What I am made of lifted as fog from redwood trees to drip across bay leaves down to Lake Sonoma. It seeped through oaks’ roots and fossil limestone and chanterelle mycelia and vernal wetlands to creeks where egrets and ospreys hunt, where steelhead and coho salmon struggle their way to spawn, and bears yet roam.
What I am made of slid down the brilliant bark of peeling madrone.
What I am made of knows the scent of the great Pacific, carried up the mighty River by those anadromous fish, and river otters, and tides. It sheets across the sheer compaction of redwood duff on the forest floor, soaking up the flavors of bracken fern and sorrel. It weeps with sweetness from manzanita flowers and tender grasses. It knows the visits of wave upon wave of migratory birds, spanning the globe in their travels.
What I am made of knows, too, the runoff from the highway, the sediment of the untended dirt road, the lawn chemical, the unknowing/uncaring taint of building materials and plastics. I am fortunate in that most of the watershed of the River that makes up most of my body is forest and oak grasslands, but cities are there, too.
I am a creature of the Russian River of Northern California, once one of the most productive salmon-bearing fisheries in the nation. No longer, sadly: a victim of the Anthropocene.
The water of my body knows its home. It knows the scent of spring’s arrival, of oak leaves on a warm day.
It informs me, this water I am made of. It reminds me that I am not apart. That I am connected and interwoven with the great All That Is.
With the Sacred, Holy Planet Earth, that remarkable place that gave rise to me, and which sustains me in every moment of my so-short, so-precious life.
…what are you mostly made of?
Thanks for the reminder to blogger hekatedemeter.
Beautiful.
Lovely piece 💚
Thank you