By Brit Allen
I was born atop a mountain of ash and ice. The ice melted into the water that gave me shape. The ash built a cradle of volcanic rock, swinging back and forth until I was old enough to spill. When I was ready to leave home, I sliced through the rocks and the dirt. I carved a path through woods and desert, creating the world around me, like a painter with his brush. I whittled channels. I sculpted plateaus. I hollowed out basins. I was a beautiful, powerful thing, simultaneously creator, nourisher, and home to many. Once, I could run faster than a mustang’s hooves, faster than an eagle’s wings, faster than the wind rippling my surface. Once, I was a running river.
Now all I can do is crawl.
I am old. Older than much of the life around me. I watched their births, each century but a blink of an eye. I was Godmother to them, an integral part of millions of little families that relied on me. I expected this to be my endless mission, but I never expected to grow so weak.
What does age matter to a river? What can time do to a being who has wound thousands of miles for millions of years? And yet… I’m dying. As are the brethren that depend upon me.
Where have the Bonytails gone? I miss their stern, narrow faces and flashing silver scales with streaks of orange like the first inklings of sunset. Where are the Razorback Suckers with their humped backs and yellow bellies? Where are the pike minnows, mouths agape and gills swelling so I can give them life? I feel them dying and disappearing inside me, and all I can do is watch as their lives dwindle along with mine.
Where are the tortoises, slowly lumbering by with their round, sturdy backs and deep, gentle eyes? Where are the leopard frogs with their spotted skin like dozens of eyes peering back at me? Where are the cougar cubs, tumbling and wrestling by my shores while their mother laps me up? I watch them vanish before me until I know that I will die alone.
Here come the Bighorned Sheep, with their wise brown eyes and sharp-curled horns like crowns atop their heads, reminding everyone around them that they are the Kings of the Mountain. They struggle to reach me when in need of a drink. The dust beneath their hooves I once swallowed, but now it’s just out of reach.
The plants at my edges fade, wilting into dark, shriveled creatures before crumbling, then dissipating in the wind. I long to touch them, to feed them the water they so crave, but I can’t. I cannot lift myself any further to brush their shores.
The water from the mountains does not come. The sun burns hotter than before, taking bits of me like a coyote tearing strips of meat. My body is lugged away in massive amounts where I spill into fields run by the two-leggeds that never end. Into plants that don’t belong here, that are greener than they should be, and continue to take and take and take. I’m pulled and stretched every which way until I am worn thin. I will shrink and shrink until someday I am nothing.
What will happen when I die? Will the fish turn belly up in solidarity with me? Will the toads and the frogs hop away, hoping for a better future that will not come? Will the eagles soaring high overhead watch me wither, choosing to flee before I’m finally gone? Will the rabbits scurry across my deathbed, scouring for something to drink beneath the relentless sun? Will the mountains grieve as my hand slips from theirs? Will the two-leggeds’ fields and homes survive from such an endless drought?
I don’t want to go. I’m so exhausted, but I’m not ready to die. I want to swell so big that I’m kissing the tops of these mountains with all the love I have. I want to water the plants and animals. I want to glisten beneath the sun, the birds using my winding path to trek their own.
I want to burst with water, my fingertips grazing everything I was born to touch. I want to be full of fish gliding through my currents as though dancing in time with the battered river stones.
I want to run. I want to run so fast that even light cannot touch me. I want the trees and the earth and the sky to bellow, “Run, River, run!” And I do it. I run and I run, relentless, unbeatable, vibrant, and striking until I finally touch the sea with a massive surge, my loving gift to her.
I want to live, oh how badly I want to live. But the sun is setting on me. The only running I do now is run out of time. I slip towards my demise, steadily vanishing bit by bit until I am but a memory.
Until the River runs no more.