It had rained steadily and hard for three, four days. The flood warnings were out when I decided to trek the woods. The mist enticed the scents from their arboreal lairs. The deep gray sky drew out greens from the spring leaves and the new shoots from the cold ground. I knew I’d encounter mud, so I slapped on my mud-daubed Nikes and some rain gear and waded into the slop that was once a footpath. After taking the golf course trail to its end, I decided to slog back along the river trail. This river – the East Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River, to be exact, about 11 miles north of the city – usually flows at the width of a 10-foot channel. But not today.
The main channel swelled, transfiguring the riverine forest into a trackless swamp. As far as I could see, the flat water stretched, glassine, muddy, drowning the forest. A sprawling cottonwood showed the now receding water mark, four feet. Smaller washes, dry most of the year, thundered with water that they poured into the main channel. The rains were relenting, but the rivulets wandering toward the flood plain were still gushing. I stepped over thick fingers of roots that made miniature falls for the water streaming toward the channel. As I watched the swollen gullies feed the channel, for the first time in my life it became clear how water draining millions of square miles has but one goal. Each drop, propelled by gravity, moves everlastingly to the sea, inevitable, unstoppable. It will get there. And it starts its journey here. On a golf course. On high ground that rolls towards the drainages, that flow into washes, which fill the East Fork, that joins the Central and West Forks, becoming the North Branch, emptying into the Cal Sag, which meets the Illinois, that reaches its confluence the Mississippi, which finds its way to the Gulf of Mexico, that is a part of the World Ocean. Water has a destiny it must fulfill. It always coalesces with more of itself. Joining. Wedding. The unnamed stream flowing into the named river, the named river pouring into the unnamed, world-girding sea.
The river trail submerged into a rain-swelled gully. I planned my route over it, but the gully’s banks stood steep, limned with slippery mud. Splotch! I flopped down into the mud, my hands gripping thorny vines to avoid sliding all the way in. My feet got soaked anyway. It felt good to get dirty, even if a thorn did chew into my palm. I headed on.
The forest sank down like a Cypress delta. A flapping maple sapling sought refuge on an altar of high ground. Its few branches, fresh with spring leaves, clung to air. Every few yards, a lone dogwood flowered the floodplain, in full bloom with candy-like, white blossoms, yet half submerged. Again and again, I lost sight of the far bank, and small mud islets dotted the vast backwater.
Before me, a peninsula jutted out into the drowned world, a muddy path rolling out onto the little cape like the crease of a tongue along the center of the jutland. I followed the path out to its tip and spun full circle to drink in all 360 degrees of my watery concoction. Inundation. How can a tiny creature like my creek swell to swallow a forest whole? It’s in destiny that even the most unassuming of things may someday assume magnificent proportion. Every element of the universe achieves its maximal potential.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within