From Is a river alive? by Robert Macfarlane. In the Canada/kayak section of the book. Before they began on the river journey, Rita had foretold that he and his friend would both get questions answered by the river. That day they had done a few rapids on the river; Macfarlane writes extensively about the experience of the river's power and danger. He writes about the structure of the river, which contains eddies that push upstream, and constant curling back. That night, he has this mini revelation, which is set up by describing his setting as "eery" and magical and special:
That night the moon is full and huge and made of egg yolk, and bright enough to read by. The trees cast moon-shadows across our tents. Spruces living and dead stand in silhouette. The wind has gone, and it is cold enough to see my breath plume inside the tent.
We burn pieces of driftwood, and the flames lick them while loons chain-call up and down the valley.
The river runs flow and counterflow in my brain. I see spirals forming everywhere: on the eddy-lines, under the pull of our paddles, in the grain of the driftwood, the licks of fire, the sky-gyres of a watchful osprey.
Far upstream, gold-dust pollen swirls atop a dark deceleration of water at a bend of the river, like a star map.
Far above, the ongoing helical collision of the Andromeda and the Milky Way galaxies, which began 4-5 billion years ago, spreads across the dark sky like pollen on water.
I fish the run-out pool below the rapid, and catch six trout.
p. 273
He experiences the swirls everywhere. Earlier his friend says that the historian Vico says that history isn't circular, but helical... seen from the side it's a spiral. So, he sets us up for the revelation in a number of ways. Earlier, there's a strange scene where pollen had covered the entire lake and causes strange effects on paddling. So, far (I'm just a couple pages past this) he doesn't expound on it. I really admire how he makes the point simply by describing his immediate experience. It feels like he's saying that this eddying is the related nature of the world above and below. That is related to, in part 2, where the Indian writer says that the wasps, flying through his house and outside to plants, are the connective tissue, ligaments (?)
On This Day (09/17):
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