After the rain, the lake was so still that ducks left 100-foot wakes. Two mallards, a male and a female, parted ways, swimming off at angles. Their long wakes overlapped.
Why the long wakes? The water is still, but it’s also thick.
Decades ago, when I was a biology student, we measured turbidity with a weighted disk that we lowered into the water. We measured the depth at which we could still see the disk.
Today, there was so much silt in the water that a disk would disappear immediately.
The lake looked like mud. But it’s not just soil.
Drains are everywhere. The Commerce Street Bridge has an 18-inch drain taking runoff from the street and gutters into the creek. After a rain you can see the sheen of oil. Styrofoam cups, plastic bottles, to-go boxes, bags, a softball.
In her book Bonelight, Mary Sojourner talked about seeing a meadow lost to development and feeling a connection to what she called the “One-in-Whom-I-Did-Not-Believe.”
“But the moment I knew I was part of earth and thus part of something greater than my small human self” was just that moment, she said. She looked down on what had been a desert meadow, saw a gated golf course and felt pain.
It’s a test, like the mallet-on-the-kneecap test in a doctor’s office. If you feel a connection to the world, you feel pain. Not pride in development. Not anything else. Just pain.
I feel that way about drains. Drains are everywhere. Every parking lot at every store and apartment complex has a few. The runoff from the rains carries everything into the creek.
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