River

In celebration of Earth Day, today its 54th anniversary, my community hosted a free showing of the 2021 documentary, River, produced in Australia, narrated by actor Willem Dafoe, and described as “a stunning exploration of the timeless relationship between human civilization and Earth’s rivers, in all their majesty and fragility.”

Writing in earlier posts that I call myself a “daughter of Niagara,” having been conceived, born, and raised in the land bordered by that mighty river, this film, with its breath-taking photography, orchestral score, and poetic narration, touched that place deep within me where river resides.

“…Our early destiny was shaped
by the will of rivers.
We both feared and revered
them as forces of life,
and of death.
We worshiped them as Gods.

Rivers inspired us as a species,
allowing us to thrive.
Over time, they became the
highways by which trade,
and technology spread inland,
and along them also flowed poetry,
stories and religions,
politics and conflict…”

– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021

For the last forty-five years, I’ve made home near another mighty river, the North Saskatchewan. While not in my sightline every day, and in only a few ways resembling my river from home, at least once a week, as I drive into Edmonton or walk along its valley with my Saturday morning Camino group, I feel deep pleasure and appreciation for its presence in my life, for how it invites, metaphorically and in an embodied reflection, wise action for living.

By flowing with the power of its current; recognizing the value of being contained by its banks; attending to its shallows, hidden depths, and eddies, its seasonal highs and lows influenced by rainfall, snowpack, heat and cold – in sum, recognizing its innate alive wildness as mirror of possibility for my own.

“…For eons, running water
obeyed only its own laws.
Patient and persistent,
it wore mountains away.
It looped and meandered
laying down great plains
of lush, rich silt.
Where rivers wandered,
life could flourish.
For rivers are world-makers.
They have shaped the Earth,
and they have shaped us as a species.
For thousands of years
we worshiped rivers,
as the arteries of the planet,
the givers of gifts,
the well-springs of wonder…”

– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021

Like a sonnet’s volta, or a river’s ninety-degree turn, the film shifted perspective to show the impact on rivers of our interventions and interference in their natural flow, albeit while acknowledging their unpredictable, destructive capacities:

“…we devised extraordinary
means of controlling them,
of harnessing their force
and taming their wildness.
We discovered how to
regulate and manage them,
how to run them like machines.
We shifted from seeing
rivers as living beings
to seeing them as resources.
Our gods
had become our subjects…”

– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021

Repeatedly, I was held in awe by the film’s aerial photography showing the shape and flow of rivers and their profound resemblance to trees. Staggering to learn was that the amount of water in the hydrosphere, the Earth’s original water account, hasn’t changed since the beginning of time, while our numbers, in contrast, have grown beyond comprehension. Too, that worldwide, there is hardly a river unspanned, undammed or undiverted, and that the largest dams have held back so much water, they’ve slowed the Earth’s rotation.

“…The mystery and beauty
of a wild river is beyond our ability to comprehend
but within our capacity to destroy.
Rivers that have flowed for eons
have been cut off in decades.

Time and again,
upstream need and upstream greed
have led to downstream disaster.

We have become Titans,
capable of shaping our world
in ways that will endure for
millions of years to come…”

– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021

Throughout, I kept thinking back to John O’Donohue, and his poem, Fluent:

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

Such simple eloquence that holds reverence for – not interference with – river’s sovereignty.

If you, too, are enamored of rivers, I encourage you to find the film and take the 90 minutes to watch it. For Earth Day…which, IMHO, should be every day.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.