Still water runs deep
On feeling stuck and meeting destiny
Just after breakfast, the boys announced they were taking us on a walk. We put Rio in the baby carrier, and they led us down our little dirt road, past the neighbors farm with the lamas, past the neighborhood of little summer houses all boarded up and vacant now. When the road ended, they shouted, Left! And suddenly we realized they were taking us into the forest, maybe even all the way to the sea.
“Do you think they can get there on their own?” Alfredo asked.
It seemed unlikely. It’s at least a kilometer of twists and turns along the river, and we’d only been once before.
Step by step, it became clear that they remembered.
It was simple landmarks that assured them along the way. The short plank of wood we walk across to avoid the mud pit. There it is! Where the river falls behind a wall of stones we walk across. Whoever touches ground is dead! The fallen tree we can’t go under, only over. Me first! The steep hill where cows roam looking for fresher pasture. Cows can climb? The bridge that looks likes it’s been crossed way too many times before. Careful here. And finally the wooden plank nailed to a tree that says BEACH in blocky signpost letters. Yes! From there it’s as simple as climbing up out of forest and walking the last stretch across an open meadow.
Almost there, they nearly sang in unison.
We could hear the sea now, louder than the river. In fact the river had gone quiet. Had the river curved away from us? Or we away from it? Curious, I wandered away from the others to investigate.
The river was quiet because it was completely still, as if being bottlenecked by something. It was stuck. I realized how uncomfortable it made me feel. To see that beautiful body in a state of immobility. It did not look like a restful state at all, more like an exasperating one.
Tree pollen floated on the river’s surface in dusty swirls that barely moved. It reflected nothing back to me, and yet it was like looking into a mirror. I, too, had been feeling stuck for a while. Maybe even a decade. And I was finally, finally getting to the bottom of it all. Core beliefs about life and myself were being revisited, rewritten, and I could see glimpses of what the next era of my life might look like. Yet I saw no way of actually getting there. Despite all of the work I’d done to get to this point, there was still some resistance.
If I were a caterpillar, I was standing at the door to the cocoon, hesitating. Caterpillars have to be obliterated, become a mush of DNA, die in order to be reborn. But, of course, becoming a butterfly is its destiny. A caterpillar can’t overthink things. It must crawl toward its destiny.
Could that explain the river, so close to the shore now, so close to reaching its next destination? Was there some resistance to being transformed – becoming the sea?
How does one flow during times when there is no flow? If resistance is part of the process, how do I stay in motion, not get stuck for too long? I looked to the river for guidance now. Again, just those dusty swirls.
But wait… the swirls were moving a little. There was movement somewhere, perhaps far below the surface in places I couldn’t see. Still water runs deep, the saying came to me. A saying I didn’t even know I knew.
“Mammaa!” I heard the boys calling and turned back toward the meadow where they waited.
We continued on, our steps getting heavier. Until we got to the top of a hill and finally saw that enormous blue body rolling into the edges of the sky, crashing into the edges of earth. The sea is such an expansive entity, a world of its own, where life explodes into multifarious forms beyond our comprehension. Of course the river flowed toward it apprehensively. Transformation is scary. Even babies know that. It will always feel safer to remain in the womb. To crawl instead of walk. But at some point, we must all give way to the process, surrender to what’s next.
The sound of the river was back. And what a force now! Almost louder than the sea, it rushed through the landscape as if releasing pent-up energy. As if had almost given up hope of reaching the sea but now, with the sea appearing on the horizon, it sprang to life with renewed energy.
It happened in the boys too. Just as their complaints about tiredness were setting in, bogging down their every step, the sea came into view, and off they shot like rockets.
Together they got the gate open, and then I heard a lot of shouting. I couldn’t see them yet knew they were arguing about who would go through the gate first. I crested the last hill just in time to see Axel throw Bastian on the ground and run ahead. Bastian lay crumpled on the grass, shrieking. But then something beautiful happened. Axel, in his haste to win at all costs, failed to see the patch of slippery mud at the threshold between grass and sand. He jumped right into it that slippery spot, which grabbed him by the legs and threw him up into the air. Up, up, his legs rose until gravity pulled his body down to the ground and he landed flat on his back in the mud. Now both boys were shrieking. I doubled over in laughter. Which neither of them appreciated. But what other response could I have had?
“Guys, guys,” I said. “Look what you did!”
“Sorry mama!” Axel wailed.
“No,” I assured him. “I mean look what you guys did! All by yourselves! You got us all the way to the sea!” Their wailing paused. “And you did it together, right?”
“Yeahhh,” they said, looking around.
“But my shoes, and my clothes!”
“Well lucky for you, we have plenty of water to wash off here. Look behind you.”
They turned, saw the sea and took off running side by side, mouths in wide open cries of victory. Braveheart style, mind you. Bastian even has the long hair.
For the next hour, they hardly noticed the waves lapping onto the shore. It was the river that captured them. That place right where the river breaks out of the forest onto the beach. I stood there watching it too. The river was totally unrestricted now. This, I thought, this is what freedom feels like on the other side!
“Oh no, you don’t,” I heard Axel shouting at the rapids. “You’re a river, you can’t become the sea.”
And they moved logs twice their weight into the currents, trying to stop the flow of water, not understanding of what sort of wild energy they were up against. When logs didn’t work, they tried heavy stones.
“Nothing is working,” Bastian yelled over the sound of rushing water. Frustration was setting in. It got Bastian first, he’s just 3 after all, and not nearly as stubborn as his big brother.
Axel continued on, trying to match the energy of the river until his arms ached and his shoulders hunched in defeat. Water won’t be stopped easily after all. It may be soft, but it flows even when it doesn’t appear to be flowing, it looks for a way, it meets its destiny.
“I think it’s time for lunch,” I said. And the boys agreed.
We retraced our steps back across the meadow, and when we passed the place where the river is quiet and seemingly stuck, there was no discomfort in me anymore. Almost there, I whispered to it and to myself.
xx
Beth
From my journal, 31 October 2023.
Also, the fourth and final part of I Follow Rivers.
