Today I had the pleasure of checking up on my beloved local creek that flows through Berkeley, a rarity in an urban landscape: Strawberry Creek.
You can find her in quite a few places tucked away in my galleries... she always has some degree of water flowing, if often modest. In these dry years, her sound has been a quiet trickle in spots here and there, where she's had enough momentum generated by dips in her trough with some rocks to rush over.
Today was different, however. The return of warm weather had almost erased the memory of the 4+ inches of rain we had dumped on us from one of those magnificent "atmospheric rivers" that have been gracing the West more and more it seems (part of our climate's shifting and buckling under the stress of us human-folk). But Strawberry Creek remembers! The day after that downpour, she was so swollen with flushes of water that her cadence and flow was like a different creek altogether. More riverlike, and exciting to behold. Today, she still has a generous, ample flow that I noticed has taken on some new residents: branches of trees (shrubs?) that have bowed down and are resting in her waters. They have created a little nook area that is shielded from view, and a really sweet shelter from the ever-present activity of urban life. My kind of place.
Today, I felt a cork come out of me, spurred by some little things that went wrong - things that could have been mere annoyances, but drove me to the brink of an explosion. I let it rip in my own way, without causing too much destruction. And the result? My good water is flowing. I can feel more bounce to my step, and I am breathing freely. Kinks build up in every system - piles of built up dead leaves, old branches, and when we are gifted with enough rain, the force of that water will burst its way through and replace the dry, yearning crevices with life-affirming, watery flow. Blessings from above, indeed.
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