For the Love of Water Post #3

The long river slogs became the best parts of my back country trips

My ongoing, steamy love affair with rivers grew slowly. As a 20 and 30 something, river valleys were something to be slogged through on the way to the “real wilderness”, the high country. I don’t remember ever giving much thought or attention to the rivers at all. But over the decades, my back country trips became more focused on the river valleys and less on the high alpine. Those long, obligatory slogs through the river valleys (on the way to the high country) slowly became the part I enjoyed the most.

Over the years, I also found myself being called to tend and protect water. I trained to become a Beach Naturalist, as well as a Stream Steward and Salmon Docent. I read voraciously, anything I could find about river ecologies and riparian ecosystems. I began to volunteer on various research projects, mostly tracking salmon and steel head. I started to love spending time on the rivers. By my 40’s, I self-identified as a water protector and water activist. I organized big community water rituals, built giant living orca murals, and even went to Standing Rock for a month to protest the pipeline. A large part of my spiritual life and practice became focused on water and I began to see myself as a water priestess.

I came to understand that each river is different and unique in many ways. One might expect big differences in streams from vastly different head waters. For example, the Hoh, originating at the giant Hoh Glacier on Mount Olympus, should be quite different than the Duckabush, whose headwaters are on the lower slopes of the non-glaciated Mount Duckabush. But what surprised me is that the Duckabush also has a "personality" and a "voice " quite different from that of the Dosewallips; even though they originate in similar ecosystems and flow parallel to each other, averaging only 4-5 miles apart. The two rivers are of about equal length and equal rise, they have similar flow rates, and they discharge into Hood Canal within a few miles of each other. And yet, at least to my senses, they are radically different people.

This is not about science - I can't prove anything to you or anyone else. And yes, I am guilty of a raging case of animism, believing as I do that each river is “alive”, and a person it its own right. Each of the rivers I had direct personal experience with had its own voice, its own character, its own spirit. And so, I wanted to visit all 14 wild rivers of the Olympic Peninsula. I wanted to experience first-hand the differences between them, and how my spirit interacted with each of their unique beings. And I needed to do it in a condensed time frame, so my human brain could remember and distinguish between them.  That is much more difficult for me when months or years pass between visits to different rivers.

As a human who has a desire to spiritually flow from source, I love connecting with something physical, like a river, that also so obviously flows from source. Each river can become a friend, even a spiritual guide, if we open our hearts, our eyes, and our ears. The rivers teach us a kind of wisdom not available from books. As John O'Donohue writes, "The river is a miracle of presence. Each place it flows through is the place it is. The river holds its elegance regardless of the places it flows through.... It gives itself to the urgency of becoming but never at the cost of disowning its origin. It engages the world while belonging always secretly within its memory and still strives forward into the endless flow of emerging possibility. In the sublime and unnoticed artfulness of its presence, the wisdom of a river has much to teach us."