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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The mighty Chicago River was angry yesterday afternoon - a chained bear enduring the poking and prodding of townspeople but nurturing its rage and dreaming of the concrete fetters along its banks slipping away and providing it with an opportunity to lay about itself with a bloody and terrifying wrath. Gatorade bottles and turds tumbled by in the torrent, caught up in the river’s primal lust to spill its contents into the Great Lake Michigan, unaware that the last few hundred yards of its course has been touched by the filthy hands of mankind to flow backwards in an unholy abomination of civil engineering.

I slid my fragile little craft into the icy torrent down the spring-thaw-muddied banks just a little upstream from that waterfall where the river meets that channel dug from Skokie. My destination: more upstream. Where the river got tight around brush snags and rubble and the current increased, I often wasn’t able to climb the rapids on my first try, I’d be just about to crest a wave over an old shopping cart or broken WPA paver or something and the river would overcome me and wash me back downstream.

But I was able to make slow progress. At least until I reached a fast, shallow section of rapids just under a bridge at the Northpark Campus. A few of Northpark’s fresh-faced students were standing there on the bridge when I paddled into sight. The chunks of concrete in the river below their bridge made up a sort of dam, and there was only one little chute I could fit the kayak through. But through this chute is where the river poured all its fury. What’s worse, the approach was littered with more concrete chunks, making it difficult to get a good bite at the water with my paddle. I made an exploratory attempt at the chute but was quickly washed back down the river. By now there were half a dozen students gathered at the bridge, talking among themselves and pointing. I took what I thought was the best angle to the chute, and almost made it, but the concrete chunks kept interrupting my paddle stroke. I was rejected and washed down the river again, this time sideways, my head hanging in shame. Frustrated, I tried again, this time using a straight-on berserker approach right at the chute in a tornado of splashing water. I didn’t even make it into the chute.

So, in shame, I had to paddle over to the side of the river and portage. I put in just on the other side of the bridge. The tender young Northparkers stuck their heads out over the bridge railing just above me. “Hey Mister!” one asked, “is that a homemade paddle?”

“Aye, Laddie, it is!” I responded and flourished the crude thing for crowd. “That it is!”

Then I put one foot in the kayak. It drifted out into the river a little and the current caught it, making me do the splits. The kayak drifted into the dangerous part of the river until I was really splayed out. I had no choice, so I lifted my landward foot off its rock, brought it toward me, and plopped in down into the river – knee deep in the chilly water - to steady the kayak. There were like a dozen Northpark students on the bridge by now, watching me closely, and when I put my foot in the water they uttered this collective sigh of disappointment that was so empathetic but at the same time so well-wishing and encouraging that although I was embarrassed I couldn’t help but be heartened a little by it. “Don’t worry,” the kid who asked me about the paddle said, “I bet the river will get easier the farther you get upstream.”

So I paddled onward, until finally I reached a park where a huge tree had fallen all the way across the river. Not eager to portage again, I grabbed hold of a branch and rested by the banks. A very elderly woman wrapped up in a headscarf hobbled up to me on the bank with half a loaf of old stale bread. She tore off little bits and threw them into the water around me. “Eat!” She commanded, “Eat!” At that, I loosed my grip on the branch and let the river do with me what it would.