To sit by the water

There’s a creek up the road from where I live. A long time ago, people thought there was something wrong with it.

To the landowners, it didn’t flow fast enough. They wanted the water off the land as quickly as possible. Maybe it flooded or they were trying to irrigate further downstream. Their motive wasn’t clear but their strategy was. They decided to move the creek.

Before, the creek had a leisurely pace. It wound in little s-curves and slowly got to where it needed to go, trickling across the land.

That wasn’t good enough for their purposes, so they dredged and straightened the creek. The inconvenient curves were gone and water would rush off the property. Problem solved.

Except it wasn’t. The creek flowed so fast it eroded the banks at a blistering pace. Tons of sediment washed out from the bottom, exposing tree roots until they fell across the creek. Plants couldn’t grow to hold the terrain in place. Wildlife had nowhere to make a home. Everything was wiped out.

The strategy worked at first. The water gushed fast as all get out, but it didn’t last. With the ecosystem gone, the creek became a deep, flat channel. No longer a nourishing source of life, instead the creek bed remained as a relic of devastation. The flow slowed down until it just about stopped entirely.

Was it worth it? I imagine the landowners got what they were after. But at what cost?

The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

— Arthur Jensen, Network

I’ve probably written 20 versions of this essay in the last few months, and this middle section is where it always fall apart. Each time it sprawls to the point of flailing with punches that never really land. And yet I try.

I keep searching for a line that makes sense of this moment in time, but there’s nothing to make sense of.

Today, you can bullshit your way through anything. The slot machine will spit out an answer if you sit there long enough, but you’ll never know if it’s true and neither will it. Give it a try and see if anyone notices.

That’s how it goes in the quest for more, more, more. It’s easy to get mad about it—many people do—but it doesn’t do any good.

People, businesses, and civilizations have always found a way to debase themselves, from the money we earn to the clothes we buy and the food we eat, and it always plays out the same way. Whatever is expedient never lasts. There’s never enough when you’ve sold your soul.

The world may feel empty right now for those of us who care and bother to try. It’s hard to look at the drawings no one drew and the messages no one wrote and keep a straight face, but that is where the battleground is. The lie is what needs to be validated. It hopes against hope that you’ll believe it.

Whatever comes next, if you can still think and you can still feel, then your sincerity will see you through. The truth doesn’t need scale and efficiency. It already is, and it’ll still be here doing its thing while the illusion collapses into itself.

We don’t actually need that much to survive and to flourish. Life is rich when we live simply, appreciate what we have, and stop trying to optimize ourselves out of existence. Plant a garden, knit a sweater, or read a book. Simply be a human. That’s more than enough, same as it ever was.

And if that doesn’t work and the bastards still find a way to get you down, then just hang tight. It’s only a moment in time.

How do I know? It turns out you can fix a broken creek.

A few years back, conservationists got together and built a nature preserve to revive the creek near my house and save an endangered species of mussels.

The team came down to the water and worked to restore the habitat. They formed curves in the creek’s path and put boulders and other materials on the bottom, so now, wildlife has the sanctuary it needs to grow. The creek is alive again. The water flows. When we stop trying to force things and let nature run its course, it’s a life-giving force.

This week, I dropped by the creek. The water was slower than usual, and a park ranger pointed out why. A hundred yards from where I stood, some beavers had come and built a dam. They set up shop near a downed log and got to work on their lodge.

Mother Nature knows something we don’t. She doesn’t need to have everything now. She’s able to get by on what she has, and time is on her side.

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