Waterfall

The Pasture
by Robert frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.-You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.-You come too.

This is what Karen and I do in the winter. It is our primary winter activity.

People ask, "What did you do today?"

"Well, Ma and I walked on down to the waterfall," I'll say.

They'll say, "What did you do yesterday?"

"Well, Ma and I walked on down to the waterfall yesterday too," I'll say.

What you going to do tomorrow?" they'll ask.

"Well, Ma and I'll walk on down to the waterfall tomorrow too."

You come too.

The Source

Ponder with me the fluid nature of water for a moment. Heat from the sun evaporates the ocean. The resultant vapors accumulate into clouds. As the earth rotates the clouds drift over Shelter Island. These clouds spill their condensed vapors over the hills and meadows of the Island as raindrops. These raindrops accumulate into small dynamic streams that gush or dribble depending on how much rain is spilled. One of these small dynamic streams, using gravitational force, disgorges her cargo of spent raindrops over a slate ledge back into the ocean about a quarter mile north of the lodge.

On Shelter the cycle is quick for the most part; from ocean to rain, a few days; from rain to ocean, perhaps a few more days. Back in Juneau it is a different story. Some of the ice that is melting now has been locked up in the glacier clawing its way back towards the ocean for millenniums. In the Rocky Mountains it may take months for snow to melt and run thousands of miles through rivers and lakes and dams and pipes back to the ocean. The cycle, however, is always the same; ocean, vapor, precipitation and journey back to ocean; liquid, vapor, sometimes solid, back to the source. A few days, a few thousand years, what's the difference in the life of a spent raindrop?

Two choices
(c) by Rick Bierman

I saw a swan today flying into the south wind.
The wind blew fierce but the swan, flew on.
The swan flew hard with all her might,
But there was no progress to her flight.
She pumped her great wings and stretched her long neck,
But no passage could my eye detect.
I know not how she got where she was,
I guess she hung there, just because.
Suspended, was she, in time and space,
As if she had always run this race.
She dangled there like a balloon
On an invisible string, attached to the moon.
And then, she turned and sped with the wind.
Crossing the sky in the blink of an eye.
"Will you fly north or south?" puffed the gruff old wind to the swan.
"Oh Yes," said the Swan, "I think I will."

I was thinking about this fluid nature of water thing. I was wondering if maybe human lives aren't like raindrops. You know, like we come from a great pool of nondescript humanity or spirit and vaporize into spirit clouds and condense into individuals on earth and gravitate onto our life-paths accumulating with and effecting others as we work our way back to the great pool. For some, a direct quick route like rain on Shelter; while others take the long road back through the pipes like rain in the Rockies; still others are frozen in time like a glacier. Each life a different collection of water molecules, perhaps a spark, or perhaps hidden within the DNA of our ancestors. A great pool of nondescript spirit running back to the primordial ooze of creation.
Pretty deep huh?

We can leave that here. I just, every once in a while, go back and see if any of it fits.

The tides are running 24.5 vertical feet today, from -4 feet low at 6:41AM, to + 20.5 feet at 1:06 PM. Horizontally we will gain and loose 450 feet of rocks.

Food for Thought
(c) by Ricks Bierman

And now the Sea consume the rocks
In sweeping, rolling, strokes.
And then the Sea will spit them back
In thin receding chokes.

This feast and vomit, on and on
Repeats with out amend.
She gobbles up the same old rocks
And spits them back again.

You'd think the rocks, a retched fare,
Would cause the Sea to eat elsewhere.
But surely as the Moon does shine,
On rocks the Sea will always dine.

The moon is twirling around the earth (which is twirling around the sun) in an orbit marvelously balanced by the gravity of the earth (and sun) pitted against the centrifugal force of the twirling. All things being equal, the gravity of the moon (and sun) pulls on the oceans at the equator causing them to bulge which sucks water out of the Arctic and the Antarctic regions causing these huge 25.5 foot tides in the upper latitudes. Twice a day this divine sequence of coincidences, AKA The Cosmic Dance, produces events on Shelter Island that, upon observation, inspire me to produce the ponderous poem preceding this paragraph. Just enough to stir the primordial ooze.

This is always the same waterfall but never the same water. Nope, not one spent raindrop the same. Perhaps, in another cycle some of the water molecules have been here before. Perhaps in another life I observed them.

Imagine the Colorado or the Mississippi, as a collection of billions of individual rain drops united to form a larger single entity. Like a city or country is a collection of individual humans. We can say Brazil or New York just like saying the Amazon River or Hudson River. Both general terms seem to wipe out the individual nature of the individuals that collect to form the larger entity.

Adolph Hitler was a German individual who had a shocking influence on Germany-as was Ann Frank. These two opposite individuals combine to form part of the German culture that formed them, as a river of individual raindrops can cut the riverbed that forms the river. Some cut as deep as the Grand Canyon while others float along the surface leaving no trace of their passage.

Earth’s geological features shape human culture just like they shape the course of a river. Hang around the Grand Canyon for a while, meet the people who live there, you'll find a Grand Canyon Culture. Ever notice that Eskimos wear parkas and Samoans wear-well they don't wear parkas. Montanans wear cowboy hats and Afghanistanians wear-well they don't wear cowboy hats. The country, not the political country but the dirt-and-water country, shapes the culture. In Juneau everybody wears rubber boots-hay it rains! Ever see anybody in Phoenix wearing rubber boots? I rest my case…

So here I am in Juneau part of the Alaskan culture like a raindrop falling on the east side of the Rockies finds itself part of the Mississippi River.

Mark Twain's life work is a study of how the Mississippi forms human culture along its banks.

I'm pulled by my humanaty to my culture, like the rain drop is pulled by it's fluid nature to a river, both of us returning to our source, kind'a like ol' Huck and Jim. Though our course at first looks linnier, (over the river and through the woods) it is circular; ocean, vapor, rain, river, ocean, vapor, rain, river, ocean. The river, kind’a like life, is the path back to the source.

And I guess that was my point to begin with, how it seems that humanity is kind'a like water. You can see the individual raindrops best in a waterfall and I guess a rainbow is a waterfall in vapor form. I guess that is why I like rainbows, waterfalls, my Mother who gave me birth, Huck and Jim and all those who dare to leap.

May the Great Spirit guide you on your journey home.

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