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When I purchased our home on the banks of the Kennebec River in 1991, I had elaborate fantasies about how we would take advantage of living next to this incredible body of water. I envisioned hosting ice-skating parties, complete with pick-up hockey, hot chocolate, and a bonfire. I pictured boating on the river (in canoes, kayaks, and rowing shells), and floating in the water on rafts and inner tubes on hot summer days. I imagined us building and using a floating dock. I also dreamed of a (wooden) raft adventure, made all the more interesting by the fact that this stretch of the river--even as far inland as it is--is tidal. Few of my fantasies have materialized. Prior to building our wooden raft, our boating on the river was limited to an occasional paddle in a borrowed canoe; we have yet to own a boat. We don't have a dock, since I have yet to envision an anchoring system that will withstand the battering of the currents and wind as well as satisfy the code restrictions in this resource-protection zone. No one would host an ice-skating party on the river after living along it through a winter. We've heard the shot-like snaps and buckling of the ice under pressure from high tide pushing its way up and around the ice's edge at the shore. We've seen the sudden appearance of large gaping holes in the previously solid ice--even in sub-zero temperatures. In all our years here, we've never set foot on the ice. We have done a lot of swimming and floating on the river, enough to have developed a very deep respect for the power of the river's tide and currents and for the wind that whips along its length. We never could have fully anticipated how much the river would run through our lives. It connects us to the here-and-now pulses of life, to the rush of time, and to regions beyond. When gulls appear, flying upriver from the distant coast, it's a sure sign that a storm is rolling in. In the quiet of still days, a plaintive train whistle echoes up and down the valley long before the quaking rumble of the train arrives. The thunderous roar of ice breaking up during spring thaw can snap me awake out of a sound sleep and send me running down to the river's edge to catch the spectacular sight and sound of ice boulders bouncing and roiling in their eagerness to leave winter behind. Spring fever arrives honking, on the wings of geese that sparkle in the dark blue water on the distant shore. I thought my dream of a rafting adventure on the river was one that, like ice skating, would never be realized. Then, one day during the winter of 1998 (perhaps during one of our 13 days without power during the Ice Storm of '98), Arlen and I were talking about the river. I added something to the conversation like, "That's why I've always thought building a raft and living on it in the river sounded like fun." Arlen snapped to attention and asked, "What?" I had mentioned the idea a number of times before, but this time as I described it, perhaps because he was now 12 years old, Arlen's eyes grew large and he asked, "Can we really do this?" I think my friend Judith would say the idea had found its fullness in time… |
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