Haunted by Waters
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.
The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.
On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.
Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
-- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
My life has been spent around water.
The Flowing water of The River.
The Rippling water of The Creek.
The Rolling water of The Ocean.
The Flat water of The Lakes.
Water.
The River was the Susquehanna or the Lehigh; the Delaware or the Rock; the Minnesota or the Mississippi. They flow or flood, depending on their moods and meanderings.
The Creek is the Tiadaghton- known to us as Pine Creek. We were always told it was the largest creek in the world; the major tributary of the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Get your feet wet in Pine Creek, the saying went, and you will always return. Perhaps it may also be that your life will always flow with the water of the beauty of the Tiadaghton. A wilderness at the bottom of a majestic pine bounded gorge.
The Atlantic Ocean. From Coney Island as a child to Long Beach Island, NJ or Ocean City, MD, the Ocean's perpetual motion, ebb and neap, wind and wave become both calming and energizing. They mesmerize and pull you in. Like The Creek it is always in your veins, now as the seawater salt of the original home of life.
Last, but no less important or powerful, the Wilderness Lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Isolated, motor-less, awe-inspiring home to loons and wolves and eagles. You get in- and out- through your own power of paddle and portage. Renewal comes through the ripples of a canoe wake and endless skies limited only by islands. It is wilderness and you go prepared to expect the unexpected- or you don't go at all.
One learns much from water. One learns that a cycle of life is going on around us. It is in the tides and waves. It is in the high water of spring and the low water of late August. It is in the quiet of a calm summer day and the relentless wind turning lakes into wave swept danger.
One learns how to flow to connect places. Water provided the first interstate highways; the routes through wilderness; traffic lanes for a growing economy. Water separated from, then led to, the New World and the seemingly endless lands of opportunity.
One learns to be patient and persistent, prepared and practical; a dreamer and a realist. One learns that water truly is the stuff of life. It is no surprise that the basic sacrament is baptism. It is in water that we are most prepared to be reborn. It is through an act with water that we are remineded that while we may be of dust, our salvation is through water being washed clean. There is a "hauntingness" and a mystical quality to water. It will never leave us. It may very well be the haunting of the Holy Spirit of God that first moved over the face of water and made what God proclaimed as "Good!"
