What If...
“We’ve seen all the things around us as something to be used for our needs…We have manipulated, sprayed… overhunted, polluted, trashed and overbuilt… The much talked about result is that we have created ecological problems. What we haven’t realized is that we have also created an energy ecological crisis.”
Long ago, we humans were more like elephants. We knew where things were hidden - the things we needed to survive, especially underground springs that sustained us when rain was scarce. Like elephants, we could smell the water that flowed beneath our feet: our stories contained mind maps of wet memory.
Intermittent and ephemeral streams are the ecological and hydrological mainstay of arid lands, which comprise about one third of Earth’s land surface. Surely, now, with droughts and floods, this delicate equation is changing. Still, the streams and springs are there, although we cannot see them.
Below ground, the streams flow in a sort of liminal zone between surface water and the mysterious aliveness beneath the channel bed, connecting hidden trickles that maintain an entire watershed. Because they are invisible, they are forgotten by humans, though not by the countless plants, fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, invertebrates and microbes whose lives depend on them. And they are fragile: once disturbed by human activity, their loss endangers entire watersheds.
As with so much of Nature’s genius, most of the time these elusive waters remain underground. Sometimes they mosey, sometimes they trickle: they are often so tiny they seem inconsequential. And yet... miniscule, essential things perform mighty miracles. Intermittent and ephemeral streams reduce or prevent erosion; filter impurities; move sediment, nutrients and seeds downstream to new homes; they maintain fertile floodplains; cycle and store nutrients; provide wildlife habitat, forage and migration corridors; they stabilize stream banks; provide dens, holes, and tunnels to hide in during the heat of the day, places to escape predators, and places for nests. They nourish perennial shrubs and trees that attract birds and insects, especially those that migrate long distances.
In the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and California), more than 80% of all streams are intermittent or ephemeral. These streams comprise headwaters, gently pooling until the soil is saturated and the water begins to move. They gather snowmelt and rain. They erupt into torrents, scour new channels, and spread river bottom silt that renews the world.
We, too, are ephemeral. It’s good to remember this. And, since we are ephemeral, perhaps we can use intermittent, underground streams as role models and begin to behave more like they do. In our hearts, and wherever imagination resides, we can take on the ecological functions of ephemeral streams as a way of being. What happens if we think of ourselves as wildlife corridors? As sources of nourishment, refuge and protection. Microbially rich. Moist and welcoming. Benthic in our aliveness as a mediating layer between the seen and the unseen, in that place where we remember ourselves as partners in nourishment and flow. Like the intermittent streams that rise above ground to find ancient channels, our participation sometimes becomes visible: we answer birdcalls, talk to plants, sing with the wind, create a garden of refuge: anything and everything to remind ourselves of the ways we are of Earth, and therefore essential to Life.
Above ground, beauty is marred by hatred and chaos. But below the bustle of destruction, the invisible flow still moves, still carries us. If we do not disturb it, we and the flow will keep each other alive; we will remember how to move with wisdom and patience; we will be a sanctuary for other-than-human Selves; we will re-wild and re-home our souls.
