I was walking on top of the river levee one morning in early December, before the solstice. The river was looking healthy and full despite our years of drought, but we had had so much rain last winter, so much snow, so much water: it was a bounty and we were grateful.
The Army Corps of Engineers had recently completed a two-year project to fortify the levee. My neighbors were distressed because in the process the Corps removed all vegetation— cottonwood trees and fig bushes, prickly blackberry vines and rangy stalks of fennel, so fragrant on moist mornings. I worried about displaced beavers and jack rabbits, hawks, blue birds, coyotes and vultures, but I was grateful that the new starkness of the landscape had afforded us all a view of the river we have not seen in decades. So cold, so blue, so beautiful, and so I was enjoying my morning walk, heading upstream, watching the current, the ducks, geese, gulls, and herons.
Suddenly a large creature tumbled toward me on the current. It was a whale, bluish gray and taller than the levee. We were eyeing each other, both a bit cautious, as one tends to be when encountering a stranger. But the whale opened her mouth, as if to laugh, as if she found the situation amusing, and the river rushed in past her massive jaws, and the water spilled over the banks. I was swept up too. Even my house, which suddenly seemed very small, was sucked into her mouth. I slid down, landing on my front porch. Luckily I had my key in my hip pocket and the water was only up to my knees, so I opened the door and went inside.
The rugs were floating like the flying carpets in Arabian Nights. Fish nudged at my knees, scolding me like the fish in The Cat in the Hat. A caterpillar perched on my favorite chair, smoking a hookah like the one in Wonderland. But wait—it wasn’t a caterpillar, it was an eel. He warned me it was best not to turn on a lamp lest I get an electric shock.
“But how can I read my book?” I asked, because I was quite eager to get back to reading Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver and Toni Morrison. The eel snorted as if the answer were obvious, and then he lit himself up like a Christmas garland. I sat down next him, quite satisfied that I could easily see well enough to read a dozen books or more.
I felt the whale rocking gently. “She’s welcoming us,” the eel informed me, and I realized a free trip to San Francisco was a very good idea indeed.
“Sometimes,” the eel said, “a quiet period of contemplation is a great blessing,” and I had to agree.
Photo by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash