I looked over at my eleven year-old son. “Want to see what it’s like to be underneath?”

His eyes lit up. “Yes!”

The wind was at our back but the current pushed against us. Gripping the paddle, he burst with a bit of energy forward that I could not quite match. The engine of the train had just begun to cross the bridge, and sure, the freight trains are long, but we weren’t sure how long nor if we could make it.

We were kayaking on the Buffalo River with friends. Much of the stretch we traveled is in the shadows of grain silos, only a few still in operation. There’s newly designated riparian nature preserve and an abandoned ferry tagged with the Stick Figure Guy. There’s active factories and parks. The river bends and curves through Buffalo history and the nature that claimed it after industrial retreat. It’s longer than you think it is.

We were about to be at the halfway point of our trip. There’s two rail bridges at this point, standing in parallel. Both are single leaf Bascule bridges, hinging at the same point. One of them is permanently aimed at the sky. It is a landscape defining landmark, visible from very far away, marking the area as both industrial and formerly so. We used to need two rail bridges. Used to.

My son and I paddled towards the roaring train on the active track. You could feel the vibration of the bridge in the water. We were under the cantilever section of the abandoned bridge when I could see the freight cars most clearly. They were pulled so fast, one after another. I was mesmerized, all of my attention completely consumed by the sight. I noticed the cars were swaying a bit, side to side. They seemed a bit feral, like they could break free and fall over into the water at any moment. The part of my brain where these thoughts raced apparently disconnected from the rational part, the part that would have remembered trains run over this bridge all the time and the water’s yet to greet them.

Fear, or awe, told me to have my son back off and I told him too. Obediently, he did. I have an instinct to be away from trains and even being in the water under a bridge seemed to be tripping it. Then I realized everyone was behind us, we went forward, under the bridge, like I snapped back into reality. The last car went over the bridge as we were there. My son pointed it out.

It was a black oil car, pulled quickly out of sight. The booming noise nearly immediately replaced by a quiet matched in its impact and volume. The sounds of nature returned: birds, water, wind.

Buffalo is both of many things: industry and nature, legacy and present, fun and work. On this trip we saw it all in the concrete behemoths passing time and the seemingly dozen herons on the shores. At one point an osprey and two eagles got into a tiff about a fish. At another we could barely hear each other over an industrial gases factory.

I’d never kayaked before I met my husband, and now it is one of my favorite things to do. I’m fond of nature, and I’m fond of exercise. This lets me do both. I find it pulls my attention completely into the moment, integrating my body and mind. It lets me see things from a view I don’t often get. I leave the experience calm and tired, even with slipping as I disembarked my kayak and falling into the river. Two other times I disembarked successfully. I laughed so hard.

The world is a whirlwind of distractions and I’m increasingly grateful for the experiences that keep me in the moment, enjoying being alive.