Go as a River

by Shelley Read

figured that if my trees could survive, uprooted and against the odds, then, damn all bad fortune, so too could I.

No matter how slow and arduous its course, no matter what trickle seeped through, I knew it would find a way to keep flowing. And when it did, I, in my new life along the North Fork, would be on the other side to meet it.

“Loss has nothing to do with what you deserve or don’t deserve, for God’s sake.”

like my orchard, had been resilient in new soil, uprooted by circumstance yet able to get on with things anyway. But I had also faltered and fallen, lost my resolve, and curled into fear more times than I could count. Strength, I had learned, was like this littered forest floor, built of small triumphs and infinite blunders, sunny hours followed by sudden storms that tore it all down. We are one and all alike if for no other reason than the excruciating and beautiful way we grow piece by unpredictable piece, falling, pushing from the debris, rising again, and hoping for the best. I

what I had learned most about becoming is that it takes time.

like the river, I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else,

had been shaped by my kindred—my lost family and lost love; my found friendships, though few; my trees that kept on living and every tree that gave me shelter; every creature I met along the way, every raindrop and snowflake choosing my shoulder, and every breeze that shifted the air; every winding path beneath my feet, every place I laid my hands and head, and every creek like the one before me, rolling off the hillside, gaining strength in gravity, spinning through the next eddy, pushing around the next bend, taking and giving in quiet agreement with every living thing.

And I marveled at how so much of their lives, in the bizarre and twisted way of the world, had been put into motion by my walk to town on an October day when I was seventeen years old.