“Here we stand upon the bridge, time is passing by. Time to tread the road ahead, time to say goodbye,” – Steve Gibbons

Elbows, hooks, corners, turns, bends – all good names for those places in rivers and creeks where the direction of the water flow changes.

These corners are typically good for fishing as the water undercuts muddy or grassy banks or runs up against immovable objects, like granite walls and boulders, often producing deep holes where fish like to congregate, waiting for food to wash downstream. For some reason, they are places that seem attractive to humans too, fishing prospects aside.

A lot of camps, cabins or homes are built on river bends. They are places of beauty for sure, but I think there is something more to it than that. Often river bends occur at places where the surrounding banks are high up off the water, providing good places to survey the scene from a comfortable vantage point. But I think the human attraction to these places belies all of this.

here seems to be something innate or intrinsic about these places that provides us with a feeling of satisfaction or rightness in experiencing them, the way a painting looks when it’s level on a wall or a line that sits plumb. That feeling is hard to describe. Similar satisfaction is not often associated with straight stretches of water unless they possess distinctive rapids or waterfalls.

In Arizona, on a trip with my boys, we stayed at a place along the Rio Grande called the Riverbend, where we were able to enjoy a clutch of hot springs they have there. It was glorious absolutely. They enforce quiet rules and turn on strings of colored lights hung in the trees on both sides of the river at night.

I stopped at a river turn this past week, one that has been well-known to locals and is often visited. At this place, the river makes somewhat of an “S” shape, with the elbow I’m referring to located on the southeast corner. The riverbank is about 10 feet high at this corner, with a short, steep trail leading down to the water and a streamside white pine to lean against. The ground is covered with pine needles, making the path slippery for those not paying attention, unfamiliar or wearing shoes with slick bottoms. From the corner view, I can look upstream until the stream bends again.

The flow of the current is gentle and nodding, tapping repeatedly the end of a partially submerged branch. With recent rains, the water is higher than it usually is at this time of the year. To my right, the water diverts and circles back upstream in what looks to be the beginnings of an ox-bow cut-off. The water is slow as it skirts a peninsula covered in knee-high dried grasses.

On my left, the stream typically picks up speed over a lengthy riffle where brook can be seen spawning each autumn … Not today.

The water is too deep to see to the bottom, and there is no bright sunshine to help. The sky is that bluish-gray mix, with some floating mist-like clouds. If it were summertime, I would expect rain showers very soon. But at this time of the year, this is often the everyday look of fall – seemingly deciding whether to send down some rain, sleet, snow or simply float on past the scene.

On the far side of the river, red-twigged dogwood and tag alders choke any potential pathway, with mud, water holes and unsteady ground dominating the topography. Much higher in the background, the base of a hillside is guarded by sentinel maples that have already lost all their leaves. Back farther in the distance, other maples are covered with bright golden leaves that still cling in large numbers to their branches. Even farther still in that background, green conifers stand the tallest above all, providing a serrated, toothy edge against the gray-blue sky.

A fish jumps out about 30 feet from shore, not a big one, but big enough to make ripples that resonate out across the quiet waters, relaying a clear message – I am here! On the near shore where I am standing, young dogwoods brush against my jeans from my thigh up past my waist, in some cases. The rest of the vegetative growth here is from much older trees that even include a few white, paper birches. To me, this place is stunning to see.

I often appreciate subtlety as much as the dazzling and shocking sights of red sunsets or the green, blue, red and orange fizzy and luminous colors of the aurora borealis. So, my view here this morning is a study in understated tones of yellows, browns, golds and greens. To those pigments on the palette, you can add the licorice red branches of the dogwood, the silvery blue of the water and the almost glow-in-the-dark monster green color of the lichen covering the wet, dark trunk of that old white pine.

A great blue heron lifts itself awkwardly, with heavy flapping wings, up from the edge of the marsh in the corner farthest away on the ox-bow extension. My first thought is that this seems a bit late for this bird not to have already migrated. However, I could be wrong. Often, some of the species that arrive among the earliest in spring – like great blue herons – can be some of the last to migrate south. I watch the heron follow the watercourse as it flies upstream, looking as though it will land in one of the tall trees I can barely see from my viewpoint. At the same time the heron disappears, another one flies up out of the same area along the river, followed by yet another. This now appears to me to either be a family group or a stand of herons resting along their migration route.

Whatever the social connection, this was a beautiful experience to see these great birds. They seemed to characterize the entire scene set before me with their languid and deliberate wing motions and the slowness of their flight. It was definitely a quiet and peaceful morning along the river. With the high water, the usually rushing and talkative stream was silent.

Not a slurp, not a glug.

Nothing.

One of the only ways the water revealed its motion was the imperfect, fuzzy and quivering reflections of the tag alders and dogwood that were painted across its surface. No bird sounds. Even the herons were silent in their flight. It was as though I was watching a silent movie.

For me, that’s the kind of peace and silence that I crave, to soak up big, deep gulps of nature through all my senses. I need that replenishment on a consistent basis to avoid, at least temporarily, the stress and anxiety borne of our insane society, with its wars, politics, starvation, sickness and cruelty. If I were so inclined today, I could walk the trail to a place downstream where a bridge crosses over the river. It’s on an almost straight stretch and provides a wide view of the surrounding landscape.

In my reasons stated earlier for humans to enjoy straight stretches on a river, I somehow forgot the deep and lasting connection to rivers found at bridge crossings.

In fact, I would argue that bridges have every bit as much meaning to people as riverbends. Some spans, just by their existence, have garnered not only appreciation but fame. Examples would include the Mackinac Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. There is one place I know where a steel truss bridge used to cross cars and people over a river not far from our big rusty mining town. The bridge was replaced decades ago – with a much less impressive guard-railed structure – but locals still refer to the road that leads to the crossing as the “Steel Bridge Road.”

Bridges possess magic, providing poetic and literal connections for people – water under the bridge and all that, as well as affording simple and effective means to cross otherwise deep and sometimes treacherous waters. They also are good places for flights of fancy and dreaming, hoping and wishing. In some instances, they provide a setting for people like me to contemplate eternity, life and mortality The closest bridge to my riverbend vista is a paved county road span that is far too often frequented by passing vehicles, usually those that travel a few miles over the speed limit.

That’s not the kind of place to stand safely or gather any peace of mind.

But this riverbend is.

And so, I will stand here with hopes to see the herons return or watch the clouds pass by and the occasional fish jump.

Sometimes, life doesn’t have to pass by in an exciting fashion.

Sometimes, it can crawl past, slowly on all fours, without uttering a sound.

That’s good enough for me.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.