I
Oxbow
Oxbow
I coasted home along the Willamette's banks, following the path for only a mile or so as I did most days, the lecture still turning over somewhere in the back of my mind. As the path curved close to the water’s edge, I came to a stop, laying my bike onto a carpet of dewy grass, before pushing through the taller reeds to the water's edge. I emerged onto a small shelf of black-grey stones, undoubtedly rounded into ellipsoid spheres by years of erosion. Reaching out, they dipped lower and lower before completely surrendering to the cold autumn water.- In the quiet, which so often wraps around these obscured places, the animated frames of the Oxbow returned to my vision. Likely captured by a satellite floating high above the stones that lay below my feet, I wondered where I stood. Downstream, the river wrapped hard to the left, disappearing behind the trees which towered high above its banks. Upstream, a more gentle curve readied the water for its impending turn. Despite the new details which filled my senses—the cool breeze flowing across my face, the ducks that quacked carelessly by, and the stones which prodded at my feet through the rubbery soles of my well-worn Vans—I lacked the higher angle afforded by the satellite, and the institutional knowledge that tracked the river’s movement over time. Did the downstream curve continue? Sharper and sharper, awaiting the final debridement of sediment that would open a new path of movement? Did a small still water lake exist there just beyond my view, the result of a previous reshaping? I stayed there for a while longer, rolling a particularly round stone in my hands, before returning it to the depths of the dark grey river—making it back to my dorm’s cafeteria just in time to join the already-forming line for “Fried Fridays.”