Duwamish River visit

                Stephanie and I drove down 1^st and parked near Spokane and took our bikes over the currently restricted lower West Seattle bridge and commenced on the Duwamish River trail. It’s been years since I’ve done it, and remembered thinking then that, for a trail by a river, it was a wasteland of a ride all the way to South Park. But now I’ve learned enough since then to appreciate the magnitude of the industry here, and the winding majesty it replaced.

               What is that five mile industrial channel between recycling pits and container yards? It’s what remains of the Duwamish River. The River that Made Seattle suggests that had Se’alth rebelled with others in the Indian Wars that followed the scornful 1855 treaties with Isaac Stevenson, he might have won claim to lands for the Duwamish people, as did others like the Nisqually under Leschi, whose meager reservations set aside by government were expanded to better lands and waters. But Se'alth did not follow Leschi into battle and sided instead with white trading partners; and now the Duwamish remain refugees on their own ancestral lands, a solitary longhouse on the side of East Marginal Way.

               Stephanie and I spent most of our time in the park across the street from the longhouse—Herring’s House Park, on the grounds of the former village of basketry hat from 500 A.D. The lone, remaining curve of the Duwamish River is there, bending the park, with Kellogg Island, the dredged piece of land between the curve and the machine straight channel, on the other side. Since 1970, people have worked to restore habitat, and a sign there made me realize the grass and marsh trees aren’t reserved principally for people; it serves osprey and beaver and salmon even more urgently. Nature has been so effectively thieved and repurposed that parks I thought were recreational are desperate habitat instead.

               To get to the park, Herring House Park in one name, T-107 in another, one must circumnavigate trains, tractor trailer yards, alleys of fenced-off homes, buckled sidewalks, and then cross a roaring five-lane arterial. This is the first two tenths of a mile of the Duwamish River trail. Here is the park. Across the street, the longhouse. And the remaining bend of the river, here. Everything else is steel and slurry, concrete silos and razor wire. To imagine this place ever habitable to people up and down the tide flats or to envision these waters navigated by cedar canoes among barges acres long is just too much for the mind. Of the ancestral paths and trading posts, even in this hard-won oasis of cormorants and clam shells, only industrial pathways remain.

               In the park, there are plaques that unwind a story: A salmon wants to swim up the river, but an older, wiser salmon warns that the river is bad. There is an otter, and it will eat you. There is a bear, and it will grab you. There is a man with a spear, and he will spear you. The river is bad! But the salmon wants to swim. The fish jumps over the otter, under the bear, and through the man with a spear. The river is good! So many obstacles the salmon must overcome. But what if the river itself is yanked straight and dredged deep and barrels of chemicals invisibly leech through sediment and there are fish with bellies of iron the very size of rivers themselves?

Asking my class, What is it like to be you?

                In my Hands for a Bridge class, we’ve discussed the traumas and perpetuations of racism and colonialism; we’ve read and investigated poetry, autobiographies, stories, and essays, and we’ve thought about disruptions in our own local and national communities. Today, I interrupted conversation on Anu Taranath’s book, Beyond Guilt Trips, within which we’ve been thinking about the kinds of discomfort we face as we travel, and how we need to be open about these with fellow travelers, mindful and curious about what such discomfort is asking. Anu’s book is a lot about how to have difficult conversations about and across difference.

               The interruption today was therefore deliberate and personal. We wrote and then one by one we shared: What's it like to be you?

We carry different burdens and hurt out into the public: So what do you carry, in public or in conversation? What is it like to be you?

                The sharing was full of heart and pain. Students told of anxieties, relationship to bodies, spirals of thoughts, masks they wear, bullying, pressures to succeed, illness endured, protective walls they’ve built, all the while throwing supportive comments to each other, silently, in the chat.

               It was such ponderous and lonely weight they were sharing, so much private toil and sorrow.

               In response, there was a distinctive slowness, an alert quiet. Everyone nodded and held still, radiating presence and care.

               I’ve never done this in a class. Only a few times in my career I might have tried. In a physical class, we would have tossed desks aside and sat in a close circle on the floor, just to see reflections in each others’ shining wet eyes. Today, we were squares on a screen, throwing compassion to tiny faces in random spots on a computer, and still it moved.

               Afterwards, we wrote of our pride and gratitude to each other, and the testimonials still scroll there, like footprints in a sidewalk that show we’ve walked together.

               We were raw and open and loving to the end.