River Man

From the September 2008 edition of Inertia Magazine:

At precisely thirty minutes before dawn, shortly before the jackhammer of practical concerns starts to chip away at my brain, turning my thoughts to rubble, I leave my studio apartment near the college and, weather permitting, bike ten miles (squeak-squeak; must oil that chain!) into the valley of hardwood trees. There I follow a winding trail of crushed stone that skirts the wetlands and crooked river. Above the rim of the valley the leaden sky changes color with slow, operatic grandeur. The cicadas sing a scratchy aria sustained by the morning breeze. Hazy pink ribbons of passing jets unfurl on the horizon and look like chalk gently smeared on a blackboard, or blood seeping slowly through loosely wrapped gauze. Five hundred years ago, so the college professors tell us, the Iroquois raided this valley and slaughtered the Erie in a series of surprise attacks. Who knows why. For pleasure, for sport? People can be that way sometimes.

Read the entire story