What Does This River Want to Show Me?
On arriving when you no longer know where to go
For weeks, I’ve been wondering whether I should sell Haubi.
It isn’t dramatic. There’s no financial pressure. It’s more like a quiet, persistent feeling that something no longer fits. As if I’ve moved through something without knowing exactly where. As if I’m already on my way to something else without having any idea what that “something else” is.
Haubi, once bought as a tool for freedom, slowness, and life close to nature, has quietly become a project. An open loop. Something waiting to be resolved.
And maybe that’s the real problem: that everything—even freedom—can turn into an unfinished task.
By the time morning arrives, the viewing is already over. The couple who came to see Haubi are thinking it over. So am I.
Then, almost without noticing, something rare happens: a day without a project. No pressure to fix anything. No pressure to sell. No pressure to get somewhere. Just space.
After meditation, Morning Pages, and a walk, it becomes clearer with every passing hour. Today, Haubi isn’t something I’m trying to sell. He’s simply what I bought him to be.
I decide to fill up the tank, pick up a few things, and buy a small camping chair at Decathlon. The best days often begin exactly like that—without expectation.
Refueling turns into one of those small French adventures. Several gas stations reject my card. Eventually I find enough cash, buy a prepaid fuel code at Super U, and finally manage to fill the tank. Then it’s on to Decathlon in Digoin. A Compact Chair. Twelve euros. Small. Comfortable.
A few kilometers later, I find a spot beside the Loire. A large black locust spreads its shade across an open field. Behind it, the river moves almost silently. Apart from birdsong, there’s nothing to hear. Another traveler is already there—one of those wonderfully French hippie vans. A small Iveco with a handmade wooden cabin on the back.
I unfold the chair, make an iced coffee, and sit down.
There’s no ritual. No profound moment. Just a man sitting on a twelve-euro chair, holding a coffee beneath a tree beside a French river.
And somehow, that’s exactly what makes the moment true.
Nothing is staged. The tree is simply a tree. Its leaves, its bark, the shape of its crown—it carries nothing except what it already is. The river flows because rivers flow. And I sit because there’s nothing else that needs doing.
The longer I stay, the stronger the feeling becomes. Not that I’ve arrived somewhere, but that I’ve arrived here.
The tree stops being just a tree. It becomes a quiet companion for the day, offering shade, warmth, and silence. The Loire stops being a blue line on a map. It becomes a presence. As if, in its own quiet language, it’s saying,
I’m glad you’re here.
Sometime during the afternoon, another thought begins to take shape. What if I followed the river upstream, all the way to its source at Mont Gerbier de Jonc? Not as a challenge. Not as another route to complete. Just as a loose thread for the coming weeks. An invitation to get to know this river.
With that single thought, an entire landscape opens. The source lies near the meeting point of the Ardèche, Haute-Loire, and Cévennes. I picture narrow roads, quiet villages, volcanic hills, chestnut forests, and forgotten places where no one else is around.
Then another river appears in my mind: the Allier. Memories of possible canoe trips. Paddling from gravel bar to gravel bar. Sleeping beneath the open sky. Not a plan. Just another possibility waiting somewhere in the distance.
By evening, it becomes obvious that the real movement of the day has nothing to do with the map. It happened inside. Waiting quietly turned into discovering.
The question Where should I go? became another question: What might this river want to show me?
The next morning, I wake up beside the Loire. I slept deeply. The black locust is still standing over Haubi. The river is still passing by. Slowly. Quietly.
Slowly and quietly, Dirk.
That’s the first realization of the day. Perhaps the only one that matters.
And for the first time, the thought of following the Loire to its source no longer feels like planning a journey.
It feels like the beginning of a relationship.