Passing the Streams

One day Christian was walking in his home forest appreciating his favorite mountain views.

While exiting a glade of birch trees he could all the while anticipate a Reverently Meandering Stream on the edge of it.  The morning light trickled through the trees and then bouncing off the near still water transporting the dew's evaporation into a rainbow of mystic color.  The stream's rubbing of the pebbles beneath him didn't make the usual noise of water as he had learned it all his life.  It hummed a chorus that suggested a different content--a rotating and reverent aspect of meandering water truly alive and well.  Christian washed his face in the stillish water... refreshing his view of the day.

After hiking a few miles up the side of that favorite and central mountain he came upon a sudden crag in the ground.  It was deep gorge with steep sides.  At first it terrified him and a childlike fear of exposed heights reared it's power over him.  After gathering himself he looked over his side of the chasm, which he had not remembered seeing before on this mountain.  The crag plumbed the depths nearly as high as his mountain sought the heights.  He thought he could see, at the crux of the vicious valley, a Distant Threading River that, though not too wide, pushed at the ground and in a force of so many gallons of history and truth and past and living water that the gorge seemed to get even deeper by it's strength as he peered into it.  Standing up, Christian found a fallen branch that resembled a cross, and a rock that was flat and round.  He tossed the rock halfway out into the canyon and watched as it fell faster than he could imagine for a time, and then seemed to slow as it grew father and farther from him.  He saw it sucked into the thundering stream without sound or splash or even much substance.  He then lightly tossed his branch out into the canyon and watched it glide down its insides.  It never seemed to fall much father than halfway down the canyon, and after several minutes Christian thought he could still make it out in the distance silhouetted against the rushing waters.

After entering the steeper part of his trail the way began to "switch-back" and Christian found himself peering back to paths he already crossed below him.  Soon a small stream entered the path and upon the next switch back he crossed the Small Peaceful Tributary again.  It seemed the trail was crossing in a "Z" pattern over and again through the trickling stream.  One time he stopped to fill his water-bottle.  Another time he washed his hands in the cool mountain water.  When taking a break from his load he dangled his sore bare feet into the glorious source of living water.  It seemed this stream was hiking the hill with him rather than passing him the other way.  When the path finally did leave the stream he begrudged the fact that the tributary continued straight up to the peak while he seemed to be taking a less direct route, out of human necessity.  "Farewell, hiking friend," said Christian as he left the stream.  "I hope to see you again up top!"

At that stage when the crest of the mountain always seems to be "over the next ridge" but never seems to arrive when you climb it, Christian began to feel very tired and loathsome of his load and his now aching sides.  It seemed his left side would burst it pained him so.  His feet felt as though nails were punched through the bottom of his soles.  Blisters were likely forming there.  His palms were scarred from scampering over so many jagged boulders and cracks to stay on the red-striped indicated trail he knew was to take him to the Summit.  His food was used up at lunch and his water-bottle was empty.  He longed for any of the waters that he passed earlier.  His friend the cool stream he could fall into for sure, the canyon river he could jump thousands of feet onto, at the still waters he could bathe in the warmth.

And exactly his point of decision to turn around and seek them out, abandoning the Summit Ahead for the Waters Behind, Christian noticed a clear blue substance behind a large boulder ahead of him.  He mustered his final strength to curb the rock and to his astonishment there was a solitary pool of water standing with a still serenity somehow level on the side of this jagged hill.  He threw off his pack and kicked off his boots and could barely remove his clothing before jumping into the pool like a child at a summer swimming hole.

But the quiet pond was not chilled as a mountain pool should be.  In fact, it was quite warm ... and he saw now that he was in it that it was steaming.  He could not figure whether the Sun had warmed it as soup or if it was some kind of highland hot spring.  He dipped below the surface and felt for the first time in life that he was back in the womb ... immersed in the place where he began.  He didn't know if it was possible ... or whether it was a result of the strenuous climb he had just endured alone, but he thought, or rather, he felt, that he was crying there under the water.  His small drops being ingested into the larger waters like so many seemingly insignificant streams into the oceans of life.

Christian came up out of the living water slowly, almost ceremoniously.  As the pond poured himself up and out of it he peered through it's steam and mist and noticed that the way he came was a beautiful view.  He could see all the way he came.  Far away he saw the forests and a Reverently Meandering Stream blessing the entire life it sustained around it.  He could see the entire canyon now, and from his angle and the Sun behind him he could see down even to the Distant Threading River that constantly cut it's home deeper into the Earth.  Christian was most overjoyed to see his friend the Small Peaceful Tributary crisscrossed by his own path.

It was then that he realized that his friend found its source at his feet.  A small leaking dribble of water was sent directly to the stream that felt like home to him.  Indeed the other two streams likewise found their source in their own branching off or direct connection to this small pond.  And then he noticed several other streams and rivers and creeks that traced from the panorama back to this very point.  The idea was nearly embarrassing.  He quickly put his clothes back on.  "This must be a gathering place for water on this side of the mountain, which is then dispersed to the other streams," Christian thought.  So he spun himself around to wonder about the higher source of this here pond.  It was then he realized that he was not on the side of the mountain, but at the very top.  He intended to view rock above him and instead found slopes descending beneath him.  And he remembered that this personal pond came up from the ground itself, with no other source above it.  He was amazed at the illusion of his earlier assumptions, and looked distantly at the opposite view of the landscape.

As he looked down he noticed that this side of the mountain was far different from his own.  The pond did send several tributaries out of itself on this side as well, seeping through the rocks to find their own most comfortable bed--as only water can.  But a third of the way down the side of the sloping majestic mountain all the streams which seemed to be expanding ever outwards stopped exploring new hills and canyons and wooded areas.  Each began to turn, right or left, toward the center of his vision, and becoming larger and more direct in their route they quickly became one massive and direct and seemingly man-made channel of straight moving water.  At first, as it used the momentum of the hill, the water charged ahead with a sense of destiny toward the lowest point possible.  Surely nothing could stop this collective rush of water from the Great Mountain ... even the Summit itself.

But in the deep distance he saw that the great canal abruptly met a large lake, one he recognized not just for it's visible appearance ... but, he privately wondered, perhaps even for it's smell.  The smell of salt was clouding his sinuses.  Stagnant salt and a foreign sense of rusty mineral thickness was his sense of the water than ended there.  Now Christian noticed his involuntary screwing up of the face and even chuckled at his too-drastic response.  He scolded himself as he remembered that it was The Summit he was climbing, and that even the simple geography lessons told him that the Sea of Dead would be on the other side of it ... the lowest point on earth in fact.

He turned around to look at His pool again.  The Source of All Streams.  He was glad that he come the way he did to find it.  He would return here every week the rest of his life as a kind of ritual hike, he resolved.  And he would always take the laborious way passing his beloved streams below to get here, rather than the barges that likely steam upwards on the seemingly straight canal.  They were on the same mountain, for sure, but the first journey's streams for him made the Summit so much more lasting in Christian's life.

-Dave Drury

(Copyright by David E. Drury, January 2002)

 

 

Back to David’s Writer’s Attic