Winter Writings: Day 14

The cars fly back and forth across the Sam Jackson bridge. The drivers faces drained and largely devoid of expression as they scurry to their destinations. They drive unaware of the river below them on its slow journey to the sea. What a tale they miss by not stopping to hear the water tell its story. From birth in a thunderstorm, high in the mountains where it joined a tumbling stream, growing faster and wider with each drop of rain; through its wild journey down the river of no return, tumbling through the frothy rapids and basking in the lazy backwater pools while eagles plucked lunch from the water; through the slow crazy oxbows of the Snake River; and on to the mighty Columbia. An epic journey that few humans have made. Instead, most choose to focus on our smaller lives and hurry on to engage in empty tasks. Never realizing that in doing so, we lost the opportunity to take a moment and learn how to be alive.