By Heather Johnson
English and writing professor Heather Johnson delves into the origins of her preoccupation with rivers, their language, and our relationship with them.
In a new edition of its dictionary for young children, the Oxford English Dictionary several years ago decided to remove words related to the natural world to make room for words like laptop. Words that would be lost would include heron, herring, kingfisher, minnow, newt, otter. River words.
I have a passion for the language of rivers. I think this may stem, in fact, from a moment of silence one summer, decades ago, in Ireland, where I grew up.
I was staying on a cousin’s old river barge, winding through the loughs, or lakes, of the River Shannon. One night, very late, a friend and I had set out from the barge, in complete darkness, in a small wooden boat, to row to the closest village pub. We set our bow in the direction of a tiny dot of red light. It must have been a Sacred Heart flame, just visible through open church doors at the end of the village street.
Through the dark air and the dark water, we rowed in silence. The oars dipped into the brackish water. A hard pull. Then a coasting. I remember the creak and groan of the oarlocks, the splash and drip of the strokes. There must have been some moonlight: The gentle swell seemed edged in silver. No words between us.
But unspoken words came nonetheless: the dark mutinous Shannon waves. The final words of James Joyce’s story “The Dead” in which “snow was general all over Ireland … falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.”
That night we reached a landing spot among the trees, tied up, and the pub admitted us after closing hours. It had felt like a secret communion with the River Shannon, which takes its name from Siannon, a goddess in Irish mythology whose name means “possessor of wisdom.”
I didn’t know it until recently, but since that night, I have been following rivers.
Once, riding a train across America, I stared through the window at the Colorado. The train tracks hugged that river through narrow canyons where bald eagles fly. At the river’s bend, the train would lean, tilting us toward a view of the rushing waters and, as we climbed into the Rockies, angled shapes of floating river ice.
When I drive I-90 westward through Massachusetts and New York, I feel a kind of resistance each time I cross a bridge, wanting to acknowledge the river flowing beneath. I hear myself saying aloud a litany of names: Quaboag, Chicopee, Connecticut, Housatonic, Hudson. Ancient rivers.
Māori people teach respect for rivers as living forces. New Zealand set a precedent several years ago when it passed a law granting personhood to the Whanganui River. Our lives are intertwined with rivers; we sustain each other.
This respect and understanding are what I hope to impart to the students of River Stories, a URI honors course. Our class went kayaking together on the Pettaquamscutt River last fall. We floated on the calm water, watching the cormorants, their wings stretched wide toward the low pink sun.
And words arrived, dark mutinous Shannon waves. I suppose it’s a kind of offering, a modest silent prayer, to a life force as powerful and majestic as a river.
Heather Johnson is a professor in the departments of English and Professional and Public Writing and the director of Writing Across URI, which supports faculty and student writing. She also teaches and advises in the Honors Program.
Illustration: Anthony Russo