An Evening's Task

   From out of a sunny day it started snowing late this afternoon, and up here when it snows like this you want to go walking where you can feel the deeper depths of calm at the heart of the snowy forest, the calm we are born from, the calm that you hold in your open hands.

   In the forest quiet the snow goes on with its whispers to itself upon the ground, upon the trees.  As I wade up through the white that is falling everywhere, the way is still untraveled, the snow ahead untrammeled. Along the narrowing road through the snow-laden oaks, the smaller trees lean over from the weight, forming a tunnel toward even more whiteness. Above them rise empty trees with frosted limbs, reaching like their own ghosts into a silvering sky...

  I leave what is now a filling path and turn upon the rougher way upward along the noisy stream that gallops down among the icy rocks at the feet of the trees, and when I reach the source of our water I step with my high boots into the pushing cascade, begin to clear away a week's debris from the mountain above, and the water rises in our watercourse.

   After a few moments in that wild splashing at the heart of the silence, task completed I stand and look around me, listening, breathing the snow-edged air, taking it all in: the darkling sky, the biding trees, the stream, the thickening snow, the disappearing road, these clouds of breath, the passing of time, the season, the rooted stillness, like water being, like forest knowing, trees reaching, all yet to come alive again from the seeming silence, when Spring calls all the voices back to their places...

*

[Wrote this back before we got our deep well and had to take turns tending the mountain stream source of our water, and when there was snow like we used to have...]

TAKING CARE OF THE STREAM

Today was our day to take care of the mountain stream that we all get our water from up here. Not clean the stream itself, which runs mostly over stones and isn't muddy, it's a clear, perky, bubbly flow of water from far up on top of the mountain, an onrushing gift of clouds and gravity, but there's a special spot along its banks (a few hundred meters above our house), where it bounces merrily through the forest like a water child getting all hyperoxygenated, and where we have our diversion apparatus that leads some of the stream into the water co-op pipe while the rest of the stream (by far most of it) freshets its way down the mountain and into the lake where it tries to be vapor so it can get to do the whole great ride all over again.

That apparatus, with its screens and filters to keep out leaves and twigs (and fend off rolling rocks when heavy rain swells the stream and things get rough), has to be cleaned once a week, so the members of the water co-op take turns. This week it was our turn, so we went up there with the co-op's new stream-care manual, got out the boots and tools and did all the steps, starting with step one (close the main valve).

The big screen right at the mouth of the diversion was matted with leaves now that fall has commenced to live up to its name; removing them and letting the water flow free and fast again was like scratching the back of a big liquid beast; very satisfying to all parties concerned. Then step two, open the sluice to lower the water level; then one-by-one through the other steps to the inner filter of stainless steel, which I scrubbed clean with a big tawashi scrub brush. Then I reassembled the filter, raised the water level to wash all the cleansing detritus away, opened the secondary valve to run the piped water back into the stream until all piped was clear again, closed that valve, then did step nine, the final step: re-open the main valve one turn.

Satisfying on a deep level, to take care of a stream/human interface, and get cold, clear skywater in return...

Reminded me of an experience somewhere, long before my own life...