Santa Fe

Somewhere in the past, the river ran true, unfettered . The river moved against the banks rising slowly, sometimes caressing wooded scape, or brushing cypress trees leaning over the cool waters. I cannot imagine the river any different, but it was, it was cleaner, and fresher, wider, and deeper.

The river hid limestone shelves, and boulders, and rising, bubbling, crystal springs beneath its tannin cloak. Fish faced into the lazy current, rising just to the surface, waiting for damsel flies and may flies, crawling water bugs, waiting to snack on insects who in turn waited to feed on bits of plant-life. A chain of life, from particle to scale to flesh.

Every morning, waking to the whispering mists of cool water against warm air, the river ambled on its undeniable path. Drifting timelessly over the water, spread out like dough on a marble board, the drought quieted waters whispered to the wind. Only a ripple, or a glint of sunlight against an eddy gave away the irrepressible march of water, and plant, wood, and sand westerward away from the sweet earth that birthed the river inland.

Wood storks stood on matted islands of living and rotting vegetation, wedged in crooks and bends. They poked their great wood like beaks in the green mass, probing like new surgeons for snails and insects, and unlucky crustations. While further up the river, hugged into narrow dark channels of clear deep water, white egrets stood like bouy markers in the islands of green. The white plumed birds waited silent, solid as soldiers for the unsuspecting fish below to come within striking distance.

Then with the speed of lightning, and without the clap of thunder, they jabbed, splitting the surface, grasping bream with a vise grip. For a moment the orange beak pauses, as the egret eyes the meal wriggling at the end of a living skewer. With a quick flick of the beak, the fish is turned head first and down the gullet, bulging for a moment in the long curved throat, then disappearing into the gullet, warming the bird, returning energy to the muscles, and wings that propel the bird both in flight and across the island of lettuce like plants growing on the surface of the old and ancient river.

It flowed before man, and during man's infancy. The river roared with the waters of hurricanes and tropical storms. Years marked in flood stages, like rings in a tree, told the story of drought and dryness. Times when the river barely slid past the ancient seafloor that was now its bed, those times are unknown in memory, known in science. Man will come, and live his life, like the waters, flowing and ebbing, living and dying. No one part of the river will be remembered, but all will be eternal, like man. No man will live forever, but eternal is his legacy. Sometimes in a boat, the water and man become one, if only in thought, surface and boat bottom become almost inseparable. Sliding along, drifting in their inevitable journey to salt and soil.