an homage

I love to read Ciii's stuff. I feel all deep and thoughtful and floaty after reading what he writes. Recently he wrote about his little girl asking him about where a river comes from. Go read it. Really.

His post kept tickling my brain.

I have witnessed the birth of a river.

This is the Mat-Su glacier in Alaska.

As you drive nearer, it grows. Its enormity begins to touch and move your soul. It is awe.

As you walk that last few feet of dry barren soil, to the thicketed edge...

...you see what is flowing out from the great Mat-Su.

It's the birth of a river...

...a great, swirling, powerful river. Born full and roaring every second. A river pours off that glacier...moment after moment...it is continuously born.

I was blown away by the power. Awed by...as Ciii says...the source. (Forgive the hat. That water is 35 degrees even on a lovely summer day at the end of July. The Matanuska is frigid.)

The Mat-Su is the mother of this river. This rushing, roaring, living thing.

The river swirls grey, hiding its depths...hiding its contents. It is iridescent. The water is full of tiny pieces of the mountain. The glacier grinds up the mountain as it methodically marches forward. It deposits those pieces into the river it is birthing.

The glacier is a great mother, the mountain--a majestic father...

...and the river is what they send forth into the world.