Karl Meyer: A river robbed of its breath and time

A great river runs backward here. Backward and uphill. In this valley so many call home miles of the Connecticut are stilled, vacuumed into bizarre reversals, defying nature itself. Most view it merely in passing, a watery reflection saying “river.” But no, it’s a trompel’oeil — one begging them to think, to save, to act.

For 51 years New England’s River has been rendered alien in Massachusetts, it’s bond with the sea broken as flow repeatedly ceases traveling downstream at Northfield, Erving, Gill and Montague. Forced upon itself 127 miles from the sea, a nightly death march sucks it into the bowels of a hollowed-out Northfield Mountain.

Look hard at the stilled, silent waters; the life-starved pools. No river would lay claim to them. Don’t tell me it’s “cleaner” now — that there are fish; that you can swim most days. Most days means nothing to a river stilled and silenced. And fish? The idea of fish is a cruel joke to a river when eggs, larvae and young are daily hors d’oeuvres to a machine inhaling miles of current.

Again, the Connecticut is New England’s “most beautifully landscaped sewer,” its fish mercury-laden, its million-gallon sewage spills plaguing impoverished cities every other week. Somehow the unacceptable is accepted here. A replica river appears all that’s required — an industrial parlor trick kept just tidy enough to satisfy the senses. We robbed a river of its breath and purpose here —cut its lifeline to Mother Ocean. Prideful, indifferent, we’ve stolen a river’s time.

Karl Meyer

Greenfield