We awakened this morning to a pond overflowing.
The water came last night — and came and came, a veritable miniature river boiling and burbling down the ditches to spill into the pool to the west, a pool now so full and large that it could almost more properly be called a small lake.
Almost.
This is a first in more than year.
It won’t last long, of course. Much of it will be routed back out of the pond across the land; that which remains will evaporate fairly rapidly in the warming air. Still, the long-range forecasts insists that we shall have extended rains, perhaps as soon as Wednesday — an early start to the monsoon that, should it come to pass, will keep the pond at least partially filled for the foreseeable future.
We have, in this place, three sources of water: deep groundwater, via our artesian well; the rains; and the headwaters of the Rio Lucero, further up in the mountains above us. The first is what keeps us in running water; the second and third, what keeps the water running, at certain times of year.
But the flow from the headwaters at this time of year is creation writ small: process miniaturized and individualized, brought down to our level in way that allows us to comprehend its mystery and power.
It’s a phenomenon we are privileged to witness every year at this time, in ways large and small — the buds turned catkins turned first leaves upon the trees, the first blades of grass, the first wildflower petals. There are other firsts, too: first butterfly, first dragonfly, first bee, first hummingbird; first nest, first egg, first hatchling.
Last night, we were reminded of the fragility of these firsts when the harrier returned near sunset. The small hawk is fully aware that there are magpie nests in several of the trees and one thicket of red willows, and she had hopes of a meal from the one in the small juniper. The magpies themselves, of course, had other ideas, as did one exceptionally large raven, perched atop a nearby latilla as though to frighten her off through sheer disparity in size.
He was only marginally successful. It took the sudden appearance of a human-sized predator to convince her to try her luck elsewhere.
Creation.
It is a fragile process, and a sometimes violent one, too. This is as true of the waters as anything else; our world, renewed, can be born of soft rain and of the storm simultaneously, of the gentle flow down a hand-dug ditch and the roiling waters of a river overflowing its banks. Even we humans are born in water, and of it, too, emergent from the headwaters of blood and history in terms as much literal as metaphorical.
Last year, there was no flow from the headwaters here for us, no run-off and no rain, either. It has made this week’s gifts all the more powerful and poignant, too; we have had it brought home to us in very tangible terms how fragile our world truly is. For the moment, we have been granted that which used to be near-automatic, but last year was withheld entirely: the first medicine, the gift of the headwaters, full and overflowing.
~ Aji
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