The Last Word On Nothing

The little creek that runs along the railroad tracks through Bellefonte, Pennsylvania is beautiful at this time of year, shallow water running clear and dark, banks and bare branches covered in snow. The creek is a tributary of Bald Eagle Creek, itself a tributary of the West Branch Susquehanna. It’s the place my husband first learned to paddle a kayak — something he started doing to impress girls, he says, but which eventually turned into a passion and, for a not-insignificant period of his life, an all-consuming purpose. 

That’s the first waterfall I ever rode down, Pete tells me, pointing to a low-head dam in the middle of Bellefonte’s quaint downtown. We’re in a rented minivan, heat blasting, our son fast asleep in his carseat. Low-head dams are sometimes called drowning machines, due to the dangerous recirculating currents they form, and this one looks particularly nasty, with jagged branches and other debris sticking out of the foam. 

Am I impressed by Pete’s teenage antics? Not particularly.

But I do love hearing about the summers he spent working for Wizzard’s Janitorial, his family business. The night jobs lasted until dawn, at which point he’d load up his boat, go kayaking for a few hours, then get right back in the truck to go do another cleaning job. On bingo nights he worked at the Lion’s Club; later, he got a job at the Penn State cafeteria. Any time he wasn’t working, (or in school???) it seems, he was on the water.

Cleaning, then kayaking. Kayaking, then cleaning. I love that Pete was so drawn to the river as a boy and young man, I tell him as we drive along the creek. Not really, he corrects me —  in addition to impressing girls, he joined the local kayaking club to keep up with his best friend. Pete is not a strong swimmer — is, in fact, still terrified of water — so it was fear, not love, that drove his rapid progression. The better you are at kayaking, the less likely you are to drown. But it worked. By seventeen or so, Pete was really good at kayaking — good enough to have a (long) shot at qualifying for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. 

We park the minivan next to a slouching corrugated-tin boathouse with a pile of slalom kayaks in the back, half-buried in snow. They look sleek and sharp, ready to slice and dance. This is where Pete’s coach — a guy with a van who charged basically nothing to teach local kids how to boat — ran his little kayaking club. How delighted he must have been to see his protégé become an artist — because that’s what Pete looks like in photos: Someone whose every line, from spine to forearm, was formed in relationship with moving water. 

But instead of going to Greece at 17, Pete joined the military. Just this evening, Pete’s father told me what it felt like when the Marines showed up at the front door to take his son away to bootcamp. A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined it. Now, with Will on my lap, I can.

In a post 9/11 blaze of (what he now describes as self-righteous, adolescent) certainty, Pete shipped off to Iraq. Years later, after leaving the military, his childhood pastime grew into something closer to obsession. He moved to my hometown, in California, to be closer to the steep rivers that plunge off Sierra Nevada granite. He committed to an almost ascetic life of river-chasing, living out of a battered old truck with shoddy brakes, and had only just upgraded to a more functional red Tacoma when I met him — and dismissed him as just another dirtbag kayaker. Pete was cute, but too one-dimensional (cute) to hold my interest, I thought. As someone with an established weakness for complexity (in both life and men), I feared that Pete lacked layers.

Now, nearly ten years later, we are driving through the gently rolling hills of Pennsylvania — the first time I have traveled with Pete to his home town a few miles from Bellefonte. It is stunningly beautiful, even if the snow does looks like it’s been scraped over stubble. The sunset — reflected on cloud, reflected on snow-dusted cornfields — makes me catch my breath. Just like it does in my own tiny hometown, though, I can also sense how this expanse of empty space could make you claustrobic with loneliness.

Here, rivers are more than waterways — they are companions. Visiting the little creeks that shaped Pete’s adolescence is like meeting his parents; it helps me understand where he came from, and something about who he is now — someone for whom rivers supplied not just fun or adventure, but an essential connection.

Pete has almost stopped kayaking since Will was born 18 months ago, a change so drastic that those who know him have started whispering about interventions. I haven’t spent much time on the river either, but it feels like a less dramatic change for me — perhaps because I was never as serious about boating as Pete has always been, or because I have a greater variety of hobbies and interests.

One day, when I have Will to myself in Bellefonte, I take him on a little 30-minute train ride that follows the creek. We pass the kayak shack and the slalom course, and Will presses his nose and hands against the glass. “That’s where your dad learned to kayak!,” I tell him, pointing out the boats and ducks and little rapids. 

As we chug along, I realize that unlike some of Pete’s friends, I am not particularly worried about his recent retreat from rivers. Maybe that’s because I have come to appreciate his knack for being fully immersed in whatever he’s doing at any given moment, something I initially mistook as a certain lack of depth.

Right now Pete is doing two big things: Teaching high school and being Will’s dad. I could worry more about that, I suppose… but no — I honestly can’t. Come to think of it, my chock-full life with Pete and Will has somewhat curbed my old appetite for complexity, or at least my tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be. It is enough — at least for now — to be fully immersed, together.