river 5-2010

"-'For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!' Thus spoke I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise

fools speak better.

The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance- little makes up the best happiness.

Hush!

-What has befallen me: Hark! has time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen- hark! into the well of eternity?"-Zarathustra (Neitzche)Part 4 (at

Noontide)(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Thus_Spake_Zarathustra_-_Thomas_Common_-_1917.djvu/337)

There are few fish in the Llano River these days...Gar, and Humans, have eaten too many; and the Carp, some as big as my 8 year old, as well as the

Nutria, have eaten the "Cover"....an untimely flood, 4 years ago at Spawning-Time lowered the population,too...
So when I finally got down there the other day, and it was raining, I just tied up to a Billion Year Old Cliff Face...and observed.
Got high, drank Tecate, looked at all the Life Everywhere.
There were Idiots with Automatic Weapons, somewhere upstream...hollering and shooting...I gleaned that I was far enough, and low enough, that I

would be OK...
The Cliff was Alive! Spiders and their Prey, Mosses and Ferns, Trees (baby trees) established in cracks in the rock,...and the Rock!
Strata that was once Mud on the floor of a shallow sea, when the dominant species on Earth were Jellyfish.
One of the places I tied off was overhung by a Rock Shelter, 15' above the water....one can still see the char on the "cieling" from 10,000 years of

campfires.An almost unknown folk, called the Chama...who, due to a two hundred year old mispelling, gave their name to this River.
There are Rock Ovens, farther upstream, where these folks cooked...Caves and Overhangs where they lived....
The rapids just upstream from where I was the other day is known as Soldier's Crossing...artifacts from both cultures can still be found, if one knows

what to look for.
Kingfishers, Eagles, and the omnipresent Buzzards.
Deer and Black Cows....wading across the river.
A wild Turkey Hen, and her Brood, scurrying up a wide gash in the Cliff Face, past Buffalo Grass and stunted Live oaks, covered with Ball Moss.
If it wasn't for the occasional burst of machine gun fire from upstream, and the occasional truck on the mile-distant highway, I might be in any era.
a Million miles away.