A Love Letter to the River

There’s a moment as you cross the Strand, waiting in the scrum of tourists and city workers as buses, taxis and bikes flow by, where, if you look up, you see a silver sliver of the Thames. The river is only a block away, but, if you’ve walked south, this is the first inkling you have of it, a miraculous luminescent gap in the cold concrete.

Humans have always lived by water, the shining bodies of possibility that stretch off towards other places, inviting connection and communion. Before we had roads and runways, we needed rivers and the sea. Maybe it's the memory of that need or the suggestion of escape that makes bodies of water so alluring. Or maybe it's just the peace that comes from starting at something humans can't develop and destroy.

London is a patchwork of green spaces, acres of parks and commons and gardens where you can lie in the grass, smell the earth and forget the ceaseless city for a moment, but it's the untamed bodies of water that soothe the soul the best. Oceans, the lungs of the world, offer the sweetest solace, but the murky Thames has its own magic, and even the dirty canals, where plastic bags float through the water like so many fish and shopping trolleys glint from the silty bed are enough to calm and quiet the mind.

Like fire, water can be a spectator sport. Around every grotty urban pond, men sit with fishing rods as props to validate their daydreaming, while people pause as they cross the Thames, taking a moment to gaze at the swirling currents and the light dancing across the water. In a world of rules and constraints, the wild, untamed river is a precious thing.

As I walk along the strand, shuttled between commitments, like a pawn in someone else's game, I glimpse that glinting river as it runs, regardless of wars, plagues and commerce, towards the eternal sea, and I feel free.