Vibrant blue and surging forth – this is how it starts. Its banks bursting with possibilities and a tidal wave of new beginnings, of new life. It churns and stampedes over rocks, mixing together eons worth of matter into one whole, like the many sediments coming together to create the rocks that line the bottom.
Then the summer comes, and with it, heat. Everything – the plants, the animals, the entire park all bustling – all cooks. The sun beats relentlessly as the water finally begins to yield and starts shrinking away. Slowly, at first. Then you come back a week later and it is unrecognizable, a shadow of its former self.
Two months time and it’s done. It’s cooked. The river is surrounded by a landscape baked golden brown, gleaming in the ever-weakening light of the sun. It has slowed to a trickle, a stream of honey lazily working its way to the shores of the continent.
And all the while he has been watching. Watching, distracted, preoccupied, but watching. Watching his shadow, cast upon the river, caught up in the rapids at first but slowly settling and coming into focus until it is so clear it reflects his visage. At once he sees both a self he has known was there all along and a new one, polished by the water like the stones tumbling below the waves.
He sees the way the water moves, unrelenting yet yielding, here placid and there turbid, but forward, always forward. He knows there is life here. There has always been and always will be. Life, so sacred, so delicate and balanced and existing as far as we know it only on this planet. This planet in motion, always in motion. Always spinning, turning, whirling and hurtling through space.
All this movement and yet we never feel it, he thinks, how can this be? Something to do with light and physics and relativity, something he will never understand but doesn’t need to. Just needs a snippet – the faster you move, the less time you experience.
He turns his attention back to the water, sees it rushing, slowing, trickling. And with a final glance he turns and walks away, in search of still waters.
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Soundtrack:
the cure (Olivia Rodrigo)
An Unwavering Heart (Pokémon Black/White)
Little Black Cat (Lizzo)
stupid song (Olivia Rodrigo)
honeybee (Olivia Rodrigo)
I Wish I Was (The Avett Brothers)
Slush Puppy (Tommy Lefroy)
White Lightning (Ryan Beatty)
Sweet Fortune (Ryan Beatty)
The over Grown Waltz (BĂ©la Fleck)
Bruises Off the Peach (Ryan Beatty)
Hunter (Ryan Beatty)
The light in the painting (Lizzy McAlpine)
Edna Strange (John Craigie)
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Photo Gallery:
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A little peek into summer #3 spent in a place that means more to me than words can describe. So I won’t try. Sending all my love from MT
🫶 EV
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