love song for a river

this post has been a long time a-comin'. i hope i'll get through it tonight.

5:00 a.m., january 8, 2007: my dad is driving me down highway 16 westbound so i can catch my 10 a.m. flight to guyana. we're in his white work half-ton, driving 40 km/hour through a fierce blizzard to avoid the fate nearly 20 vehicles had met, just in the 200 km stretch to edmonton. we creep along the yellowhead, passing many vehicles whose drivers had the sense (and the time) to stop and wait for the storm to pass. and i got to thinkin':

one of my friends had once told me a story about a lesson a river had taught him. he had taken some driftwood from a river in southern alberta, and had neglected to leave tobacco and give thanks to the river for the wood. then, he and another friend decided to go tubing down the river to relax for the afternoon. partway down the river, the current and some fallen trees created a dangerous situation, and my friend and his friend barely escaped drowning. the tubes the two were floating on, as well as my friend's friend's shoes, were taken by the river. my friend acknowledges the incident as a lesson in respecting the power of the river and the giving/taking relationship we have with all things.

so... some people don't like to think of man-made things as requiring the same respect or reverance as things in the natural world. but, i've heard an elder say that God created all the molecules and atoms and particles and stuff, so even man-made things are ultimately God-created. so i was thinking about the river lesson while driving on the slippery, snowy highway, and i realized how much the highway is like a river.

for most of my life, i've lived within about a 10-mile radius from highway 16. i've travelled the 300 kms between edmonton and lloydminster seemingly hundreds of times. my dad spends an hour on the highway every day with his commute to and from work. it's what connects me to my parents when i'm in edmonton and they're at home. it's how food is transported to my town. it's a strange reminder to me and perhaps my family of how tragedy and pain can create something beautiful. i'm in love with the prairies that line the road: their dull beige-y yellow color in the winter; their jubilant yellows and luscious greens in the summer. throughout history, humans have settled near bodies of water because that water is a life source. i've never known a body of water as intimately as i know highway 16.

if the yellowhead is my river, then shouldn't i treat it with the same respect and reverance as any other river? i don't mean to worship it, but i do mean respect the power it has. i think we tend to not do that a lot, which is maybe why there are so many vehicle accidents on the road. and the whole tobacco/giving thanks thing: you can ask me more about it later, but i think it's always a good idea to be aware of what you are using and to give thanks for it. we take a lot from those highways, or rather, the land those highways now inhabit. i heard something once that said something like any wild deer in north america can only go 40 miles at the longest until it has to cross a road. i can't remember the exact number or whatever, but it was a little ridiculous. we've built up roads across the continent, and we scarcely think about how that's affected the land or the animals that live on it. i think maybe a little "thank you" is the least we can do. yeah?