You might have thought I'd lost the fight out of me. You'd might have thought that because my voice is a little softer lately and my words have been a little more tempered that I don't have the old raw steel in me anymore. You've probably been expecting me to turn my pen to a scathing manifesto condemning some ill-imagined adversary. That might have been justified, after you made your decision a question of grand philosophy instead of something more concrete. That's my world after all, and you opened it up for me to have many words on why your position is not only wrong, but positively evil. That is, if you really want this to be a question of metaphysics. But that would do neither of us any good. Assuming and of course begging the question that what we are both after is in fact the good, which is a question I am justified, if not obligated, in asking.
But I have produced no such fiery and visceral retaliation, which is unlike me, so maybe you thought I just laid down. Perhaps you thought I was just okay with everything. I wouldn't want to give you that impression. I have not laid down at all these last days but for a very little sleep, when my body demanded it. Some passions go up like a dry hay barn when a negligent farmer tosses out his cigarette, but others smolder, keenly tended, like the hickory wood beneath a long, sweet barbeque.
I have thought about the rivers I have paddled. I have considered the words of the Tzus, both Sun and Lao, and what they might say if they had seen my country. The strongest seems the Colorado or the Arkansas, with their wild rapids, roaring falls, and rugged canyons. They have an unbridled rage that carves through the sandstone with the careless motion of the reaper's scythe. They roar through the canyons, wild and free with no regard for jagged earthworks in their way, as their boisterous voices echo through the badlands like barbarian battle cries. And they are impressive creatures. But these are rivers still in their youth, with their pot-marked faces and the anxious urgency of an awkward adolescence in their stride.
Just because a river speaks a little softer or a little slower, don't think it's lost any of that wild spirit or that power. The Nantahala, ever patient, carved itself a gorge so deep and narrow that it only sees the sunlight for a few minutes around noon. I've been in that water, and believe me, it's cold down there. It's even colder when it pulls you under and knocks you so hard you don't know which way is up. It'll snatch the breath out of you and won't give it back until you do what it says. But it still has those dark corners where the gorge divides that still recall the troubled dreams of youth, where it hides those ripping scars beneath the white. The ancient Gauley, like an old ornery cowboy who chose a trail too hard for any man, just to see it done, still does battle hand-to-hand with West Virginia's granite hills after all these centuries, still blazing out its impossible course through the miles of solid rock.
But the wisest have taken that path of least resistance, whatever it may be. By yielding to the mountain, he comes to where the mountain yields to him. Water must take the shape its vessel demands, but in the end overcomes its vessel because it can change and pour out, or over, or through anything that holds it. This is a river older, wiser, and stronger than the rest. This is the one who has already broken and beaten the mountains in his way. He has already tamed and polished all the jagged boulders into a smooth mosaic tile floor. Don't let the gentle waltz of the cool, clear waters across the parquet eddies fool you. If he's already won his war against his equals in the other elements, a war even the mighty Gauley and the brazen Colorado are still fighting, imagine what he can do to us. I've seen too well what that river can do. The seeming warm, sweet arms of that quietly rambling giant can grab quicker and break harder even the strongest of men's hearts, and not give them back.
So just because I speak a little softer or a little less, don't think I've lost any of that spirit or any of that fight. And don't think it means I am content. I am far from content. I will not confront you, even when you have brought the fight into my realm. I'm trying hard to break that old habit of burning bridges I'm still crossing. I don't want to do that anymore; I've seen where that gets me, like I've seen the Gauley hurl itself headlong into a solid granite wall and make a sharp turn. Believe me, I've still got those dark corners like the Nantahala where my old fierce tongue hasn't quite been smoothed out, and I always will. But I also know that the best in me, and the best for me, always comes like the strongest and wisest in those old rivers, on the path of least resistance, but keeping in a deep reserve that same fight of their brash and brazen youth. And with a visage of complacency to steady my stride over troublesome ground, still keeping that sense of vicious urgency, when the time is urgent. And it is.
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