Algae in a water sample from the St. Croix River, magnified about 200x.
(Photo by Aiden T., student from Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center)
Just as a forest provides a specialized ecosystem that includes shelter for its inhabitants along the food chain, so too does a river. Having grown up and lived my life along them and other bodies and circuits of fresh water, they all represent symbols of life, movement, and shelter.
Although the bigger life forms get the most notice, those who are intimate with Mother Gaia’s circulatory and lymphatic systems know that the critters begin at a much smaller level. Years ago, during a field lab for biology, we took our nets and scooped up mud in a pond. We found dragonfly and caddis fly larvae and even a fresh water sponge. We took our test tubes of water back to the lab and put drops of it onto microscope slides. Life wiggled and whirled in it.
Are these curious whirligigs designed for our entertainment? Far from it; they are the tiniest links in the food chain, the links upon which the rest build upon. When the shelter of a river, a pond, a creek, a lake, dries up, so does the network of life collapse within and around it. Drinking the water and using it for industry, tourism, or other utilitarian purposes – for good or ill — for non-aquatic life forms is what the self-perceived apex predator of the global food chain focuses on, dishonoring all else.
Rain plops bed’s graveyard
dead salmon stink on delta
flies work as dark falls.
Important note: After writing this I went out to find more info on salmon and came across this very informative piece written by Zachariah Hughes in September of last year: “Amid an Unprecedented Collapse in Alaska Yukon River Salmon, No One Can Say for Certain Why There Are So Few Fish.” Please take a few minutes to read it here.
An excerpt that speaks to my haibun:
If salmon disappear, so do all the environmental benefits they confer on the local ecology. On a river system the size of the Yukon, those impacts will be massive, not only for humans and the other apex predators that survive off their meat, but for the health of the river itself. As their spawned out carcasses decompose, salmon seed all the sloughs, streams, creeks, ponds and puddles of the drainage system with the nutrients they spent years gathering from the ocean. Unlike hatchery fish, which return to the lone location of their release, wild stocks work their way into far more of the winding contours feeding the main river.
Mish is today’s host of dVerse’ Haibun Monday. Mish says:
Today, I’d like you to incorporate the theme of “shelter” into your haibun. If you are new to the form, a haibun is made up of no more than three tight paragraphs that are non-fiction/auto- biographical and usually written in present tense. The prose is followed by a haiku that makes reference to a season with an image of nature. Often the haiku adds another depth or layer to the prose.
I took a link from a submission from last week’s earthweal challenge and wrote to it, not realizing that challenge had ended and Mr. Linky expired. I’m writing to last week’s challenge but linking up to this week’s challenge Mr. Linky (hope that is ok, Brendan??) Last week, Brendan said:
For [last] week’s challenge, write something about rivers, their symbolic complexity, their vanishing and what depositions now coming to view tell us about what waters giveth and taketh away.
Tao Talk 
In ecology every specie shelter the other in a weave that is too complicated to understand until it is too late.
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It’s like by the time you feel thirsty you’re already dehydrated. Mother Gaia is in distress 😦
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Insightful haibun Lisa. Many times I find myself so thankful I am near the top. I cannot imagine knowing I am here only to feed someone else. Although, I do believe I am, on another level. Great post Lisa!!!
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Thank you very much, Mary, for your thoughtful comment. If there were no humans on earth, I would like to be a tree. Maybe at some point in the future, I’ll get my wish.
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Joe March wished she was a horse before she knew she was a writer.
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Not sure who Joe March is, but I’m sure there are a few of us out there. Now that I know what being a human is, I would prefer being a tree in a place with no humans.
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Little Women. Louisa May Alcott.
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So she’s a fictional character. What a nice touch.
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Everything is interconnected. Many times we don’t realize it until it’s too late. Thank you for the important reminder, Lisa!
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Thanks, Merril, and you’re welcome.
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Thanks and you’re welcome, too, Lisa. 🙂
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A fascinating haibun, Lisa, and I like the image that illustrates it and helps me to picture the river ecosystem, particularly as I live by the Norfolk Broads. When I was at school, I loved pond dipping and looking at life under a microscope.
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Kim, thank you and geeked you’ve had the pond lab experience also.
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Great documentary titled Hooked that’s totally worth checking out to learn more about aquatic ecosystems and humans’ interference with them. Warning – may make you cry or rage!
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Thanks!
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SO MUCH MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. hUMBLE BOW TO OUR SCIENTISTS.
Much 💖 love
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Gillena, the increase in scientists and their study of nature is one of the reasons why I wish all higher education would be free. We need the data to support the creation of non-destroying ways of living.
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So apt and touching. We all want to save the forests, forgetting the ponds and even mud puddles. Life, like the universe, can be complex beyond our attempts at understanding them.
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So true. We’ve been blessed with a homeostatic, self-regulating shelter called Earth. Why we have to f**k with it continues to mystify, pain, and enrage me.
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It is the tiniest beings of nature that have always intrigued me as much as why others can just walk by without a glance. We must start here and it is heartbreaking to see how the selfishness of society and “progress” continues to jeopardize our world as we’ve known it. It seems it takes material gains to be lost before we give a hoot. I admire you for using the haibun as a vessel of information on this topic, so well presented.
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Well-said, Mish. Brendan is to blame for the “vessel of information” thank you ❤
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Said so well LiSA.. NICE JOB!
💖💖👏👏👏
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Thank you, Cindy!
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Nice haibun Li! I enjoyed it very much! ❤
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Thank you, Carole Anne!
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I love where you went with his Lisa! A fascinating and wonderful bit of writing. Such a world of life in a drop of water. Great share my friend. 👍🏼🙂✌🏼❤️
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Rob thank you very much ❤
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It’s definitely a tragic state of affairs. But with commercialism, materialism and other madness growing, things seem to be getting worse. A wonderful haibun.
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Nitin, I believe you’re right. Thank you.
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thank you for hosting Mish and the subject, close to my heart. I could go on…
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The largest are dependent on the smallest. A good reminder that every part of the ecosystem provides shelter for life. (K)
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Kerfe, thank you.
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Very well done, Lisa… Shelter is more than just a roof over out heads.
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Dwight, thank you very much.
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You are welcome, Lisa!
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We are a great threat to the ecosystem. Humans need to reform their ways.
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The closer we examine the world’s great presences (like rivers), the less we see we are masters of them. Great look into the tiny magnitudes which master us in the end (or their end)… Brendan
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Brendan the arrogance of humans will be our ending. We will be insisting on our supremacy as we gasp our last.
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You speak truth Lisa. There is so much to conserve.
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I wish it wasn’t true, Sean. I have been reading about the development of desalinating salt water. Why every nation that can isn’t investing in it is a mystery to me.
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Such a vivid haibun that brings attention to a tragedy. Thank you, Lisa. The haiku on the end is evokes my sympathy and senses.
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K, thank you for reading. I think that when Jesus said, “Forgive them, father for they know not what they do,” it was applicable to the situation. What makes what we do unforgivable today is that we know what we are doing and feel no urgency to stop.
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A very informative haibun. Such important information. Our dependence on fresh water will soon become headline news, I’m afraid. We have been blessed with such generous supplies, it is hard to fathom how badly we have cared for our lakes and rivers. Here on the West Coast of Canada, the salmon are decreasing, to the consternation of those who depend on it – not only humans but whales and wolves and bears. Sigh. It is like watching a movie coming to a bad end, hoping a hero will arrive in time to turn the tide. None in sight, I’m afraid.
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Sherry, Enbridge (from Canada) is doing their best to build another huge oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac. WHY?! would anyone OK threatening the largest supply of fresh water on earth with an oil pipeline operated by a company with a horrible record. Even if the company had an impeccable record, the Great Lakes are well-known for giant storms that can tear that pipeline open.
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I fear the world as we know it is on the brink of ecological destruction. Your haibun illustrates this horror in great detail.
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I wish it wasn’t so 😦 Thank you.
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I know. Me too. All we have is hope. ❤️
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Stark reality…and very discouraging to see the salmon populations dwindle! Very nice write, thank you!
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Tigress thank you very much. If you read Brendan’s poem for today you’ll see the attack on salmon has been going on for a long time 😦
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Everything is connective and you conveyed that wonderfully. I had read that about the salmon. I feel the earth is changing quickly and time is running out to
save some species. Who will shelter us in the end?
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With what’s been happening I think it’s pretty clear Mother Gaia is sick of scratching us fleas and will be either frying us or drowning us pretty soon.
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or both…
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This is spot on and devastating 😦
~David
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Thanks, David. It is! It’s an ongoing shock to the system — hers and ours.
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Thought provoking poem and seems a lot of river distress everywhere. Our underground rivers in the mountains are running lower but still some springs emerging.
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You’re right, it’s global. Happy you have some springs still emerging ❤
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