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The Language of Water

Deception Creek, Skykomish, Washington

 

As I stand there in the silence, I become aware that the silence is not complete. Water is speaking.

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

 

Water

urges us

to fluency

John O’Donohue, Nets

 

 

On any given hike in the Pacific Northwest, there is often a lot of water. Rivers, streams, waterfalls of all sorts and sizes, the “liquid sunshine” (aka rain) that falls from the sky. And each one has it own distinctive sound.

 

But what is the language of water? How does it speak to us? What songs and soliloquies do we hear in the soft murmurs of a sunlit creek? What words of wildness do we feel within us while drenched in the roar of a thunderous waterfall? What echoes of ourselves do we discover in the rhythm of the river as it rushes past? What secrets does the woodland stream whisper to our ears as it pours endlessly over the surface of the stones beneath it?

 

Water speaks in its own language. And as it flows and falls and splashes, it invites us to listen…

 

 

[Note: This is from a hike a couple months ago since I have a lot pf photos still to post from summer and fall hikes, and here in Washington we are in the aim of another form of water, an atmospheric river, which is forecast to bring many inches of rain and potential flooding.]

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Uploaded on November 11, 2021
Taken on September 26, 2021