The first time I met this river I took my teacher, with blossoms of gray in her hair, into and through a Russian olive tree. The river turned left and my boat, named Ellen, stayed straight. My hands and body moved in fluster while spiked branches reached for us and crunched. “So sorry,” I said. To which Karla raised her right hand and showed me a map of cracks, no larger than a bud of globemallow. Her first time on the oars, she told me, just like mine, she took her teacher through elaeagnus angustifolia. My shoulders loosened as she turned, her eyes looking back downstream. Back to the moment, back to the flow. Her voice faint in the wind, “You should see his scar.”