APPRECIATION: DROPPING A MUG IN A RIVER IN THE MORNING AND FINDING IT DOWNSTREAM IN THE AFTERNOON

This is a story of loss, of sombreros, of summer, of friendship, of steelhead, and early morning coffee. Mostly it’s the story of a plastic travel mug that I dropped one summer morning while standing knee deep in in the Deschutes River. I was wearing a sombrero, and hoping to catch a few morning fish. My mug, conveniently snug in my flannel pocket, slid out, and then down the river.

The mug had the name of my high school on it. It was a gift from some positive committee at the high school I attended, and later student-taught at. It was the kind of mug that you liked, but liked enough to take camping. I was sad, but not heartbroken, as I watched it drift down the river.

I told my friends to keep an eye out for it. We were rafting down the river for the next few days, and we might see it. And we did, six hours later, see it floating and circling in river foam near a tangle of ambitious blackberry brambles. There is a temptation to turn this into something of a parable. You can’t escape your past. Don’t hold on too tight. Keep your eyes open, you can still find what you thought was lost. What we once thought useless or not valuable, with time, becomes a treasured part of us. Blah. Something like that.

The mug is on my desk right now. Truth is, many mugs come and go from my life. This one has survived moves and losses and garage sale purges. In part, I’m sure, because I don’t have a deep sentimentality for it, and yet there he is when I need him. He does the job, and I guess time and experiences produce sentimentality.

I appreciate losing, and then finding. I appreciate well used travel mugs, especially ones that have done some traveling on their own.