Ferry Meditations

'Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?'

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse


'Few of us know the river's source...'  

Memories of Silver River, Kenneth White

This incalescent February afternoon, as I hop onto the Renfrew-Yoker 'ferry' (now more of a raft) I make a point of remarking to the youthful ferryman of the beauty of the river. 'Aye, but there's few folk that know it,' he replies. To be sure, today, mid-February, it's wall to wall sunshine. There is a windlessness that renders everything clear and crisp, and quickly beautiful. Sounds hang in the air like vapour trails. 

Enlightened by this warm February sunshine, what can often be confused as Charon carrying his passengers across the River Styx is now the quiet and wise Vasudeva plowing the gentle waters of the upper Ganges.

There's nothing quite like crossing a river by boat. It's a real meditative experience, where one can (especially here with the Kilpatrick Hills in the distance) space out and extemporize the self, and tune into the voice of the river. This particular crossing, from Renfrew on the south-side to Yoker on the north, though it probably only takes a few minutes, is actually timeless. It is a real mystical experience, as people like Hesse and White and Whitman only too well knew. 

In Siddhartha by Hesse, the eponymous seeker finally uncovers inner peace and ultimate truth in the river herself. Vasudeva, the ferryman, plying his bamboo raft, remarks to his passenger Siddhartha that to most the river has been 'nothing but a hindrance on their journey...'. That, amongst the thousands he has taken across, 'there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle,' who 'have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them...' 

The Yoker side of the River Clyde.