A Walk Along The River

Frazil Ice, Trask River, Tillamook , OR, 1/28/2025

Dear Friend,

It was 26 degrees and sunny when Pablo (our 10-year-old dog) and I walked to the river this morning. I was bundled head to toe against the cold, crisp air. With each step, I felt the frozen earth under my rubber boots. At the river's edge, I bent my knees so that I could skim my fingers across her coolness. Hello River, I said, keenly aware that she deserved my respect, even at her gentle flow rate.

It has been fifteen days since our last rain, which means the height and speed of the river has waned. Because of this break in precipitation, the shoreline is exposed again, which means that Pablo and I can walk upriver with ease.

It takes time to know a place. I will need years of noticing weather patterns, shifting colors, migratory visitors, and sun positions, to understand like a local. Years are made up of a string of moments of pause to catch how every living thing expresses themselves in this particular terrain. One must spend time on the land to know and be known.

Pablo hugs the narrow path then stops to sniff, eat grass, and pee. He’s got his system; he knows what

he’s doing. When he looks up and turns his head toward a sound, I stop and wait. I watch him and heed his movements. He’s experiencing this space in his way, building a timeline, I suspect, of previous visitors and those just beyond whose scents and sounds are reaching him. His awareness expands well beyond his physical body.

I’m a less experienced tracker, but I notice prints in the sand, like the fisherperson’s boots and the hooves of elk and deer. I hear raven then spy one warming in the sun on the Bigleaf Maple on the opposite bank. Another flies overhead and calls out. We are part of this scene. They notice us, too.

The tall grasses of summer are bent and frozen flat against the ground. The moss covered boulders have a layer of sparkling frost, still very much alive even after so many months under the river’s frigid flow. Those that are still submerged, gurgle and pop. Pablo turns his head to acknowledge them. The river is alive.

Time is a great teacher.

Part of this river bank is the result of volcanic flow dating back 40 to 60 million years. Pahoehoe or smooth undulating lava designed the landscape here with rolls, swirls, and natural basins where water pools and moisture loving plants take root. This morning, many of these natural basins are covered in geometric frazil ice. A moment in time, when temperature and movement are captured like in a Polaroid snapshot. Frazil ice consists of ice crystals that form in turbulent and supercooled water. The ice molecules expand into an organized latticework that is less dense and lighter than liquid water, allowing it to float.

Discovering this patch of art makes me pause and wonder, which is really the point of all this. I wonder when it formed and when it will melt and I wonder if I can stay warm enough to watch it disappear back into the river as the day warms up. How thick is it? What does it feel like? Who is protected under this cap? And then I wonder if there is a message embedded in the design left by the ancestors, waiting for me to come along and share it with you.

My intuition tells me that I should share my experience so that you are inspired to go outside and step into a moment of wonder that will reset you, like this has me, from all the noise of the world that has been pulling us further away from our nature self. The self that feels at home under the open sky or next to the wild ocean or in a city park near an ancient tree. The self, once recalibrated, who can step back into the work and causes that are calling us, but now with more balance and perspective.

Let me know what you discover.

Note: “There are somewhere between 20 and 74,963 forms of ice”