The day’s forecast for rain has instead manifested in a momentary flurry of snow — neither long nor heavy, but just cold, dry, and windswept enough to cloud air as well as sky. There is no runoff here yet, but just west and south of us, down the Gorge, the water will already be running high and hard and fast.
As high, at least, as current levels allow; two or three years of deeply intensified drought have reduced its level drastically, and even the decent amount of precipitation of this winter just formally ended will not be enough to bring it to normal levels for long.
Of course, we aren’t seeing it now, either, although it’s one of the few “public” activities that social distancing would permit us now. It’s easy to stay away from other people if you’re not there for purposes of rafting or other group events, and at this cold and windy time of year, you’re unlikely to see anyone along the highway’s edge anyway. It’s also possible to see most of the great river from one’s vehicle, meaning that there is no need to share open space in order to see it. Photographing it, of course, is another matter.
Wings captured this shot, though, a good decade and a half before this novel coronavirus would enter the public consciousness, or community. He took this with his old film camera, standing atop one of the rocky slopes along the highway’s verge. It was, if memory serves, taken at roughly this time of year, perhaps a little further into spring, when the rapids were still high and powerful, but the sage had come into its own silvered self, lush and full already. Remnant patches of snow are still visible here and there, and that is not unusual; it’s customary for us to get heavy storms well into April, and flakes that melt as fast they fall even in the second week of June.
And we shall welcome the water, however it comes, for these are the waters of spring: high, hard, heavy, healing. These are the waters of birth, and rebirth: a violent rush that ushers souls and spirits into a world awaiting them with bated breath, the same waters that hold them suspended in their safe embrace before birth, and that welcome souls upon their return from the world of emergence.
It is why water is the first medicine — it is the lifeblood running through the veins of Mother Earth, the very thing that keeps her, and her children, alive. It is the substance that links her with the skies, fallen as snow or rain, thence to evaporate and return, the medicine that underlies the story of the Skystone, its colors reflected in the rushing current of the Great River now.
Outside our boundaries, the world reels with illness and death, caught in the too-oft-fatal throes of pandemic. To heal, it, and we, need the waters of spring, now more than ever.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
