Toward the south end of my property, there's a gentle bend in the stream where a tree leans over the creek at an angle of around 45 degrees. The water that's run through the creek over the years of the tree's life has eroded the soil around its roots. The fate of the tree is a visible reminder of the way water slowly shapes and reshapes the land, carving out bits of it as the speed and volume of water dictate. There's no schedule for this construction project, and no goal. It's part of an immemorial process.
It's January. Last week the temperature dropped low enough to freeze a lot of the water in the creek. I walked out one morning and considered the ice, the way one might stand in an art gallery and consider a series of paintings. I was taken by the variety of forms expressed in the ice.
One shallow area was more strikingly crystalline than any other, a testament to the origin of the word "crystal" in the Greek word for ice: krustallos. After this word was coined, someone noticed that the structure of quartz looked something like ice, and the meaning of "crystal" ramified in the direction of similarity, as many words do through their history. The ice crystals behind my house contained straight rods an inch or so long, pointing all around the compass, all held together in a matrix of less obviously patterned ice.
In a deeper spot, the ice layer was thicker, and had a milky cast to it. This ice put a question into my mind: If I looked at it under magnification, would I see other patterns, other crystal structures? In yet another spot, ice was thin, the sandy bottom underneath it visible, and liquid water on top. This ice had a clarity that reflected the patterns of bare winter branches in the trees above it.
Looking at the streambed over a distance, I saw a larger perspective, with all these variations in the icy mix. The ice in different shades of white. The water going from solid to liquid, released from its arrested movement by the day's warming. So much variety in the space of a few feet.
The freeze only held the water for a short while. The water would flow down through Oliver Creek, on to the Loosahatchie River, then to the Mississippi, and out to the Gulf of Mexico, as it has done for many ages.
The land I live on was once an enormous forest. Then, for a while, it was a plantation. Now it has a suburban character, at least on the surface. But the signs of its more permanent affiliations are here, perhaps most vividly in the creek.
The poet and essayist Gary Snyder has thought seriously about the nature and value of watersheds. In an essay titled "Coming into the Watershed" he writes:
A watershed is a marvelous thing to consider: this process of rain falling, streams flowing, and oceans evaporating causes every molecule of water on earth to make the complete trip once every two million years. The surface is carved into watersheds--a kind of familial branching, a chart of relationship and a definition of place. The watershed is the first and last nation whose boundaries, though subtly shifting, are unarguable. . . . For the watershed, cities and dams are ephemeral and of no more account than a boulder that falls in the river or a landslide that temporarily alters the channel. The water will always be there, and it will always find its way down.
So I have--as we all have--another way to think about where we live, one that represents a deeper substrate of our place on earth than does the political entity that collects taxes and provides streets and water mains and sewers. I live in Shelby County, Tennessee, in a town called Bartlett. But I also live in the Loosahatchie River watershed, and people a few miles to the south live in the Wolf River watershed. It's helpful and healthy for me to remember this.
We are social creatures with a rich culture. But we are also creatures of nature, entirely dependent on, and embedded in, conditions set and provided by nature. Human preoccupations in Western history have frequently leaned toward our fascination with the institutions, ideas, and technologies we've created. And human culture is fascinating. But so is its natural foundation, beautiful in its stunning variety, and vital in its singular ability to nurture human culture.
I can see it through the windows on the back of my house, and I can walk a few steps for a closer look. The little walks I take down to that creek help prevent me from taking a great gift for granted.
