The Weight of Still Water

The smell of wet river stones always brings me back to the feeling of cold mud between my toes. It is a sharp, metallic scent, like iron filings mixed with crushed mint. When I was small, I would stand at the edge of the creek until my ankles went numb, watching the surface tension hold the world together. There is a specific silence that lives in moving water—a low, rhythmic hum that vibrates against the skin of your shins, grounding you even as the current tries to pull you away. We spend so much of our lives looking at the surface, forgetting that beneath the glass, there is a mirror waiting to swallow the sky. It is a strange, heavy comfort to realize that everything we see is merely a ghost of what is actually there. If you close your eyes, can you still feel the pull of the tide against your own skin, or have you forgotten the texture of the deep?

Tisha Clinkenbeard has captured this quiet duality in her beautiful image titled Fishing Reflection. It reminds me of those long, humid afternoons where the boundary between the earth and the heavens simply dissolves. Does this stillness make you want to step into the water, or are you content to watch from the bank?