Pilings Point: A place on earth

We began with climate change.  You handed me a glass of iced tea and I said something about plastic straws. And in no time we were half way to the end of human civilization. Then some customers walked through the front door and you turned to take their orders.

I sat there staring out of the window at the cars driving by on Mass Street. Carbon emissions on wheels. Eventually my glass was empty and I walked out the back door.

I turned down the alley, walking on broken asphalt, power lines overhead, dumpsters pushed against brick walls, graffiti and grime all around me. As I walked towards the river, I kept turning the arguments about climate change over and over in my head to no end.

And then I was standing alone on the Kaw River Bridge. And as I looked out over the river towards the horizon, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t climate change that I wanted to talk about. Not humanity. Not the planet.

All that I really wanted was to simply walk along river with you. We might talk about the sky. Or the earth. Or the trees along the levee.  We might talk about the river rolling along to the sea. Or we might talk about nothing at all. Just walk.

I am old. You are young. I am the past. You are the future. But what do I know that is worth the telling? I would rather just show you one place on earth that I care about.

There’s a place along the Kaw River I call Pilings Point. It’s not far. About a half-mile downstream along the levee trail from the bridge. At a gravel cut through the large limestone boulders that line the inside of the levee we would half-slide down to a lightly traveled path. The path would take us through a fringe of river bottom forest to a muddy ravine. Sometimes there’s a trickle of water in the bottom, but it’s not difficult to jump from one side to the other. And then, the river would be before us.

Pilings Point is just a small point of rock jutting out into the Kaw River. The stumps of the pilings from a long gone railroad bridge march down into the water. You can look downstream to where the river bends behind the trees on the near bank. Upstream you can see the bridge back in the distance. The city is hidden behind the far bank. Pilings Point becomes, for me, a world all its own.  

As places go, Pilings Point is not particularly picturesque. There’s trash scattered here and there, washed down from upstream or tossed aside by people who have been here before. You have to step over lengths of rusted steel cable tangled among the rocks. Just a little farther downstream, on the far bank, you can see large slabs of broken concrete, dumped down the bank to keep the river from carving the soil away. You can still hear the faint sounds of cars driving back and forth across the bridge. And the Kaw River itself is hardly pristine, the water laden with eroded farmland and chemicals.

But the quite evident wastefulness and lack of respect for the natural world is simply not what matters to me. Of course, I see the garbage. I am aware of the toxic chemicals in the water. And I know very well how the Kaw is far from being a wild prairie river it once was. The Kaw River has been both tamed and despoiled.

But when I walk to Pilings Point, I come to see the river, not the desecration. I watch the sun sparking off the ripples on the water. Sometimes piles of puffy clouds drift by. Sometimes the skies are gray. I listen to the wind. I feel it against my face. I see gulls flying. I walk along the edge of the river, sand shifting under my feet. I can crouch down by the river and feel the water flowing through my fingers. And the river always rolls on by, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Pilings Point is a place on earth. I come to witness the evident beauty - and the wonder.

This is what I want you to know. Over time, as I come to Pilings Point, engaging my senses, this particular stretch of river has become a place where I belong. The river in this singular place still lives. You can breathe the spirit of the river into your soul.

I believe that a person enters into a place. You go to a place - watching, listening, touching. It is a matter of some time, of repetition. A place doesn’t belong to you, rather, in attending, one day you discover that you belong in that place.

So if I could, I would take you to Pilings Point. You would see for yourself what there is to see.

And maybe this is all it would be. Just a walk. Some trees. Rocks. A river. The sky above and the earth below.

Or maybe it would be more. We might walk away from Pilings Point caring a little more about a place on the earth and about each other.

And that is where everything begins.

I leaned in

      I leaned in

 Bert Haverkate-Ens

I leaned over the sink

and was struck

full in the face,

really, it was more

of a glancing blow,

no really,

it was a warm caress,

so unexpected

that I nearly ducked

my head.

Well, I dodged,

and then I leaned in.

It was only the winter sun,

looking in,

only to touch my face,

only to remind me

of its concern.

I left the dishes

and ran off with the sun.

Really, we walked together,

silently, warm against the cold,

remembering old times.

Snowlights

The camera lies. The mind plays tricks. Except for cropping, these images of the same snow covered tree along Mass Street are what the camera saw.



The color of the whole tree is more or less as I remember. Looking up from underneath mostly shows you where I was standing at the time.

In either case, the surprise and wonder that I felt when I happened upon this tree colored by the bright streetlight has mostly faded into memory.

Now and again I come onto a scene I have photographed before because I thought it was memorable. And then when I come by again, what I see is not what I thought I remembered. From past to present, certainly things feel differently to me. And where did that tree come from?

And sometimes I wonder this. When I have seen your face countless times and I have seen photographs of you again and again, who am I seeing? And who am I? There’s a kind of magic in the seeing and remembering the moments of our lives. Now you see it. Now you don’t.

The camera lies. The mind plays tricks. What you see is not what you get. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow will be another day. What will I see around the corner? Don’t blink, you might miss it. Watch the birdy. Say cheese.

All I can say is this: I never saw it coming. I never saw her coming. And I cannot remember now what I saw then.

If I keep my eyes open, what might I see?

A snow covered tree colored by a bright streetlight on Mass Street?

And might I see you?

Snowstones

Same place. Same day. Same stones. Same snow. Slightly different perspectives. The top photo in the series is the key to looking at the other photos. So which question is the one to ask: Do all stones look alike? Or what difference does it make anyway? Or is everything just a matter of how you look at it? If you look carefully, what do you see in these photos? The safe answer is snow and stones. There are other answers. (Click a photo to enlarge them in slideshow format if you wish to compare the photos more carefully.

Another answer is that I had build a cairn here some months ago. It was well enough constructed and in the middle of a slope of large limestone boulders that it still stood. I knew that it was mine in part because I had topped it with a broken piece of red brick. The snowfall had changed everything, but I still knew where to look. And the snow had changed the look of everything. That I think is the answer that I was thinking of.

This is how it seems to me: What can be seen is a matter of perception - and of giving attention to a place over time so that what we look at becomes familiar enough that the changes over time reveal something of the soul of the place.

In this case, the cairn became a focal point. And the photos have been taken of the same subject from different angles. Otherwise the patterns of snow and stone seem random. And beautiful.

Somehow, all of this matters to me.

Morning walk in the snow

Reflected light made the predawn bright.

I pointed and clicked.

Who knew what pictures I would get?

 

The cold had finally sapped the battery when I had gotten to the levee trail, but no matter. Just to be in a place, so familiar and so magically changed on such a morning, was more than enough. 

I walked through the wet snow and then down the side of the levee to the river. I took my gloves off to feel the bark of an old cottonwood tree. I tasted a few mouthfuls of the fresh snow.

And then I simply stood for a long time at the river's edge - listening, watching. Except for the flowing water and an occasional hushed train whistle, the world around me was silent. There were seagulls circling. Clouds of small birds I did not recognize swirled over and beyond the snow-lined branches of the trees behind me. And a bald eagle, flying towards me from downriver, paused on a branch high over my head for a few minutes.

And now these words, too, only begin to capture my experience. And so finally, after some time, unmeasured, I turned back to a world of snowplows and cars driving to and fro.

On my way home, I stopped at Aimee's for a hot chocolate and whipped cream in my mustache - and to recharge my camera. And then, by daylight, there were so many more photos still to take in South Park - most of them I would leave on my hard drive. 

At some point, I simply had to leave my wonder at the astonishing black and white world behind me and go home.

One benefit of taking pictures and writing words is the heightened awareness these acts give me that the world simply cannot be captured. Being in the world is the thing. This walk to the river and back was indeed extraordinary. But again and again, the natural world surprises me with unexpected beauty.

I encourage you to walk with your senses open. Take a camera if you wish. Or not. Get to know a place and just be there now and then.

Be human

A personal note:

I began posting to my blog, ‘Walk to the river,’ more than seven year ago. I began using Facebook to link to my blog and to post other thoughts and photos about five years ago.

My primary intention has been to pay attention to the world within my reach – especially the Kaw River and its environs - and then to share my experience in words and pictures. But I have also branched out in other various directions.  And this too: I enjoy just having a little fun now and then. I try to follow the advice of Wendell Berry: ‘Expect the end of the world. Laugh. / Laughter is immeasurable.’

But now I must lament.

Original content on Facebook is increasingly being drowned out by advertising and ‘shares’. Where have all the faces gone? And where are the words in your own words? All the ‘sponsored’ posts are bad enough. And then it seems that there comes just one more shared post after another. If you like cats, I’d rather see yours. And I do sometimes read a shared article - if you have told me why it was important to you.  And yes, I’m interested in thoughtful political discourse, but will the raging never end?

Oh my – my dear Facebook friends! Sometimes I can’t scroll fast enough.  

What to do?  What to do?

My intention has been to share with you what I personally  think and how I see the world around me. I have tried to do what I can within the limits that Facebook and Blogspot present. After all, waddya expect for nothing, rubber biscuit?

And yet, among all the superfluity and clatter, my posts have indeed reached you now and then. I hope that you have found some of them to have been worth your time and attention. I hope that you have occasionally laughed. And I especially hope that I have encouraged you to walk out into the natural world within your own reach for yourself. 

The river awaits.

And so now this this personal post makes me chuckle just a little bit to myself. Most of ‘you’ will not even have seen this ‘note’ as it sails out onto an endless sea of posts. And in that incessant stream of posts which is Facebook, many personal posts simply swirl down the ever swirling Facebook drain.

This will hardly be news to you, but it should never be forgotten: Facebook is a faceless, unfeeling, behemoth that plays by its own rules for its own ends. Only individuals can care. Only people can be human. And if we aren’t careful, parts of our individual humanity can be stolen or submerged – not just by Facebook – but by various technologies and a culture that is increasingly dehumanizing.

Still, here we are. 

I am glad to see your faces on Facebook and to hear what you are up to now and then. Those personal posts of yours are like the prize at bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks - except that instead of caramel popcorn and peanuts, the Facebox has been filled with rocks and rabbit pellets. Please do not share this if you agree.

And I do wish to thank you for your likes and comments over the years. Especially the comments.

So, now, for those of you who have gotten all the to the bottom of this barrel, here are a few of the human faces of the man himself behind the ‘Walk to the river’ blog - more or less in his natural habitat.

And as they say: see you in the funny papers.

The ordinary and extraordinary

To my good friend,

It was a fine winter afternoon. As I crossed the bridge, I saw the Kaw River running very high for this time of year. The lowly island of limestone boulders just beyond the dam was completely submerged under the rushing water. But as I looked again, I saw a handful of white seagulls standing up to their ankles on the summit. 

Now, you and I have walked to the river frequently and we often remark on the changing river current.  But this seemed somewhat beyond remarkable.

I had my device camera along and I have taken countless photos in this place. Still, I thought to myself, why not take just a few more so that you could see what I saw. The day was entirely its own, after all, and not any other.

As I wandered, I saw the familiar and the unexpected woven together. In front of me, the same old river was running in quite a hurry between its banks. I was taking my time. The cold air was biting my exposed fingers, but I was bundled and warm. The sun, nearing the winter solstice and heading downward to the gray fringe of bare branches on the far side of the river, shone with an extraordinarily fine light. And yet, as it often is, it was just me and the river just rolling along.

I took shots from every angle, but not that many. I knew my subject quite well and with very little editing, I think this series of photos came out quite well.

So, Mike, I began by taking these river pictures for you, but I’m sure you won’t mind if I share them with a few other folks.  After all, but we don’t own any of this, but we are indeed most fortunate to be part of it.

bert

P.S. Click on first photo to see all of them as full-sized slideshow.