Opening essay - A walk along the river book

A walk along the river for me is all about a very particular place. There is water flowing between two banks, but when I use the word river, I mean the whole place, including complexities beyond my ability to describe. There are the earth and sand, the limestone rocks of the levees, mud and sky, sun and wind, and every variation of the time of day and of the seasons. And of course, the plants and animals must be remembered, including we humans. And so one must also consider the human artifice that is now braided together with these natural river elements, not least of which are the Bowersock dam and hydroelectric power plant. And ever present is the water, which is somehow the same and also ever changing according to its own laws.

I walk along a river as though it’s a bounded place and yet also a place of unbounded inspiration. This river is real and it also lives within my imagination. Reality and mystery travel together.

This book is primarily about my observations – a partial record of what I have managed through a fairly haphazard process to capture. A greater totality of the river, even the details of the small segment of it that I have explored, will have to be found in other books as well as in scientific and historical data.

So this is personal. But I hope I have a point of view to express that is also a little bit general, to at least consider other river elements, extending from the tributaries that once drained open prairies to the purposes of water for human use as well as the river as a present part of the natural cycle of life.

But I will try to keep it mostly simple. This book is about my wonder and my growing appreciation of this place as a place where I fit in, where I admire beauty and the workings of nature, where I find that I am content, at times.

I expect that most people will look at this as a picture book, and I can live with that. I will offer the caution that photographs as I tend to take them, frame reality into a two dimensional rectangle, drawing attention to particular aesthetics. A photo is more about line and shape and texture and such artistic values than somehow representing reality as it is, although, even still, these photos show much of what was when I pressed the shutter.

My archive, small as it is, begins with easy digital cameras in the year 2000 and continues through 2013. The completion of the North Unit of Bowersock - the construction photos forming a significant portion of this book - seemed to make this a time to pull something together.

My book will tend toward broad strokes, not details. Significant portions of even this brief span will be ignored. I have not explored the Kaw by night. I have not been on the water by boat. But more than many people, I have walked up and down along this rough mile of river and sometimes I had a camera with me at an opportune moment.

In the fall of 2011, I began writing a web log called ‘Walk to the River,’ in which I wrote down my perceptions and observations, taking some photos as well. That walk begins near Central Middle School and passes through South Park and Downtown Mass Street. But the river is always the destination, and the exploring of this part of the river will continue well beyond the making of this book. But it is likely that I could say that nearly every day for roughly five hundred days I have walked across the Kaw River Bridge.

And yet it should be made clear that while I can recount some number of steps, most of the steps along this river that I have taken for two decades will still remain unremarked, a kind of deep background for the memories I have managed to record.

What is here remains a fragmentary record, but I hope one of a little worth to some who would also choose to walk along this river.

I would like to think that these words and photos will encourage you to visit and explore this space I call the river for yourself. Experience this particular place through your own eyes with your own body and mind, with your own desires for beauty and your own attempt to understand a little of how the world works.