The Way the Water Speaks

on yarrow, piping the west & the mighty flicker

I’m tying together bundles of wild mountain herbs, thinking of women, life and the moon. The wind is blowing and the water is running fierce alongside our yurt. The wind and sound of the rushing snow melt makes our mountain home feel like we are next to the sea.

So I’m tying up these bundles and I’m listening. I hear the water speaking again. I hear the voices in the wind. All winter the water spoke to me, I heard children laughing, chanting, cries through the silent snow packed hills. It’s just past summer solstice, my winter offerings lay buried beneath cottonwood and sage — and the water still grants me a listen. I hear children again, dancing past wild mint and rose. I hear my name sometimes, people talking, whispers.

I took my daughter up the old dusty road towards the big shimmering water. A red tail hawk greeted us as we peeked over the next hill. She slowly took off from the earth, riding the wind, gifting us a vision of her beauty and strength.

Where the water runs, there is green, there is life; the holy milkweed, oak and willow make their homes in the cool wet earth and offer their gifts of life to all of Creation. Willow is really such a gift to us. The other day, I wove a tiny willow hut for a broken-winged flicker we found, as a safe home, as a place to heal. I gently bent the willow stalks in the four directions, secured them with twine. After a few days Amara and I ended up freeing that bird down by the creek, something a wild bird in a cage… and as she fluttered off she landed in the cool water for a moment, as if imprinting her feathers there. The water carries everything downstream.

Most of the water on mountain has been diverted into canals for irrigation down in the valley. There’s talk of burying all that water in plastic pipes, in the name of “water conservation” and “salinity”. Someone, in defense of these pipes, said to me, “It’s better than spraying the willows with Roundup.”

How do you like your water? Poisoned or in plastic? Is this really the best we can come up with?

Our goats nibble on the dancing water-loving willows. Their milk feeds their babies and ours. I think of all this as I gather and weave together a little home for the broken-winged bird, as I gather and weave together bundles of healing for our family.

Up here, no one sprays the poisons on the willows or in the water, thank God. Our daughter likes to fill her fists with mud at the waters edge, and rub it all over her belly and knees. She stomps through the mud like an Amazonian warrioress, fearless, playful and resilient. And she LOVES our goat milk, does a little happy dance each time she gets a taste of it. It tastes like wild mountain herbs, saskatoon berry, yarrow and willow.

I read the Environmental Assessment Statement regarding the impact of piping these ancient canals, where the cottonwood and deer grow, where the flicker, mouse and cottontail rabbit forage and make their homes. The statement was sent to shareholders and various governmental organizations, BLM, fish and game, etc. It was determined, after much collection of “data”, that the piping of these ditches would have “no significant impact.”

As I drove down through the vast aliveness of these mountains with bundles of herbs, bundles of sunshine and health that will sustain us through the winter, I thought,

“Who decides whether or not disappearing water will have a ‘significant impact’? Who decides? Whose institutionalized education gave them permission to decide where the water should and shouldn’t live? Where do they live? Do these people live here? Do they walk these hills? Have they lived through the seasons, winds and rain here on this mountain? Have they seen the rabbit and coyote survive the winter? Have they heard the water speak? Or the flicker find her food, or the cicadas singing from the juniper bows? Who decides what is ‘significant’ and what isn’t and who gives them that permission?”

My daughter wakes up. I hang the bundles of herbs to the walls of the yurt and let her play with a few flowers. I tend to her with snuggles, blueberries, and goat milk. She slurps it all up with great relish and proceeds make her way down to the water, to play, to dance, to learn the way the water speaks.