Water, Now and Then

The frogs are singing as we wake up, earlier than normal, so the sky is still dark with that little hint of pink and yellow morning. The frogs sing and scream for the first time all season — perhaps a pinky promise that spring is on its way. Please keep your promise Frogs; winter was too much, too long, too cold, and spring will be sweeter than the summer’s wineberries.

The frogs live in our pathetic pond down in the holler, quite a ways from the house, which makes it all the more impressive that I can hear them now, even as I type this, with the front door closed and windows shut. The pond is maybe 4 inches of water, and probably 1/5 the size it should be, the rest nearly a foot of anaerobic sludge, hot and thick, and swallowing when I first tried my luck at trying to conquer it last spring. The frogs croak in unison and the pond’s surface ripples with excitement, vibrating with hope of the future. They croak and croak, I like to imagine out of pure joy from the rain from the night before. We don’t often get thunderstorms out here in the mountains, but when they come, they’re huge and menacing, lighting the sky up with a blue lightning I’ve never seen before.

It has been 133 since the flood, since our confrontation with raw, feral nature, as she proved to us we are at her mercy, try as we might to disagree. The flood drowned my town, the town I love and have loved for almost two years. My refuge, my nest, my home. The river rose to 28 feet and swallowed our town up, wiping the east side of town out completely. The river picked up whole train cars, rushed shipping containers and entire houses down into its belly, hitting every bridge on the way down. Buildings, older than you could think, gone and who-knows-where. Trees, tons of trees, more than you could even fathom without seeing them first hand, tangled with clothing and houses and metal and things probably worse. Businesses, generations, civilizations, eaten. Hundreds remain missing, hundreds, buried under mud and those trees and buildings and cars and.

Earth now, the water becomes, as do we. A burial at sea, so to speak; our giant sea of a river. And nonetheless, the frogs sing, delighted at the rush of water they now jump and swim and fuck in. The same rush of water that killed and drowned and wiped. But who am I to take away the frog’s joys of new life, of Spring Awakening, of ensuring their genetic succession, of laying their eggs, of watching their young evolve in front of their two little bulging eyes. Of life, of growth, of the future.

Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from the frogs. Screaming as loud as they can, quieting one by one the closer I get to them as I walk down the mountain to steal a video of the rippling surface of their pathetic pond. They don’t mind the state of course, as long as there’s those few inches of water for them to frolic in, after being buried under the cold mud all winter. As long as they have one another to scream at. Finally, they emerge on this early February day, and I’ve never been happier to hear them. Surely, life is coming back to us, and newness will sprout and proliferate and bloom and again we will be surrounded by the beauty of a bright, new world. Come quickly spring, we need you.

The river is different now. It has changed itself. It exists in new places , where it never was before, where we never thought it could be. But even so, there it is. On the other side of the highway, or what was once the highway and is now a gorged hole in the earth, sharing no suggestion that it was once asphalt and stone; unmovable, fixed, immutable. It exists where homes once were, where businesses were, for decades, for centuries even. Changed forever, rerouted, in the most terrifying way possible. By force.

The water takes but god does it give. And for that, I will continue to love her. In spite of, perhaps, but absolutely altogether. (Week 6: 2/7/25)