I try to imagine what it must have been like for the first human beings who moved through this dark forest: to glimpse a flare of light on moving water, to step out of the shadows of the close trees and see the sun flashing on a broad river. To see air and water and light conjoined in a magnificent blaze. That first instant must have felt the way waking into darkness feels—not knowing at first if your eyes are open or closed.
In that instant, the river is not a life-giving source of water and fish and passage. In that instant, it is not the roiling fury that can swallow whole any land-walking, air-breathing creature. It is only itself, unlike any other thing. It was here long before we were here, and it will be here after we are gone. It will erase all trace of us—without malice, without even recognition. And when we are gone to ground and all our structures have crumbled back to dust, the river will become again just the place where light and water and sky find each other among the trees.