Twenty-four years ago I ran rivers with friends. A memory tugs at me from that time. Perhaps one of the more seasoned river runners walked a few of us up a San Juan River canyon to look at the fossils embedded in the walls. I remember a coiled shape, dark brown and beige. I understood I was looking at time.
I believe the fossil was a nautiloid, but I’m not sure. In those days, as now, I took no photographs. I believe that taking a photograph weakens the parts of a writer’s mind that exist to record. So the nautiloid drifts in what has become a huge repository of sight, sound, taste, touch, scent and the way those sensory impressions can become a recreation of time. I am possessed by that elusive coiled shape and the river scent of the air on what might have been a June day.
I’m possessed by the nautiloid not so much because I’m a fiend for accuracy, but because I’m working on a story about a beloved woman dying of cancer. She and her best friend are part of a group that goes on a river trip on the San Juan. The two of them, Meg and Little Ray, paddle ahead of the group, beach the canoe at the mouth of a side canyon and sit on a downed cottonwood trunk. “I’m dying,” she says. “Cancer. There’s nothing they can do.” Her friend understands to only listen. He expects her to talk about being afraid. Instead, she stands and says, “Follow me.”
I think she will take him up the little canyon. They’ll stumble over rocks and flashflood debris. It will be June and so hot that their sweat dries instantly on their skin. Meg will stop just before a blind curve in the canyon wall. “Wait till I’m around the corner, then follow me,” she’ll say. Little Ray will stand under a sun he almost can’t bear, then step into her absence, look up and see…
I want him to see nautiloids embedded in the sandstone. But, I am fierce about accuracy and I am fighting this story. So, rather than following my own often repeated instructions to “Just write,” I’m googling – nautiloids, San Juan River, Monticello BLM office, Green River, Colorado River. You’d think I was industriously doing my work.
I’m not. I’m avoiding writing Little Ray walking around that blind curve and seeing what he sees. If you have trapped yourself in believing you have to know exactly what is coming next, you might write for twenty minutes about standing in a canyon or on a city street, knowing you have to go around the corner and doing anything to avoid that first step.
I’d love seeing what you write. You can mail it to me in a Word doc to bstarr67@gmail.com
Share on Your Social Media
