A New and Keen-Eyed Caretaker of Rivers
Ryan Schnurr
by Cynthia Davis
The Maumee River Basin with its tributaries and feeder rivers totaling four thousand miles, stretches from Fort Wayne, IN, to Lake Erie just beyond Toledo, OH. Ryan Schnurr, who grew up in Fort Wayne, became curious about the Maumee River which is actually the confluence of three rivers. He lived only a few blocks away and realized that, except on the bike path, it could not be seen because of levees, buildings, trees, and concrete walls. He read widely about it, and, in the late summer of 2016, he decided to walk the entire length of the Maumee River Valley.
He writes, “I wasn’t the only one to confuse the boundaries of the Maumee. Early mapmakers did, too. Some of them thought it was the Ohio River. Others thought the Maumee was part of the Wabash.”
Schnurr’s book, In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River (Belt Publishing, Cleveland, OH, 2017), is packed with the history of the region (especially the conflicts between white communities and Native Americans), science, concerns about the environment (especially the pollution and algae blooms that cause dead areas), geology, and humor. The sources are interestingly annotated, too. Schnurr, who is a doctoral student in American Studies at Purdue University, clearly loves a story.
And he had a chance to tell his Maumee River story at the Wild Rose Moon Performing Arts Center in Plymouth, IN, in November 2021. I was in attendance as Schnurr presented his research and experience of the Maumee with extraordinary liveliness and humor.
Schnurr wasn’t the only one with a river story to tell that night. John Kennedy and Chris O’Brian of the musical group Kennedy’s Kitchen (based in South Bend, IN) performed “The Great Kankakee,” a song John wrote commemorating another Indiana river. The Kankakee River was lost forever in the early 20th century when it was turned into farmland, thanks to, “the greatest feat of engineering skill in the history of mankind.”
George Shricker, founder of Wild Rose Moon, also performed a song he had written, an ode to the local Yellow River where he walked and meditated regularly years ago to comfort himself during a lonely time.
After the initial presentation and the musical performance, Schnurr engaged the audience in some creative group writing. He divided the audience into groups of 3 or 4 persons and commissioned them to discuss how to talk to the river. He encouraged each group to contribute lines to make a poem to the river.
This was all a pleasant surprise to me, because I have my Ph.D. in poetry from The University of Notre Dame. I wanted to tell Schnurr that what he proposed we do involve both the literary devices of apostrophe (direct address to someone or something not in the poem) and personification (treating an object or quality as a person). I remembered writing my own poem to the St. Joseph River across from IUSB when I was an undergraduate there.
Instead of pointing out my erudition, I let myself drift back in time to revive the mystical experience of walking beside that gorgeous river, letting it comfort my loneliness as if it were a living thing, and feeling grateful that no one had turned it into farmland.
Ryan took the lines the audience members offered and created this poem:
What The River Knows
Wild Rose Moon audience, November 19, 2021
I want to ask the river:
Where do you start? And where do you go?
What do you see? At night —
Shooting stars? Phases of the moon?
Do you remember the glaciers?
How does it feel to be firm, cold glacier,
Then melt into warm water? To know
All the tribes that camped along your banks?
Who first uttered your name?
Do you remember the origin of human beings?
What do you think of the changes we’ve made?
Will you remember us? Do you want to?
How does it feel when the storms come through?
When your trees and sand do to another place?
To have a canoe paddle thrust into your bosom?
Timeless river — why are you so frightening?
How have you managed to survive this long?
Have you ever been wrong? Have we ever been right?
What do you need from us?
Can you possibly forgive us?
Together we audience members shared these feelings and thoughts and became co-creators as we contemplated what a river means to each of us. We moved past our differences and found a place where we could connect with respect, peace, and surprise. The poem anchors those minutes of shared humanity.
