Hi y’all,
I hope these words reach you with the medicines of shared resonance and responsibility to these times. My heart is here with you, what can we do together?
Rach
photos from new mexico in 2018
The waterways are drying fast this summer in the watershed where I roam. The local lake is spiraling deeper into crisis. A relentless algae superbloom proliferates, thriving in the warm, stagnant conditions. Yet despite being a breeding ground for bacterial neurotoxins, the space remained a refuge for years because a vibrant bird sanctuary persisted. The most exquisite days on the lakeshore were still and clear. Water became mirror, merging with sky. The birds doubled back on themselves as they swooped and sailed and waded, reassuring those of us who ached every time we passed another "do not enter - dangerous conditions" notice around the perimeter. Those signs languished from temporary to permanent, became weathered and ancient too fast... but the birds are here! That must mean something!
In early spring, I wove up the winding trail through eucalyptus and redwoods and too few ferns and not enough moss, listening for the familiar sound of water rippling over rocky shores and the morning’s chorus of birdsong. But as I reached the summit I heard… nothing. I climbed up over the edge and was immediately disoriented. An alien lifeform stretched itself like a blanket across the entire surface of the lake, resembling the fractal formations of romanesco. I was stunned, almost nauseated. Where were all the birds?! I asked the only other person I saw if he had any ideas.
"It's an aquatic fern," he said, "never seen anything like this before." We sat there together for a while, watching and hearing nothing except the creaking giants swaying in the breeze behind us.
New signs are posted by the lake now. They say... but the fern is here! That must mean something! In other words, they say this is a positive step toward rejuvenating the lake - that the fern will suffocate the algae, keep the water temperatures cooler, maintain habitable life for other creatures.
But the birds are gone, all of them, gone. Except the crows who will outlive us all. I am filled with weary optimism and unsettling impotence. What are we supposed to do about this?
This past week, my friends along the Río Grande valley in New Mexico, the watershed of my homelands and the geography where I'll resettle in two weeks, woke up to their own disorienting devastation. The Río ran dry for the first time in Albuquerque in 40 years. My instagram feed filled fast with reflections and observations. One friend described watching silver minnows gasp for water in evaporating puddles, and tadpoles squirm with premature pressure forcing them from their watery wombs. None of them survived. Another friend shared a story of sinking his feet into freshly exposed sand as strangers walked by and said "never seen anything like this before!" He sat there for a while, watching a dog play fetch on damp earth, hearing that reassuring birdsong that graces us even when we're at our worst. Weary optimism, unsettling impotence. What are we supposed to do about this? I heard him ask in a dozen different ways.
I think of a friend in Taos named Río. I think of his mother who named her son Río in honor of the sacred and mighty waterways that earned the name "grande" (!), that raised her as a child, then raised her own child, that may not raise her grandchild. What does it mean to be the namesake of something that may soon go entirely extinct?
I was also raised by that Río, even if it was already near dead when it came down our way, even if it was always dry. I tell a friend in Albuquerque this. He spits back with a bitter bite, "yeah well our Río was never dry here." Our Río. I get it. He's angry. He's grieving. We all are.
My grief swells to new depths as this piece flows through me. Because… it’s not just the forests burning and the rivers drying, and it’s not just the destruction of irreplaceable species and places and beings. It’s the ceaselessness of it all.
These words cry through my fingertips, showing me no matter how dehydrated it is out there, my internal water table is brimming to the surface, suppressed by so many hard swallows my throat burns.
Suddenly, I feel the rivers in my mind burst alive with wildness, reminding me who they are, flushing me with their potency, singing with nostalgia of their former freedom when they could rush unrestrained in a world before ditchbanks, levees, and diversion dams. These wild ones are our shared ancestral rivers, the rivers we were raised by someway, somewhere, back then, way way back maybe. Modern rivers are mostly memories of themselves at this point. We have to get quieter to listen.
I feel them say "what do you expect of us? When you stretch and strain and drain us? When you grate us along concrete through invasive architectures? When you trap us behind steel through extractive infrastructures? When you constrain our bodies to fit man's mechanistic needs? What do you expect of us? What are we supposed to do about this?"
What would it mean to understand that the river is not simply what we have pinned into precision, wrangled into submission, along a designated, heavily-manipulated track, but it is every drop of water sprinkling on a lush green lawn or golf course, every drop of water funneling into a private swimming pool full of toxic chemicals, every drop of water pumped into a plastic bottle by a private corporation.
This is what it means to be a river under capitalism: carved up into commodity. The more true question the rivers might be asking us is "what are we going to do about this, together? You, my temporary two legged sibling and me your fluid ancientfuture elder? Are we not the same body manifesting in a million permutations forever?"
We are all amidst those last gasping breaths, alongside the silver minnows and the tadpoles.
~~~
What does it mean to be a river beyond capitalism? This question turns me toward a vast, all-inclusive, non-omissive consciousness that wants us to stop leaning on the narrow, constricted, colonized mythos that led us here, to imagine a paradigm shift with radical commitment, where all of us – rivers, humans, birds – are remembered as biological performances, ecological processes, collaborative cosmologies in kinship with the rivers we are, the rivers that raise us, the rivers and us, both needing to refresh our memories of what it means to run wild. We are not these ideologies of neat separation we were trained to see.
Could we convene listening circles with the rivers, and the lakes, and the birds, and the sand, and the stars, and our hearts? Could we gather by the dying rivers, together, and greet our death there, too? Could death and grief be reminding us we live in cycles not progress narratives? Could we drop the pretense and drop into presence with what is?
None of this is rhetorical. I don't think it will be billion dollar solutions that save us. I think it will be us looking bravely at the truth mirroring back at us, for free, right here, right now, all around us, because yes, we are in a climate emergency, but the deeper truth is that we are in a soul emergency. And in that case, finding our way looks like making room for spirit, praying to all things holy, practicing radical love, circling around the fire, cultivating wise council, and ultimately, surrendering to being wholly and completely changed.
We are not alone in this threshold moment, but we're still figuring out how to be together, how to shift together as a multispecies murmuration that asks: can this together include the rivers, the lakes, the birds…? We have changed them. What if we let them change us?
Here are a few more questions I'm asking myself, that I offer as invitations:
How am I changing?
Have I allowed myself to be transformed in all the ways my spirit and the rivers and the birds are asking of me?
What courageous creativity am I conjuring in this moment?
What connections am I weaving with the world-mirror all around me?
How is my capacity for fully feeling evolving?
Is my heart growing wider to love and grief in equal measure?
I am beyond grateful for your warm, generous presence here. You make this place what it is. I am because you are. If you value what you find here and would like to support this space, consider leaving a heart and/or comment. It truly means so much, and I always love to hear from you.
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“ Could we convene listening circles with the river, and the lakes, and the birds, and the sand, and the stars, and our hearts? Could we gather by the dying rivers, together, and greet our death there, too? Could death and grief be reminding us we live in cycles not progress narratives? Could would drop the pretense and drop into presence with what is?”
I’m definitely in these questions with you. Too much swirling in my head to type it out right now but I know we’ll get our chance to discuss!
Always appreciate your hopefulness. It’s hard to not feel despondent about the rapid speed in which our planet is deteriorating. At least she will recover even if our species can’t.