On Seeking Life Lines

Somewhere Betwixt Devils & the Deep, Part 4

“I spent hours at the cape emptying my mind of analysis, suspending its incessant quest for essence, and regularly encountered in doing so William Blake’s enduring metaphor, that the entire world is rendered for us in a grain of sand.” — Barry Lopez, from his essay, To Go, To See, page 28 of Horizon [Vintage Books] 2020)

Note to readers: Complications in my recovery from recent eye surgeries will cause a short hiatus of new essays about the drylands. In the meantime, I invite you to explore with me an ancient high-country forest, and then descend into the thickets of a river delta in the backwater reaches of an obsolescent reservoir. We’re seeking the patterns of life drawn from a planet that slowly renews that which is made chaotic by any species that becomes enamored with its own powers. Please expand and engage with these images until the life lines emerge, and also revisit previous posts of Water Into Stone for words and images chosen to inform this ongoing search.

A few weeks ago, BDog and I had an opportunity to walk the oldest known organism in North America, the Pando Forest, as described in a recent essay. Here is part of what we saw.

Amongst the trunks of above-ground shoots, decaying logs and frost-bitten grasses and flower stalks send nutrients back into the snow covered soil, feeding intertwined roots and fungi that will nourish next year’s growth.

One set of tracks preceded us on the path, likely a coyote or fox seeking its own forms of nourishment...

Pando Forest is large enough to provide a vibrant, though somewhat misleading, image of life proceeding as if humans had not disrupted its natural processes. But lifting your gaze, consider a derelict pole from an abandoned electrical or telephone line…

…or the well-maintained fence that preserves a 106-acre rectangle of this ancient forest from deer, elk, and free range cattle.

Outside the fence, browsing of the young aspen shoots has opened up the surrounding forests. Tracks along the fenceline show where life too large to fit through the narrow gaps at the gates has been turned aside, thereby preserving a human-controlled diorama inside of an ancient forest intact. In time though, fences as well as transmission poles will fall, and then perhaps Pando Forest’s lessons in longevity can be better understood by those who remain.

In contrast, where a reservoir once drowned a river’s fertile wetlands, long-term drought has allowed a delta dominated by cottonwood/oak groves and willow thickets to re-establish order …

Descending into the thickets, with perseverence you may see the shapes of past and future lives. The seemingly chaotic jumble of chewed sticks becomes a beaver’s lodge…

…and myriad lines of life re-appear in the chaotic jumble now left behind.

After a time of healing, Water Into Stone will be back with more words and images from the drylands. Up next: Renewing an Oasis, the Fungal Way—Somewhere Betwixt Devils & the Deep, Part 5. Until then, happy seeking amidst the sand grains of our beautiful home planet. -B.