I suspect #3 was messing with us — sending this photo in the same mailing as the real Crazy River!
Dear Readers, this raises an interesting question. Why are so many of our favorite river pictures people-less? What do you think?
A different Crazy River — this time in Montana. Another glamor-shot from #3, our own river paparazzi.
“Do rivers ever take a holiday?” — JJ Mahoney
Well, Mahoney dear,
This IS a science-based blog 🙂 so we’ll begin our inquiry with a definition of terms.
Vacation (full definition) — You go to an appealing location and rest a bit. Then play until you want to rest again. Then rest until you want to play… in an infinite loop of bliss until the plane takes you back home to work.
Vacation (shorter definition) — You take a break from work.
BUT. In the glorious and freeing world of physics, there’s no difference between work and play:
Work (official physics definition) — You move something somewhere.* This includes not just carrying your laundry up the stairs, but also dancing yourself around the kitchen or shifting your thoughts out of a well-worn rut.
So play IS work. This doesn’t mean “ugh, there’s no escape from work.” It means Yay! Every fun activity that calls to you – do it. It truly counts as your work.
Then what’s the opposite of work?
Not-work (logical definition) — When you don’t do nothin’ nowhere.
Not-work (shorter definition) — Rest.
Not-work (cosmic definition) — wei wu wei or “doing not-doing”
Stephen Mitchell, in his translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (HarperPerennial, 1988), says wei wu wei “has been seen as passivity. Nothing could be further from the truth. A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can’t tell the dancer from the dance. ‘Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action.’”
So the play-fullest play IS rest. AND work. This makes all of life… a vacation.
For the sake of science and your insatiable need to know, dear reader, I propose to spend the next week testing this hypothesis with some wild rivers. The problem is that our Wyoming rivers are all frozen. I am dedicated though, so I am taking myself off to a tropical isle to see what I can do!
While I’m gone, I invite all of my readers to join me, wherever you may be, in testing this hypothesis. Send me a note with your results — which part of your work feels like play? Does any of your play feel like work? And what about rest?? I look forward to hearing your adventures. Til then, keep on doing that not-doing.
Betsy “Yohoney”
PS — Computer time’s likely to be minimal in paradise, but I will post a bit of river candy now and then!
* for TheWorseMother.com, who is not only tied with hyperboleandahalf.com for blogger- that-most-enhances-my-life but also VERY GOOD AT MATH, here’s the equation:
W=Fd
Where…
W = What else but work.
F = For sure not the same thing as the F in her AF**GO University (!) but just the force that moves something.
d = distance.
Seljalandsfloss, Iceland, by Michael Utech
“Wait, wait, wait — is today’s post saying I can ONLY have healthy “multiple channel flow” if I go slow and am all level, all the time?! Please answer ASAP.”
— Split
Dear Split,
Excellent point! I should have clarified that each one of the eight basic types of rivers can be absolutely stable AND fabulous IF it flows over, under, around, or through a world of big, solid rock.
What does that mean for a human being?? Read about it here. Then check here for a glorious visual of just what you’re after. Don’t worry — I have a strong hunch you got this going on already! And thanks for your follow-up. XXX — B
Dear Like a River — My life doesn’t fit the model of a stream channel! It’s more like maybe ten at once. There are my kids (homework, practices, fruits & vegetables, suitable friends, clothes that fit, feelings, dreams, and socks, oh the socks…), and my job (sometimes I actually bring the kids, depending on when, who, etc…) plus love life, work-outs, friends (I CAN’T do without them, luckily I get to see a couple at work and in yoga class), parents (my mother-in-law lives with us which is actually helpful), and this tantalizing little side interest that’s maybe, hopefully evolving into a true vocation. See what I mean? — Split
Dear Split,
I have two friends, Crazy and Sassy, who both flow through multiple channels every single day. But any similarity between them ends there.
Crazy:
Mostly she’s crazy-beautiful, but at times she falls apart. Then Crazy Woman Creek is unable to carry her load. As you can see, she begins dropping rocks and dirt all over her bed. Her channel becomes shallow thereby decreasing her stream power so she’s less capable of doing work. Eventually an unnatural island forms right in the middle of Crazy’s life. It divides her energy between channels, further diminishing her power, then the additional deposition acts like a low dam and flattens her water surface, forcing the stream sideways. She erodes her own ragged edges:
Sassy:
Sassy does multiple-channel-flow in the healthy way: anastomosing. You can see she’s more like a system of many stable, narrow, deep streams. The sometimes twisting branches join, split, and reconnect in a continuous network across a super wide, very flat, extremely well-vegetated floodplain. The friendly plant roots stabilize her banks. The Saskatchewan River’s whole environment is lush with LIFE: insects, mammals, and everything in between. Plus she’s super accessible. You can walk all over that flatness as long as you don’t mind being damp. It’s wet everywhere even though you’ll rarely find a serious “rapid” or any water deeper than your waist. And best of all, Sassy functions beautifully – she can do her work — which for a river means transporting sediment. As a result, her banks and bed are stable.
How to be Sassy:
• Each separate part of your life must be deep and narrow — focused enough to move a load on its own. But let some of those branches turn and meander almost tortuously. That’s part of Sassy’s charm and stability.
• Like Sassy, draw support from the roots of your friends.
• Those roots will depend, in turn, on your energy. Because of interconnections, if there’s any water in Sassy’s stream, those roots get it too. If one channel gets blocked, water flows another way. That’s why so many lifeforms have this same pattern – blood capillaries, leaf veins — and why you, Split, seem to be doing pretty well. Your mother-in-law helps with the kids who can also sometimes go to work where you also see your friends who you may see later at yoga.
• This life needs a steady and unhurried pace. Sassy, her banks, and her floodplain are all pretty flat, so everything’s evenly irrigated. Furthermore, the gradual slopes create very little erosion force AND allow plenty of time for water to soak in.
• Sassy can handle a flood for the same reason – lots of level space to spread out and slow down the floodwater. If you want to run in multiple worlds, be sure the overall cross-section of your life gives you room to overflow when inundated.
• Avoid building walls. Burying or filling any part of Sassy is the beginning of her end. Imagine elevated roads, railways, or “flood control berms” cutting off her channels.
When we’re part of a community, branching from and joining into others lives in our own healthy way — well, not much can disrupt that kind of well-being. Thank you, Split, for the reminder.
“I need to slow down some — any recommendations dear rivers?” — Hatt
Dear Hatt,
Look around a bit more. Poke around over there, visit over here — and then maybe somewhere else too. You will see more country, and those places will get to discover you too, so that’s a plus for them! Think of all those otters and moose that get more shore time. Wait – what kinds of riparian critters do you have out there in your area? I suppose that depends on elevation… are you near those salamanders? I doubt you have moose. But you know what I enjoy almost as much? Little humans. Just the way they move around is so darn cute. I think even the fish like them — as long as their folks use barbless hooks;) Those things are the best invention ever. Anyway, many joyful wanderings!
— Happily Unnamed Tributary of Pole Creek
Happ (hey are you guys related??), in her typical circuitous fashion, actually is onto something. You see, all streams must dissipate energy somehow. This is where they, like all phenomena in the universe, obey the second law of thermodynamics and increase the world’s entropy. (Although entropy is also called disorder or chaos, remember it’s not necessarily a bad thing!)
Streams like Wailua Falls use steep steps to dissipate energy in a vertical direction. But streams with flatter slopes introduce their disorder sideways, by meandering.
The inverse implication, as Happ suggests, is this: if you introduce more twists and turns into your river, the slope WILL become more gradual. Because the energy is expended side-to-side, the stream does not NEED to get rid of more through a lot of downs and ups. The pace becomes more relaxed. And — bonus! — you get a super classically photogenic stream/life:
So flow off in a tangent, dear Hatt, then switch your bearing again. These adventures can be new endeavors in the outer world OR new ways of thinking inside your own head. Both kinds of exploration will allow you to enjoy a more leisurely tempo — plus all us critters around you will benefit from your lengthened presence! Aaahh.
“A happy river on a sunny day.” — #3
Dear #3 — Indeed. Many thanks.
I would love to hear your thoughts on “my” river. A river that meets the ocean. She has more than one obstacle to push through before flowing into the sublime. – Fluid Chaos
Dear Delight-filled Fluid Chaos –
What a lovely sight you are. And remarkable:
“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Like you, researchers in mathematics and physics find that chaos actually can lead to higher levels of order. Science writer Robert Pool paints my favorite image — chaos is order disguised as disorder, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Your eloquent name for yourself and your river tells me you know this. How over and over in life, catalytic events throw us into turmoil. And how this disorientation can be our most direct line to wonder. Letting that confusion be okay – that’s what allows us to surface from disorder into a resplendent higher order.
I love you, Fluid Chaos.
“Read my river, please! Though I wouldn’t know which one to submit…” –T
Dearest T,
I love that you have many rivers! Your descriptions of them are leading me on fascinating explorations. And all the while I keep chanting under my breath “many rivers.”
I just figured out why this tickles. Many Rivers is what Irish-English poet David Whyte named his company. In today’s next delightful synchronicity, his most recent collection, River Flow (Many Rivers Press, 2007) includes “The Seven Streams”:
Perhaps you branch and branch like they do… like lawyer turned mediator; spiritual seeker; beloved source of light and sustenance as daughter, sister, friend, wife; painter; poet and writer; yoga teacher; and most miraculously, #7: mother to a toddler and a babe. For…
“… in the northern part of the Parish of Kilnaboy is a townland called Teeskagh and near it a mountain called Slieve na Glaisé, the mountain of the celebrated cow called Glas Ghoibhneach, said to have belonged to the smith, Lon Mac Loimhtha, the first that ever made edged weapons in Ireland. He lived in a cave in this mountain unknown to all the Scoti except the few who lived in his immediate vicinity. He had lived a long time in Ireland before his art was in requisition, for before his time the Irish used no iron or steel implements of war, but fought with sticks having stone, flint and bronze heads. Lon was for many years supported by his invaluable cow called Glas Gaibhneach which used to graze not far from his forge on the mountain of Sliabh na Glaise which abounds in most beautiful rills and luxuriant pasturage. He had found no other retired spot in Ireland sufficiently fertile to feed the Glas but this. This cow would fill with her milk any vessel, be it never so large, into which she was milked, and it became a saying in the neighbourhood that no vessel could be found which the Glas would not fill at one milking. At last two women laid a wager on this point, one insisting that no vessel, be it never so large, could be found in Ireland which the smith’s cow would not fill, and the other that there could. The bets being placed in secure hands, the latter lady went to her barn and took out a sieve which she took to Slieve na Glaise, and into which, by consent of Lon Mac Liomhtha, she milked the cow. And behold! the milk, passing through the bottom of the sieve and even overflowing it, fell to the ground and divided into seven rivulets called Seacht Srotha na t-Aéscaíghe, the Seven Streams of the overflowing. Taescach, i.e., the overflowing, is now the name of a Townland lying to the west of Slieve na Glaise. Clear streams of water now run through the channels then formed by the copious floods of the milk of the Glas.”
— Excerpted from an 1839 collection in the Clare County Library
Your vulnerabilities walking on the cracked sliding limestone, those very openings sieve the charmed rivulets into flowing…
back into the one mountain with pasturage luxuriant enough to feed she who supports so many.
I suspect you share this secret of the ancient Overflowing — a rock mountain you dip back into, faulted, abundant, and nourishing.
Happy Birthday, Beloved Taescach.
Like a River... 