Spring River

The Willamette River has started to thin at the edges, its murky spring sediment swept downstream, emptied into the great confluence of the Columbia, meandering miles and miles before sinking later into the wide, slow Astoria estuary. And so now, if you look into the shallow waters of the Willamette, right along shoreline, you see a clear, marbled view of the rocks at the bottom, all the little pebbles, silver and white and salmon-pink, and the rare green rock, pale as sagebrush.

The water stays clear as long as you don’t disturb it; the clarity is quickly lost to our wading footsteps, or to the geese who reach their long necks beneath the surface, loosening the silky, amorphous mud.

Things have changed, too, above the water; all the swallows flying in quick, buzzing lines. They’re tiny, almost as small as hummingbirds, but longer, more gracile, their wings papered and batlike. And above them, too, the turkey vultures ride the low drafts, circling lazily, and the great blue heron flies, all tucked into itself, the shape of an arrow, its wings unmanageably large, and the osprey watches all of us carefully, locking black eyes with me for just a brief, small, fleeting, almost imperceptible moment before diving into the wide, clear water.