WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:08.839 The Monday before the semester's start, I found myself surrounded 2 00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:11.839 by a seam of maps older than my career, stacking 3 00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:15.439 them in my classroom beside a battered globe and a new, white, 4 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:18.879 bright wall board. This was the annual ritual of preparing 5 00:00:18.920 --> 00:00:21.640 for the onslaught of freshmen who would, in their first 6 00:00:21.719 --> 00:00:25.160 nervous days at Duvemont High, have to suffer my enthusiasm 7 00:00:25.199 --> 00:00:28.960 for local geography. The windows were open to a blue afternoon, 8 00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:33.439 the air carrying the good, earthy river smell that's inescapable 9 00:00:33.479 --> 00:00:37.119 this time of year. I'd plan to refresh the display 10 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:40.679 above the chalk tray, perhaps add something from the university 11 00:00:40.719 --> 00:00:45.000 library's regional archives, or at least a more colorful surveyor's rendering. 12 00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:49.159 I'd pull the oldest, dustiest ones out of the school basement, 13 00:00:49.719 --> 00:00:53.359 foxed parchments stitched by hand, then a progression of crisp 14 00:00:53.439 --> 00:00:58.240 mid century topographies, the faded recent prints with their digital neatness. 15 00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:02.799 It was at first a workmanlike exercise, handled the way 16 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:07.000 anyone handles the backdrop of their life. Tape, torn pins, 17 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:11.040 straightened measurement by ruler along my makeshift ledger lines. You 18 00:01:11.079 --> 00:01:13.719 get used to seeing the Rhan and Belfield rivers drawn 19 00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:17.400 as twin blue ribbons, curving side by side across every map, 20 00:01:17.799 --> 00:01:21.480 each labeled in the same cursive script, never once meeting, 21 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:25.959 despite running so close for nearly forty miles, I'd grown 22 00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:29.040 up brushing my fingers over these lines, pointing them out 23 00:01:29.079 --> 00:01:31.680 to board children as the great quirk of our region, 24 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:36.319 though if I'm honest, I'd barely questioned what unique actually meant. 25 00:01:36.920 --> 00:01:40.640 Some towns have author's birth places, others have three story 26 00:01:40.719 --> 00:01:44.560 hay barns, and we have the story of two everlasting parallels. 27 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:47.640 That's how I always thought of it. That was enough 28 00:01:48.719 --> 00:01:51.000 this time, though, as I stood back to check for 29 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:54.120 any wrinkles or skewed tax under the glancing light, a 30 00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:59.239 hesitation slowed my hands. The rivers unwavering parallelism leapt off 31 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:03.680 the page as not just special, but when really considered absurd. 32 00:02:03.879 --> 00:02:06.000 If you put this in an exam, I would have 33 00:02:06.079 --> 00:02:10.520 marked it impossible. Rivers converge when terrain demands it, don't they, 34 00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:15.719 especially rivers sharing a valley at the same elevation. Streams 35 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:18.759 drawn by gravity, carving their way to the lowest point, 36 00:02:19.159 --> 00:02:23.080 rarely resist the logic pushing them together. Yet here map 37 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.039 after map, decade after decade, it was as if the 38 00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:30.199 land itself insisted they keep their polite distance forever. Even 39 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:33.759 in regions dense with hills and marshes and dovemont is, 40 00:02:33.840 --> 00:02:37.360 nothing if not undulating and sodden, nature seemed to permit 41 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:42.159 a strange, persistent separation. I set the last map in place, 42 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:45.719 the little thrill of unease stayed unsettling what should have 43 00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:48.919 been routine. I closed my eyes and tried for a 44 00:02:48.919 --> 00:02:52.159 moment to mentally recall standing at the banks of each river. 45 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:56.159 I could remember them, yes, skimming stones into the rhone, 46 00:02:56.199 --> 00:03:00.199 with my brother leading students along Bellfield's grassy verge for 47 00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:03.479 end of term bird counts. I could see those scenes 48 00:03:03.520 --> 00:03:06.759 in flashes. Yet if pressed to sketch a route from 49 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:09.240 one river bank directly to the other, I found my 50 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:13.639 internal geography fuzzed, confused. A thick fog crept into the 51 00:03:13.639 --> 00:03:17.000 imagined in between. Was Roan west of Bellfield or was 52 00:03:17.039 --> 00:03:19.319 it the other way around? And if you set off 53 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:22.039 intending to cross the green belt between them, where would 54 00:03:22.039 --> 00:03:25.400 you emerge? The notion so simple on the maps became 55 00:03:25.439 --> 00:03:29.680 inexplicably tangled in my mind. Had I ever actually tried walking, 56 00:03:29.919 --> 00:03:34.120 for real, straight from one to the other. Had any one, 57 00:03:34.159 --> 00:03:38.319 Surely some one must have The answer, disturbingly was lost 58 00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:42.159 in the mash of memory and convention. I nearly laughed 59 00:03:42.199 --> 00:03:44.840 at my spiraling thoughts. It would be easy to chalk 60 00:03:44.879 --> 00:03:47.599 this up to summer haze or too many years teaching 61 00:03:47.639 --> 00:03:50.199 the same syllabus. Yet as I looked again at the 62 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:53.759 parade of maps stretching from a water stained eighteen twenty 63 00:03:53.759 --> 00:03:57.240 two hand drawing to the just printed State Geological Survey, 64 00:03:57.639 --> 00:04:01.120 I felt something drop, a faint wrong knocking against the 65 00:04:01.159 --> 00:04:05.000 floorboards of my certainty, one of those problems too obvious 66 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:10.039 to notice until the perspective unexpectedly shifts. I scribbled a 67 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:12.879 note in my planning journal to ask my new class 68 00:04:12.919 --> 00:04:15.159 to morrow what they made of it, Whether they could 69 00:04:15.199 --> 00:04:19.319 point out any actual reason for the rivers eternal parallel dance. 70 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:23.000 Maybe they would know a story or an explanation hidden 71 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:26.480 in their family law. Maybe there was a clever hydrologic 72 00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:30.759 thing I'd missed, some tectonic quirk named in a university paper. 73 00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:34.519 I should have gone on with my prep seating charts 74 00:04:34.680 --> 00:04:38.839 club rosters, but the thought clung and buzzed needling with 75 00:04:38.879 --> 00:04:41.240 the kind of question that makes you wonder how much 76 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:46.000 of anything you really truly see? That was I realized 77 00:04:46.279 --> 00:04:49.279 the first time I'd questioned something so deeply woven into 78 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:54.199 our world's background that curiosity itself felt misplaced. To morrow, 79 00:04:54.399 --> 00:04:57.120 I told myself, I'd find out what happens when you 80 00:04:57.160 --> 00:05:00.560 start pulling at a thread everyone else has let lie. 81 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:04.759 In Dovemont, the rivers shape everything, or more precisely, their 82 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:08.279 relationship does. You'd think they'd grant us a town logo 83 00:05:08.319 --> 00:05:11.839 of a meeting point, waters commingling, but instead there are 84 00:05:11.839 --> 00:05:16.680 emblems and slogans about reverence, separation, where rivers run together 85 00:05:17.079 --> 00:05:21.399 but apart, cross down banners for River Days, the only 86 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:26.040 festival with two opening parades, one snaking along Rhane, another 87 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:30.759 along Bellfield, each ending with trumpets and overlapping Burgher stands 88 00:05:30.759 --> 00:05:34.360 within sight of the other's fireworks, but separated by swathes 89 00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:37.879 of green and a conviction of where that river over 90 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:41.360 there is meant to stay. As I walk down Main 91 00:05:41.399 --> 00:05:44.759 Street the next morning, a run of brick frontages unchanged 92 00:05:44.839 --> 00:05:48.560 since the Tobacco Days, I passed twin streams Dinah, its 93 00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:51.839 picture windows filled even at dawn with highway, mugs and 94 00:05:51.920 --> 00:05:55.920 pie under clear plastic domes. Theirs never meet. Canoe rentals 95 00:05:55.920 --> 00:05:59.279 on the rhone and right across the square, parallel paddles 96 00:05:59.319 --> 00:06:03.319 dealing in bell fields, blue canoes. Shop doors comeberdecked with 97 00:06:03.399 --> 00:06:07.680 split river sail signs. The school has a mural of 98 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:11.319 the two rivers curling like musical staves, always staying their 99 00:06:11.360 --> 00:06:17.560 separate course. Dovemot's very identity curls, sometimes self consciously, sometimes 100 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:21.680 with real pride around the never join, never cross motif. 101 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:26.680 My own presence here feels half way inherited, half way accidental. 102 00:06:27.199 --> 00:06:29.920 I live in my grandparents old house on Ridge Road, 103 00:06:30.279 --> 00:06:33.439 an unfussy, broad eaved place set amid Dogwood and Elderberry, 104 00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:36.800 with the hilltop rising behind. It's a short walk to 105 00:06:36.839 --> 00:06:39.199 the high ground between the rivers, a longer one to 106 00:06:39.240 --> 00:06:42.720 their actual banks. The den holds relics from another era, 107 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:47.319 carpenter's squares, weighted plum bobs, a transit level that belonged 108 00:06:47.319 --> 00:06:50.680 to my grandfather, Its brass scuffed from a hundred town 109 00:06:50.800 --> 00:06:55.519 survey jobs. My grandmother, before she slipped into quieter memories, 110 00:06:55.759 --> 00:06:58.800 told stories of the two water years, always with a 111 00:06:58.839 --> 00:07:01.759 mystery folded in so the words. For as long as 112 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:04.480 I can remember, I've been the guy in the middle, 113 00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:08.319 a joke my colleagues repeat whenever I'm tapped to mediate 114 00:07:08.399 --> 00:07:12.519 between staff students, or as happens at river days. The 115 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:17.120 committees managing the two parades routes my caste of regulars 116 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:20.240 you might call the chorus of Dovemont. There's missus Rowan, 117 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:24.720 the school librarian who's also the unofficial town historian, keeper 118 00:07:24.759 --> 00:07:28.800 of everything from bound minutes to yellowed yearbooks. She relishes 119 00:07:28.839 --> 00:07:32.040 nothing more than trapping unsuspecting students in a ramble about 120 00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:36.160 old land deeds or the proper way to catalog regional folklore. 121 00:07:36.839 --> 00:07:40.600 There's Justin, a sophomore with sun dyed hair whose passion 122 00:07:40.639 --> 00:07:43.920 for river fishing exceeds his attention span for school work. 123 00:07:44.920 --> 00:07:47.160 He has shown up to my class with half dried 124 00:07:47.199 --> 00:07:50.720 waders and stories of the big Bellfield trout. Nobody else 125 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:55.240 ever sees. Madeline. Maddie, to her friends, is my neighbor, 126 00:07:55.639 --> 00:08:00.160 the sole Dovemont mail carrier, practical and unsentimental, whose care 127 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:03.600 has mapped every twist and shortcut of our knotted back roads, 128 00:08:03.959 --> 00:08:06.959 and who insists the greatest miracle is not losing her 129 00:08:07.079 --> 00:08:11.399 van keys in the river mud. Lastly, there's mister Holloway, 130 00:08:11.720 --> 00:08:16.959 retired civil engineer walking contradiction, a man regarded as eccentric 131 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:21.000 by nearly everyone, famed for his unsuccessful attempts to unite 132 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:24.199 the rivers with canal projects and store a book bridges 133 00:08:25.279 --> 00:08:28.480 life here turns by the rivers, rhythms, carnival at the 134 00:08:28.519 --> 00:08:32.879 solstice parade, Friday, fish fries, roans, catch on odd years, 135 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.879 bellfields on even the annual school river run, foot trace 136 00:08:37.159 --> 00:08:41.840 always pointedly along side by side tracks, and a peculiarly 137 00:08:41.879 --> 00:08:46.159 Dovemont tradition that prohibits any bridge from spanning both river's breadth. 138 00:08:47.159 --> 00:08:51.200 There are plenty of bridges wooden stone, even a shiny 139 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:54.759 modern span or two, but each crosses just one water 140 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:57.840 and brings you always to a splash of green and 141 00:08:57.879 --> 00:09:01.039 the certainty that the other river winds off on, visible 142 00:09:01.039 --> 00:09:05.120 but untouchable, looped just out of reach. I tucked my 143 00:09:05.240 --> 00:09:07.759 note about the rivers into my grade book and walked 144 00:09:07.799 --> 00:09:10.879 the length of the main corridor, past class photos and 145 00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:15.559 championship banners. Every step re enforced the town's mingled pride 146 00:09:15.559 --> 00:09:20.039 and indifference. The rivers are everywhere carved into mines, even 147 00:09:20.039 --> 00:09:22.840 if their true nature, what it means for two waters 148 00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:26.279 to live in perpetual side by side exil never seemed 149 00:09:26.279 --> 00:09:29.960 to trouble any one much as home rooms settled. I 150 00:09:30.039 --> 00:09:34.000 found myself nervous, without knowing why. The students filtered in, 151 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:37.759 some I recognized from last year's field trips, others filling 152 00:09:37.799 --> 00:09:40.639 the spaces between desks with the initial hush of forcing 153 00:09:40.639 --> 00:09:43.879 themselves to look like you belong. I wrote on the 154 00:09:43.879 --> 00:09:47.679 board geography, do vm O and t s rivers a 155 00:09:47.759 --> 00:09:52.600 question and waited while the shuffling and whispering faded. Before 156 00:09:52.600 --> 00:09:55.759 we begin, I said, eyeing the window where sunlight caught 157 00:09:55.799 --> 00:09:59.399 a plane of dust motes, Let's try a riddle. Why 158 00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:02.480 don't the road and the bellfield ever cross? Or meet? 159 00:10:02.759 --> 00:10:06.159 For that matter? A few faces lit up at what 160 00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:10.639 they believed was a well trodden old chestnut. They never 161 00:10:10.799 --> 00:10:14.600 have muttered David from second row, a girl in a 162 00:10:14.679 --> 00:10:17.720 varsity jacket, said, maps say they just run next to 163 00:10:17.759 --> 00:10:22.879 each other, always have right. Maybe it's the hills ventured 164 00:10:22.919 --> 00:10:27.240 some one else, as if reciting from rote. Justin, perched 165 00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:29.799 by the window with a tackle box still visible in 166 00:10:29.879 --> 00:10:33.360 his bag, piped up without raising his hand, it's just 167 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:36.120 how it is. But sometimes if you try to cut 168 00:10:36.159 --> 00:10:39.559 through the woods you get turned around, like the space 169 00:10:39.679 --> 00:10:44.240 stretches or something. The room chuckled a bit. The others 170 00:10:44.240 --> 00:10:49.120 didn't seem to find Justin's comment remarkable, so I pressed, 171 00:10:49.519 --> 00:10:51.399 if I said I wanted to walk straight from the 172 00:10:51.480 --> 00:10:55.879 Rohan to the bellfield, what would I find? Silence? Then 173 00:10:56.120 --> 00:10:59.320 you can, but it takes longer than you think. It's boring, 174 00:10:59.519 --> 00:11:02.840 just tall grass. My uncle tried to cut across once 175 00:11:02.919 --> 00:11:07.320 but got poison ivy. Nothing struck any one as particularly strange. 176 00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:12.279 The consensus was a shoulder shrug normalcy. An idea sparked. 177 00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:15.320 I drew a crude outline on the board, sketching the 178 00:11:15.320 --> 00:11:19.200 two rivers parallel, narrowing the green band between them, the 179 00:11:19.240 --> 00:11:22.480 way they pinch close near the old mill, almost touching 180 00:11:22.519 --> 00:11:25.639 by the football field. How close do they get here, 181 00:11:25.960 --> 00:11:30.600 I asked, tapping the spot. David's answer was quick, Oh, 182 00:11:30.679 --> 00:11:35.519 about a hundred yards, or maybe two hundred. Justin tilted 183 00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:39.360 his head. Feels like a mile, though, doesn't it. I 184 00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:43.240 checked my own memory, that fuzzy half image, grassy fields 185 00:11:43.279 --> 00:11:46.559 sloping down, then a rise in woods. But how far 186 00:11:46.799 --> 00:11:50.840 was it truly. Later, as the class filed out, missus 187 00:11:50.919 --> 00:11:53.480 Rowan stopped me in the hallway. She had a box 188 00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:56.440 tucked under one arm, her hair gathered in its usual 189 00:11:56.480 --> 00:12:00.679 turquoise dyed twist maps for your class, she said, and 190 00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:05.399 some diagrams originals from the Twin Rivers exhibit last river days. 191 00:12:05.919 --> 00:12:08.240 Let's see if your students can make any better sense 192 00:12:08.279 --> 00:12:11.240 than the rest of us. She handed over a set 193 00:12:11.279 --> 00:12:14.120 of worn diagrams, every one and echo of the maps 194 00:12:14.120 --> 00:12:17.440 I had already examined, with neat notes in looping cursive, 195 00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:22.519 never bridged natural separation, and every so often a margin 196 00:12:22.639 --> 00:12:27.759 scrawled in pencil, traveler reports, oddly long detour paths wandered 197 00:12:27.759 --> 00:12:31.519 off course. I told her what I'd noticed that when 198 00:12:31.559 --> 00:12:35.480 I really tried to reconstruct my own crossings, distances seemed 199 00:12:35.480 --> 00:12:39.679 to shift or memories clouded. She smiled, but with a 200 00:12:39.759 --> 00:12:44.000 tinge of surprise. Funny people have written about it for decades, 201 00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:47.519 but nobody ever minds for long. Maybe we're just used 202 00:12:47.559 --> 00:12:51.240 to being unique. But it wouldn't let go. The more 203 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:54.799 I collected stories and diagrams, the less my own recollection 204 00:12:54.919 --> 00:12:57.919 seemed to snap into focus. I threw my note book 205 00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:00.879 and a map into my satchel that afternoon, told the 206 00:13:00.919 --> 00:13:03.519 office to expect me a bit late, and walked out 207 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:07.440 under the cloudless sky for the first time. I intended 208 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:09.679 not just to look at the rivers, but to really 209 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:13.399 test what lay between them. I set off from the rhone, 210 00:13:13.840 --> 00:13:16.480 walking with the deliberate step of some one determined to 211 00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:19.360 prove or disprove an idea. The air at the river 212 00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:21.799 bank was sharp, with the scent of cold water and 213 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:25.679 crushed limestone. A pair of fishermen, Kaleb and his uncle, 214 00:13:25.799 --> 00:13:28.440 as it turned out, sat with their feet planted in 215 00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:32.519 the mud, passing a battered Thermas between them. Kalib gave 216 00:13:32.559 --> 00:13:34.960 me a nod. I asked if the fishing was any 217 00:13:34.960 --> 00:13:39.960 better than last week. He shrugged, depends which river you prefer. 218 00:13:40.120 --> 00:13:43.759 I guess Bellfield always feels a world away, even if 219 00:13:43.799 --> 00:13:48.240 it's near enough to shout. I smiled, then asked, off hand, 220 00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:51.240 you ever try walking direct from here to the Bellfield 221 00:13:51.639 --> 00:13:56.360 looks so close on the map. His uncle cackled, Oh, sure, 222 00:13:56.679 --> 00:13:59.240 only takes all day if you don't get lost in 223 00:13:59.279 --> 00:14:02.000 the weeds. Feels like the more you stride for it, 224 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:05.639 the farther it gets. I made a note in my book, 225 00:14:06.159 --> 00:14:08.720 such talk was common enough that it had become banter, 226 00:14:09.159 --> 00:14:13.559 an inside joke in local fishing circles. Leaving the bank, 227 00:14:13.879 --> 00:14:16.399 I let the map guide me toward what appeared, by 228 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:20.000 all mathematical logic to be the shortest route to the Bellfield. 229 00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:23.720 The land sloped gently at first, then twisted through a 230 00:14:23.720 --> 00:14:27.159 sycamore grove whose trunks slanted at odd angles, as if 231 00:14:27.200 --> 00:14:29.799 each tree were slightly out of step with its neighbors. 232 00:14:30.360 --> 00:14:33.480 The old road showed no signs of recent use, but 233 00:14:33.559 --> 00:14:37.360 I followed it past the rustle of grasshoppers and thick reeds. 234 00:14:38.120 --> 00:14:41.279 After twenty minutes, expecting to reach the bridge that on 235 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:44.440 my map at least crossed to Bellfield Road, I instead 236 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:47.720 emerged at the same bridge i'd left, crossing only rhan 237 00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:50.519 the opposite bank, a bright thread of pure green with 238 00:14:50.600 --> 00:14:54.039 no sign of moving water. Had I doubled back unknowingly, 239 00:14:54.480 --> 00:14:56.919 I checked the compass. It spun no more than a 240 00:14:56.919 --> 00:15:00.840 degree away from north. The GPS in my foe, already 241 00:15:00.840 --> 00:15:04.120 temperamental in these parts. Through a string of coordinates that 242 00:15:04.279 --> 00:15:09.120 jagged along impossible lines. Brushing off the confusion, I turned, 243 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:13.080 selecting a new approach that aimed east. This time, the 244 00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:16.799 fields angled strangely downward. The second river bank should have 245 00:15:16.840 --> 00:15:20.960 appeared within sight, but instead dusk strung my eyes, and 246 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.279 the only sound was the muffled rumble of the nearby highway. 247 00:15:24.840 --> 00:15:27.960 An urge overcame me to simply abandon the search, but 248 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:32.240 the stubbornness of curiosity took over. I climbed a hummock 249 00:15:32.360 --> 00:15:34.600 that should have given a clear view of both rivers. 250 00:15:34.799 --> 00:15:39.200 Binoculars poised for a brief moment, Bellfield danced to the east, 251 00:15:39.559 --> 00:15:42.639 missed hanging over its water like low wool. I took 252 00:15:42.679 --> 00:15:47.000 three steps sideways, and suddenly roans glittering bank overtook my view, 253 00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:50.799 as if the entire landscape had pivoted on a hidden axis. 254 00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:53.720 The between never seemed to line up at the same 255 00:15:53.799 --> 00:15:57.720 time or in the same place. Thwarted, I wandered into 256 00:15:57.759 --> 00:16:01.759 twin streams. Diner Madeline, in her usual red cap and 257 00:16:01.799 --> 00:16:05.399 grease marked apron, caught my distracted wave and slid into 258 00:16:05.440 --> 00:16:09.080 the booth with me a cup of burnt coffee in hand. 259 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:14.120 How's the exploring professor, she teased, You grew up here, Maddie. 260 00:16:14.279 --> 00:16:17.240 How do you picture the rivers? She eyed me for 261 00:16:17.279 --> 00:16:20.679 a beat They're always there when I knead them. Roan's 262 00:16:20.720 --> 00:16:24.559 best for skipping rocks, Bellfield for walking the dog. She shrugged. 263 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:27.600 If I want one, I get there. If I want both, 264 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:31.080 I drive the long way round. But if you had 265 00:16:31.120 --> 00:16:34.399 to draw a map, I pressed, scribbling a quick outline 266 00:16:34.440 --> 00:16:38.519 on a napkin. Where do the rivers actually touch? She 267 00:16:38.600 --> 00:16:41.559 glanced down, then smiled with a flick of her wrist, 268 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:45.960 crumpling the sketch. I always preferred roots to maps, aren't 269 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:50.759 you the teacher? Her answer, annoyingly practical, bounced off my 270 00:16:50.919 --> 00:16:54.679 rising confusion. I finished my coffee and walked home as 271 00:16:54.679 --> 00:16:58.840 the sky went purple. That night, I compared notes. The 272 00:16:58.919 --> 00:17:03.240 GPS record criss crossed my intended paths in confounding angles, 273 00:17:03.559 --> 00:17:08.000 always measuring more distance than anticipated, neither starting nor ending 274 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:11.799 where my memory placed them. Printed maps implied the green 275 00:17:11.880 --> 00:17:15.319 band was narrow. My walks stretched it into a seemingly 276 00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:20.240 inexhaustible run of fields and woods. Unable to settle, I 277 00:17:20.319 --> 00:17:23.519 rummaged in my grandfather's old tool cabinet for the surveyor's 278 00:17:23.559 --> 00:17:26.680 notebooks I had once found so dull. The top notebook 279 00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:30.039 brittle with age and scrawled with columns of figures held 280 00:17:30.039 --> 00:17:33.839 a margin note dated nineteen sixty three. Paths between seemed 281 00:17:33.839 --> 00:17:38.200 to shift, cannot account for daylight, bellfield farther away each season. 282 00:17:38.759 --> 00:17:43.039 Below this a sketch two rivers approaching, then diverging again, 283 00:17:43.319 --> 00:17:47.640 with a dotted line labeled lost, short cut vanished. I 284 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:49.920 held the notebook up to the light until the late 285 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.079 hour blurred the ink. It was a simple enough problem, 286 00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:57.640 or so I dethought. But nothing, not memory, not device, 287 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:01.039 not the best of inherited instruments, could chase away the 288 00:18:01.079 --> 00:18:04.160 creeping feeling that the divide between the rivers was less 289 00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:07.279 a physical fact than a kind of local law, a 290 00:18:07.359 --> 00:18:10.640 rule so normal as to have erased the very capacity 291 00:18:10.680 --> 00:18:15.000 for doubt. I awoke, restless, the strangeness of the whole matter, 292 00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:18.039 gnawing quietly in the background of my every day routines. 293 00:18:18.599 --> 00:18:21.119 I saw the rivers everywhere the next day, in the 294 00:18:21.240 --> 00:18:24.319 arches of the school's entr away with their stylized blue lines, 295 00:18:24.599 --> 00:18:27.759 in the art projects taped to the library glass first 296 00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:31.759 grade twin rivers with bright sun overhead, an impossible green 297 00:18:31.839 --> 00:18:37.720 wedge forever between questions, formed, dissolved, formed again when the 298 00:18:37.720 --> 00:18:40.599 final bell emptied the corridors. I made my way to 299 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:44.680 the library Rowan's domain, the scent of paper old, and 300 00:18:44.759 --> 00:18:48.599 knew her territory. I found her by the local history shelves, 301 00:18:48.839 --> 00:18:52.640 Flipping through a ledger thick with signatures. She eyed the 302 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:56.400 satch in my hand, the one bulging with maps, Grandpa's 303 00:18:56.440 --> 00:19:00.599 note book, and my own frustrating sketches. You look like 304 00:19:00.680 --> 00:19:03.559 someone who's discovered we live under a riddle, she said, 305 00:19:03.880 --> 00:19:08.440 raising a brow. I keep finding contradictions. Maps say the 306 00:19:08.519 --> 00:19:13.160 rivers close and never meet. Walks say otherwise, memories don't cohere. 307 00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:17.920 I can't get the distances right. Nobody can. She tapped 308 00:19:17.920 --> 00:19:21.119 the ledger. You know, the towns always had legends back 309 00:19:21.160 --> 00:19:25.880 before settlers. The indigenous people called them twin spirits, forbidden 310 00:19:25.880 --> 00:19:29.440 to touch, or all the world unraveled. My grandmother used 311 00:19:29.480 --> 00:19:32.039 to say she'd walked a short cut from Bellfield to Rohan, 312 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:36.640 but could never find it. Twice travelers diaries mention wandering 313 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:39.960 crossings that seemed to fade. Maybe we're not supposed to 314 00:19:40.039 --> 00:19:43.920 question it. I laid out my drawings, torn and blotted, 315 00:19:44.200 --> 00:19:47.559 and for the first time someone didn't dismiss them. Instead, 316 00:19:47.799 --> 00:19:51.519 she retrieved a folder of historical river diagrams annotated with 317 00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:56.759 looped hand. Each diagram was strikingly uniform, twin rivers, unwavering 318 00:19:57.039 --> 00:20:02.119 except for occasional marginalia deetwood in rain, short cut gone 319 00:20:02.119 --> 00:20:07.519 before dusk. Travelers recall being spun about mister Holloway by 320 00:20:07.599 --> 00:20:10.720 luck or fate entered carrying a battered tool box and 321 00:20:10.759 --> 00:20:15.039 a flask. He caught sight of the river diagrams, trying 322 00:20:15.079 --> 00:20:18.559 to solve the unsolvable? Are you, he chuckled. I once 323 00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:21.920 tried building a canal between them after college. Got half 324 00:20:21.960 --> 00:20:26.079 way through excavating, then realized we'd looped back both ends 325 00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:29.960 of our works rested by Rohan checked the maps, the blueprints, 326 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.039 the distance. Nothing fit. Next season, the ground had closed 327 00:20:34.079 --> 00:20:37.559 over our trench like we'd never been. He peered at 328 00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:41.400 the old surveyor's log. You know, Old Jim Holloway, my father, 329 00:20:41.680 --> 00:20:45.519 He wrote about the same footbridges planned, laid out straight, 330 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:48.599 ended up with both ends on the same bank. We 331 00:20:48.680 --> 00:20:52.799 figured the rivers had some grudge. All of it. Legends 332 00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:58.039 and engineering records danced around the impossibility. I thought of 333 00:20:58.079 --> 00:21:02.440 the older generations, my own family included, who recalled days 334 00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:05.240 when you could take a short cut between, only to 335 00:21:05.279 --> 00:21:09.279 have those stories fade into jokes or metaphors. Some insisted 336 00:21:09.319 --> 00:21:13.240 they'd strolled through wild flowers and wound up across, yet 337 00:21:13.279 --> 00:21:15.680 none could point to the path or show it to you. 338 00:21:15.799 --> 00:21:20.519 Twice Justin approached us later that afternoon at the library table. 339 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:24.519 He'd heard there was river stuff happening, and brought with 340 00:21:24.599 --> 00:21:30.559 him an enthusiasm undampened by adult skepticism. My grandad told me, 341 00:21:30.799 --> 00:21:33.480 he said, fiddling with his cap, that when you fish 342 00:21:33.559 --> 00:21:36.240 the Rhone early, then cross over for lunch, and fish 343 00:21:36.319 --> 00:21:39.519 the Bellfield by sunset, it feels like you've crossed half 344 00:21:39.559 --> 00:21:42.680 the county, but if you check your watch, you haven't 345 00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:46.119 gone far at all. Doesn't add up, like the place 346 00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:48.599 between the rivers is longer than the rest of the world. 347 00:21:49.640 --> 00:21:53.960 He was grinning, half proud, half uncertain. Sometimes I think 348 00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:58.440 both rivers move when you're not looking. We compared more diagrams, 349 00:21:58.640 --> 00:22:02.880 listen to more family storeries. Every recollection, it seemed, hugged 350 00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:06.880 the same invisible boundary. A world where paths and distances 351 00:22:07.039 --> 00:22:12.039 shuffled to maintain the perfect perennial divide. Travel became amrbious 352 00:22:12.039 --> 00:22:15.599 strip of memory. Everyone's accounts subtly curving away from a 353 00:22:15.640 --> 00:22:20.039 direct crossing, while the rivers themselves watched, calm and unmoved 354 00:22:21.119 --> 00:22:24.720 by dusk. It was clear our curiosity hadn't simply found 355 00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:28.519 a geographic oddity or a patch of failing memory. The 356 00:22:28.559 --> 00:22:32.559 contradiction was subtler and more thorough, as if reality itself, 357 00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:36.319 or our experience of it, reshuffled quietly according to the 358 00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:41.440 town's expectation. I stared long at my jumbled notes. Just 359 00:22:41.519 --> 00:22:46.039 in stories, Rowan's legends, holloways, failed bridges all formed a pattern. 360 00:22:46.519 --> 00:22:49.160 The rivers hadn't just avoided each other out of accident, 361 00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:52.279 but the whole structure of Dovemont seemed consciously or not 362 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:58.240 to enforce their parallel intimacy. Crossings, vanished, paths, elongated, deep 363 00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:02.680 was multiplied, and nobody, it seemed, could recall an unambiguous 364 00:23:02.680 --> 00:23:06.200 breach of the divide. It was perhaps more than a 365 00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:09.720 mere oddity. It was a principle, a kind of spatial 366 00:23:09.759 --> 00:23:13.359 and communal law manifested not only in water and land, 367 00:23:13.759 --> 00:23:17.359 but in memory, in tradition, coded into our behavior, and 368 00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:20.519 even the act of forgetting. And now that I'd begun 369 00:23:20.519 --> 00:23:23.079 to pull at the thread, the odd geometry of our 370 00:23:23.119 --> 00:23:26.680 town felt at once more enchanting and more deeply confusing 371 00:23:26.720 --> 00:23:30.319 than I'd ever guessed. Justin's stories had left me with 372 00:23:30.359 --> 00:23:33.759 a peculiar charge an attentiveness humming in the background as 373 00:23:33.759 --> 00:23:37.319 he left, whistling through his teeth, and missus Rowan gathered 374 00:23:37.319 --> 00:23:41.480 her folders. Holloway winked, slid his flask deeper in his pocket, 375 00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:44.720 and muttered that he'd leave the undoable to the young. 376 00:23:45.599 --> 00:23:47.880 I promised them more news if I found a thread 377 00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:51.400 to pull, or better to tie off. Walking out of 378 00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:55.279 the library into the bruised violet dusk, the rivers twin 379 00:23:55.400 --> 00:23:58.640 Pool felt as real as any magnet, two lines in 380 00:23:58.680 --> 00:24:02.720 the belly of the landscape, and now somehow wound inside me. 381 00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:06.400 I wanted to touch the truth directly, not just circle 382 00:24:06.440 --> 00:24:10.680 its boundary. The most obvious next step, though hardly the 383 00:24:10.680 --> 00:24:14.640 most logical, was to run my own experiment, something systematic, 384 00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:19.359 something more than aimless walking or fuzzily skewed memory. My mind. 385 00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:22.839 As the lanterns flickered behind me on Main Street, reeled 386 00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:27.319 through logistics, I texted Justin, who agreed at once, name 387 00:24:27.400 --> 00:24:30.160 the time, got a plan, or just mackin it up 388 00:24:30.200 --> 00:24:34.720 as you go, I responded that improvisation was practically science's twin. 389 00:24:35.799 --> 00:24:38.319 We met the next morning under the tallest sycamore along 390 00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:41.400 Rhane's bank, just In lugging a canvas bag of what 391 00:24:41.440 --> 00:24:44.799 he called river gear. It turned out to be mostly 392 00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:48.200 fishing line, a set of child bright foam pool floats, 393 00:24:48.440 --> 00:24:52.039 and a half eaten sleeve of saltines. His eyes shone. 394 00:24:52.359 --> 00:24:56.359 He was already picturing trout twice the usual size. So 395 00:24:56.519 --> 00:24:59.839 here's my plan, I said, spreading out a laminated map 396 00:25:00.039 --> 00:25:03.039 and borrowing his best marker, hot pink, prone to leaking. 397 00:25:03.720 --> 00:25:07.200 We picked two spots, the closest approach just west of Millbend. 398 00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:10.079 Each of us releases a distinctive float in our river. 399 00:25:10.519 --> 00:25:14.039 We measure distance, record the launch site, track their progress. 400 00:25:14.440 --> 00:25:17.440 If the rivers really do nearly touch, maybe currants or 401 00:25:17.480 --> 00:25:20.680