The Rio Grande River Near South Fork, Colorado
Rivers are the veins and arteries of our world, and they are essential to all life. In the U.S., we depend on our 3.5 million miles of rivers for our drinking water and the food we eat. Rivers provide crucial habitat for fish and wildlife, opportunities for recreation, and spiritual and cultural connections for us, our families, and our communities. Rivers make life possible, yet we are losing them. Amy Souers Kober, American Rivers (www.americanrivers.org)
Heading out early on the morning of the autumnal equinox to explore and honor the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, little did I know that the following day was World Rivers Day. Recently engaged in global activity to honor fresh waters, I simply wanted to get to know this river at the place where she begins her long (and oft interrupted) journey to the Gulf of Mexico.
Enroute to the headwaters, high in the San Juan Mountains 130 miles or so away, we crossed the Rio Grande numerous times, stopping at a couple of particularly beautiful Colorado State Wildlife Areas to touch the River below her genesis point. Our day of awe and beauty had only just begun.
Arriving at the Rio Grande Reservoir, more beauty to behold, beauty that touched my heart and brought feelings of deep gratitude for this River, for all Rivers, for all Life. During our slow meandering of the area, the sense of what it might have been in the days when indigenous peoples lived there in harmony with the River, the Earth, Life. Before my European ancestors brought what they believed was ‘progress’, what I now hold as colonization and control that has led us to feel we are separate from one another and from Nature.
I think of the Lakota phrase “Mní wičhóni” (“Water is life”) that came powerfully into our consciousness as the protest anthem from Standing Rock. I remember that it also has a spiritual meaning rooted in Indigenous world views. Water not only sustains Life, Water is also sacred.
A key element in honoring the waters is to ask and to listen. In doing so recently with rivers in the eastern United States, I have ‘heard’ their sorrow for the division and bloodshed of the past and their wish that this be healed. And I have sensed the rivers’ desire to flow freely.
In our culture of control, we view water on the move as disruptive and thus needing to be controlled. In nomadic times Rivers and humans moved freely in what I imagine to be a dance. ‘The River will rise soon … we need to move to higher ground.’ Listening to Nature and dancing with her. Today we demean such lifestyle choices. Countries, political boundaries, ownership have fenced us in to the ways of separation.
How shall we become free? How shall Life and Nature regain their natural freedom? Musings for now. Questions with mere hints of possibility. A call for greater awareness. For honoring. For asking. For listening. For gratitude. And not just out in the wild, beauty of Nature, but right here with each turn of the tap. Ask and allow the water to inform. Remember the sacredness. Respect and respond.
Marshy Headwaters of the Rio Grande River