River

Mountain once told me that flowing is the privilege of all things, not just rivers. Between sun and ocean, invisible air becomes water-laden wind, flowing in gyres toward the highlands. Drops of rain flow, first apart then together, becoming streams, becoming ponds, and finally becoming me. I am River, one of many, and within me flow countless motes of earth, stone, life, and everything in between.

One day, a boy and his father visited one of my banks. Most creatures of the land tended to take a drink when I afforded them the chance, but humankind had other pursuits. From an assortment of long bags and a large, plastic box, the father unloaded a tarp, a couple chairs, several rods, and several smaller boxes. Meanwhile, the boy found a pebble pile that suited his fancy, and then began tossing them.

I was tickled as pebbles began plinking into me. Mountain once told me that even rocks one day must fall, but my surface is far more used to the descents of leaves or rain than that of whirling pebbles. I could not help but to chuckle, my ripples rolling out from where the pebbles fell.

“You gotta give it a good spin,” the father suggested.

The father tossed a pebble of his own. It had a good spin indeed, but I promptly welcomed it into my depths all the same. 

Grumbling, the father tried several more tosses before finally one of the pebbles he loosed bounced a few times atop me. His cheer was quickly interrupted by a groan, though, as his vigorous throw had also thrown his whole glove off of his hand. I lapped up the glove and let it join the depths, for what else could I do?

For several more minutes, both boy and father tossed pebbles until finally they were both able to bounce a stone upon me. Fish fled in consternation at the rain of rocks, but the humans seemed quite proud of their work. They stayed at my bank for a few more hours, and even managed to coax a few fish out with their rods, strings, and hooked morsels. But they retired from my banks before dusk, as they were creatures of daylight.

Meanwhile, as dusk approached, the local Eagle also retired to her nest in the stolid acacia that overlooked me.

“This is a good place, River,” she told me. “The trees are tall and sturdy, and the fish are tasty and many.”

“Why thank you,” I replied simply. I was far from the mightiest river, but pride swelled within me nonetheless.

Eagle nodded in satisfaction. “I think I shall stay here for some more seasons yet,” she declared before tucking herself into her sparse nest.

While some rested, the coming of twilight brought others to action. After a drink, Coyote roamed my banks in search of berries and other such bounty. Years ago, his ancestors would have had to contend with hulking bears and sloths during such a search, but nowadays Coyote only worried about mountain lions and humankind.

“I don’t know about them bears or whatnot, but humans ain’t so bad,” Coyote told me, sensing my reminiscence as he took another drink. “They leave food lying around, they chase away bullies like wolves, and sometimes they even leave chickens lying around.”

“Don’t they try to attack you for eating their food?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Humankind made these things, guns. You ever see a crow drop some poor creature onto a rock from a mile high? Guns are like that, except they bring the rock to you. If a human sees you and it has a gun, well you’re toast. Unless they like you.” Coyote explained animatedly.

“That’s utterly horrifying.” 

“Yep.”

Seasons passed. As promised, Eagle stayed by me, hunting my fish and the fish of lakes and lagoons nearby. Coyote made no such promise, but I still felt it as it padded quietly alongside me during dusk and dawn. As the seasons passed, eventually so did generations, each at its own pace. With time, Eagle and Coyote passed away, and I came to know their children as Eagle and Coyote. And the son of humankind who had learned to skip stones on me grew to adulthood.

Flowing is the privilege of all things, and as the seasons passed, new guests joined my currents. I carried bits and pieces of paper, plastic, and metal, bringing them wherever they would go. As I did with branches, dead fish, and algae, I brought these new guests to new banks wherever I could, though some I left in the depths and some I brought all the way to the sea. 

The Coyote of that generation enjoyed sifting through these strange new shells in search of food.

One evening, I asked him, “Is there good food in those bits and pieces? I thought you preferred deer.”

“Yeah,” Coyote shrugged, “but you take what you can get, that’s what Ma always said. You can run out of deer. You can’t run out of this stuff, I think.”

“Even rocks one day must fall,” I repeated Mountain’s adage.

“Okay, okay, we can’t run out… yet!” Coyote replied placatingly.

“Where does it all come from?” I asked.

“I dunno. Humankind makes it.”

“They make it to feed you?”

“Probably not,” Coyote snorted with a grin. “You know how beavers leave all those bits and pieces of tree when they build their houses? It’s like that. Humankind leaves this stuff. Lucky for me, some of it is edible.”

Coyote blanched and spat out something that looked like iron molded into paper. Its surface was slick with food stains and wet with saliva.

“Bleh,” he muttered. “Keyword: some.”

While Coyote treated these new bits and pieces on my banks as strange, new sources of food, humankind themselves had a different approach. Most would totally ignore the things, in the same way that beavers ignored the slivers of wood they strew over forests and rivers. Curiously, some paid additional mind, like the son of humankind who learned to skip stones on me.

Once or twice a moon, he would walk my shores, carrying several large bags. With gloved hands, he would pick up the smaller bags littered near me and place them into the larger bags.

“Why do the smaller bags need to go into the larger bags?” I asked him once.

But it seemed that this son of humankind wasn't a talkative sort, as he resided in silence, content with only his own sighing and breathing.

When his work was done, some of my banks would be clear of these new guests. They would look as they had already for millions of seasons. Perhaps this son of humankind, now a grown man, preferred them that way. But if that was the case, why did humankind make these new guests in the first place? Perhaps most of the rest of humankind simply preferred it the other way.

More seasons passed. Spurred by the sun and the wind, the flighty rains wandered to other lands. My currents grew weaker. I fed the creatures, the soil, and the mightier river beyond as best I could, even while I grew meager. Of course, I was no fledgling rivulet, and I was no stranger to seasons without rain. I knew that either the rain would return to me one day, or I would leave this world and let other rivers thrive in far off lands. But the latter prospect was saddening, nonetheless.

“From the sky, you look as spare as a twig,” Eagle lamented to me one day.

“It is the way of things,” I admitted. “It is the privilege of all things to flow. The rain, too, may fall wherever it pleases.”

“Well it would please me if it fell enough to provide me with fish,” she grumbled.

“I’m sorry,” I babbled.

“Ah, worry not,” she sighed. “You can control the rain as much as I can control the sun. That is to say, not at all. But I must admit, I will need to seek a new land to nest in.”

“But your mother and your mother’s mother nested here,” I protested, “And countless generations of eagles before them.”

“There must have been a day when my lineage first alighted here,” she pondered, tapping her talon on the acacia branch fondly. “And there will be a day when we depart. It is a pity that I must be the one to see it.”

“You are right,” I murmured.

I have seen life come and go through me in every second of every day. This was no different.

More seasons passed. I saw Eagle take to wing one last time, in search of new nesting grounds. She was fortunate, for in the seasons that followed, a new trial graced this land.

One day, as a powerful warmth whipped through the land, I saw charcoal plumes flourishing into the sky. The clouds above were obscured by a hazy halo of bronze. Creatures from far away fled to me, but I could not attend them fully. I was more parched than I had ever been. And then, instead of rain, motes of ash fell upon me.

“What is this?!” I asked Mountain in my alarm. “Has rain given way to ash? Must I learn to become a river of ash?”

“I do not think so, young River,” Mountain answered. It rumbled with a clarity that vibrated throughout me, as meager and distant as I was.

Mountain was old, older than anything I knew save for the sun and the earth. Its ice fed me even when rain did not, and it was the closest I had to a parent.

“Then what is it?”

“It is Wildfire,” Mountain explained. “It thrives in the absence of rain. It burns, rendering life to ash, wiping the slate clean.”

“Well let’s ask it to stop!” I coughed.

“Flowing is the privilege of all things,” Mountain replied. “Wildfire will stop in its own way. When there is nothing left to burn.”

Wildfire never did reach my shores in person, so perhaps Mountain was right. But its fiery curtain hung over the sky for almost a whole season. Life fled in its hungry wake, first to me, then past me. I was more barren than I had ever been, and I despaired.

“Cheer up, River,” Coyote told me one day, a stringy chunk of hare meat dangling from his jaws. “See this hare? It has seeds in its dung.”

“What?” I sputtered, at a loss.

“I’m not gonna make a dung exhibit, even for you, River,” Coyote said gravely, then gulped down his morsel. “I ain’t that kind of animal. But yeah, it has seeds in its dung. Probably from plants in that forest that burned. One day those seeds will grow here. And they’re gonna need you.”

“I can do nothing for such seeds,” I burbled. “All I can do is trickle in the path that I carved when I was young. And wait for Wildfire to return me to the sky.”

“Holy moly…” Coyote replied candidly. “Well, doesn’t matter. I believe in you. I could find some other watering hole, but I don’t think I will.”

“Animals often make poor choices for themselves…” I muttered.

Coyote cackled, “The drought made a savage out of you! Good!”

He slinked away to other pursuits, though I struggled to imagine what sort of existence he could eke out here now.

Towards the end of that first fire season, the son of humankind who had learned to skip stones on me returned. He was an old man now, though he seemed far from frail. In fact, he walked more like a mountain lion than a man. Though he was alone, he set up two chairs, a tarp, and many rods at that place where he once fished with his father.

“You should quit this place,” I warned him, “before Wildfire comes to devour you!”

But again, humans were not a talkative sort. Heedless, the old man began angling. He had great patience for an animal, and though my currents were tepid and my waters dirty, he still managed to fish out a few small chubs and trout. Sometimes he would glance at the murky amber sky, but for the most part he kept his eyes on me. Sometimes rivers took pride in beauty, but I had briefly forgotten the feeling.

I did not know if I could do anything for Coyote, or for the dung-borne seeds he described, or for this son of humankind. But I would truly be a poor and desolate river if I did not try.

Finally, his hook latched onto the glove that had fallen into my depths many seasons past, when his father first taught him how to skip stones. With only slight perturbation to his practiced motions, he reeled it up out of the water. It was tattered beyond all recognition, but he seemed to recognize it all the same.

A few tears came to his eyes, and the features of his face rippled, just like I once did on rainy days.

“Thanks, River,” he murmured.