Beyond my Knowing

Vicki Crawford

The West Fork River goes beyond my knowing. I do not know where it ends or where it begins, or how many places are touched by its muddy cold fingers, only that its presence was a constant of my childhood. I saw it winding through the town where I grew up, always muddy, always rising and falling with the rains and springtime melting snows. It is not a wide river upon which barges travel. It is a small boat river. A fishing river.

When I was younger, I almost drowned in a swimming pool. I was floating on my back in the pool. Suddenly, water filled my eyes, ears, and mouth, and I panicked. I scrambled for the surface, for the air, over and over. I have vague memories of the muffled noises, the loss of air, and the choking. I flipped back into a floating position and forced myself to float on my back to the edge of the pool wall. I felt the roughness of the solid surface as I reached my hands for the wall and remembered clinging to the roughness of that wall, not minding if it cut my hands. The instructor was flirting with a girl on the other side of the pool and did not see me drowning. It happened so fast, in moments. I remember the sickening smell of chlorine and the echoing sounds inside the room where the pool was located. I could not swim then. I cannot swim now. Still, a pool is not a river. Pools have a visible beginning. A clear ending. Four feet. Then six. Pools are civilized. Rivers are not.

We didn’t live along the river then, but I remember a sudden storm causing the water to pour in waterfalls down the hillside behind our home, first flooding our garage and then our house. The teenager next door rushed over to help us, shoveling and scooping water away from the door as quickly as he could. I remember the metal of the shovel hitting hard surfaces sounding in an echoing ping. He stood ankle-deep in water during a lightning storm holding the metal shovel. I remember worrying for his safety but then feeling relief when in defeat, he tossed the shovel angrily onto the ground. We all gave up as the water overtook our home. The next day, a foot of water blanketed our downstairs, ruining everything it touched. We had to stay with relatives until our home was livable.

There were also the West Virginia floods of 1985 and random flooding of occasional creeks. Once, in a tiny country restaurant in West Virginia, the flooding creek nearby caused water to soak the floor beneath our feet while my family and I dined. On our way back home that day, we watched rocks cascade down the embankments along the back roads as water poured over hillsides. As it began to fill the roadway, we exceeded speed limits to race against the water’s approach. At times we drove alongside the water as it overcame the road in that race to not be swept away, barely making it.

We need water to survive, so I always thought our town needed the West Fork River. Needing and wanting are two different things. I remember, once, visiting a childhood friend who lived in a house across from the river. It was a large house that had an equally large porch for staring at the water or stars at night. We sat on the porch on summer nights when the heat was stifling, and we watched lightning bugs along the river and swarms of dancing insects above the water. We watched people swimming or fishing in the waters, while listening to music on an old boombox on the porch.

Once, during a sleepover weekend at her house, it rained. Torrential. Unrelenting. The river was crossing the road towards her front porch. I couldn’t return home. The dark green looming dangers approached, giving us no way out. We could have climbed the hillside behind her house, but the river would eventually reach us. When I saw the river on her porch, at first it fascinated me. Then it terrified me.

I was not home; I was not with my family. Did they know the river was about to take me away? Did they wonder if I would make it to the end of the river before the muddy green sludge of floods—before the watery West Fork River’s fingers would pull me towards another place? Would I float easily down the river to its end? Was there such a thing as an end or a beginning under its waters? Would my mouth fill with mud, water, rocks, sticks, and debris? Or would I choke on the floating Styrofoam bits and metal tabs from beer cans or small escaping fish? Would I become part of the West Fork River? Panic.

I would finally know where it ends. I would never travel past the end or know the beginning. I would be stuck in some strange bubble of beginnings, endings, and sorrows, a water spirit haunting my town. Strange thoughts rushed through my mind as the waters approached.

Before the rising river made the road disappear entirely, the National Guard arrived to rescue us from the river house. I remember riding in a large truck through town to a central location, but I remember little after that. I don’t remember how I got home, only the river, the large truck that rescued us, and how my friend’s sister sat on the front porch watching the river rise, painting her toenails while listening to a battery-powered radio. I realized their river house must have flooded in the past, that they’d been through floods before. She was unafraid. She acted like the flood was nothing more than an inconvenience as we were being rescued. Yet people die in floods all the time. She didn’t fear water as I did.  

Many times, the West Virginia waters reminded me that we share our lives with the elements. We hope that tornadoes and earthquakes and floods won’t touch us, but Mother Nature travels where she will. It is our job to try and rebuild our lives when she chooses to remind us, she exists. As I form words about water, I can hear the icy rain of January falling gently on my roof. I am afraid of large bodies of water, yet I love the rain. The beautiful sound it makes on the roof. The delicate way it lands on tree leaves, and how it sounds against an umbrella. The way the raindrops feel on my face, and the artistry of droplets as they fall slowly down glass windowpanes. But when it will not stop, when it fills rivers, lakes, and oceans, that love evolves into fear. Earth is the only planet with abundant water—one reason we can survive.

These days, I hesitate to travel on boats in the ocean where there is nothing but endless water. I’m fine on river cruises and enjoy a weekend picnic aboard pontoon boats traveling along slow-moving rivers where land is visible. I enjoy the gentle sway of the boat but never lean too far over the edge. I respect the water. I know water has the power to wash me away in a second, but I also know it saves me.

When I visit my hometown, I still drive along the muddy West Fork River. I cannot avoid it; my family’s home is beyond the river. I see the same muddy waters. The same sunken tree branches reach out, longing for rescue. Partially buried beneath the water yet reaching for the land. Needing land, but also needing water. Like me. Like all of us.