A bend in the river

I spend part of almost every day in a city so lovely, so old and well-preserved, that it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The streets of my city are 800 years old; they are paved in cobblestone and bisected by a culvert that carries away the water from the five fountains of the Old Town. The fountains are over 400 years old and on summer days people fill their bottles from their springs. The sidewalks are covered by arched arcades - the Lauben - so that on a rainy day one can walk the length of the Old Town without an umbrella. To the south of the main street lies the Münster, the old cathedral that was stripped bare duing the iconoclasm of the Reformation; to the north the Kornhaus and the French Church with its Huguenot past. I walk these streets almost daily, the compact and almost perfectly preserved streets of the Old Town of Bern, paying no attention to the fountains, the Zytglogge, the Münster, until I suddenly catch an inscription, a date, 1526, 1602, and then I stop and look at the bend in the river, the protective U of the Aare curling around the extended finger of the Old Town, the bend in the river that made this a good place to found a settlement, the defensive bend in the river that hugs the city on three sides, and I think: this place has been inhabited for 800 years. This city has nestled up to the river like a child in the protective curve of a mother's arm for 800 years. My feet walk streets that have been walked for 800 years. The river made this city possible, made it defensible, made it livable. The river makes this city beautiful, makes it joyful. From above, from the Rose Garden, the river tucks the city in to bed, wraps it like a ribbon.

From a bend in the river, a defensive bend in the river, came this city, this city that is my home.