Water Thoughts

Be unto love as rain is unto colour. E.E. Cummings

Our phone line is dangling limply over a branch and the access road to the 101 is a muddy rushing river. It isn't hard to read symbolic meaning in this, but the immediate implication is that we are stranded, suddenly simply here. We live in a wet green world where the creeks are roaring and the mud is sliding from the hills and no one is going anyplace soon. Everywhere there is the din of water: running, dripping, roaring through the canyon. Newborn rivulets trickle through the grass and waterfalls surprise old sandstone contours and once you accept what is beyond your control, reality itself seems fluid and unbound.

But first we gather by the crossing in our Wellies and rain gear, assessing the situation, speculating as to time frame, sharing news and stories, tending to one another in a way we often don't. Do you have enough fuel for your generator? Can we pull aside the tree that came down last night? Who has a car parked on the other side of the trestle? Who needs eggs? We are all exasperated about the well-known inadequacy of the crossing in question. But mixed in with our frustration, there might be a hint of a holiday feeling, at least at first, at least if everyone's okay. How much can you protest when fate hands you a bonus Saturday that goes on for days? All of our important meetings will somehow happen without us. "It's another world," says my husband, as we walk through the fog in a lull between storms. Maybe it's the only world.

At night we lie awake listening to the fury outdoors and in the morning we marvel at the rain gauge and take survey. Pigs have gotten into the orchard to feast on oranges and macadamia nuts. The swollen creek has etched new tributaries and a section of road by our neighbor's house is near collapse; we muck around in the mud attempting a makeshift repair here and there. There is a kind of enchantment as well: the air smells fresh with sage and eucalyptus, the toyon berries are varnished, and transparent beads of water adorn every leaf and blade of grass.

But images via satellite Internet reach us even here, and superseding all is the backdrop of the watery devastation wrought by the Asian tsunami, fathomless and horrific. It seeps into our souls and somehow washes away the notion that we are separate and safe. Maybe that's the beginning of wisdom and an impetus for compassion, but there's also something free-falling and scary about the randomness and vulnerability it implies. "What if we miscalculated?" asked a boy in my class just the other day. "What if we lived our whole lives believing one thing and it turned out we were wrong?" We had been talking about religions of the ancient world, but in a broader sense, about the search for meaning in our own lives and the answers by which we choose to live. I attempted of course to be wise and reassuring, which is difficult when you're clueless and confused. "Just try to be a good person," I offered lamely. "It doesn't matter what you call it."

And I think about that as I watch the sea drawn back into its lowest tide, stained in the strange light of a hidden sunset. In fact, I think about it constantly, having suddenly so much time for contemplation. The element of water has been the indisputable theme and architect of these last few days, washing, eroding, reshaping, unearthing. In my luxurious isolation I am more aware than ever of my connection to others, of my community here and my membership in one greater. A physician neighbor, newly arrived after nearly two weeks in Sri Lanka, has just walked in across the trestle. Sri Lanka. It seems very far away and at the same time very near. The worries of the world press mightily upon us. "Hold tight to other hands in the water," writes Annie Dillard. That seems about right.

More rain is predicted. We do what we can, then shrug. We are down to the essence, simplified, renewed, washed clean, perhaps, but damp and tattered and all in need of mending. "Put more water in the soup," writes my friend Greg in an e-mail, "there's a better day a'comin" Beneath the dome of wet sky, Indian paintbrush and small spears of orange poppies are sprouting on the hillsides, and I remember cycles and hope and all the old promise of spring.
- Cynthia Carbone Ward January 2005