Down on the tow path west of the boat house, along the canal, where turtles float heads up, beaks above the water, their limbs balancing them still, where the bullfrogs are bassooning, near sunset, there is a paved road down to a cut through the rock slabs, out to a point in the river where it is narrow and where the fishermen come at this time of dusk.   The paved path has a half inch of water standing on it many places, and out at the end of it, a platform overlook of poured cement, and when I come to the end of the path, there are herons.  First, just a few.  But then, many.  They rise from the boulders and rock slabs just up the bend on this near side of the river, across from the steep bluff and the fine homes up top on the Virginia side, first a few of them, lifting up, and then as turkey vultures and large ravens wheel down, suddenly a whole flock of herons lifts up into the sky, some down river, some up river, some higher up into the sky.   They hover as they rise, and then the birds become horizontal, their legs behind them, their necks tucking their head back against their winged shoulders, riding the stream of the great river, the chasm of rock.

On the platform there is a man leaning over the cement railing of the high platform above the rocks, and he too has a bike.  He's in blue pants, and a blue shirt, in work shoes despite his bike being a decent one for a commuter or a bike messenger, an old blue ten speed, 14 actually, a decent saddle, hipster handlebars.  He's looking out over the river and I do not disturb him.  He is drinking a tall boy Heineken, silver, marked with green.  His beard, close cropped, grey, his face dark, handsome, strong, his eyes clear, a man well proportioned, his bike leaning against the parapet, he surveys the great river.

I'd been trying to write earlier at the coffee shop up on MacArthur, but in a kind of gloom known on the first day off, I knew, even as it was getting hear sunset at 8 PM in early May, I needed a bike ride. Mom had come to visit, and my brother had even driven her back, but I was feeling sad.  Sad and irresponsible, a loneliness, replays of the past, wishing I could grow up without having wasted so many years, and what is tending bar anyway but a huge waste of years kowtowing, cowed by the system.

"Lots of herons out," I said to the man, and he replied in kind, "oh, yes."  Here, with the narrows, and the water, as he put it, turning brown and dark, the current at its strongest in this chute, the fish can come no further up the river, he explains.  Not the shad, nor the stripers.  He looks around.  "Been coming here for years," he tells me.  We look together upstream.  "See, that's smog, way up there.  It used not to come 'till June or July, but that's pollution.  "See the brown in the trees," he says, looking back over the rocks that impede the river, from which small trees, sycamores, poplars, oaks, looking almost akin to mangroves in a way, but on land, growing only so tall as the shallow soil will allow on the rocky outcrop, "that's where they're dying."  Indeed, there is die-back in their branches, many of them.  "That's how we breath.  If the earth can't breath anymore, how can we..."

I look around some more, and the herons are still about, perfect instruments of the air, and so are the larger black birds, and there, two more fishermen come to join the half dozen scattered about with their poles.

I talk bikes with the guy a little bit.  He got this one for seventy five dollars.  "Also got a single speed."  The blue bike he has is an old road bike, and I can't make out the brand, maybe a Gios, but not.  A rugged short beard, white grey over his dark skin, his features Caucasian as much as African, or African American, in his worn inside out package courier company emblem work shirt with holes along the neckline, he is someone who should be cast in a film production.

He takes a tug off his beer.

See, people catch fish and they leave them up on the rocks here.  That's the smell here, he explains to me.  Catch 'em, throw them back in the river, that's nature's way.

Best time to fish, right now, right now and early morning.  The park rangers will catch you, if you don't have a permit, and they'll lock you up.

I wish I had some wine, you know, like the old Tour de France, I tell him, referring to the bottle holding capacity of the three back pockets of any cycling jersey.

"It's good to talk to you, sir.  I was feeling a bit lonely."

"Why feel lonely?  You got your own company.  I never feel lonesome, I got my company and the Lord up above.  I used to drink the hard stuff, get in trouble.  But now I just drink the beer."  He finishes the last sip, dribbles the can over the wall, then a minute later crushing the can quite flat with a single boot stomp.

A man comes with two medium sized black dogs friendly with poodle fur, and the man I've been talking to is pleased and asks the owner questions.


I rode up a bit further, past a few more locks, and a lock keepers house small and warmly lit and an older couple out reading on rocking chairs, sharing the evening.  I rode back.  Closer to nature, the inevitable as we grow older and closer to our ultimate destiny.  The bugs are out now, and I'm glad I have my glasses on.


Huck and Jim.  Somewhere along Huck's growing up.