Journey to the River’s Source: A Quest for Clean Water

Oh, you wouldn’t believe how the river appears from where I stand. It bends like a silver ribbon, but when you get closer, when you kneel at its edge, you see how much it struggles to be itself. The water carries not just stones and leaves, but bottles, wrappers, and a kind of sadness too heavy for a river to bear. I want to trace it back, to see if the beginning is still pure, untouched—maybe like a story before people start scribbling all over its pages.

Oh, the walk upstream is no easy thing. My shoes sink into mud, branches grab at my sleeves, and the heat presses against my back like a secret enemy. But I keep going because I imagine what waits at the source: clear water spilling out of earth itself, something clean enough to taste the sky. The thought of it feels like hope in my throat, sharp and bright, and I’m afraid of what I’ll find if it isn’t true.

Oh, sometimes I wonder if rivers are like us. They start off pure, full of possibility, only to be sent winding through towns and cities that feed from them, take from them, and leave them scarred. I think about how people say teenagers are reckless, messy, lost—and maybe that’s true—but I wonder if what we carry is just the dirt from everyone else pouring into us, expecting us to flow steadily under the weight.

Oh, when I finally see it—the spring bubbling through moss and rock—it almost makes me cry. The water is so clear it looks like glass bent into motion, as if time itself is rushing to begin again. I kneel down, cup my palms, and drink. For a small moment, I believe in things starting over. I believe there is still a place that’s untouched, still a version of me who hasn’t yet been marked by all the hands that press against my life.

Oh, and now as I walk back, the river beside me whispers the same sound it made at the beginning. It feels like it has been waiting for someone to notice, to follow, to believe in its quiet story. Maybe that’s why I came—because I wanted to see its truth before the world could rewrite it. And if the river’s journey circles back to me, then maybe my journey circles back too: both beginning and ending with a thirst—for something clean, something real, something like the very first drop that started it all.