Monthly Archives: September 2012

… crossing

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“What is this nonsense about water under a bridge? I keep thinking about that – like I’m just supposed to let everything go… after all, the bridge/river metaphor is so strongly present in all my stories. What does it mean? What do rivers have to say about bridges? What do rivers have to say about liminal space?”

~ Taescach

Beloved Taescach wrote that a year ago. A lot was happening in her life; even more has happened since. I asked perhaps the most bridged river ever, the Mississippi, to respond:

Dear Taescach,

Bridges do look different from the bottom up. And yet this is the first time I’ve heard of a person asking one of us streams for our view of them. You clearly have an artist’s curiosity about how to see things.

Your easy insertion of the word “nonsense” shows you have discernment as well.

The idea that difficult bygones are like water under the bridge may be accurate — but not for the reasons people think. It’s because the water under most bridges is having a problem AND creating problems. And it’s the bridge’s fault.

“Bridge” seems to have constructive (yes, we rivers often gush puns) connotations for many humans. To them it symbolizes a way  to get over some obstacle on the way to where they want to go. Or a way to link two sides of a gap.

It assumes there IS a gap.

And when someone builds a bridge over me, they are saying I am that gap — an obstacle.  I’m in the way. It’s saying “we’re going to go right over you to get past you.” They don’t want to go through me or in me or even on a boat across me. No interaction. They don’t want to get wet.

I like how you open the possibility that I am less like a problem and more like the middle, ambiguous, disorienting part of a rite of passage — a threshold between old and new ways of structuring identity. As you have no doubt experienced, the quintessential trait of the liminal is its fluid and shifting nature. In that way nothing could be more liminal than us rivers. And whenever/wherever people try to fix a threshold in space — to harden it — they often create trouble. “Permanent liminality” can mean endless acts of separation, meaningless ceremony, or violent alienation.

Trying to harden any part of us rivers is a very delicate situation.

 In some ways, the concept of a bridge could be fine with me. If a LOT of folks were coming and going right through me, all that traffic would muddy my waters or wear down my edges. Unfortunately bridges are usually just way too narrow and/or too low, and then:

  • The reduced cross-sectional area means even my crucial, annual “bankfull flow” can’t fit through there unless it speeds up. The higher velocities generate unnatural power for my current setting, and I have no choice but to do something with that power. I down-cut right into my own bed — my foundation — and banks.
  • While my waters wait their turns to fit through the small opening, they back up. There’s a “backwater” effect where I eddy and scour the shore AND dig a sort of abnormal reservoir — a place that starts gathering sludgy gunk.
  • As I shoot out from under the bridge — back into a free-er state — the transition means a lot more turbulence and more erosion of the stream banks.
  • The situation’s even crazier when the bridges have vertical piers right in my channel. Getting through the whole ordeal is usually a definite rite of passage for me — a wounding one. In extreme cases, my erosion actually makes the bridge fail.

Obstacles and even  liminality turn out to be a matter of perspective.

So — whether you are a river or a human or both — if you find a fixed threshold eroding parts of your life or getting you stuck somewhere, then I have two ideas for how to deal with said bridge:

1. Burn it. And don’t forget to take out any pilings or head walls built down in the channel. Just let wading through, boating over, or swimming in this fluid gap be an integral part of life. Alternately:

2. Make the bridge very high and wide.  It’ll be more archingly beautiful and exciting for people AND leave room for all kinds of riverine transitions.

You have my thanks — more than you know — for asking.

~ The Mississippi

Rock Creek reveals: “the biggest thing people don’t seem to see” about living like a river

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This weekend I got the chance for some pillow talk with Rock Creek  — I slept right on the banks of my old friend. My hostess reported that the stream was “crazy” this year during runoff. “It almost came over the banks!” Here’s what the stream itself whispered the next morning:

June 5th was my peak this year, and it WAS a decent one — but look it up on your gauges, crunch the numbers, and  you’ll see it wasn’t unusual. In the long haul, I end up peaking at least this high in three out of four years. Unless someone messes with my shape, I should actually top my banks every five years in this particular spot. Of course that’s because I’m a river of rapids and hence (surprisingly to some) the most moderate. Most of the flatter streams get out way more often, yet somehow people look at our stream banks and think it’s “normal” for us rivers to keep inside our channels. It’s not and we don’t. That’s the biggest thing people don’t seem to see about us. We are not just our channels. We are “supposed” to do what you call “flood.” It’s the norm, not the exception.

I verified everything Rock Creek said with the United States Geological Survey’s lovely stream gauge data (I love USGS data!). Rock Creek’s been behaving “normally.”

And my old friend’s also right that B-type streams like Rock Creek don’t spread out on a big floodplain as often as the streams we see in wider, typically human-occupied valleys (the skinny, deep, meandering E-types or the point-bar dominated C-types). When you average it all up, our most familiar creeks top their banks two out of three years or even more.

Why, then, does “flooding” always catch us humans by surprise?!

Why do we think the word “flood” equates with disaster??

Perhaps for the same reason it shocks us when our human lives spill out of our constructed boundaries — though that too happens regularly.

Maybe we’d rather all that energy stay in one tidy-looking, seemingly controlled channel. Or maybe we just spot some orderly constructs and assume they’re not to be breached — ever. Likely we worry our floods are dangerous.

But river water leaving the banks is natural. And for good reason:

Torrents of water must come every so often — during annual snow melt or seasonal rainstorms. If that water stayed within the channel’s width, it would have to flow incredibly fast. All that power would erode the river’s foundation out from under it.

And so the river builds a flat area adjacent to its banks. When large flows come, the water spreads out onto this plain and instantly slows, spreading harmlessly across the land, saturating the soil with not only moisture but fine material, nutrients, and seeds. The whole ecosystem flourishes. The floodplain is fully part of the river — not an accidental bystander.

When our human lives overflow, we too are saved by spreading out and slowing down. If you’re living like a healthy, wild river, then you don’t need your floodplain every minute, but you do need it regularly.

<<Every person’s floodplain looks a little different. What’s yours? It could be friends, family, alone time, a pet, nature, your favorite city, reading, music, moving your body in some way, clarifying your feelings, or something I’ve never dreamed of!>>

If you’re living like a river, then whatever kind of floodplain you have benefits from your floods as much as you benefit from your floodplain’s ever-ready presence.

<<Can you entertain the possibility that those people/places/activities/things that save you are not only okay with their role but nourished in return?>>

And yet the fact remains that a flooding river can hurt buildings, roads, and even people. Possibly you’re thinking that you yourself have damaged those around you with your own personal floods. Here’s the important thing:

Floods only cause damage when we humans ignore reality by obstructing our floodplains with artificial structures or trying to stop the overflow. The floodplain is fully part of the river. It cannot be eliminated.

Can you honor your floodplain and keep this integral part of your wild nature intact?

I hope we all can see the way things really work as “normal” and create room for our streams — and our selves — to live like real rivers.

Thinking like a river?

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“We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations.”

~ David Brower

When my friend and colleague Kanesha Lee Baynard sent me this quote, it reminded of why I want to read Mr. Brower’s book Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run AND of why I have to ask rivers and hydrology to interpret river adages for me! Today I turned to my closest stream and asked it — how do you think, anyway? Here’s what I got:

I build my life — my own edges and the shape of my very foundation —  using what’s around me, constantly adjusting to new changes, and sticking to two rules. 1) Always and only follow what pulls me, and 2) increase chaos while doing so. All other details follow from there. — Big Goose Creek

Wow. Do you think we’d leave a beautiful living legacy by thinking in these five ways?

1. “We’re building ourselves.”

In the final sentence of his book A View of the River, Luna Leopold concludes:“The river, then, is the carpenter of its own edifice.” Can the same be said of us as individuals and as a species? Is it useful to acknowledge that?

2. “We use what we encounter and adjust to changes.”

Streams work with the geography they encounter — specific slopes and geology — and with the rainfall. Both the “lay of the land” and the “climate” can be counted on to change in human terms as well. Our economies, communities, bodies, energies, personalities, and loved ones will never stay the same. The changes may be slow or cataclysmic. Either way, like river channels, we adjust. Sometimes the adjustment includes a messy-looking period of what hydrologists call “instability.” Does that ring true with your life experience?

3. “Follow what pulls you.”

A river is pulled by gravity to a sea. Every decision’s based on that urge. What tugs on you?

4. “Chaos is unavoidable.” [And perhaps desirable?]

The Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that our every action increase entropy (i.e., disorderly energy no longer available for getting anything done). I can’t see that anyone knows for sure why this is so, but I have my pet theory. It’s based on the idea that IF the universe makes sense AND  everything in that universe boosts one kind of stuff, THEN that stuff must be important. Have you ever had chaos lead you to a higher level of order?

5. “Every other decision — whether to turn, which way, when to fall, and how to heal when changes wound us — will follow from the above four thoughts.”

In the physics of rivers, this is true. Can it be extended to people? Is there any other choice? I would like to know what you think. I hope you’ll comment below or email me. Meanwhile, I’m off to visit Big Goose Creek and see if we can’t increase us some entropy. Baaa.