River Reflection: Canoe Trip

While technically the syllabus instructs us to find a nice place to sit by the Trinity river while we write our river reflections, I think there is no better time observe the river than while floating down it. On September 19^th, myself and several of my classmates were given the opportunity to take canoes and kayaks down the Trinity river to better give us a sense of what it was like for Huck and Jim to be floating down the Mississippi River. In all honesty, while I was looking forward to this class assignment as I thought it was an innovative way to break away from the typical lecture, I was not expecting anything profound.

            Between both school and work, during any given week I find myself leading the life of the typical student (AKA so busy you hardly have time to breathe). Personally, one of the largest impacts of this constant work and stress is that I find myself being overly pragmatic to the point that I develop a “tunnel vision”, wherein I cannot focus on anything but the most immediate tasks. As a result, I often find myself bouncing back and fourth between an activity, assignment, or project, and in the midst of completing everything I am blind to the world that surrounds me. In other words, every goal turns into just a means to an end, as I never slow down long enough to immerse myself in my surroundings. With that being said, it was for that exact reason that I enjoyed the canoe trip so much. As we paddled down the Trinity and everyone began to filter out into groups I found myself alone floating down the river in my kayak. With no one in near proximity I was able to, for the first time in a long time, able to just sit and observe the nature that lay around me. While rowing down the river I found myself taken back at the fact that while I drive right by the Trinity River every day, I had never given it a second thought.

I specifically remember taking a deep breath and simply being overwhelmed by the sunset as I could hear the ambient sounds of the nature that envelopes the river. Even though we couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes away from TCU, it felt as if we could have been hundreds of miles away. I found it very striking that in the midst of running back and forth between school and work that the river has, and always will be, existing in the same state. In this way I think the river greatly contrasts with the environment that surrounds it because as the world we live in continues to move exponentially faster, the river is not affected by any new changes or technology and simply keeps flowing.

While I was only on the river for a brief period of time before I was quickly taken back to the real world, the thought of the existence of a place so enveloped by nature will always serve as a reminder to me to look beyond the next task, project, or assignment.