Considering a River: Lookout Creek, Writing, and a Brief Meditation on Flow

Andrew C. Gottlieb

Andrews Forest Writing Resident (2012)

Poetry, Prose

I will tell you of a river, Lookout Creek. Of writing about that river.
Of ways to think about and experience that

river.





The act of writing balances experiencing the object and interpreting the object,
an exercise that is no longer the object at all,
and thus deals with symbols and interpretation
of certain perceptions.





Lookout Creek flows
through the 16,000 acre H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
on the western side of the Willamette National Forest,
emptying out
into
Blue River Reservoir. The creek, as wide and fast as it might be, is only about 5 or 6 miles long: perhaps why it’s called a creek. About an hour east of Eugene, Oregon, the Andrews Forest is a research forest, a Long Term Ecological Research site, and one of the benefits of that designation is that Lookout Creek, flowing in a research area, is closed to fishing.








A river is a linear object,


in a way, but it’s impossible

to experience it linearly.
We experience it
non-linearly.
A hunk here, a hunk
there.

Even floating the course of an entire river,

that’s how it is.

Continue reading “Considering a River” here.