Nataša Gregorič Bon and Nataša Rogelja Caf
Walking and writing with rivers, seas, oceans, and other water bodies due to their fluid, volatile, and permeable nature often inspire, nurture, soothe, and rejuvenate the individual or collective ways of being. Water gazing, walking, and meditation could be some examples. Rivers with their murmuring or gurgling nature awaken and foster steps, words, rituals, legends, and traditions. The inscription by the Baiheliang/ White Crane Ridge, carved into a stone ridge at the Yangtze River, dating back to 763, is merely one example that brings to light not only practical and navigational data, but also reveries on human-river interplay.
Rivers flow both along the landscape’s surface and through its underground, where they are nourished by numerous underground springs and connected to several streams and tributaries. They form the river network that is vital to the water cycle that nourishes trees and flowers, evaporates into the sky, and irrigates the land in the form of rain, snow, etc. Rivers like other water bodies permeate different realms and embody different forms – liquid, solid, and vapour – and therefore can be studied and observed through different methodological approaches, sensory modes (either emotional or technical, such as remote sensing technologies), perceptions, and lifeworlds.
Similar to the rivers, the maritime routes also open up different stories, imaginaries, and voids that communicate, describe, or portray the waterways. Seas are empty and full, wrote Jake Phelan (2007), because they are simultaneously full of routes, memories, and symbols, and yet they are empty and hardly deserve to be called a place. How can we think, walk, and write with these different waterbodies? Inspired by Malinowski, who once wrote in his diary that thought takes impetus from life, not vice versa, we perceive thoughts as drifting floats or buoys that mark the current, not navigate it (1989: 236).