The ripples of water

Experiencing bodies of water in norcal

The sunlight waxes and wanes. When the clouds muffle the gold, the soft hum of blue sky and bright whites reflect in gently changing panes of opaque current. The sun breaks through and the river is glitter, golds and silvers catching on smooth ridges of water.

~

Our trip begins the moment projectile rock meets Sacramento River — the birth of a momentary epicenter. The disturbed water shudders, rippling as the stone sinks. Then it’s gone. The river quickly recovers, smoothing over all evidence of surprise. Green, teal, aquamarine. Unbotherable. My inner child shrieks with an ineffable glee.

After luring me down the Sundial Bridge, the water appoints the young children of the pebbled river bank to be my teachers. Our ritual begins with collecting stones. Pick any you fancy. The secret is really the river, anyway. All that bathe in its touch become vibrant, shiny, holy. As if infected with wonder, with borrowed sunlight, with bone-deep frigidity. Or, if you find yourself feeling generous, pick a stone from the upper banks. Dry, weightier and whole, ashy and dull. Test it in your hand, imagine what it could be the moment it leaves your sight and forgets it was ever yours.

Now pause for a minute. You may not want to, but this is important to the safety of both children and unassuming ducks. It is a beautiful day.

When the coast is clear, embrace the simplicity of the action. The draw of your arm backwards and the subsequent forward launch, release, arc through the air —

There’s a firm knock of satisfaction that blooms inside my chest at the sound. A ripple blooms and withers. The quick life of a moment. I laugh at this ridiculous joy, and the stretch of my smile against my face compounding at this audible, physical manifestation of freedom. Proof something happened, proof I am either not crazy or completely so. Suddenly, all I want to do is throw rocks into the water again, and again, and again. Farther, louder, splashier. Add more rocks, see how the ripples collide. What music can I make, how many pebbles can hands hold, will this feeling ever grow old?

My teachers look at me in a funny way. I am one of them, but... so tall? Aren’t I too old for this? They shrug it off in the way kids sometimes do, while behind us two moms sit playing Pokemon Go. I chuckle silently as one says to the other, “Oh, no, I don’t need to catch any more Charmanders. I have enough of those candies.” Aren’t they too old for this? There is something about the river that seems to draw our inner children out to play.

~

The road is lined with families of trees. In, and out, of consciousness. Somewhere along the way, the hills blacken. Branches barren, charred. Skeletal.

When a clearing begins to come into view on our right, it is hard to resist the opportunity to change pace. We fold to the mountains’ call for worship. You can’t outgrow mountains. At most, if you want, you can scamper up, make small talk with the trees, sit upon a mountain’s shoulders. As a child of a valley, I’ve been raised at their feet. Looking up. Always knowing north by something less fickle than a star.

This is how I know the stream that cuts the clearing in half is a child. It babbles contentedly, framed by long grass and sparse flowers. To get across the stream, it seems the only way is to leap across the water. I could go back to the car. But I walk along the stream for a few minutes, considering the width of the gap and the overgrowth of weeds. What if I don’t make it? What if I fall? Oh, but darling, what if you fly?

The choice to jump, the commitment to the action, and the action itself happen in a heartbeat. It’s casual, I tell myself. It’s not even that far. And I do make it, starting with one foot on the other side. The grass isn’t greener here, but we feel more solidly committed to being in the field now. The car feels some ways away. I continue to walk with the direction of the current, as if maybe it’ll lead me somewhere. I watch a couple shriek, trying to catch something in the grass. So begins the frog hunt.

But when the time comes (after I have, in fact, interrupted a tiny frog in the midst of hopping between green blades), we leap back over the stream. Don’t overthink it, I chastise myself. I look to the water to find my nerve. The same choice, the same commitment, the same action, and the car becomes within reach. And so we are back on the way to it, into it, seatbelts fastened as we cruise up Mount Lassen to chase the next view.

~

The Lassen steam rises. The colored water sits in their allotted palette dish wells. Cyan, mint, mustard. The rain covers it all, covers us all, ties groups of people together and ushers us away. Wet jackets, damp hair, muddy shoes. Each hiking party is on a mission to see the sights, to satiate hunger, to seek out dry car seats.

At dinner the previous night, our affable waitress cackled as we greedily downed our glasses. “The water comes out cold!” Her words ring true as we eat our cold lunches, shivers subsiding as the water seeps out of us, back into the air.

~

We find our last water along railroad tracks, a return to the Sacramento River. Our stop at Mossbrae Falls had been up to this point uncertain, and along our hike between the tracks and the river (with interruptions for blackberries, graffiti signs, and more glistening photos of the running water), there is a build of anticipation and expectation. “You’re almost there!” the people cheer at us. I’m constantly looking to our right for a bridge mentioned in an article I’d skimmed this morning, trying to mentally cut a mile into fourths and figure out if we’ve walked across enough rocks to cover three. The tracks wind around corners, and all I can focus on is how nobody in the articles talked about how uneven the track ballast feels underfoot, jagged corners turned to take stabs at the soles of our shoes.

This is my third time having chosen a location for Caravan, but it’s only this time that I register that this pre-destination anxiety will likely never go away.

When we finally idle to the right and down an intimately cool slope of packed dirt, the trees part to allow breath for the waterfall. I need it. All thoughts of capturing this place for you, for some type of Later, leave my head at the sight. I let out a huff of relief, along with utter and complete awe. A wall of rock carpeted in hanging grass and soft moss, iced delicately and carelessly in crystalline water. Simply going, and going, and going, hitting the river with such purpose it feels less like falling and more like diving. As if the only reason it isn’t frozen is because it’s continuously slapping itself awake, tiny chilled droplets sent flying into the shade.

We step gingerly, but quickly, over stones in the river. The only sound is the constant crash and collapse of water’s hurry, pummeling into itself, running so fast it foams white. Large shined boulders, round and slippery, with some just big enough for hopping across. Closer, closer, closer, until the stones trail off and I can feel the mist on my face. As some point I become so absorbed in my awe that my foot slips,

my shoe floods with water,

and I’m reduced to impulse. Shoes and socks quickly discarded, left by a tree-turned-bench, my ankles submerged in glacial water. Biting. Numb. Effervescent. The cold takes over my blood.

~

Bikini girl, children and fruit leather, fisherman. The father and the fisherman speculate on how cold the water is and where it comes from — perhaps a spring? I think about what it means to be part of the falls, to make a place one’s own just by choosing to be there, to soak in it and let it make you sparkle. It is already time to go.

~

At some point, I picked up a rock at Mossbrae. I felt I should take something to remember it by, and shiny and cold, I took it. The waterfall changed something in our group, evident as we opt to walk back on the cement railway sleepers as opposed to the coarse ballast. A fearlessness, a fluidity, a one-ness.

Halfway through in a parting of the trees where the river becomes visible, I look down and have the need to throw a rock. I smile at the echo of the Sundial Bridge. Slipping my hand into my pocket, I hurl my keepsake down — it splits in two, hitting the rocky slope, before plopping into the water.

Unlike the laughter, the impulse, the awe, the rocks belonged wholly to the water. Like the frog, they had to be returned. They were not mine to keep.

~

Briefly disturbed by the ripples of all the bodies of water we encountered, we are perhaps ready to make our own. We emerge from the water as the rocks do— vibrant, shiny, holy.

Words: Audrey Sioeng

Photos: Kyle Garcia Takata, Nico Frost

Design: Khankamol Chor Kongrukgreatiyos