The endless river

Time is a flat circle

DEAR EXPOSEUR—I do not regret to inform you that for a time, I fell off the face of the Earth. This was an entirely considered and deliberate move, given the general state of things, and having now returned to terra firma I do regret that my absence was not a longer one. Such is life.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my son and I took a weekend trip to Romney, WV to ride the Potomac Eagle scenic railroad, which I wrote about in some detail. This weekend, we repeated that trip, this time with my father.

We rode at sunset, the golden light slanting through the trees as the train wound toward The Trough. This time we saw seventeen eagles swooping and diving along the wending river, their white heads catching the last rays of daylight like semaphores against the darkling sky.

Jean has worked for the Potomac Eagle for thirty years. She recites facts about homesteads and history with the diligent monotony of long practice, then suddenly her voice cracks with genuine excitement as she spots movement along the water.

“There! Right there by that sycamore!” she calls out in her mountain drawl, as if anyone could tell a sycamore from an oak from that distance. “Two of 'em!”

Upon entering The Trough, my father perked up.

“I've been here before,” he said excitedly. “Nearly fifty years ago. With my father and my brothers.” He told me about a three-day boating trip they'd taken down this very river, how they'd paddled through The Trough and ended up in Romney. He grew up near Beckley, but hadn't been back to this stretch of water in decades.

We spent the next two days swimming in the South Branch of the Potomac. Felix perched on a large flat rock for three hours, collecting shells from little pools and watching catfish appear and disappear in the green water that tasted sweet and smelled faintly floral.

My father told stories while we floated on our backs, looking up at the sky through the canopy. Stories of his own father and the mountains where he grew up.

On the way home, we avoided the interstates entirely, choosing mountain ridge roads from Springfield back to Maryland. At Green Spring, we came to the Oldtown Toll Bridge, a narrow 200-foot span built in 1938 by act of Congress. One of the few remaining privately owned bridges in the United States, 10 feet wide and flanked by a weathered toll-house. We drove across it and could feel it shift and rattle under the car. On the other side, we reached the toll booth.

An elderly woman sat inside, her shock of white hair catching the afternoon light, wearing a neon Lisa Frank white-tiger t-shirt. Church sermons played from her phone, the preacher's voice mixing with the sound of water beneath the bridge. She didn't say a word when we pulled up, only extended a tin cup on a stick through the window.

I put in a ten. She drew the cup back, counted out change with deliberate precision, then dumped it into my palm. Still no words. I asked if I could take her photo. She looked at me for the first time, her expression unreadable, and grimly slid the toll window shut.

We left the narrow bridge and proceeded up the mountain road, the Potomac shrinking in the rearview mirror as we climbed the hills, into hollers thick with tall grass, ticks, and roadside religious signs. Three generations now, swimming in the same river. —mw