I'd paddled upstream as the sun rose behind me, bright red-orange, hazed by the dawn mists that flowed low with the river past the valley's grey-green forests. I'd worked my way through a zen garden of old, river-worn rocks, bonsai trees and bushes growing from cracks in the stone, in shallow lees of sand and pebbles. The water strained taut through gaps in the rocks, furling whorls and standing waves. The dawn light, the mist, and the still of the river instilled in me a quiet awe, a sense of how long the river had flown this way, how slowly these rocks had been smoothed, how stubbornly the plants here had grown, in flood and drought, in storm and ice.
There were two osprey overhead circling lazily, waiting for the afternoon's thermals. I watched one stall, backbeating with its wings, and then dive. The other circled low, and its shadow passed over me. It felt like a deliberate gesture, of mastery, and acknowledgement. I pulled up and grounded my boat on the stern of the next island, a low rut of boulders, lined with sandbanks, and trees. The river ran through the middle of this island like a stream, a few inches of water flowing over a cobbled bed, the trees arching overhead like a bower.
I reached back and brushed my shoulder, and found in my hand a crushed damselfly, still twitching. It had landed so lightly that I'd mistaken it for a mosquito, or a leaf. It was frail, and perfect, dusty blue, a fine crystal sheen in the spaces between the frets and webs of its broken wings, like the windows of a cathedral. I wondered if it had molted this morning, crawled up out of the water as a naiad, struggled out of its skin, unfurled its wings and dried them in this sunrise.
I was angry at myself, pointlessly so. I was angry that I'd spent so much energy, car and kayak, oil metal plastic and muscle, to come to this place, a clumsy shambling giant, and kill so perfect a being. I was angry at my indulgence, that I felt somehow entitled to crush, with a casual whim, something that had been born here, had hunted and hidden aquatic in these waters for months or years, and emerged fresh and took wing, here where it belonged. I was the wrongness here.
I held the damselfly for awhile, then put its body back into the river, watched as the water carried it away. It reminded me of kayaking a few years back, during a cicada summer, when they were in such abundance that I could close my eyes, and map the landscape from the contours of their calls. It had been a hot summer afternoon, the river moving slow and heavy, a liquid mirror. There were thousands of cicadas flying, and hundreds stuck struggling in the river, too many for the fish to eat. I would watch them fly low, close to the water, and immerse. I imagined that they saw the sky in the water's reflection, and were flying into it, or maybe were beguiled by their own reflection, approached it like a mate, or an adversary.
I was on a 3-day trip, and had miles ahead of me. I would pick out the next bend of the river, where the trees met, and paddle in a straight line towards the junction for miles, hours, it seemed. As I passed, the water-trapped cicadas would twitch-thrash their wings, struggling futilely. I knew the water would hold them until they starved, days maybe, and then their sogging corpses would sink slowly, or accumulate like dead leaves in slackwaters and eddies, a tangled debris of wings bodies and legs, the bright red of their eyes fading to black.
I picked a path through the cicadas, curving and balancing my boat's path. I scooped cicada with my paddles and my hands, dropped them on the kayak to dry in the sun, while trying to keep the waterbeat of my stroke. They would crawl slowly across the boat towards me, the highest point on this strange island, and climb me like a tree, launch buzzing from my head. Why was I saving only the closest cicadas? What was so important about my destination that I couldn't stop for all of them? And when they left me, how many would fly back into the sky-water, to die behind me?
But the cicada had been flying here for millions of years, dying legion. I was Serendipity incarnate, one last chance for those I saved to fly and scree-call, cut wounds into trees and lay their eggs, a new generation that would crawl dark in the dirt, grubs seeking out roots, to climb out seventeen years later, unfold wet wings to dry in the sun, and fly into another summer. The cicada would last longer than I, whether or not I saved them.
After watching the damselfly float away, I got back into my kayak and paddled downstream, through the rock garden, to the island where I'd camped the night before. As I approached the island's bow, a low beach of sand pebbles and shells, a flurry of damselflies arose, flew clustering around me. They landed on my boat, on me, on my arms hands and shoulders, and I stopped paddling, drifted with the river and them.
I'd paddled this river for years, but nothing like this had happened to me before. I couldn't help but connect it to the damselfly I'd killed - these were the same species, the same age. They must have hatched at the same time, maybe even from the same brood, and these ones had followed the river downstream, found shelter at this island. It felt like a judgement, but I'd had time to think, while following the waterflow downstream, past cormorants and blue herons perched on logs and rocks, the osprey overhead.
I was a disturbance here, but from the damselfly's perspective, no more of a disturbance than a falling tree, than a thunderstorm, than the quick slurp of a carp. My actions, my presence, were as inherent to this place, as were the damselfly's. I had come here from love, and so had the damselfly. And in the cloud of damselflies that flew around me, rested on me, I saw abundance, and resilience. They'd been here on this river before me, and would be, long after I was gone.
Copyright 2008