Reflections on Moving Water
by Kathleen Dean Moore
There were some gorgeous, thought-provoking, eye-opening essays in here. And some that surprised me. Toward the end she wrote of Lillian, the elderly neighbor who "forced me to spend part of each day doing nothing." When Lillian went off to assisted living, she took another chunk in the wall that separated the author from being a "former thing", an old person, a useless relic of a bygone time. Scary.
She wrote many essays based on trips she'd taken--floating the Smohalla, the John Day, walking along the Aguajita Wash--and she names each es
say after the river which inspired it. More descriptive names for the essays would have given away the delights of the book:
<i>The art of poking around.
Crossing against the current.
The logic of the dunes.
Staring into Orion.</i>
But she held back, naming her essays only by the river or wash or sometimes even just a dry creek, and making the reader work hard to uncover her wondering magic.
A few of the essays were difficult for me--the study of philosophy always hits a roadblock in my head, but mostly she wrote of the elusive rhythm of rivers. And it's a wonder, as the old folks say. A wonder.
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