gently down the stream by Taylor L. '29

Last Friday in my Concourse seminar⁠01 my first-year humanities learning community! , our topic of discussion was an excerpt from chemist Primo Levi’s memoir, The Periodic Table. I’ll provide an excerpt of that excerpt here, where, in describing his outdoorsy friend, Levi observes that: 

“He did not belong to that species of persons who do things in order to talk about them (like me)”

I, too, belong to that species now because I’m a blogger, so I’ll tell you about what I did this Saturday.

The first break of the school year passed this weekend, since we had Monday off for holiday. We get four-ish breaks this semester, so that means that a bunch of living groups and clubs and teams take this rare opportunity to go on trips and retreats up in the Northeastern countryside to escape the Boston bubble for a few days. I’m in a club called Amphibious Achievement, which teaches local high schoolers how to swim and row on Sunday mornings, and, quite on theme, we decided to go whitewater rafting up in central Massachusetts.

Personally, I love driving and find it to be really calming, so I immediately volunteered as chauffeur for the five hour drive. MIT gives students discounted rates for renting through Zipcar, which conveniently allows you to bypass the 21-year-old age restriction on rental cars. I woke up at 6am (very painfully) and hopped onto the T to end up at East Boston and collect the car (this took an hour). 

I felt like the Toyota Prius and I were fast friends, even though it was trapped very tightly in a parking spot, and I can’t parallel park or un-parallel park. The car didn’t like me as much though, and at 8am, just as I was pulling up to the Stud, it decided to go on strike and flash a low tire pressure warning.

this is not what you want to see!

We drove over to the little Sunoco gas station next to Random Hall and filled up the tire. The gas cap was missing, but the cashier told us that tires are like soccer balls, and once you fill them, they stop losing air. So five minutes later, and $1.50 poorer, crossing our fingers, we set out on our way. 

The drive over was super pleasant once the car was no longer in active mutiny. I forced everyone in the car to listen to the entirety of The Life of a Showgirl, and after that, Taylor Swift on shuffle. The New England countryside is gorgeous at this time of year, with all of the rolling hills dotted with forests, and the occasional river underneath the road. It reminds me of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which, as a shameless tourism plug for my state, is a must-visit attraction if you’re near North Carolina in the fall. 

It was only until we arrived at the rafting place and I left the car that I realized my grave mistake. In my confused, sleepy 6am packing, I hadn’t brought: a. a change of clothes, b. new socks, or c. long pants. In the fifty-five degree weather⁠02 It was a lot colder than it sounds , I felt the consequences of my actions immediately. 

The plan for the day was a nice little rafting stroll through Class I, II, and III rapids, because none of us really knew what we were doing. We boarded a repurposed school bus (there were a bunch of young kids, and I’m a bit disappointed nobody called it the Battle Bus) and stopped for lunch at a little campground. It really made me feel like Henry David Thoreau to be so surrounded by nature. They made me lock my phone in a little box, and, with that, I was officially off the grid. 

the battle bus!

Our raft was helmed by the sweetest guide named Hannah, who is also the coolest person ever and leads rafts on the weekends as a change of pace from being an EMT. She didn’t teach us how to row (she may have overestimated our intuition), so we sort of flailed around for a bit until we discovered that we didn’t have to be in sync if we rowed with enough passion. 

The vibes were great. If I had to describe it, it would be like the “row, row, row your boat” song. The river was lined by tall deciduous trees, which were a quarter of the way to their full autumnal colors. Maybe I have Taylor Swift on the mind because I listened to her for five hours that day, but it reminds me of the Folklore and Evermore album covers. 

We had a pact going in that we would emerge completely unscathed, 100% dry, and that fell apart within the first fifteen minutes. Sometimes we would get stuck on rocks like beached whales. Throughout the whole trip, I’d see cute little kayakers in their neon kayaks with their little paddles, and I was inspired to sign up for kayaking as my next PE class. 

To be completely honest, I had very few thoughts in my head during the rafting, which was probably a very good thing. It was super meditative. We also jumped in the water near the end, which was really super cold. I felt like one of those people that does 5am cold plunges. 

Near the end of our two hours on the river, we began approaching the rougher rapids. I remember reading a book called The Boys in the Boat during middle school, which characterizes the extent of my knowledge of rowing and crew, and they always described their rowing as them becoming a united organism, pulling oars as one, moving through the water with a single mind. Whatever the opposite of that is, is how we made it through those rapids. All I can say is that we didn’t capsize.

About fifteen minutes after getting off the water, I took the most rewarding hot shower of my life. On the drive back, I seriously put Taylor Swift on shuffle again ⁠03 one-star Uber driver behavior . 

I think this is a suspicious amount of Taylor Swift album cover references now, but they’re just very relevant here. The sky really reminded me of the Lover album cover. I just love skies like this. I even have one as my phone background. 

this picture was not taken while I was driving!

I also love highways and interstates and all of those roads that take you really far away if you let them. It’s always really comforting when you’re on a road trip that the exit signs look the same, with the same white numbering and green and yellow accents, regardless of whether the exit takes you to New York or Oklahoma. It’s a nice bit of continuity. I even considered getting one of those green highway signs as dorm decor, but I ran into a roadblock because I have no idea how to procure one of those. 

What I love less is that, once you leave the highway, Boston roads are no joke, and city driving in North Carolina did not prepare me for this. Sometimes the lanes here just disappear. Like, the painted lines just go away. 

i found this reel while doomscrolling, and it really captures the “driving in boston” feeling

When we got back, the weather decided to turn all gloomy, broody, rainy, blanketed in Gotham fog, which also feels very New England-y to me. I wish I’d gotten a picture, but just picture a streetlight on a dark night, illuminating rain coming down furiously at a forty-five degree angle. I got the whole gamut that day.