Cairn 2016

I understand that humans have built cairns to mark the way or as a way to remember something for a long time.

On the Friday after the Tuesday when our country had elected a supremely unqualified man to be President, I had tried not to stumble on my way down to a rocky point near the Kaw River. A couple of years ago, there had been an inukshuk at the edge of the river there below the North Unit of the Bowersock Hydroelectric Power Plant when a good man – these judgments are my opinions, of course – and I had been walking together. I remembered – and I wanted to remember - the good man. I wanted to get the other man out of my mind.

There are of course consequential actions. But consequential for whom? The future appears to be much more uncertain if you are an immigrant or a Muslim in this country, or if you’re gay or a poor single mother – among other people. Many of those folks have been having a harder time living their lives than I have for quite a while. That should not be forgotten.

It’s simply true that one person makes a difference in other people’s lives – sometimes. I don’t wish to try to paint a silver lining on anything here or to digress too far from the where I was when I started these thoughts near the river a few days ago.

But consider the ancient philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, as our reference point. He was a Greek who was born and had lived and died around 400 BC. He came to believe that virtue was revealed in actions and not theoretical ideas. He possibly looked somewhat like the man I see now and then when I am walking – sometimes sleeping on a bench up along the levee. That man looks homeless to me. He’s short and a little heavy – not very clean. His light-colored hair is a dirty mess, but cleanliness is likely not his primary concern. It was said that Diogenes often slept in a large, empty ceramic jar of the kind that once contained olive oil or grain. Diogenes was the man who supposedly went around the marketplace with a lighted lantern in broad daylight looking for an honest man. It’s the kind of thing people might remember, I suppose.

At about noon on Friday, I wanted to get the swirl of consequences out of my head. There will be time to consider the consequences of one unvirtuous man in a powerful office or the ongoing neglect of other men. Instead, I built a cairn.

Let’s be clear. It took me almost ten minutes of my time. I had to select and pick up rocks that were scattered at my feet with my bare hands. I took some small care to place them and balance them. It became a short stack of stones by the river. A cairn.

And philosophy – at least as far back as Diogenes - is just a questing for meaning. I use words, but it is the meaning that matters – if something is going to matter at all.

So in my mind, it was the absence of an inukshuk that reminded me of a good man and another day some years ago. The present was a beautiful day on a Friday along the Kaw River. Water sparkled as sunlight caught the edges of ripples as the muddy Kaw water flowed over the mud and rocks of the river bed. Pigeons sometimes flew off from their perch on a cable over the dam and they would swoop and swirl, turning in nearly perfect synchronicity. Individual birds flying as a flock, their instincts marking memories in their fleeting patterns in the air. And when they all turn on a wing together, the sunlight catches on an edge and flashes a signal at me.

Have I gone too far? I did not mean to say that the river or the rocks or the pigeons or even the sun had any intent to tell me anything at all. But might I still derive some meaning out of thin air?

I left the cairn behind me. I have a device and so I had taken some photos. I headed for the library to help with the New York Elementary School Chess Club. They were to meet at the there this time because there was no school this Friday. A man, who is a little older than me, has a passion for chess and for kids. I would say that he is a good man.

Now I won’t go on and make too much of this good people thing with a lengthy further listing and definitions of people I know. I have encountered many good men and women – and good kids – along my way. But good people should be remembered amidst the swirl of bad news.

Later that Friday, I ate well at the Basil Leaf Café with my good wife in the evening. We have a good roof, running hot and cold water. It comes from the Kaw and is drinkable, thanks, in some part, to a government of the people. We have electricity, clothes and appliances and luxuries that Diogenes could never have imagined. I slept that night in a comfortable bed.

And still we have our fears.

I woke up on Saturday and walked to meet the sunrise at the river. There was frost on the grass. The air was crisp, but I was warm and well bundled. Diogenes – or someone who looked a lot like he might have looked – was sitting once again on the bench in the still morning air overlooking the river and the rising sun.

I walked passed him and down to the point of rocks where I had built the cairn. I had to watch my step. A large tangled raft of drift logs had jammed months ago in high water against the large limestone boulders of the levee. A rough and partial gravel path went down. Loose gravel and larger rocks sometimes turned under the weight of my foot.

A few stones near the top of the cairn had fallen – maybe a dozen or so. Maybe I hadn’t balanced them well. Maybe a pigeon had tried to land on the top stone. Maybe the earth had shivered.

I rebuilt the cairn. Not the same. No, the cairn was not quite the same as I had constructed it the day before. But perfection was not the point. Permanence is not the point. Remembering is the point.

My friend from some time before is a geographer. He teaches in Wisconsin. Married. Has a son. In the map that is in my mind, I supposed that I could call this place Inukshuk Point. Or Pigeon Point. Or even Diogenes Point. I could name the cairn after my friend, if I wanted too. But the cairn won’t be standing there long enough to hold the name – except in my mind. And then there will just be scattered rocks. But there will be time to remember.

Although even that rocky point just downstream of the dam has already changed significantly in my memory. That is, the river – sometimes moving with great force – had pushed and pulled the mud and the rocks into different places.

You have to give those Greek philosophers some credit. Heraclitus said it well when he said that no one steps into the same river twice. Of course, I think that there’s a small joke there. It’s on us. Not even I am the same man who built a cairn on Friday and then came back and rebuilt it on Saturday at day break. I never even stepped into the river.

It was an incredible morning. Hardly different from other incredible mornings. Me, being there, in that place is one difference, I suppose. I breathed in the cold clear air. The cold air meeting the warmer surface of the river pulled up tendrils of mist. The spirits of the Kaw made their own swirling rituals and recollections, the sun catching the edges of vapors as they turned, rising.

I walked along the rocky edge of the Kaw. Watching my step. Looking out over the water and up as the sunlight caught the edges of leaves not yet fallen. The sky was reflected in the river. A large black bird flew out of the mists towards me, spread her wings, catching air, and settled on a low island of rocks out in the middle of the flowing, ever changing river. It was all the same and not the same. Some memories must go back millions of years in the forgotten channels of my mind.

Seagulls cried. Some flying down river to the east, some flying up river to the west. Some flew north and some, south. And some circled, their white wings catching the morning sun, over the outwash of the Bowersock Hydroelectric Plant on the far bank.

I turned and made my way up the boulders of the levee. One careful step at a time. Part of the way up towards the top, I picked up a smooth pole. It must have drifted in from somewhere upstream. Sometime ago. This time, I used it to help my balance. And when I had nearly reached the top and didn’t need it anymore, I jammed one end of the stick into a hole between the large and irregular rocks. The other end, by accident and necessity, pointed towards the sky.

Sunday, late in the afternoon, I came back down to that rocky point. The river water whispered and burbled around mossy boulders. My cairn was still standing – just the same – although the light was different. And I could see that someone else had been there. They had built another cairn alongside mine. If you used your imagination, you could see a rocky half-moon rising out of solid rock.

I took some more pictures. And then I turned and headed back to my home. The man with the familiar scruffy face was sitting on the bench overlooking the river. On the bridge, I came upon two girls, one tall and slender with blondish hair, the other short, with red hair. Both had their hair tied back in pony tails. They were leaning up against the railing looking out towards were the river took a bend and continued on to the horizon – and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. They turned their heads to glance at me and I saw the late afternoon sunlight catch the edges of their eyes. And then they looked down at the muddy sunlit surface of the Kaw River.

I imagined that if they looked carefully, they could see the shadow of a man walking along the shadow of a bridge on a November Sunday afternoon. And then they looked out with their whole lives ahead of them – perhaps, one day to look back on and remember.

Link to: Inukshuk by the Kaw - Dec. 2014