A PERSONAL THANKSGIVING REFLECTION: Gratitude for a healing place
Within a Pennsylvania mountain stream in October
This personal reflection conveys what I learned from this year’s Thanksgiving, to continue to give thanks for what heals in bumpy, unpredictable times—like Now.
There are many precious shared ways. I’m especially grateful, though, for my private way: I heal alone in nature’s running fresh water.
Streams became my place, whatever the season, when I was a child seeking Something, scrambling down the wooded slopes of my grandparents’ hilltop home in West Virginia to a small creek. I wasn’t allowed near fresh water at home in Latin America because of lethal parasites. In that new Appalachian spot, however, I sat spellbound. I absorbed the creek’s intimacy, vitality, and smells so unlike the seacoast that I also loved.
Though I became a committed urbanite, I rediscovered streams through fly-fishing. More than sites for sport, environmental engagement, and nature’s vaunted peaceful retreat, such waters became my existential touchstone.
What I reached for and found resembles what later resonated in the writings of Western mystics, notably those of nature, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, John Muir, and Mary Oliver (see my Reflections for 4/09/21; 4/23/21; and 10/29/21).
Being beside or within a stream proved a special universe in which I shed all guises for Just Me. As Just Me, I found complex connection. Body and spirit fused with it all; the feel of the pulsing current, the streambed, sounds, breeze, light/shadow, and lives within and around the water. There were risky engagements that, as an urbanite, I learned to face: rattlesnakes, bull elk, and bears.
I deeply respect streams and rivers, entities that carry rich life from within the earth, interacting with trees, atmosphere, and us. This was the universe in microcosm, giving rather than demanding. Such dynamic, interconnected physical presence suggested a larger embracing presence that’s received many names; I invoke them all appreciatively.
Even more than analyzing what I observe, I marvel at what’s there, at what I feel there, as shared presence. It forges a steadying gladness that supports in trouble and peace, and that sustains long afterwards. I am ever grateful.
—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator
