Monday, July 17, 2006

Trip to Glacier - Day 2

Today I fall in love with water. Red Eagle Falls and clear as crystal water foaming over rainbow rocks, cold and clean. It dives beneath itself, carrying down tiny bubbles like pearls that flutter and fight their way free to the surface and then . . . disappear.

Water deep and still and almost black in Two Medicine Lake. Not the bright blue-green of some other lakes here because it isn't fed by glacial melt, which carries down a fine limestone silt that suspends in the top feet of water and refracts the entering light. These waves are dark and glassy like obsidian until the water goes gold-green in the shallows, a narrow shining band along the shore.

And the water of Twin Falls, running down the cliffs in double glissando like the arching grand staircases of L'Opera Garnier in Paris, but more musical and more mysterious. Or like arms rushing out to hold the island of rocks they isolate, cherished for some unknown reason.

Water that leaps and rushes, water that waits silently, water that swirls as a trout flicks its tail. Today I fall in love with water, and feel it running through me as I sit and watch. My heart pounds with the beat of the falling water on the rocks. My breath surges in and out like the foam driven below into dark depths, and leaping up again in a soft shimmer. And when I leave, it still runs through my mind, cleansing and soothing, the soft thunder drowning out the worries I hear too often, and singing me to sleep.

No comments: