Water

I used to live in a small house in the north. The house sat above a river, about a hundred yards or so.

Across the river I could see a farm, the flat green fields went right down to the water. There was grass everywhere.

Brambles covered the hillside, getting ready to flower. I imagined a whole world hidden under their thorny maze: raccoons and mice and silent fawns, keeping still.

Sometimes deer grazed in the yard, maybe four or five—a mother or two with their young. They walked past with a delicate step and looked at me.

At night I sat on the porch. The stars were bright. The sky was such a deep blue-black. It seemed like it was closer somehow, up there in the north. I listened to the crickets chirp. I thought that’s all there was, at first—just crickets and stars. But then I heard a dog barking, faintly, far away. Geese honked overhead. The cat walked past, a black shadow in the blacker night. I liked how cold the air was.

I live here now. It’s hot and dry and dusty. Today I took a long walk on a busy road in the wind. A storm was coming. There was a steady stream of cars on one side of me and a grassy field on the other. There were small black birds gathered in a group on the grass. I walked past and watched as they lifted up into the sky.

After a good rain the air is different and the soil and the plants and the people too. Life is restored—on the surface, a little, underneath, a lot. Hell, even the cars are brighter. As I walked along the highway the big rigs looked almost beautiful.

There’s a canyon nearby, populated, but still wild and remote. Storms regularly wreak havoc in it, washing out the road, but the people who live there love it so much they stay anyway. The scent of sage and sycamore and chamise that fills the canyon afterward is like nothing in this world.

Soon the water will be rushing again. Streams, creeks, rivers. Last time it rained my son and I went up to the mountains and scrambled down the creek under the bay trees. We climbed boulders and jumped across rocks. We found so many clear deep pools and little rushing streams, and always around the next bend there was the promise of more, so we kept going.

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