P/P Photoweek: Dipper Falls Cascade (VIII.25.08)

ON THE SOUND OF RUSHING WATER

Just as the smell of freshly cut hay or just turned garden
soil seems to somehow contain all other smells, so also
the high sparkling sound of rushing water seems to hold
all other sounds.

The sound of the wooden flute, the violin or oboe is there.
And the trumpet or the human voice. Or the deep sound of
skin drums, or strings of tiny metal bells. All are held, it
seems to me, in the mysterious rushing sound of flowing
water.

Perhaps that is why we sleep so peacefully in the sonic
embrace of a quiet stream. No other sound has such deep
roots in our own natural history story. Indeed, how could
this be otherwise? For where there is clear flowing water,
there there is security of the very most basic kind. The sound
is whispering, as it were, a soothing reminder to someplace
deep in our common unconscious that, like love itself, where
there is water, life flourishes.

Camp Lost & Found,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, VIII.17.2008