So You Row, Huh?

Let me try to break the story down. I was a rugby player for almost eight years. My Mom thought it was getting too rough on the field. My captain got his ear ripped off one week. Another player broke his leg in three spots the next week. It was rough. My Mom rowed in college and suggested I try the sport. I did – fell in love with it, but also still loved playing rugby. Try balancing both sports, they said. You’ll do great, they said. Wrong. I found myself sitting bench on the rugby team and rowing in a C-level boat on the water. I had to choose. Do I stick with the team that I was comfortable with and see where that takes me OR do I venture in a completely new direction and hope for the best? I chose the latter option and haven’t looked back once. Rowing has done so much for me I don’t even know where to start. I have found myself interconnecting my academics with my athletics at college. I can be writing an anthropology paper, for example, and weave metaphors to the sport throughout the piece. I remember sophomore year of college I was taking an anthropology course, and the assignment was to write about “place.” I spent the year between freshman year and sophomore year in London, training with a team “across the pond.” I sometimes go back to that anthropology paper to read about Putney (the town I trained in). For some reason, it always brings me back to that moment of arriving in a completely new place – terrified. I have attached the paper below.

Essay One

In the Fall of 2017, I landed in England. I had never been there before, knew almost no one in the country and made my way to Putney, a suburb of London that sits along the Thames River. Rivers are an integral part of my life. I am a rower. I was in Putney for the next year to row for one of the oldest rowing clubs in England. From one perspective, rivers are things that never really seem to change, as is the case with a famous old river like the Thames and yet as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

The impact Putney had on me can be best described through the analogy of the river: The two Putney banks on either side of the Thames giving shape to the river and representing a “Before” and “After” version of me, the Putney Bridge connecting the two banks (connecting the two Nicholases) and the river itself that represents the passage of time flowing through Putney and changing the river banks over time. An excerpt from one of my favorite books highlights this analogy well. Tiziano Terzani, author of “A Fortune-Teller Told Me” wrote, “The water which has yet to pass is tomorrow, but it already exists upstream; and that which has passed is yesterday, but still exists, elsewhere, downstream.” (Terzani, 2002, pg. 18).  Terzani shares similar philosophical insights throughout his book, but the references to water flow well with the story I am sharing – my journey of self in a specific time and place.

A few emails off to people I did not know were all that supported the grand plan for me to spend a year in England. I had researched famous rowing clubs online, and many of them were in Putney. I contacted my top choices, heard back from a few of them and settled on Vesta Rowing Club (VRC). The head of the rowing program at VRC, Harry, seemed to be the nicest of the strangers who replied to me, followed up the most and shared the most information about how to settle in over there.

When I first touched down in England, the weather wasn’t the only gloomy part of my arrival. My outlook for the near future was warped by nerves because I feared to be alone. Really alone. Not just alone, but at the same time, far away from everyone and everything I knew. In terms of time and distance, this was the farthest away from things I had ever been. I was not part of this new environment and didn’t have a clear vision for how that would change. In a way, I was between places – definitely not home, but also not really “here” either. The left bank of the Thames River as it went through Putney is where I ended up living for the year. This side of the river represents the “Before” Nicholas. The other bank of the river, the right bank, is where VRC was – the boathouse and my teammates – and represents the “After” Nicholas.

Walking over the Putney Bridge every day made me feel like a tourist on good days and on bad days, like an outsider – someone who was there, but didn’t really belong. It was exciting, but it was also terrifying. Unlike New York City, there is no neat grid structure to the streets, and also unlike New York City that has rivers that neatly run North and South, the Thames River snakes through London, which greatly challenged my sense of direction. I struggled to orient myself in the new environment, which contributed to my stress and anxiety. But, the one landmark that always centered me – literally and figuratively – was the Putney Bridge. The bridge was a major river crossing, with train tracks (tube rails), four lanes of busy traffic and pathways for pedestrians. Yi-Fu Tuan, the author of “Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience”, referenced a similar insight about recognizing certain places from different perspectives. He wrote, “Long residence enables us to know a place intimately, yet its image may lack sharpness unless we can also see it from the outside and reflect upon our experience.” (Tuan, 1977, pg. 18). If the “Before” Nicholas read this quote when he first arrived in Putney, he would have gazed across the bridge hopelessly searching for a way to better connect with the place. Although I hadn’t read Tuan’s work at that point, his message here is clear. I was not yet able to open myself up to the Putney environment and all it had to offer. Instead, I felt trapped – but, I also knew that in order to gain the most from my time in Putney, I needed to fully commit to giving it everything I had. In a way, I had to surrender to Putney.

After spending about a week in Putney, getting somewhat acquainted with the sights, it was time to make my way down to the VRC boathouse for my first official practice. It is hard to describe how scared I was stepping into that boat bay for the very first time. Unfamiliar faces, a new equipment layout, and a long season ahead not knowing if I would fit in with the rowing team were all potential issues I was playing through my head. I became very aware that while my voice had not changed, I was, as the only American at VRC, now the one with the funny-sounding accent and using the wrong words for things. My mind was clouded with negativity. All I was experiencing and all I could envision moving forward was a significant amount of fear and anxiety burrowing itself ever-deeper into me. Everything was new and I wasn’t in my element – I wasn’t in control. I had to let go, and my first challenge was introducing myself to the rowing team.

The first friend I met in the VRC boathouse was James King, better known as JK. He was around my age, and I instantly felt comfortable with him. I felt like he could relate to everything I was experiencing because we were both at that stage in our lives where change and growth coincided almost entirely with one another. He welcomed me into the rowing team with open arms, introducing me to numerous teammates, and reassured me that I would fit right in.

One block in from the river bank and running parallel with the row of boathouses was a street filled with small stores, coffee shops, and pubs. I began to build a routine for myself. After morning practices, I would head to one of the coffee shops. For about two weeks I kept the coffee shops on a rotation because I wanted to decide which one was my favorite. I decided the “Grind Coffee” café was going to become my “regular” spot. I started going there every day after my practices, ordering what was now my favorite drink – Grande Mocha – and experimenting with different menu options for breakfast. The café was on a street corner about a five minute walk from the VRC boathouse. When you step in the door, there are large coffee grinders with baristas working away behind the counter. The smell of fresh ground coffee invites you into the café, and couches lining the walls greet you as you walk past the counter. Dark wood beams on the ceiling, and an outdoor area protected by a green awning is accessible through French doors. The best way to describe the atmosphere of “my spot” is to compare it with a coffee shop in downtown Brooklyn, New York, Blue Bottle – the place smells great, all the seats are filled with people who are young and loud, and the place vibrates with energy. Sometimes it was hard even to hear myself think, but I still felt comfortable whenever I settled into a booth. This routine gave me comfort because it was something that was an anchor in my schedule every day. Every morning I knew that after practice I would head to the café, enjoy breakfast, and plan out the rest of my day.

Morning practice was never easy. Walking out of my apartment when the day hadn’t yet transitioned from night messed with my head. I would start walking towards the boathouse and, by the time I made it to the bridge, the sun was finally revealing itself. It was beautiful and, for the first few morning sessions, I just took the moment in as I kept on walking. I started to think about how “picture-perfect” the sunrises were. I decided that every morning I would stop in the middle of Putney Bridge, look around, take in where I was – really be present – and take a picture of the sunrise as the vibrant yellows, oranges and reds streaked over the horizon and painted the clouds. It became a routine and eventually a ritual for me. On the days we had evening practices, I would capture the sunsets on my walk back over the bridge to my apartment. The photographs I took opened and closed each day like first and last pages of a chapter in a book, with my practices and whatever else I did on a particular day being the pages of a story in between them.

I remember my first water session on the Thames clearly because it surfaced so much emotion. It felt like home to me because I was so comfortable sitting in the boat, rowing on the new river, and studying everything along both banks. The tide was low, which meant that you could see all of the greenery usually hidden by the water. A soccer (football) game was going on in the stadium along the right side of the river. The field lights were shining so bright, dancing across the water’s surface, and it so reminded me of rowing back home. The sounds from inside the boat and from the water as the oars sliced through the surface brought back more than memories. The sounds filled me with emotion. Keith H. Basso mentions remembrance in his piece “Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape” that aligns with this point of surfaced emotions. He wrote, “Place-based thoughts about self lead commonly to thoughts of other things – other places, other people, other times...” (Basso, 1996, pg. 55). I believe rowing on the Thames for the very first time reminded me of rowing back home because, although the location was different, the motions, feelings, and mindset felt so familiar.

One of my favorite parts of rowing on the Thames was being able to travel downstream past the Putney Bridge. I was able to capture a different perspective by rowing under the bridge. Everyone sees the pavement of the bridge as they walk across it and the stonework along its edges, but very few people ever think about the complexity of the support beams underneath that keep the bridge above the water. Looking at the bridge as a body, many can see the skin – the stone, cement and asphalt – that cover the body, but very few can see the skeletal structure – the bones – that support the body. Rowing underneath the bridge I felt as though I had already bared myself to this new place, and now the bridge was doing the same to me.

As my connection with the rowing team grew, I started to view myself as a true member of the team. Not a participant, but someone integrated into the family and culture of the boathouse. It may seem silly to recall now, but I remember when I first felt comfortable enough to joke with my teammates. I never really thought about it before, but joking with people requires trust. Without trust, there is no joke at all and just offense. They invited me to brunches, team events, and to watch football matches at the local pubs. I was accepted and was content.

I am very fortunate for the time I was able to spend in Putney and leaving was one of the hardest things I had to do. I had to say goodbye to the people I met and to the special few who became very close friends. I grew as a result of my interactions with these people and my surroundings for that year. Looking back on my time in Putney, a blend of lonely days that would seem to last forever and weeks with friends that would fly by in the blink of an eye, I can see that it impacted me in more ways than I ever would have imagined. I changed. I have become more independent and self-confident. Being in Putney also helped me better deal with internal issues. As a result, I am more resilient. When I first arrived in Putney, the “Before” Nicholas on the right bank of the Thames was always thinking about multiple futures and often feeling overwhelmed with anxiety. When I left Putney, however, the “After” Nicholas on the left bank was grateful for the time he spent there – truly thankful – and for the opportunities that allowed me to accomplish so much on and off the water. Referencing Tuan’s quote from earlier, I am now able to view Putney from the outside and reflect on my experience. My perception of Putney shifted over time and, even though it physically did not change, my view of it did as I changed. I evolved over time because of Putney, and appreciate that the connections, friendships and memories I made while there helped me, and will continue to help me, in so many ways.

My first rowing season back at Trinity we were in the boat for the first time, and the sounds from inside the boat and from the water as the oars sliced through the surface brought back more than memories, the sounds filled me with emotion. I was thinking of Putney.

* * * * *

I don’t know who or where I’d be without rowing. To my parents, teammates, coaches, supporters, and disbelievers – thank you.

Nicholas