My homescreen photo is about 75% water. As I mentally walk into the image, a breeze riffles the waves on a coolish September day in upstate New York. The view from the southwest shore of Big Pond features forest-clad hills, blue skies and a few clouds thrown in to make for a lively composition. A little stream dances out over a rock-and-wood spillway, following a stony bed down to the Beaver Kill.
Many waterways in this area carry the surname “kill” at the end of their names, thanks to the early settlers in the area. It’s a middle Dutch word meaning “riverbed” or “water channel.” The Beaver Kill flows south and west to the town of Roscoe, New York, drawing a big loop at a place called Junction Pool. There, it’s joined by a smaller creek, the Willowemoc, which flows out of the Catskills from the east and north. The Beaver Kill then travels another 20 miles before it empties into the east branch of the Delaware River. Throughout these wanderings, the streams pass through place names reminiscent of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales: Delaware Wild Forest, Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest, Big Indian Wilderness.
In the spring and summer of 2021, I sat at my desk and studied this beautiful area from afar, reading trail descriptions and researching routes. The Beaver Kill was one of my father’s favorite fishing haunts, and for that reason I stood on its banks 18 months after his death. A small portion of his ashes were about to become what I like to think of as fish food…a down-to-earth version of the sacred circle of life.
I picked my way down a short, steep path to the stream. A few minutes earlier, we’d taken a wrong turn, and as we turned the car around, a fisherman emerged from the woods with a very prosperous-looking trout on his stringer. My husband, a former trout killer, gave him a cheery smile and a thumbs-up.
While I was looking for the right place to spread the ashes, Gary spotted an even bigger trout, patrolling the pond just above the spillway. The spot seemed to be bursting with life. Flying insects darted by and toads hopped out of our way in the muddy spots along the pond’s edge. Green, green, green everywhere.
The stream tossed little water droplets into the air just above the surface, where they caught the breeze and mingled with the ashes and the early afternoon sun. Moving water, moving sunlight, and moving wind gathered the ashes of my father, connecting his spirit to one of his life’s greatest joys: standing in a stream with a fishing pole in his hand. He had often said how much he felt at home in moving water.
We have that in common; I think of water as my third parent. Sitting here at this desk, in the landlocked state of Colorado, I gaze at the little riffles on Big Pond — thousands of tiny, windswept shapes. The water dances with each cloud, and with the blue sky, creating subtle echoed reflections of blue and white on the surface of the pond. Broad ribbons of green show me the way to the densely forested mountains at the north end of the lake.
As W.B. Yeats wrote on a homesick day in London,
“I will arise and go now, for always, night and day,
I hear lake water lapping, with low sounds by the shore.
As I stand in the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
