A Creek through the Meadow

By way of the Blackfoot River, by way of the Clark Fork River, by way of the Pend Oreille, by way of the Columbia, water eventually finds its way to the Pacific Ocean.  But for now the water is a creek twisting through a meadow at the base of the Continental Divide in Montana.

Yesterday, I slowly poured the ashes of the woman I loved into that creek, and I watched the ashes swirl in the water and then drift away, and I drank red wine, and I held my daughter, and my sister held me, and we threw the figure of an angel in after, and then we broadcast the seeds of wildflowers all around our cabin.

We spent the night there in the mountains, sitting late by a campfire.  The creek sounded like voices.  We cooked over the open fire, drank more wine.  Late in the night, I crawled into a loft bed, fully clothed.

I woke early this morning, a little achy, and hiked into the forest alone.  I hiked until the sound of the creek faded into the quiet forest.  After a while, I found a place amid some lodgepole deadfall and I sat listening to the silence. Eventually, a robin flew down to the understory nearby and chirped at me.

“I am with you,” I said to the robin.

Better than silence—even the commonest of birds.

--Mitchell Hegman