Salt Water, Fresh Water: Have It Both Ways

As if it happens every year, the season’s turning again. The whirring fans many of us had going to help us sleep at night have quieted, and we’re beginning to reach for — gasp — light jackets. We’ve had some rain, at least, and what a gift that has been. Over in the UK, too, the skies have opened up, not deterring the thousands of mourners who will brave most anything to pay tribute to their beloved Queen Elizabeth. Having seen just how parched and brown the parks in London were in August as we rode through them on our bikes, not a sprinkler in sight, I am sighing with relief for the grass.

In fact, so great was my yearning for any watery experience throughout the summer, as a participant or spectator, that I want to dive into the topic here, swimming around in it for awhile. My focus will be on how two people in a marriage can have different predilections when it comes to waterfronts; and how these predilections can alter some over time.

For Me, It’s the Salt

Although I don’t get there much anymore, I’m inherently a sandy beach person.

Before school started, I drove down to what they call here in NH the “Seacoast” (a term that always sounds redundant to me, but in this state they’re so thrilled to have a sliver of the Atlantic that the effusiveness comes out this way) just to get the feeling of expansiveness that being by the ocean can provide. Once in a while, especially at the end of summer, being landlocked doesn’t feel right.

Growing up on the North Shore of Long Island, I went to the South Shore — Robert Moses State Beach, more commonly called Fire Island — only occasionally, but each trip left a deep imprint, like a footstep in the sand before the tide washes it away. From the first moment you see and hear the waves, get the mist on your skin, and then feel the water curling around your feet, you sense you’re in the presence of a major power. And by the time you’ve gone in and taken your first tumble, ending up with sand in your bathing suit, you know what’s in charge here, and it’s not human.

But Long Island Sound was pretty vast, too, and much closer to home. I could see a patch of blue out there when I climbed high up in a pine tree, as an eight-year-old. Recently an old friend of mine, flying from Iceland to JFK, got this photo when the pilot gave him a look over our shoreline.

See those four candy-can stacks, near the top? My family lived slightly to the left of them. It was a big deal when the Long Island Lighting Company put those eyesores in, but fortunately the white smoke they emitted was pretty mild. All summer long, we got to choose whether to swim in the Bay or the Sound, limited only by sticker access. Get in the car at 3 pm, you can be underwater by 3:10. Did we take it for granted? Well, sure; we didn’t exactly remind ourselves, toweling off, “Oh you know most Americans don’t have such easy access to salt water beaches.” Now, though, each summer, I realize it, feeling wistful.

For Him, It’s the Fresh

My husband, on the other hand, is all about lakes and rivers.

While he spent teenage years smack in the middle of Connecticut, with no prominent bodies of water in the vicinity, as a child he lived for a time in Minnesota, right near the source of the Mississippi River. Too young to spend much time on its banks then, he nonetheless went back to it in his memory years later, when he began rowing on a beautiful stretch of the Connecticut River, with New Hampshire on one side and Vermont on the other. This, to him, was really living. Ever since, no matter where our base, he’s found water to row on: ponds, lakes, rivers. Waves on a beach? Nice to gaze at once in a while, maybe, but not essential.

And, for these empty nest years, we have two kayaks to use when we get the chance.

While we were setting off down a section of the Contoocook (after nine years here, I still have trouble spelling it) River a couple of weeks ago, Rob offhandedly used a word I’d never heard before.

He said something like, “I’m glad we’re about to have a riparian experience.”

Huh? Nine times out of ten, when he utters a word that’s new to me, it has something to do with his Episcopal faith. There are plenty in that department, believe me. But he was on vacation, and we were far from any church. I pride myself on having an excellent vocabulary, but this word was a stranger to me. It sounded like it could refer to someone who had the credentials to pronounce whether a fruit was in fact ready to be eaten or not, but he was using it as an adjective.

This kind of moment — getting a fresh tidbit of something from your partner, the person you’ve been paddling around with (broadly speaking) for many years — is what helps keep marriage interesting.

On that particular afternoon on that particular river, we both saw snapping turtles cruising by, splashes of brightly colored wildflowers on the banks, and this graceful creature, who didn’t seem to notice its own reflection.

Check ’em Off

Afterwards, curious about the fact that we donate to a land preservation group here called “Five Rivers,” https://5rct.org/ and not having enough to do with school starting and all, I decided to make sure I was acquainted with the other four of these waterways. Since I now had the word “riparian” in my arsenal, I might as well make the most of it. Plus, where we used to live was known for its “Five Colleges,” so there was a certain symmetry going on.

And this was, in truth, a way easier project than climbing all the 4,000 footers.

The Merrimack is the widest and best-known of these rivers; it runs right through Concord.

The Warner River, intersecting with the Contoocook, is even quieter.

Quieter still — you’d need to drive along a certain road or walk in on a trail to find it– is the Blackwater. Recently at a very low level because of drought, an apter name would be Brownwater; Rocky (two years ago here, before his head went white) liked it just fine.

And the last one I hadn’t even noticed, even though I drove past it every day on the way to school. There’s something about rivers —unlike beaches on the coast, they can be almost surreptitious. This is called the Soucook River.

Swirl It All Around

Does having all these gentle rivers (a few might qualify as “brooks”) around console me, serve as worthy substitutes for the shorelines I knew as a child, the vistas possible there? Not completely, no. But, little by little, season by season, I’m seeing the beautiful features of this kind of habitat. And I have a feeling that, once my husband gets to be by the sea again — a plan is in the works for wintertime — he’ll want more of that, too.

I think you could do worse than imagine marriage as a kind of estuary: a place where fresh and salt water mix, swirling around together, providing a rich new ecosystem where a mix of species, some of them even strange-looking, can flourish.

What used to be, or what is now your go-to place to be on, or in, the water? How much do you depend upon it? Have you sensed any change, either with the place itself or within yourself?