Given Earth, Given Water

Abstract

Given Earth, Given Water Claudia F. Saleeby Savage (bio) 1999 The St. Vrain River flowed into Lyons, Colorado, my home of thirteen years, tamed, more creek than river, a just-fed rattlesnake, more long than thick, lazy, and frequently sunning itself on stretches between pine. In summer, you could join its slow pull, floating past the apple groves, knotty and feral, past the bolted grass and red sandstone, past the outdoor art of floating tin, and find a quiet place to dry on its banks, fall asleep to its murmuring. Formed by the marriage of North and South Creeks, headwaters near the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park, the river was unchecked, alluvial, hoarding pieces of its wanderings to reform itself, eroding and sculpting, until it entered the Button Rock Reservoir, where my dog; brother, Bill; nephews; and I would hike through fleabanes and larkspur in spring, flowering prickly pear and yucca in summer. In autumn, luminaries made the golden aspens glow and the St. Vrain welcomed fevered dancing feet as Celtic fiddles received the dark. 2013 September 13, less than a year after Bill’s death, what would have been his birthday, I watched Lyons wash away on CNN. It had been raining harder than it had in over a hundred years. Reporters used the term biblical [End Page 101] often. The St. Vrain thanked the sky and grew from creek to Class V white water in hours. Houses, hillsides, and roads toppled and cleaved. I traced the screen with a shaking finger and tried to reconstruct its heart. Everything was gone. My daughter, River, just one year old, played with my curls and stroked my cheek as I stared at the screen. I loved water. A raft, a kayak, on my back, eyes to the clouds. The moon shimmering. The sun winking on the cold, lush river. I looked at the screen and thought of when Lyons was my home, Bill on my deck, planning our next adventure, on land, on water, his body strong. 1986 Bill was the first of our clan to move out west from New York in the early 1980s for geology. He couldn’t get enough of the earth’s bones and Colorado shed fat quickly, the sun, wind, and snow stripping the land over and overexposing its shifting ribs. Bill hiked and climbed the mountains as if they were brethren. “See that,” he said on a hike north of Fort Collins. Bent over, his dirt-creased fingers stroked a gray slab with flecks of glinting silver. “Even granite is beautiful. You can still sense the water.” He carried geodes and bits of rock in his pockets, always worrying the earth, smoothing its secrets. 1999 Bill’s constant smile, his deep tenderness with his children, and his emphatic way of clapping his hands together made it easy to forget he was fourteen years my senior. His favorite word was yes. From my house in Lyons, rivers like the St. Vrain, Cache la Poudre, and Arkansas called to me. The St. Vrain was small, a teaser river. Just swift enough that kayakers practiced rolls near the bridge east of the library. Just gentle enough that toddlers eased in, wiggled down hot sandstone slabs, and released their dust-smeared thighs to the water. Watching it drift toward the hay bales along Highway 36, watching it origami ripple after ripple, made me long for something bigger. The Arkansas River’s massive body in the western interior of the state, its depth an unknown geometry of foam and debris, satisfied my need for bravery. And then, the Poudre was close and consistent beauty. High canyon walls, the pine and aspen deep green against the dark, wet rock. [End Page 102] On one of my first rafting trips down the Poudre with Bill and his family, the river was swifter than promised and, as our boat surged through the water, I looked back at him gripping his paddle, his shoulders thick and perpendicular to the river, his palms wide, his smile wider. He was the man I looked to for reassurance that the adventure was going to turn out OK. To Bill, it was always going to...