The River Doesn't Care What Season It Is

There’s a stretch of road I take most days that runs along the river for about a mile before it cuts back up into the neighborhoods, and most days I still catch myself really hoping to slow down for it, even though I’ve driven this exact route probably a thousand times by now. Something about a big river just sitting there doing its thing, indifferent to whatever’s going on in my week, resets something in my head for the next few minutes.

Cincinnati’s whole relationship with the river is a little strange if you didn’t grow up here. Half the city’s identity runs through it, the bridges, the way downtown and Covington sort of face each other across it like they’re in conversation, and half the city seems to actively ignore it exists most of the year unless there’s a flood warning or a fireworks show. I’ve had people who’ve lived here their whole lives tell me they can’t remember the last time they actually walked down to it instead of just driving past.

Winter’s when I notice it most, honestly. There’s a particular kind of grey the water goes in January that I don’t have a good word for, not exactly slate, not exactly steel, somewhere between those with a little brown mixed in from whatever’s churned up down at the bottom. Ducks that don’t seem bothered by any of it. A barge going by so slow you’d think it wasn’t moving if you didn’t check back in five minutes later. I’ve stood at the same overlook near downtown in July with the water high and fast after a wet spring and in October when it’s low enough you can see the old stone footings of something that used to be a dock, and it genuinely does not feel like the same river twice in one year, even though obviously it is.

I don’t have some big metaphor to wrap this up with, and I’ve caught myself trying to force one a couple times writing this, something about steady work and slow tuning and a river that keeps moving regardless. I’ll leave that alone. Some things are just worth noticing because they’re there and you happen to be standing next to them at the right minute, not because they’re secretly about something else. The river doesn’t know I tune pianos for a living. It was here before the city figured out what to build next to it and it’ll be here after, moving at whatever pace it wants regardless of what season the calendar says it is.