Einstein on the Bank of the River
You live upriver half your life, you’d feel a little like the world was constantly moving past you, no slowing it down. I think folks who live down further where the river empties into the Sound must watch the tides go out then come back in. Over and over. Do they see the world as a constant ebb and tide? A flowing out, then a return? Is the world to them like breathing, an inhalation and exhalation?
I was up Otter Creek last week checking on Indian Bob. He’s part Stillaguamish, part Norwegian and mostly, just Ornery. Lives alone, he says, because he likes it that way, but I know he couldn’t live two days with someone before it drove him to homicide. He has set routines and he likes to keep em set. He tolerates my visits — interruptions to him — for awhile, but not long. He’ll announce he’s got to get back to his chores even though both of us know he’s going to watch daytime TV with his two dogs. It’s my signal that it’s time to quit our socializing.
Bob has a rundown cabin set beside a backwash that dries up most summers when Otter Creek becomes little more than a trickle. I often think his world is more attuned to seasonal shifts. Time flows, just way slower.
I don’t so much think of Bob as native American as I do Zen Priest. It’s like he’s nearly stopped the River. I would go bat guano crazy with boredom living his life, but like I said, I’m a river person and the universe is in constant motion for me, maybe WHY I live upriver. Or maybe I became this way because I live here. Do you choose your environment or does your environment make you?
Indian Bob told me once his grandmother, a Stillaguamish elder back when Elder meant something, told him that there are no mysteries for those who ask no questions. All I can figure is she must’ve lived on a lake. Me, I got lots of questions, just not enough answers.
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