At Home on the River

Some have asked, more have wondered, “What’s it like living on a floating home?” It’s not for the faint of heart, when in the winter, your plumbing freezes and your pipes break as they are exposed to sixty mph winds. Those same winds kill your prized and expensive bamboo if it hasn’t already blown into the river. Then at night, you hear, and feel the ominous clanking of metal as you lay in bed hoping your mooring lines will withstand the winds fury. Then there are the neighbors, sometimes too close for comfort as little as fifteen feet apart. Yet amidst the incessant complaints, grumbling, and griping, there’s an unspoken bond that emerges when something goes awry, and suddenly you all pull together to help one another. It’s not for the faint of heart when a low growl emanates from beneath your house, sending shivers down your spine only to realize a beaver is chewing on your logs supporting your house. Suddenly, you find yourself at the mercy of a hungry rodent! Then there’s the ramp, that leads from the walks up to the parking lot. It can be daunting at times feeling like an accent to Mt. Everest when in the summer, the river is at its lowest and the ramp is at its steepest and you feel like you’re never going to make it to the top. It can hold you prisoner in the winter during an ice storm. Even with chains on your shoes, the ramp becomes impassable, locking you out from the world. You can’t get to your car. You can’t leave the moorage even if you wanted to. But then comes Spring, and like bears emerging from hibernation, your neighbors come out on the walks embracing the sun’s warmth. The same people who stood shoulder to shoulder with you in the storms darkest hour. You’ve fixed broken pipes together and gathered together for soup. Then Spring has arrived with its off-tune melody of mallards and geese squawking overhead as they are returning to their nesting grounds. Baby ducklings hatch out before your eyes, while you spot a beaver with her baby kits swimming close behind. There is new life all around you. In those moments, you forget the harsh winter. You’re in love anew with the unfolding beauty all around you. It’s all new and exciting again, the sight of geese in flight, as they fly over you and the playful dance of fish as they snatch bugs from the air. They eclipse the not too distant memories of winds roaring through the gorge. You forget as you breathe deeply, taking in the clean crisp air of Spring, air cleansed by winter storms. You forget when the clouds begin to part, making way for the sun to cast its diamonds across the water's surface. You forget when the river becomes like glass at that certain time of day, mirroring a perfect reflection of houses and boats. You forget when at night, house lights twinkle on the gentle ripples of the river, you forget. You forget the troubles when fishing is just off your back deck. When you can walk outside and step into your boat, which beckons to take you across the water to “your island.” You forget the first exhilarating time you take your boat out and feel the freedom of pushing away from land. When the Spring air, smelling of cottonwood, wafts past your face as you cross over the river to that special place you call your own, were peace settles on you like the gentle landing of a butterfly. In those moments, you realize why you're here. For the geese, the mallards, and the graceful egrets sharing your watery domain. You’re here for the skies where osprey’s soar overhead, and fish as you watch in amazement. You’ve witnessed as they fished and fed their babies in the nearby cottonwood trees where they’ve nested. You’re here for the walks on the beach that you share with deer and beavers. For the resilient people you’ve shared life with. “River people” are different. They don’t care for so much for pristine lawns or gleaming facades; most don’t care that you have boat parts hanging off or around your house. That’s for others to worry about—those who have moved from land and haven’t yet accumulated. The “old timers” have a certain respect for one another akin to the camaraderie soldiers have, having weathered battles together. We’ve all arrived here for different reasons, and most of us stay. While the average in a “land-locked house” is eleven years. Looking around at my neighbors, I see many of us have been here well past that. Why do we give up big, expensive houses, some on acreage, to live here in a house half the size, floating on logs in a river? We are drawn to water. We are water people: we are the water planet. Sixty percent of our bodies are water. Water covers seventy percent of the earth’s surface. We swim in it. We bathe in it. We play in it! We love it! Dropping anchor and moving off land is not for the faint of heart. Not all are drawn to the water’s call. For me, it satisfies something I’ve yet to understand. I do know, though, that the thought of leaving and moving back on land weights heavy on my soul. From these excerpts from my diary of our first years here, I’ve done my best to describe how beautiful it is, how frightening it can be, and how wondrous it is….and the people whose stories provide a continual feast, nourishing my soul. It started when we drove down Marine Dr. and saw houses in the river. We wondered, what would it be like to live on a floating home?