reflection in a river or lake before falling in and drowning? I could Google to find the answer but I won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>If I could order a sixer of Rainier cans from Amazon as I sit by this river, would a drone&#8217;s delivery of the beer desecrate the river?<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps my reanimation as a human being the last two years has turned me more into a man of the river than a man of the ocean. I need to ponder that notion.<\/p>\n<p>I wish someone would order me the special CD release of Bruce Springsteen&#8217;s <i>The River<\/i> and have it delivered to me. I miss that album.<\/p>\n<p>Ford is such a great word of the river. It is a verb and a noun. I love words that can go both ways. Love is one of those words.<\/p>\n<p>I have someone in mind I would like to accompany me on this river.<\/p>\n<p>All that time growing up in Oregon City and I never connected to the rivers there: Clackamas, Molalla, Willamette. Certainly other Oregon City youth of that era did. Perhaps I was too busy playing tennis, writing savage anti-administration editorials and reading Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer. I think I missed out.<\/p>\n<p><i>(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--themify_builder_static--><!--\/themify_builder_static--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The river runs downhill but this course isn&#8217;t the low road. On the contrary, a river, if a person decides to flow with it, represents the highest possible road a human being can take. Most don&#8217;t; most can&#8217;t. Following a river&#8217;s metaphors is a road rarely taken. I invite everyone to try. Rivers are everywhere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[811,963,965,967,968],"class_list":["post-3969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-oregon-rivers","tag-river","tag-river-notes","tag-river-writing","tag-rivers","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9647,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions\/9647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}