 | Miss C&O Canal or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb |
I’ve heard about her. I didn’t think I’d have anything to worry about. I thought my expectations were low from my experience on the GAP. My dear, sweet GAP. How fair.
I arrived for our first date with such ignorant bliss. I didn’t know she’d change me. I didn’t know she’d get me so angry. I didn’t know she’d make me so scared. I didn’t know her at all. Sometimes, I think she wants it like that. She’s got scars from her past that I can’t heal and I’m not sure time will either.
She’s a monster feeding on determination and the unrelenting. Devouring the type As from DC and sucking the life from the yinzers out for recreation.
She’s a creature I learned to respect but I also grew such a sense of compassion for her. Her bitterness is valid! She’s betrayed! She’s seen the ambitious before; they created her! They couldn’t tame the Potomac, so they took their ball and went home…only to get their shovels.
Can you imagine the cheering for George Washington and his vision? He started this. He bought the wedding dress for her and promised her a full life of prosperity. Her groom never showed. These puddles that I run through are fragments of her tattered veil and train. Trains. the mistress that stole her suitor. Industrious men discarded her because they learned they could harness her essence.
Steam. She boiled over at the abandonment. These lock houses are blemishes on her epidermis. She wants to hide in the woods now. The locks are the sharpie drawings of college frat boys as she slept, trusting her creators for a future. She can’t wash them off.
Powerful men want control. She learned to be envious of the Potomac. The Potomac’s whispers from the distance drives her mad. The Potomac was an unbridled horse that killed men without reserve. Men cowered and fled, but they wanted to ride high on the saddle and pull the reins to their whim. Nay, The Potomac said, as she bucked them off. How she wants to cause waves. She wants rocks. She wants to overflow into her surrounding terrain. She hasn’t been domesticated; she was born in a cage, and if it weren’t for the Potomac, she might not have ever known any different.
Decades went by with her in the dark. She nourished the oaks at her edge. When they fell, her soul was lifted ever so slightly. Each branch brought her to a height she hadn’t reached. Leaves fell and pond scum grew on her surface. She’s incognito. She’s the angler fish of the shallows. She wants you to be forgotten by your loved ones, just like she was forgotten by those who loved her.
When I met her, I was lost. I didn’t think she was there. Was I in the wrong place? Did I arrive too late? I felt stood up. I felt abandoned, just like the muddy path I was on that wasn’t much more than a foot wide. Am I supposed to be here? Does she want me here? It was clear to me that many others decided they did not want to be here. It was clear to me that even those who were supposed to be here wanted to let her be.
After an hour, I sensed her danger. She was here, but I didn’t know where. I pedaled faster. I pedaled harder. My legs cried and eyes dried. As it got darker, I saw her. I stared the spirit in the eyes. I thought I could pass through, but she wants to be seen. She’s dragged trees and branches in as accessories. She heard the torments of the Potomac. She sees the kayaks and knows she’s been betrayed by her makers. She was supposed to be the solution. She will not rest until she is useful. She will not rest until she is given what she was built for: her purpose. The reason why she was born was to transport the ambitions of mankind between Pittsburgh to DC and back again.
She’s alive and reaches out from the Paw-Paw tunnel. The murder scene of her husband that never was.
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