Bells by the river. by Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald, originally published on Medium, June 2025.  Reissued by Mnoty Press, October 2026.

There's something I find very fulfilling about ringing bells beside a river. Especially when the river is making sound I can hear and try to harmonize with. Waterfalls and rapids are my favorites, but oceans and lakes are lovely, too.

I think my practice in this sense started with playing the flute by lakes in Michigan. I remember playing on the north shore of Lake Michigan, probably twenty years ago, maybe a bit more, and I was trying to tune in with the spirit of the lake while I played. I had trouble blowing and making sound as the wind was blowing. Eventually, I found an angle with which the wind off the lake and my breath were entering the flute together to make the sound.

Not long after that, I took a road trip: my first trip across the plains of North America. I recorded a bunch of sounds along the way, and really got into the practice. I remember liking the slow, constantly changing rhythm of the waves on a calm day on the south shore of Lake Superior.

As I got out into the plains, I had a good time playing my flute and rattles by the small lakes. I had added rattles after it occurred to me on Lake Michigan how my footsteps walking across pebbles was similar to the sound of a rattle. Rattles are really special instruments, and even now I feel like I'm only beginning to grasp the depths of their use.

A while later, I moved to the west coast, or perhaps I should say the east shore of the Pacific Ocean. After I had been there for a few years, I started increasingly adding bells to my rituals.

The Pacific Northwest is a lovely place. I started bringing more instruments further, with a backpack full, sometimes bringing a drum or fiddle, and increasingly bringing bells. Even a single small brass bell can be a really wonderful thing.

I did this out of the Olympic Peninsula several times, even making it kind of an annual pilgrimage in the spring before tourist season started. I spent most of my time, though, around the Nooksack River, north fork and middle fork, and started to notice how the brass bells would resonate in my spirit as I practiced, surrounded by trees, birds, and a beautiful flowing and singing river.

I have spiritual beliefs, and among them is the belief that one's musical intention reverberates through and is carried by stuff like water and rocks. When it's a river, like the Nooksack, I'm sharing my music with both water and rocks. When it's a noisy piece of river, my heart is singing along with the complex and dynamic percussion ensemble.

Somehow, brass bells seem to work best for tuning in to this whole thing. I still bring other stuff, as perhaps the rocks, water, birds, trees, and spirits like variety and fun as much as I do.

Peace.