Water Running Everywhere

At the cabin this week, the warm temperatures have gotten ahead of the snowstorms. Everywhere I go, in any direction I turn, water is running: off the roof, down the gutters on the cabin and shed.

When I go for my walk, both Tahosa and Cabin creeks are rushing, stirred up with brown organic matter and flecked with bubbles. At Fritz’s pond, a small stream pours into the pond and out the other end, into a small meadow of willow bushes, their branches tipped with soft buds.

Along the way, water flows alongside the roads and from the fields, where the strands of grass are yellow/brown and flattened from snows. All this water creates ponds that will last only a few weeks.

It’s even dripping inside the cabin, as the snow melts on the roof and finds cracks in the ceiling that I’ve never been able to fix since the 2013 flood.

As the snow melts, things are uncovered: the door mat that blew into the side yard last winter and I haven’t seen since last February, and a pile of rotten wood that needs to be relocated. And I hear the first hummingbird of the season—a welcome sound and sight.

I see one pasqueflower in the front yard, only two or three inches high, the flower not ready to open yet, and I think of the other pasqueflowers still underneath the ground, feeling the earth turn warm, the sunlight finally free to penetrate the soil. All that life underneath, just waiting, even as Mount Meeker is still blanketed in white and framed by aspen blossoms. It could be Mount Fuji bordered by cherry blossoms—the same blend of strength and delicacy.

As spring comes to the high country, releasing all this water, something in me wants to break open, too.

Comments

[Julene A Bair]

"All that life underneath, just waiting." You really make us feel the burgeoning presence of new life, the resurgence. What a celebration spring is! This is as close to eternal as we humans can imagine. It gives me hope because I know the earth will transcend us and all the damage that we're doing to it.

[Kathy Kaiser]

Thanks, Julene. I hope you're right, that earth transcends us and will live on.