The River as a Symbol in Go as a River

The Literal River

In Go as a River, water flows through the story in two concrete forms: the free‑running Gunnison River and, later, the man‑made Blue Mesa Reservoir that drowns it. The Gunnison once rushed through the valley where Victoria Nash grew up, supporting the town of Iola and her family’s peach orchard. After the construction of the Blue Mesa Dam, the river was plugged and forced to become a lake, submerging the entire town and its farms. The reservoir remains a physical presence in the second half of the novel, a silent layer of water covering the landscapes of Victoria’s youth.

Where the River Recurs

The river appears in nearly every major phase of Victoria’s life:

• Prologue: The narrator (Victoria) speaks from a later time, imagining what lies at the bottom of Blue Mesa Reservoir. She names the Gunnison as the original wild river and describes how Iola was deliberately drowned.
• Chapter 12 (Nine): Wilson Moon tells Victoria he will “go as a river” rather than flee Iola, coining the phrase that will echo through the book.
• Chapter 20 (Seventeen): After Ruby‑Alice dies, Victoria whispers “Go as a river” to her, linking the phrase to release and peace. She later reflects that “Wil and the Gunnison River … continued to teach me this” as she learns to trust her next step.
• Chapter 21 (Eighteen): Victoria begins weekly walks to the confluence of the North Fork and the Gunnison Rivers, making the river a routine site of contemplation.
• Chapter 26 (Twenty‑Three): While sitting in the forest, Victoria realizes that her own way of “going as a river” involves gathering all the pieces of her life, not just flowing forward.
• Chapter 29 (Twenty‑Six): Victoria meets her adult son Lukas at the edge of Blue Mesa Reservoir, the very body of water that now covers her childhood home. The scene takes place on the pebbled shore, directly linking the reservoir to both loss and reunion.

How the River’s Meaning Changes

The symbolic meaning of the river evolves in parallel with Victoria’s inner life.

1. The River as Lifeblood

In the earlier parts of the story, the Gunnison River is a natural force that sustains Iola. It irrigates the orchards, carries the train’s whistle, and marks the rhythms of the day (the 9:22, 2:05, 5:47 trains). For Victoria, the river is a taken‑for‑granted backdrop, part of the stable world of family and farm.

2. The River as Change and Loss

When the dam is built, the Gunnison becomes a lake, and the river’s meaning shifts to loss. The prologue explicitly calls the project “heroic” in official history, but Victoria tells “another story” of grief. The reservoir drowns not just buildings but memories: the farm, the peach tree that bore the sweetest fruit, and the graveyard. The river’s transformation mirrors Victoria’s own displacement when she leaves Iola and uproots her orchard.

3. The River as Release and Acceptance

The phrase “go as a river” first spoken by Wil becomes central to Victoria’s eventual acceptance. For Wil, it seems to mean moving on without resistance. For Victoria, understanding the phrase takes time. In the forest scene (Chapter 26), she explains that flowing forward against obstacles was only part of her story. She also gathered “all the tiny pieces” of people, places, and moments that shaped her. The river, then, comes to symbolize both motion and gathering: a force that travels but also carries sediment, memories, and continuity.

By the epilogue, Victoria is “ready” (as the Annie Dillard epigraph says) and stands by the river in a state of quiet readiness. The water no longer represents what she has lost but the flow of life itself, which she can finally trust without resistance.

Connections to Characters and Themes

Victoria Nash

The river is Victoria’s primary teacher. Her journey from an obedient farm girl to a woman who makes courageous, painful choices is a movement from fighting change to flowing with it. The river’s damming and the drowning of Iola force her to let go physically; the lessons Wil passed on help her let go emotionally.

Wilson Moon

Wil introduces the phrase “go as a river.” He is a drifter who refuses to be pinned down, even when staying costs him his life. For him, the river is a way of being: unhurried, responsive to the landscape, and free from attachment to place. His death in the Black Canyon foreshadows the violent disruption of both his life and the river’s course.

Seth Nash and Town Prejudice

Seth Nash represents the rigid, bigoted forces that try to control others and the land. His hatred of Wil leads to murder, just as the “heroic” dam project drowns a community without consent. The river’s damning thus parallels the moral damning of those who refused to see Wil’s humanity.

Themes

• Love and Sacrifice: Victoria gives up her son and later leaves Iola. The river flows on, carrying her sacrifices into new life.
• Prejudice and Injustice: The dam displaces the townspeople; prejudice kills Wil. Both are man‑made disruptions that the river endures.
• Resilience and Survival: The river keeps flowing through droughts and dams. Victoria, like her transplanted peach trees, learns to survive in new soil.
• Memory and Place: The reservoir does not erase memory. Victoria carries Iola inside her, just as the river carries sediment. The annual stone‑placing ritual for her son is a way of marking memory against the flowing water.

Study Questions

Conclusion

The Gunnison River and its subsequent incarnation as Blue Mesa Reservoir are the most persistent concrete symbols in Go as a River. They represent the flow of time, the inevitability of change, and, finally, Victoria’s release into acceptance. The river teaches that we cannot stop the current—we can only learn to move with it, carrying our pasts as sediment that enriches, rather than drowns, our futures.