Page 28 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

an island begins to form. The island – in fact, any deposition -­‐-­‐ reshapes the current. As water curls

around the obstacle, the current’s own force turns it upstream. Around one small change, the energy

reorganizes itself entirely.

And here’s the point: No one pattern continues indefinitely; it always gives way to another. When

there are so many obstacles and islands that a channel can no longer carry all its water and sediment,

it crosses a stability threshold and the current carves a new direction. The change is usually sudden,

often dramatic, the hydrologist said, a process called an ‘avulsion.’

On the Toklat that night, the physics of the river played out right in front of me. A chunk of dirt and

roots toppled from the bank upstream, tumbled past me, and jammed against a mid-­‐river stone. The

current, dividing itself around the rootball, wrinkled sideways and turned upstream. It curled into

pocket-­‐eddies behind the roots. Even as I watched, the pockets filled with gravel and sand. A willow

could grow there, and its roots could divide and slow the river further, gathering more gravel, creating

a place where new life could take root.

I shoved a rock into the river. The sudden curl of current made me grin.

Yes, we are caught up in a river rushing toward a hot, stormy, and dangerous planet. The river is

powered by huge amounts of money invested in mistakes that are dug into the very structure of the

land, a tangled braid of fearful politicians, preoccupied consumers, reckless corporations, and

bewildered children – everyone, in some odd way, feeling helpless. Of course, we despair. How will we

ever dam this flood?

But we don’t have to stop the river. Our work and the work of every person who loves this world – this

one – is to make one small deflection in complacency, a small obstruction to profits, a blockage to

business-­‐as-­‐usual, then another, and another, to change the energy of the flood. As it swirls around

these snags and subversions, the current will slow, lose power, eddy in new directions, and create new

systems and structures that change its course forever. On these small islands, new ideas will grow,

creating thickets of living things and life-­‐ways we haven’t yet imagined. Those disruptions can turn

destructive energy into a new dynamic that finally reverses the forces that would wreck the world.