I’m sitting on my back porch steps, reflecting in the sun, listening to the creek, when I hear the water ouzel singing its almost ridiculously cheerful, celebratory song. This particular early spring afternoon is unseasonably mild and bone dry; the usual melting banks of snow in the yard are conspicuously missing. But even in the years of real winter weather, with snow and freezing temperatures, I still hear the dipper out in the creek, calling out as he bobs up and down in a funky dance, and I am smitten — caught in a moment of delight. The ouzel represents year-round residence in water, and since I can hear him, he reminds me of my good fortune in being his neighbor on our creek. Somehow, I flowed uphill to where he lives.
Fifteen years ago, while living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I went to a counselor for help sorting out some problems. During this period, I began spending more and more time taking weekend trips to my family cabin in the mountains. Lamenting to my counselor, I said one day, “I can’t keep running away” from home. In response, this wise woman said something I’ll never forget: “Maybe you’re running toward something, instead of running away.”
I ended up moving to Plumas County a few years later, leaving the ex, a great job, and little else behind. After I tendered my resignation at the company where I worked, the CEO asked me what he could do to make me consider staying. I said, “Build a trout stream in the parking lot?” Little could keep me away from the mountains at that point. It was if I knew that what I really needed was here: beckoning forests, pine-scented air, and the wisdom and promise of cool mountain streams and lakes — the ultimate therapy.
My mountain property borders on a year-round creek flowing sweetly beneath an arbor of alders, cedars, cottonwoods, and Douglas firs. In June, speckled orange tiger lilies bloom along its moss-fringed banks. Regular inhabitants include the ever-present water ouzels, noisy kingfishers, mergansers, water snakes, native trout, deer, and an occasional bear or coyote. Once, I saw an otter slinking along the snowy bank. Sometimes, upon approaching the creek too quickly, the sound of flight and a lurching shadow signal the departure of a shy blue heron, his fishing interrupted. I’ve watched in awe as dragonflies display their predatory skills with fighter-jet precision, feasting midair during a hatch. A little orphan merganser once enjoyed a short life feasting on the same bugs; I found him there every day, until he likely caught the attention of a large hawk I had noticed hanging around. One day while sunning by the creek, I was shocked to see a large turtle padding quickly toward the water. I picked him up to admire the shapes and coloring of his ancient-looking shell and set him down, thrilled at this once-in-fifteen-years sighting.
What is it about water that makes us feel better? Is the happiness we feel on a stream, lake, or beach about allowing ourselves the indulgence of delight in their beautiful surprises? Delight requires that we experience things as a child, or a lover, or as never experienced before. And in this, the creek keeps me sane. I go to it for refreshment, solace, inspiration, and wonder. If I’m inside, feeling troubled or stressed, remembering that the creek is flowing clear and cold just steps away can lift my spirits. There is nothing like opening the bedroom window to hear the clean sound of the water, singing and flowing over a kaleidoscope of ancient rocks, as I drift to sleep.
Sometimes during heavy spring run-off, the noise of the flow is deafening. Then the creek runs high, swift and turbid, and it’s best to stay away from it. I’m mesmerized, watching from the house as fallen trees go speeding by, and I wonder where trout can possibly hide in all that chaos. I reflect that sometimes my inner flow feels like an out-of-control flood, with me unable to slow down, propelled along helplessly. This past winter, the rains came early and then subsided, leaving the creek bed freshly cleansed and sparkling. The resulting exposed hidden treasures of green, blue-gray, and gold remind me of the essence that can be revealed in all things, beautiful and pure.
I think there are studies that have proven the calming influence of gazing at water — something about endorphins being released when looking out at a horizon of blue. It seems like a case of science explaining what we instinctively already know, but I like that it confirms my suspicions. I think of this when low water exposes Native American grinding holes in rocks overlooking what was then a river, later dammed to create a lake I know intimately. I visualize women sitting in a row, grinding food, caring for their babies, talking and gossiping. Their presence is palpable. Is it a stretch to think that laughing in the sun, away from their men, looking out over the water made them feel better, too?
A man named Masuru Emoto has conducted experiments on the aesthetic properties of water crystals. He claims that crystals are affected by the emotional “energies” of different water sources. For example, a frozen water sample from a mountain stream would show beautiful geometric designs, while that from polluted water sources would be “ugly” and distorted. One critic described Emoto’s book, The Hidden Messages of Water, as “spectacularly eccentric.” I wonder if that is a bad thing. And I also think water knows a lot, which is perhaps what Emoto is trying to say.
I started listening to rivers as a small child on family camping trips on the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne River outside of Yosemite. I learned that streams tell stories with splashing bubbles, cascading pools, and swirling eddies. Lying in my sleeping bag beneath a blanket of brilliant stars, I could hear voices drifting from the river in the chilled night air. I suppose that my view of these wet, flowing bodies and their inhabitants as just as evolved and wise as men, if not more so, might seem mystical or “eccentric.” It’s not surprising that a favorite book (and film) of mine, Dersu Uzala, features a Siberian hunter and master of survival skills who addresses all animals as “men.” While he is vulnerable in a spiritual way to the violence of nature, it is the violence of humans that ultimately proves too much for him. Dersu needs to be outdoors to thrive, or even to live, and upon being forced inside due to failing health, takes sad comfort in a small indoor fireplace. I can only wonder what little piece of water I might replicate should I find myself in a similar situation.
Most winter seasons are much harder than this last one has been: there’s usually several feet of snow to shovel, difficulty getting to work and back on icy roads, long winter days, and too much time spent indoors. Yet this drought-stricken winter, I was able to drive to the lake ten minutes from my house as early as January. I think you could have seen rays of happiness emitting from my dog and me as we returned to the shore, I made a few casts, and sucked in deep breaths of the cool, sunlit air. A bald eagle crashed into the lake and flew off, scolding us from a treetop with its eerie, screeching call. A pair of Canada geese glided around curiously. With not a human to be heard or seen, I could see and hear nature with crystal clarity.
Admittedly, I was in a bit of a snit on my drive to the lake, after hassling with my husband about household chores. “When I got back home,” I was thinking, “I am really going to give him a piece of my mind. I know he’s watching the game and not doing a damned thing around the house like I asked him to.” And yet, as I sat on a large granite rock along the shore, tracing my fingers along its craggy edges, warmed in the sun, the rock set me straight. It seemed to say: “No, you’re not going to do that. You don’t need to, and it’s very undignified. You will be here, right now, and later, if you feel bad again, you can just come back and sit by the water. It’s all good!”
Nicely readjusted and driving back home, I remembered a different time with my husband. We were watching a water ouzel family and the fledglings’ first attempts out of their nest, which was tucked under a wet, rocky ledge. We brought lawn chairs over to the creek, poured a few glasses of wine, and simply watched, mesmerized. We counted the babies and named them, Number 1, Number 2, and so on. “Oh! There goes Number 2 — he got swept downstream trying to get to the rock out in the middle of the pool!” we exclaimed, like kids. Then, every night, we would go and see how the little birds were making out. It made things better, clearer somehow. Always, when I hear the dipper’s song, I feel content and grateful, as one does hearing the happy sound of children playing nearby.
Water is all-wise and knowing and has much to say, if we will listen. Its flow and living energy offer us a respite from our thought-heavy, tech-saturated, two-legged selves. In The Earth Is Enough, Harry Middleton writes: “we could always hear the creek on the wind, the mollifying sound of rushing water, a generous palliative, freely given.” The popularity of artificial water features in yards and parks is an obvious affirmation of how much this sound centers us and perhaps cleanses away thoughts that would be better off somewhere else. More than once, I have quietly witnessed people returning their loved one’s remains to the waters and have done so myself, heedless of man-made laws. Completing the circle, the water carries our spirits in eternal buoyancy.
I sometimes reflect that we’re all creatures at the water’s edge, coming to drink, wash, play, grieve, hunt or be hunted, dream, listen, while eternity flows through us. Through moss-tufted rocks and branches bobbing in the current, the water tells our stories: to be a part is a privilege and can be, in itself, enough.
