"Not everyone will get it, though; the language of stone is difficult. Rock mumbles. But plants speak in a tongue that every breathing thing can understand. Plants teach in a universal language: food." – Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass








Sept.

The water bank sand bags lining the initial curve of the Monona Terrace are as large quarried boulders. Only a little leakage makes its way underneath these mammoth fixtures, blue handled for the sake of the crane which must have lifted them into place. The water is so high underneath the lower terrace that you can tell it is higher than the very place you have your feet. The New Orleans dilemma, if, of course, only on a much smaller level. Bright blue on a sunny day for as far as the eye can see; off to the other side, a network of destination, as I see that pools of water have gathered at the loading ramp going into the Terrace, all down hill, pumping pipes spiraling all over the place...but pumping where? Let's face it, I say to myself, when the mind has the choice between these two scenes – water as blue, beautiful, and holding the jewels of fish, or supporting ducks that wash across with such ease – or as sodden, moldy devastation, we tend to the blue. I run past and the park rises to the first overpass at Broom Street where a cluster of streets merge in and out of one another and an internal alert of loud crashing sounds made by cars kicks in...and now that is the concentration. The city I see is just like this: a zooming in, and zooming out; a clinging to the beautiful but also a necessary nod to the hidden bowels of concrete or, in the case of our homes, our wet basements as a consequence of last week's city-wide flood. Later that night you read of a hurricane making its train tracks inland at the Carolinas. It is told that a previous hurricane back in 1954 whipped up such devastation that it is truly unimaginable, 6, 8, feet of water up to the middle of your house.  The mind, thinking about such terror, skips to the hope of the settling weeks afterward, to the peace of the inhabitants, to settling their claims, and tending to the frightened. For us, here, to get through our part with relative ease, is a fine gift and one very worth receiving.