From the first time I heard this song, Rivers Run by Karine
Polwart, I wanted to learn how to sing it. It is a beautiful song about rivers
and climate change that is realistic but infused with a touch of hope. Karine
is singing this song to her “Darling One”, and I was kindly given permission to
sing it and post this music video for my own “Darling Ones”, my goddaughter ‘Lena
and her little sister Storrie and brother Auggie. So, while this video is
illustrated with rivers and the images of river-life, my Darling Ones also drop
in on occasion.
‘Lena, Storrie, and Auggie live with their mom and dad on a
small working farm in New Mexico, and so their lives are more obviously woven
into access to river water than most of ours. However, in Santa Fe, where I
live, the clear good water that flows from our faucets is a sweet blend that is
mostly river. 39% of the water we drink and use in households in our city is
from the Santa Fe River. Every shining drop of that water was brought from the
sky through rain and snow into the vast watershed of the Pecos Wilderness, the
Sangre de Cristo mountains to our East. There it is gathered into our little
river by the slopes and curves the mountains, channeled through forest and
canyon. We catch the river’s water in reservoirs for our use, but in 2012 Santa
Feans also voted to spare a bit for the river herself through the “Living River”
program, which restored her path and seasonal flows through the city. Her
lively presence among us is not only vibrant and beautiful but her flow
restores our aquifer and wells. Another major part of our drinking water in Santa
Fe rolls and flows to us from the Rio Chama and the Rio Grande. The final share
comes from groundwater, which is also recharged by the river and the rain. Water
is life, and the rhythm of the rivers is the heartbeat of the land.
The line in the first verse of the song, “Kingdoms come, and
kingdoms go,” made me want to start the video with some rivers in Europe, but for
the later verses I move to images of my beloved rivers of the southwestern United
States.
After the song, the music switches to a
traditional Irish slip jig called Butterfly for the credits. (Rivers Run is in
9/8 time, so it seemed a good pairing with a slip jig which shares that time signature.)
First come the image credits, with deepest thanks to my artistic friends who
share their extraordinary images with me, in particular the photographer Irene Owsley who contributed so many of her portraits of New Mexico Rivers to this video.
In my mind are three kids of images in this video, so I found a quote for each
of them:
I. Rivers and Creeks:
“The good life of any river may depend on the perception
of its music, and the preservation of some music to perceive.”
― Aldo
Leopold
II. River-life: We are not the only ones whose lives
depend upon the rivers.
“We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging
to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use
it with love and respect.”
― Aldo
Leopold
III. Darling Ones
“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is
the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that
build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that
your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your
responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future
matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our
relatives depend on it. Because they do.”
— Robin
Wall Kimmerer
I could only include part of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s
quote in the music video, the more complete version is included above. It is
from her book Braiding Sweet Grass. Aldo Leopold was a great naturalist,
who found his path to protecting the wilds and his notion of a “The Land Ethic”
in the eyes of a wild wolf. He developed the idea that wilderness had intrinsic
value, and his beautiful writing and advocacy moved people to set aside and
protect some of these wild lands. The first of these was The Gila National
Forest, designated June 3, 1924, which celebrates its 100 birthday this year. You
can read about Aldo Leopold’s ideas and his experiences in his Sand County
Almanac.
Then on to music credits. When Brent Berry was at Peter
Oviatt’s Moonflower Sound recording the final tracks of drums and shakers, a wild
rainstorm came up. So, Peter put the mics on the windowsill, and the Taos Sky
sat in on percussion.
At the end of the video, after the music, are three short
river-stories I wanted to share. The first is about Acequias, the traditional
means of sharing river water between farmers in New Mexico. The second is about
the beavers as a conduit between the rivers and the life they support. The third
is about the current trouble the rivers of New Mexico are facing; we will always need the
rivers, but in these times they also need us, and the New Mexico rivers have
been declared the most endangered rivers in the US in 2024.
I. Acequias
Acequias are ancient waterways used in New Mexico to bring
water from our rivers to our orchards and crops. Acequia water rights come with
the land, governance is shared by the community, and people work together to
keep the acequias clear and flowing and to strategically share water.
Our darling ones live on a small farm along the Rio Ojo
Calliente.
I sing this song as a prayer that their family will always
have clear sweet water flowing into their fields when they need it, and that if
the little ones choose to follow their parents in farming, the acequias will be
there when they grow up to infuse life into their labors.
The realization of this hope will depend on winter snow in the
mountains and the coming of the summer rains.
This in turn depends on us all finding the wisdom to
use our understanding of climate change and choosing to act.
It’s a complicated prayer I’m singing.
II. Beavers
More than 200 million beavers once shaped the rivers of
North America, but they were decimated by the first colonist’s dogged determination
to maximally profit from harvesting their dense fur and turning them into hats.
Their numbers may have dropped to as low as 10,000, but we have finally understood
our folly, and are beginning to invite them back. They are master water-benders,
and they partner with the rivers in giving life; I first began to appreciate them
through the marvelous book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and
Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb.
Beavers:
- Slow
water, enabling natural water purification
- Build
riparian communities where life abounds
- Cool
waters and create fish habitat
- Prevent
stream erosion
- Offer
fire resilience
I include one example of this in the video, a fire
resilience art-of-the-beaver story that is astonishing:
Beaver Dams Help Wildfire-Ravaged Ecosystems Recover Longafter Flames Subside
by Isobel Whitcomb, Scientific American February 7, 2022
The beaver dams in Dixon Creek preserved a lush green
riparian habitat amidst a landscape charred by the severe 2021 Bootleg Fire in
Oregon.
Upstream the river was devastated by the fire, a blackened
sludge of ash and debris. The aquatic life was deprived of oxygen, the fish
were gone.
But downstream of the beaver dams, the water was
crystal clear and filled with trout. The beavers had created wetlands, which
slowed the flow of the water: sediments settled and the water was filtered.
III. Endangered Rivers: And if our Rio tomorrow runs dry…
The group American Rivers each year identifies the
rivers that most urgently need protection.
In 2024 they declared all rivers in New Mexico as the
#1 most endangered.
This is because a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision,
Sackett v. EPA, dramatically weakened the Clean Water Act. SCOTUS overturned
decades of federal clean water precedent to now limit protection to permanent
streams and wetlands with continuous surface connections to those streams.
New Mexico’s waters, and so all life here, depends on snow
melt and summer monsoon rains, which seasonally awaken our arroyos and
intermittent streams. These in turn feed our permanent streams and rivers. All
federal protection of these intermittent waters from polluters and industry is
now gone, and now we must rely on ourselves and the state.
But there is more to the story than this in our desert
southwest. Drought and increasing temperatures, and need for water upstream has already demonstrated it can leave our Rio Grande dry when it hits Albuquerque and further to
the south. In the southwest we are in a mega-drought more severe than any seen for over 1,200 years. When our forests burn now it is regularly with a ferocity that we
did not witness until recently; after 100 years of restraining fires and with
the increasingly warm and dry spring and summer weather, the forests now burn
to the ground, the watersheds are stripped of life in a new way. As a
consequence, our rivers can rage and flood as the natural cycles of rejuvenation that came with historic natural fire cycles are now disrupted by extensive
fires that burn with a new intensity.
These are hard things to face, but now is not the time to
feel helpless and look away. Now is the time to reflect upon our children’s
future, embrace Aldo Leopold's land ethic as our own, and to care for and take action for our life-giving
waters. Find something you can do, and do it.
________
I have a YouTube channel if you are interested in more of my
music videos.
#Butterfly #ClimateChange #Rivers #Beavers
