I’ve been worried about my sweet potatoes swimming away, or at least in a circle, for a while now. That may sound foolish, but given the abundance of rain we’ve had in the last month here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, it doesn’t feel unfounded. And when I consider the absolute deluge we had several Fridays ago (close to 5 inches in just a couple hours) it starts to feel like not only a legitimate concern, but even a reasonable one.
So what then, I asked myself? If they did up and float away, swept downstream by such storms, where would they go? I’ve spent much of these past months since moving to this veritable rainforest in Black Mountain (occupied Cherokee land) pondering the precipitation coming out of the sky, but less time contemplating its path once it hits the ground. Mostly, I’ve been bemoaning it flooding my garden, and essentially creating a moat, to my dismay. The treasure it surrounds, you might ask? Well, the sweet potatoes, clearly (I say as a blatantly biased gardener), but I’m also wondering if the liquid itself is the treasure? Perhaps it is the luxury of living in such a water-rich area that I don’t think as sensitively about its path and route once it begins making its way through our watershed.
But in fact, what is my watershed? And who? From where does it flow? To where does it go? Who does it carry and whom does it meet? I was distressed to discover I knew so few of the answers, especially as an informal educator who relishes teaching stream ecology. I am coming to love the familiar burbling of this precious and spirited liquid, but could I know it more intimately? As I began to search for names and characteristics, like those of a dear friend, I was shocked to learn that this water, these droplets sometimes torrents would end up in the Gulf of Mexico! Somehow, in my orientation conditioned by the global North and my Euro-centric heritage, I had just assumed that these streams would run downhill and eastward towards the mighty Atlantic. But no, indeed not – instead to the Gulf, possibly even more choked by the chains of capitalism and consumption, holding on for dear life after countless oil spills and off-shore drilling, connecting us in name and shared story to our non-US neighbors. Water can’t be quite as easily separated by a wall.
And so, there – my sweet potatoes would end up in the Gulf of Mexico (if they were to hypothetically survive such a long journey) after first passing through many unnamed but beloved tiny streams here at Christmount Assembly. Those would finally funnel into Camp Branch, and then make their way to the Swannanoa River, which feeds into the French Broad, flowing on to the Tennessee and then the Ohio before entering the Mississippi to arrive with a flourish at the Gulf. What a watershed, and what an unfolding! I traced my fingers on the map, trying to imagine all the living beings along the way. Activist theologian Ched Myers writes about watershed discipleship because, he muses, “we can’t always easily fathom a plan to care for the entire planet, but we can envision our watershed.” So here I am, at 28, learning to envision my watershed maybe for the first time, coming to know its sinuous curves and meandering turns by name and in relationship while de-centering my own separate existence, made up of so much water as I am.
As I clumsily seek after this new way, I’m reminded of a metaphor Robin Wall Kimmerer used in a recent talk for the McKenzie River Trust, entitled “Upstream: Conversations Between People & Rivers.” In it, she invites us to consider what it might be like to live as guests in the house of water, to imagine how this might shift our behavior, and moreover, our entire framework. How would I respond, I speculated, if I saw myself in a dynamic dance with water, one of receiving, of listening, of being hosted by, and responding out of such a well of love? Or, if not the host, at least the protector and guardian? Could it be like contra dancing, where sweetness and surprise are intermingled when one enters the fluidity of role swapping, of learning from many turns and directions and swirls?
In the days following my sweet potato alarm and muddy, soggy ground, I happened upon the most magical of water hosts and guests. After concluding my morning gardening rhythm, I strolled back to my office, following the gentle winding of one of the many creeks. As I placed one foot in front of the other, lost in my own analytical thoughts, I heard the twinkling laughter and voice of a small child. Her words were indistinguishable, but the joy was unmistakable. Rounding the bend, I saw this little girl standing on the wooden footbridge, probably no more than 3 years old, peering down into the chattering brook as an adult, presumably her mother or caregiver, marveled with her. I had paused at this point, unseen and spellbound by their exuberance. As I watched, the woman leaned further over the railing and exclaimed, “Hi water! We love you!” The little girl burst into giggles again and I found myself sure that the water was giddily giggling back at such a greeting. Glee filled my being. Such enthusiasm! Such earnest delight! Such fondness and warmth for her watershed!
I shook my head in wonderment as I began walking again, leaving them to their moment, my breath having returned from where it had paused in that slow, bright place of awe.
What might it look like, I thought, if we received and greeted all creatures and spaces with such hospitality and clear eyes? The relationality I had beheld, the profound ways in which an adult was fostering wonder and connection in that child, encouraging what was so vividly already in her to grow and become, rather than sterilizing it with labels of “nature” and “environment” and “human” – boxes of separateness – well, I floated back to my office on an updraft of hope.
Reverend Stephen Blackmer, a forester, environmentalist, and Episcopal priest at the Church of the Woods (written about in Harper’s Magazine, The Priest in the Trees, December 2016), near Canterbury, New Hampshire believes connection to the land and devotion to prayer leaves a spiritual presence that is palpable. “Prayer transforms places as well as people,” Blackmer said. “You can actually feel it when you walk into a place where people have prayed for long periods of time. It is as if prayer has changed the molecular structure of a place.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about this idea as I reflected on what felt like a witnessing of such a sacred interaction that day. Do our words, the longings of our souls, the stirrings of Spirit within us – do they, could they, alter the very structures of the particles of place? And if, in fact, they could (a thought almost too wonderful and too full of possibility to bear) what then might that mean for us as guests in the house of water? How might we also be humble and heart-led hosts? What might we invite into this world so ordered by exclusion rather than welcome?
Two day later, I found myself on the same well-worn path. As I rounded the bend this time though, a gasp escaped as I sank to the ground on my haunches, shocked still by what I saw. There, underneath the footbridge where I could still hear the lilting laughter of the mother and daughter, stood a great blue heron. Ardea Herodias. Tears sprang to my eyes, unbidden, flowing homeward, down my cheeks to eventually return to the French Broad watershed holding me. The heron and I briefly locked gazes, and my breath caught, anticipating her or his nearly certain departure into flight. But instead, she (or he or they) stayed, continuing to gracefully pick her way along the rocky streambed.
I couldn’t conceive of trying to guess or imagine her thoughts with my anthropocentric lens, but my first and most lingering curiosity is this – could that heron feel the joy and fondness lavished on that exact space just a few days prior? Could she have felt in her holy and hollow bird bones the depth of blessing spoken over the water by human creatures? Did their exultation and exclamation of interconnectedness and care change the very air? Was she drawn there by the power of love, perhaps the truest homing instinct there is for us all?
I cannot logically know the answers to all these questions, but I wonder if they might be shaping and forming my cells on a molecular level, in the same vein of transformation that occurs when our prayers and our postures of praise encounter a particular place. Carried on the wings of possibility, this thought stays with me. It scoops up my snippets of sweet potato worry and connects me to all my creaturely kin in the Gulf of Mexico and to this one beautiful blue heron. Walking home that day, I found myself uncontrollably, buoyantly, and loudly singing my friend Te Martin’s song “May My Body Be a Bridge.” Her words, influenced by the Palestinian solidarity movement, invoke the chance for our bodies “be a bridge, for the healing of this land…may the river flow through us, cleansing greed from our hands.”
Ah, friends, may the children teach us! That we might stand on such a footbridge, whilst acting as a bridge, welcoming both herons and the water, and joining such a river of love!
Held by the embrace of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Emma Childs is endeavoring to make home in Black Mountain, NC. She has spent the last 10 years exploring the deep connections between spirituality, ecology, farming, food systems, and community health. She is working to learn to quilt with scraps of fabric, as well as with snippets of story and song, people and places, words and wrestlings.
