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Dear Readers:
Rivers have characterized our civilizations
since we first began to record time. We have cried by their
banks, built our settlements by them, charted and explored
them. As we developed, we learned to channel them and build
bridges across them, measuring our societies' progress by the
scope of our engineering projects. Rivers have been our boundaries, our
protectors, our scourges and our sanctuaries. Maybe most importantly
to the human spirit, they have also been the source of some of our
most inspiring journeys and legends. 
There is a place called Three Rivers in
California that nestles the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s a
great place to go to when you’re done with a tough week or a
tough lifetime, and if you’re very lucky, you’ll be able to go
there with someone you love. Like many other places that are
characterized by the joining of three rivers, it can be as much
of a symbolic, as a physical destination. Like other places that
share its name, it lives with the encroachment of
civilization. Each person who visits chooses to bring
reverence or exploitation. I sometimes wonder: Can we, being
what we are, reconcile ourselves with our surroundings any
better than can reconcile ourselves with our own selves? And is
the way we view the world around us – as something to be
appreciated or controlled - a measure of our personal growth?
So, maybe, that is what the 3 Rivers
collection represents – Our seeking of nature, refuge and
habitat, both within and outside of us. To reconcile all three
with our temptation to alter them and bend them to our will is,
ultimately, a process of coming to a better understanding of
ourselves, as well as of the world around us.
Best wishes,
jon_bohrn @ augustpoetry.org |
