Finished with classes for the week, books bundled and flung over shoulder. My college ‘tis from thee, quiet halls of liberality, from thee I spring with a step from the air-conditioned fluorescence through doorway draft and into the heat of the midday flush across my face, ember of late summer sun kiss, flung into Friday’s freedom. Amble on path and gambol on grass, games and daisy chains and laughs, ahead of me a blueyellow dress swayed sinuous with her step, synchronized with the bounce of her hair, noon burn gold when summer was her crown. A Frisbee afloat, a discus adrift, a circle spinning to the corners of the quad, caught by one Vitruvian and thrown to another, I could join if any of them were familiar. Paved path to my dorm, swipe of my ID card, into the lounge and through the hall to my open doorm. Paul repurposing his backpack for the weekend by replacing books with water bottle, flask, and hacky sack, looking up with a smile, “Hey man, are you finished for today?”

“Yep, officially weekend.”

“Nice, let me congratulate you with good news, I think I found a connect.”

“Oh yeah? Haven’t bought any since I got here. Good timing, my stash is almost gone.”

“Yeah, I made friends with this senior named Max who lives at that house a couple blocks south of campus on Main street, you know the one with the nice garden?” Shake.

“Well it’s a short walk, wanna go see if he’s home?”

“Sure, how’d you meet him?”

“Ultimate Frisbee club, he’s pretty good and was wearing tie-dye so I thought I’d ask.”

Three-block walk from campus to a ramshackle porch with a motley assortment of old chairs, cushioned recliner next to wicker, an unfinished wooden coffee table with empty mason jars, lumpy clay mug and an abandoned chess position. On a warm breeze the little bells of their wind chimes tinkled, entwined with larger bells at bass notes, chance melody, resounding tintinnabulation. White house with green accent, ivy sprawling up the side, fuchsia spilling from pots hung from the porch roof, and above the porch a repurposed wood door hung sideways, painted green and emblazoned with white lettering, “EcoHouse.” Next to it, a green garden speckled with ripe red tomatoes and peppers and spotted with smiling pansies, rabbit runs into the brush on our approach. The screen door sprung open by a gangly granola, bearded ponytail, tank top and flip flops, acid washed, “What’s up guys? Lookin’ for someone?”
“Yea, we’re looking for Max, is he home? He told us to stop by.”

“Aw man, he just went down to the river with some friends, I woulda gone but I’m late for a PAX meeting.”

“Do you know where he went on the river?”

“Yeah dude, down to the rope swing.”

“Where is that?”

“Just walk down to the river, take a right, and eventually you’ll find ‘em.”

“How do we get to the river?”

“So like, head west until you can’t anymore, and then walk up to 18^th street and there’s a path through some bushes and across the train tracks, right? and then find the dirt path down the hill to the river, and then turn right and just keep going ‘til you see the swing, got it? I’d show you, but I’m late. I’ll catch you guys later, Max’ll be back here eventually. Feel free to kick it in the EcoHouse ‘til he’s back, door’s always open.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck, I’ll catch you guys later,” he said as he sauntered up the hill towards campus.

“Wanna try to find the rope swing?” asked Paul.

“Through the bushes and across the train tracks? Sounds tricky.”

“If we get lost we’ll just turn back.”

A ruby-throated sparrow sprightly hopping through the dooryard caught the attention of a white cat, who, stalking slowly, crept into our path. Paul shouted “Hey!” and the sparrow took flight. The cat turned, glared at Paul and didn’t move, so we walked around it. As we made our way west, downhill towards the river we gradually exited the campus bubble of buildings maintained by college facilities. Gradually the houses got shabbier, old paint peeling off in feathery flakes, yards divided by fences of gaping and broken pickets that enclosed decades of accumulation: garages with picker trinkets and tools, immobile steel rims, rusted Schwinns and big wheels, cord-wood, moldy planks, and a child’s plastic basketball hoop with tattered net. Seniors passing porch time, grandmother rocking in her chair, she nodded in our direction, “How’r yins doin? Pretty day,” and took a sip of cold milk in a clear beaded glass.

“Never better! Yeah, it’s beautiful out isn’t it?” Paul replied with neighborly enthusiasm.

“Injun summer.”

Chairs n’ cars, rock n’ roll, oldies crooned in soft metallic twang from the transistor radio: Does your memory stray to a bright summer day when I kissed you and called you sweetheart?

Who would we meet at the river? Hidden behind a rainbow’s wall, through the misting waterfall: Pan and his dryads glistening, tresses dripping, drying on the bank, in the sunlight laughing, not a lost shimmer, wreathed in leaves of green dock and ivy, sitting in a circle with clouds of incense ascending. Rope of hemp with fat knots hanging over the water, pick up a fallen branch to gather it, find footing on the muddy sycamore roots, give it a pull to feel it support your weight, nerve, deep breath, and jump—swing from under the canopy, hold tight, zoom upward into the sky, at the end of momentum let go, and into the river we’d dive.

“Are you going to jump in at the rope swing?” I asked.

“Maybe, I guess we shoulda brought towels. Once we know where it is we can go back though.”

“The river’s gonna be too cold to jump in soon, might be already.”

“It’ll be here in the spring. I just wanna find this path to the river, and maybe Max is down there and can hook us up. The only way to the river that I know is at the park downtown, but that’s way out of our way.”

We walked under an apple tree behind a frontyard fence, a few had fallen on the ground, turning soft and brown on the pavement. Paul jumped and plucked a low hanger green and red, then took a bite, “Yum, honeycrisp I think. Try it.”

He tossed it to me, sweet juicy crunch, munch and swallow. One more.

“It’s delicious,” I said while chewing, and gave the rest back to him.

“Right? There were a lot of apples left in that tree, needs to be harvested.”

We turned right and began walking north along a grassy lot that buffered the town from industrial buildings and the train tracks, we passed an abandoned industrial hangar that was beginning to be reclaimed by nature. Paul finished his apple and pitched the core into the coarse grickle-grass, “Hopefully that’ll grow another tree.”

“RAWP! RAWF!” from a frontyard, lean and mean, strained chain holding her back, wish I had a bone to throw. While paying attention to the dog, Paul kicked a green glass marble that skittered ahead, stopping where concrete curbed to grass. He walked over to it and picked it up, “Wonder where this came from?” He showed it to me, “Huh, I dunno, not a kid’s toy, with all these marks and grooves, and it looks kinda flat on one side.”

“Full of flaws, but a keeper nonetheless.” He pocketed it and we continued, turning west on 18^th street, which ended in bramble with three stately trees rising, protected by boulders that formed a road block for truck entrance to Steel Receiving at Johnstown Company Machine Products, “PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESSPASSING, LOITERING, LITTERING.” Abandon all rights, ye who enter.

“You really think this is the way? I don’t see where to go.”

Yellow gold leaves at the end of a long bough, extra sun exposure drying them and changing their color before the others. Paul walked over and plucked one easily.

“Look, here’s a path, think it’s the one he was talking about?” Hidden tunnel of matted leaves, a duck through the underbrush between the three trees.

“That sign says no trespassing,”

“Well that’s for that factory, but yeah, you’re also not technically allowed to walk over the train tracks, but people do it all the time.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“Who? No one’s here.”

Short trail with cattails and ferns on either side, we emerged behind a pile of discarded wooden crossties. We scanned for authority—all clear—and jogged across the rows of cast steel propped up on a bed of grey rocks that were darkened to a burnt umber between the tracks, east to Philadelphia and west to Pittsburgh. I found a flat, disc-shaped stone with good weight and put it in my pocket. On the other side of the tracks we walked along the tree line, river glinting below, gnats swirling like dust bunnies in the light between the branches. “Here we go,” Paul found a steep path and went first, crab-style, loose dirt giving way, slipping stress on the knees, twisted root of an oak for foothold, limbs grasping as branches bowed and rustled overhead, relief as we were shaded into the river’s cooling draft, welcomed on to level ground. Breezy glow on the underside of the leaves above us, river reflected. We walked until dirt turned to mud where startled frog or toad hopped into the water, and gazed out at the slow southward flow ever moving and winding through the shaggy hill, no white water but a peculiar sort of faint dimple on the surface, then sparkling at equal intervals scattered and glinting away beyond a swooping curve.

“Look out there, see how the river’s rippling and sparkling like that? What’s doing that?”

When there is no pebble tossed.

“I think those are Jesus bugs, walking on the surface tension of the water and catching the sunlight.”

Dad would point them out to us on family canoe trips down the river near grandma’s house.

“My dad calls those water skeeters.”

“Oh yeah? Someone told me they make the water flash light to attract mates, skeet skeet.”

Time to cast away, I took the stone from my pocket and skipped it, Wah, wah wuwahwah wuwah wuwah wuwah wuwah wahhhh… tumbling rings, many-tinted as an opal, obscured the reflection of the farside. Slightly defocusing my eyes turned the river into impression as I traced my field of vision inwards: dark shades of green mixing in liquid foliage, wavering into solid blue sky sparkling, gleaming into bright white, lightwashed, sunbleached, fades into murky browns beneath the water, solidified into the alluvium on which we stood. Pink socks on my feet because I forgot to separate lights and colors, at least I didn’t take my laundry home. Difficult lesson learning to take care of yourself, sever the tether umbilical, gaze in your navel like a mystic monk, seek peace and follow it, look up and refocus. I turned towards Paul, who was twenty paces ahead.

“Pretty spot, look at those guys,”

Ruffles from a family of clean wild ducks that swam away from us to the farside.

“Yeah man, after graduation me and my friends all floated down our river on tubes and rafts, and we took turns paddling the keg canoe over to whoever needed refills. So much fun, I bet we could organize one here next summer.” said Paul.

“Too bad students go home in the summer,” I replied.

“Bet we could get summer jobs.”

“I guess someone’s gotta clean the dorms.”

“Or be a farmhand or do some landscaping.”

“Oh yeah, that smells better to me.”

A cool breeze turned into warm draft that carried the surrounding aroma; wet leaves beneath our feet, snippid. Bbbrooooak! Bullfrog calling me.

“That guy said turn right at the river, right? Can’t see beyond that curve from here, but you wanna walk down and try to find them?”

“Yeah, let’s walk.”

A clearly trodden trail led to a place where the banks widened out at each side, in a small clearing we found a circle of stones that had been used as a fire pit, black ash and cigarette ends inside, flattened beer cans, empty bottles of whiskey and rye, testimony of summer nights.

 “Aw that’s fucked up, leaving their shit out here. Wish I had a garbage bag. We should recruit the Ecohouse and help clean the riverfront.”

“Yeah man, Iron Eyes Cody would shed a tear.”

As we continued down the trail overgrowth of shrubs and tangling bushes began to narrow our path, understory supporting the canopy cover. We navigated through thorns, stepping on them with sneakers, and over holes and hollow logs, somebody’s home, beware the subtle serpent, Orpheus can’t save you, creaking note of some unknown bird: kah gah gee! from above, lazy tap of a woodpecker attune the trembling leaves, jostled a few free, I grasped at one, but it flitted away and fell faintly to the earth. Gravity. Rope from a tree limb is not always fun. 

“My American History professor told us that there were battles in the French and Indian War along this river, so keep your eyes peeled for arrowheads,” I said.

Sagging branches of silver maples letting the water flow through their fingers, willows weeping in perpetual lamentation.

“Imagine running through here with your bow and arrow, trying to set up an ambush on some fur traders and jack their loot,” said Paul.

Clothed in feathered cincture with quiver on hip, swift as an antelope through the forest, startled by a stinging swipe along my calves as I brushed through some ferns, “Ow, what the heck are those?”

“Yeah, those are stinging nettles. They kinda hurt, but it’ll go away soon. Not as bad poison ivy, that’s what you should look out for, shiny three leaves. Oh, and look at that rock, something ate a crayfish there.”

Discarded limbs and shell, didn’t see the ambush, gemmed with eyes of jet.

“What would be able to jump in the water to snag one and then take it out on the dry rock to eat it?”

“I’m not sure, maybe a raccoon, they’ve got those small hands.”

“And that! What the fuck is that thing?!”

“Ooh, that’s a hellgrammite. Those things are vile.”

As I stepped away the brush rustled ahead of us, a man with a fishing pole emerged limping, “Howdy.”

“Howsitgone?” replied Paul.

 “You guys know any good fishin’ spots ‘round here? I been tryna’ cast in that slow backwash, right in the dirty foam, but I can’t get a bite. I’m not sure this thing has trout in it.”

“Nahman, sorry, first time we’ve been down here, but there’s a hellgrammite right there if you’re looking for some good bait.”

“Aw, snap, at’ll getta nibble if there are any. Thanks.”

He bent over, picked up the wriggling larva by its rear to avoid the intimidating mandibles, put it into an old tobacco-tin with other bait, and sifted dirt onto them.

“Did you see anyone jumping off a rope swing?” asked Paul.

“Back there? Naw, the trail gets pretty ragged, ran into a bit of billabong and turned back ‘cause of my bum leg. Did see a beached canoe though. Thought ‘bout takin’ ‘er out but she ain’t have no paddle.”

“A canoe huh? Well, good luck, hope you catch somethin’.”

“Will if I’m patient enough. Take care now.”

The fisherman kept his course along the vale, walking out of sight rrrrrRRR a turtle pushed off from the bank in front of us as a low rumble started off in the distance and steadily grew until the train clanked heavily above our heads, mind of metal and wheels, through the trees I counted the connected cars go by—one, two, skip a few, doppler fade from earshot. We continued picking through shaded overgrowth, thorny thicket across the dwindling trail, scratched and blood drawn.

“Man this is getting rough.” right road lost, “Shouldn’t it be clearer if Max and his friends just walked through?”

“Yeah, I don’t know, maybe the guy at the EcoHouse told us wrong, I think he was blazed. Maybe he didn’t know how overgrown this trail gets by the end of summer.”

“We shoulda just asked him for some.”

“He had to go to class, and besides we wouldn’t have found this entrance to the river. The rope swing’s probably just farther down anyway.”

“Yeah, but some bud would go a long way to making that cafeteria food more digestible.”

“Well at least we found the canoe, look.”

Paul brushed aside branches of young cottonwoods and willows as we walked into the rushy mire to inspect the canoe: thatched seats, green paint chipped but no holes, seaworthy.

“Seems like someone was trying to hide it. If we knew anyone with a paddle we could take it out and bring it back. Though maybe we could paddle with our hands, what do you think?”

“In this muck? I’d rather wish the way and hope it goes.”

I looked out at the muddy bank, and then I saw him: a black back rose and sank in the foam.

“Look, there’s one!”

A single mercurial trout darting towards us in the fluidity of a transparent and flowing azure. As it got closer we could see its nacreous side scales with streaks of green and purple. With a quick swirl it lipped a fly beneath the surface.

“Woah he’s a biggie, scales like a steelhead.”

“Wonder why that fisher couldn’t get a bite.”

 Its tail whipped muck into murk cloud, dimpling the water’s surface before the fading vortex drifted down stream and out of sight.

“Wish we could follow him down the river. Max prolly knows where to get canoe paddles.”

“We could check back at Ecohouse later. What time is it?”

Listening to my stomach and a beebuzz as we walked through a gnat swarm, ready to head home.

“Eat oclock according to my stomach, wanna go back and get a meal?”

“Yeah, let’s do it. That looks like a clear trail going up.”

We walked out of the riparian mud that thucked at our soles and without rest we climbed back up the hill, he first, I second. On level ground we emerged from the treeshade into the sunlight’s warmth. No one in sight, we walked back on the rails, stepping from tie to tie in long strides, until Paul again found the hidden tunnel where we came forth, back into town.

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