the river

Running in the humidity is a loving squeeze. Pumping arms through thick air, hair sticking to your forehead. Gasps for breath. Pushing legs like you’re swimming on land. Nothing can stay stuck to you when you run in the heat. It’s a full release.

The river that raised me curls around the city’s edge, separating Minneapolis from St. Paul. The water up here is clear, looks refreshing. The current carries ducks and peaks white little mountaintops on windy, choppy days. Up here we send down all our secrets. That’s why it’s so muddy in St. Louis.

I run a path along the river. On humid days that remind me of being swaddled by St. Louis summers in waterlogged air, I take a break to visit the water. A wooded stretch with sections of concrete steps that descend down to the river’s shores invite you to sit and watch and wade your feet in if you dare. I bound down the steps that are almost a foot high. The height makes me feel kidlike traipsing down.

I sit on the stadium seating and look out to watch the reflections on the rippled water get carried by. I imagine riding the river on a makeshift raft and landing on the riverfront under the arch, coasting downhill back to that waterlogged air. Or I look out and picture the river set free, dams removed, letting the water howl an innate song. 

I imagine all the times I've sat beside this water. Water I was taught to dodge in St. Louis for its murkiness, its dirtiness. Water I’ve swam in here in Minnesota. Water I’ve laid in at its alleged headwaters, a near puddle, like a long awaited baptism. Water that created the clay that made the industry that brought my ancestors here. We may never step in the same river twice, but they hold all our histories.

After a while, I leave the river to bound back up the stairs and return to my run. When I’m on these longer distances, I create a loop instead of a there and back. It forces me to finish, to get so far away from home, I have no choice but to run back. Take yourself away from the things most familiar to you and you become the only one who can get you back to yourself. 

When I’m done, the heat has dried up my anger, my angst, my anxiety, my heartache. I finish the run sweaty and wrung out and everything has spilled forward. Everything in that moment has found its way to dissolution. I imagine it evaporating, plucked up by the clouds, carried and held, and dropped back down into the river.