Ships Passing By . . .

At first light, it appears as a shadow – silent, rising out above the River. Then, the shape resolves with steel and purpose, a freighter sliding down the St. Lawrence with impossible grace. Seven hundred feet of raw mass and structural strength, yet it moves with the quiet confidence of a heron over glassy water. The water parts without some protest, folding around the hull as though it has always known this visitor and expected its return. In the stillness of the dawn, there is no sound of industry, no hint of cargo. Only a ship, the River, and the grace of raw power set in motion.

For as long as people have traveled these waters, the River has been a channel of opportunity. Long before steel freighters carved their way through the morning haze, birch bark canoes carried the Algonquin and Haudenosaunee. French explorers followed, then fur traders, timber rafters, and grain schooners bound for Atlantic markets. But it wasn’t until 1959, when the United States and Canada completed the St. Lawrence Seaway, that the River truly was opened to the world. Locks, channels, and engineering resolve transformed a wild, glacial River into a deep-water gateway that could move iron ore from Minnesota, grain from Thunder Bay, and steel from Hamilton, straight to global ports. What began as a canoe route is now one of the most strategic commercial corridors on earth.

Though he has grown up on the St. Lawrence River his entire life, David Saunders, a young freighter first mate, doesn’t navigate it, not yet. His career has taken him west, into the inland, to the vast, ice-carved expanse of the Great Lakes. Out there, he moves 30,000 tons of cargo iron, grain, and stone through wind gales that build mountains out of fresh water.

David did not discover freighter life by accident. It was set quietly in motion by the River that raised him. He spent his childhood summers on Idle Isle, a small private island tucked in the St. Lawrence River across from Point Vivian, NY. His grandfather, Mike Saunders, bought the island in 1975, and for over fifty years it has been the spiritual center of the family, a place where time stretched, generations gathered, and life made sense. While other families vacationed to somewhere new each summer, David returned to Idle Isle every year, breathing the same River air, listening to the same ship horns as freighters slid past the island at dawn and dusk. It wasn’t just scenery, it was a calling, forming in the background of his life.

Mike was the kind of man who offered guidance without speeches. He understood people in a quiet, profound way, and he understood David. David was not built for fluorescent lights and office corridors – he was built for motion, weather, and challenge. One afternoon, when David was still a teenager, they stood together by the Idle Isle pool as a downbound freighter passed, carving its way through the River. Mike watched it for a moment, then didn’t waste a breath, “You should be a merchant mariner.” It wasn’t advice, it was recognition. David never forgot, and he followed the path Mike saw in him.

David earned his license the hard way; four years at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, MI, followed by long months of sea time, and a steady climb from cadet to first mate. When he’s not navigating through weather and water, he returns home to a farm in Philadelphia, NY, just miles from the River and the island that shaped him. His life moves between three worlds: months commanding ships across the Great Lakes, weeks tending the farm, and days on Idle Isle watching his beloved freighters pass.

Every time he comes home to Idle Isle, he watches the freighters thread the River’s narrow channels and rock-walled passages and feels a different pull. This is where he first heard a ship before he ever saw one, the long, low horn echoing between islands. One day, he says, he’ll bring a freighter down through these waters, past the island that raised him, through the Seaway he has yet to run. For now, the River waits, a first chapter that he hasn’t yet returned to finish. He knows every voyage starts and ends where it began.

David’s path was never about escape. It is always about return; return to a life steered by family, by River, and by the quiet certainty of a man who knew who he was meant to become.

By Mark E. Russell, Idle Isle, NY.

He has applied legal precision and narrative clarity to every venture he’s led, from early startups to global agencies and now to CatalystXL, the software-as-a-service company he founded to simplify how organizations communicate and operate. Russell’s writing has been featured in TBD Magazine and Mastering Communication at Work, and his ideas have contributed to two chapters in the New York Times best-selling business book Spend Shift. He lives in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, with his wife, Amy Saunders Russell, their three River Rat children — Emma, Sam, and Trey — and their miniature schnauzer, Stella. The Russells divide their time between their home overlooking Lake St. Clair and their summer island retreat, Idle Isle, on the St. Lawrence River.