A River Begins
Many big things start small, really small, sometimes in fact, imperceptibly small, including rivers, and the one in this story is no different. This big Chilean river begins almost in a shy way, like a whisper, no more than a murmur, and far up in the Andes on the Argentinean side of the mountains. It begins in almost complete silence and solitude, in the stillness of thin air, and due in large part to its majestic surroundings at the top of the world, with great eloquence, and in the form of a small and round pearl-like droplet of dew clinging to the rough face of a rock and glistening in the sunlight.
This droplet is too small and delicate to move on its own, but soon another one sees it and together they shudder. They tremble and quiver and want to meet up with others on the face of the rock. All at once, this daring droplet can’t wait any longer and lets go its iffy hold, and slips, then slides down and rolls into those ahead like miniature snowball, gets bigger, and then stops. It hugs and hangs precariously for a long second to the sharp edge of a rock, becoming a stretched and liquid jewel, and then drops, and drips . . . and plummets and splats onto the next rock.
Now it meets more like it, lots more, and they form a tiny trickle, and since water likes to blend into water and run together, it finds and mingles and mixes with other trickles, then hundreds of them, then thousands and thousands more that come together and become a high mountain stream.
It’s only one small stream, but moving fast and going places, and with a bright future ahead. Soon, drips and drops formed from ice and snowmelt, and still others that babble and gurgle and seep out of the ground, join the fun and race downstream. They tumble and jumble and splash over each other, spray high up in the air, mess and muddle, and then pitch and plunge forward, all the while booting and blasting small rocks in front of them, and are reinforced in numbers by legions of big and fat and floppy rain drops.
Right away it is no longer small or silent; that was before. Now it’s a torrent cascading down the face of the mountain, roaring and rumbling like a wildcat. It carries with it big and small boulders and everything else it can get its claws on, and forms a cloud of mist and fluff and fog that rises up the steep sides of the worn channel, and in places where the mist and fog clears, it is white and frothing and full of angry looking foam.
In due time it gets to the bottom of the mountain and starts to slow down. It’s no longer in such a hurry, no longer a wildcat, but now seemingly drowsy and tired of carrying boulders and rocks and sand and trees, it drops most of them off at the first opportunity, and begins to pool and pond and puddle and plod. As it plods along, the channel becomes wider and deeper and the sides are no longer so steep. Then after joining up with many more mountain streams, it gets even wider and starts to meander around like a giant anaconda, sometimes curling back on itself as if unsure as to which way to go . . . and now is no longer falling like a shot but has finally become a river.
A somewhat leisurely, almost lazy and nonchalant, but slow-moving-right-along kind of river. Here, there is more dirt and muck and less rocks. Grass and trees line the banks, and row boats can float on it, fish can swim in it, houses and cabins look out over it, and kids play by it, and at last it becomes one with other rivers and turns into a big river. A big river that hauls a lot of the mountain down with it, and in time will take all of it, but for now is satisfied with bringing the sand for the beaches, the rock for the quarries, the silt for the deltas, and life to everything it touches. As with any river, big or no, it has a green liner for most of its way to the sea, and life concentrates and pulses next to it.
Now it has finally become navigable; the best kind of river; a force of nature and a thing of beauty, and it knows it. Such are the rivers that flow in and around this story and touch the lives of the people that live near them or upon them.
From Cuco, book 1 in the Cuco series