…if I could have drawn a picture it would have been of the river and an eight of women, rowing with high tide into a clearing of the rising morning mist.
(From “Tidal River”)
The Oarswoman: A Story of Rowing, the Coast Guard, and Making Your Mark forthcoming from Pegasus Books, summer, 2027.
“The capacity of the human body to flip, leap, and spin thrills me. When I was a fourth class cadet, I’d watch an upperclass sprint around the track. He galloped the backstretch, and so quick was his footfall, so short the instant between strike and spring, he appeared weightless, as much in the air as on the ground. I couldn’t not watch him run. So, too, the varsity four. In my trance, while the rowers ran through their drills, their individuality dissolved, and they became abstract, geometrical lines and curves, like arabesques of motion inscribed on air and water, evanescent and eternal. ”