Ode to Oxbow
Every apartment, every town where I have lived is marked prominently in memory by the running trail that I frequented while living there. I’m not a fast runner, nor do I go particularly long distances, but it soothes my nervous system like nothing else, so I always find my trail. The McEachern Greenway in Concord, North Carolina, the Bolin Creek Trail in Chapel Hill, the mountain neighborhoods above Beaver Lake in Asheville. When I moved to Rochester, Minnesota I found a couple favorite spots - the Douglas State Trail that passed right by my apartment, and then about 15 minutes down the road, a place that became dear to my heart, Oxbow Park. It’s an unassuming park nestled among cornfields, named for the U-shaped bend in the branch of the Zumbro River which runs through it, but the wooded hills of Oxbow feel surprisingly remote and wild.
Oxbow started as a place to run and ended up becoming my haven, a place of life-saving sanity. I’m glad I found it before the Cataclysm, before the Great Undoing in which psychedelics upended reality, my marriage exploded, and the pandemic arrived all within short order of one another. The summer of 2020 stands out in memory, as I know it does for so many. Newly divorced and still reeling from the collapse of what I thought life would be, I would see patients in the COVID clinic all week, then join the raging protests or traverse inner realms on the weekends. It felt like the world was coming undone. What kept me tethered to ground, to a sense of inner stability and connectedness, were the hours upon hours spent walking the trails of Oxbow.
At least once a week, often more, for a full year, I drove myself to the park. But I found that couldn’t run on those trails anymore. Physically I was fine. But my psyche was demanding I slow way, way down. And the trees, I think, wanted to be noticed, the river wanted to be seen, and the effusion of wildflowers wanted to be appreciated. The place demanded attention. To my surprise, my own nervous system responded, began to find a safety and openness in slowness that I have never experienced before. It was as if I and this place began to match each other, to co-regulate.
And what magic emerged! Minnesota is a place of beauty and of extreme seasonal waves. The winters are deep and long, and the profound cold asks for certain gestures of respect that aren’t to be disregarded. Go out ready for the ice, though, and the utter silence is a glorious relief; the usual trails are hidden and the waterways have become paved paths; the reflection of moon on snow lights the night. The movements of hare and deer are evident with tracks visible in all directions. Then, when the first buds begin forming on the trees, the real excitement is happening down close to the Earth, as the ephemeral spring wildflowers take advantage of the growing amounts of sunlight, before the leaves arrive to block the view. Skunk cabbage, bloodroot, dutchman’s breeches, white trout lily, Jack-in-the-pulpit. Summer bounds onto the scene. There is so little time, and so much to do! The walls of green grow like Jack’s beanstalk. The leaves become so full, and so quickly they burst into the red and orange flames of fall.
I entered a Dream state every time I stepped foot in Oxbow, every week every wander was a step deeper into the living, breathing World. A bluebell sea washes in waves over the forest floor, and looking into the face of a single bluebell is looking into the farthest reaches of the cosmos, is looking into the face of the divine, is looking in a mirror. To be clear, I did not take mushrooms or any psychedelic at that park – Rochester is a small town, and I was a newly-minted pediatrician at the time, so I did not dare the chance of running into my patients or mentors. Those journeys happened elsewhere. But Oxbow was the place I learned that magic is real, that the World is alive, and I am alive in it. It is the place where I learned that slowing way down, and feeling, feeling everything, feeling frozen and leafless, feeling abundant and full, feeling the thrill of the first new growth, is what a relationship with the World is about.
Not long after the year at Oxbow, I left Minnesota for Boulder, Colorado. This land of high-altitude, thin, dry mountain air, of snowy peaks and rivers, of 300 sunny days a year, absolutely feeds my soul. I have found my trails here, too, a favorite running trail and a few areas reserved for slow, connected wanders. However, despite Boulder being an undeniable outdoor paradise, I have yet to find a place that touches me quite like Oxbow did. I think of Oxbow fondly, wonder how it’s doing now under the blanket of winter as I’m writing this, wishing the deer well in the cold, imaging the silence. Thank you, Oxbow, for breathing me alive.