What does a gypsy do when not traveling?  Well, precious little, so far.  As much as I have been enjoying this settled time, I seem to compulsively check the airline websites, check in at my favorite places, input fictitious departure dates, destinations I covet.  I move the dates around, watch the price rise and fall.  The longing to travel never really fades.

I recently read that the road can be like a string tied around your neck; pulling when you aren’t following.  And while the cold bite of winter was enough to chase me to ground, curled up and biding my time, the sidewalks are awash today.

Snow, heaped carelessly in dirty gritty banks, is dissipating.  The gutters chuckle to themselves, much like the streams that once crossed this land.  Before sidewalks.  Before man attempted to subjugate the earth.  My mind is drawn to the streams I have known.  The waters sweeping past, either low and contemplative, or fast and boisterous.  I have passed pleasant hours beside many kinds.  I hope to do so again.  Though the waters are different, the shape of the stream welcomes me back.

Perhaps it might be said that we would gain insight from emulating the stream.  Thought the very matter of its defining trait is ever changing, the essence of the stream is the same.  You do not meet a stream after a long winter, and accuse it of being a different stream than the one that was there the previous summer.

Last year, I spent hours beside a stream in BC.  I watched the small bubbles surge past, watched the water roil from the forces below.  I saw how the rocks, large and round as dragon eggs must be, saw how they shaped the stream.  I picked up bits of driftwood, battered smooth by grit and sandbars, so far from where they fell into the water.  I dipped my head, bowing low before the might of the waterfall, touched my lips to the seething surface, and drank of the water.  I crept to the very base of the torrent of water, until my eyes were filled with the ever moving water, my ears could hear naught but the endless roar of it, until the droplets beaded on my skin and ran down my bare body.  Humbled, I crouched beside the uncaring marvel.

I slipped my fragile body into the cold water.

A slap, a bite of chill.  The water, from tugging on my ankles, became an undeniable force on my whole body.  The water pushed me, like thousands of tiny hands patting my body.  I was enveloped.  Giving control over to the water, I was swept downstream, headed for the pinch of two shoulders of rock.  the water bunched at this point, heaving great gouts though a smaller space than the cauldron at the base of the falls.  I twisted my body in the water, shaping my form to encourage the water to carry me up, sweep me along with it through the middle, as opposed to dashing against the shoulders.  Not fighting, simply working with the flow.  No point in fighting.

The water swept me along, carried me true, up and to the very brink.  I glimpsed the riverbed downstream, wide stream, shallows for wading in.  Then, I too frothed through the shoulders, tossing up and dashing down, heedless and unstoppable.  Flowing over the rocks, tossing sticks from my path.  Flowing into eddies, unexpected swirls and dashing back.  Leaping over the shallows, spreading out to wet all the rocks, bringing life and nourishment from upstream.

Gasping, I found myself bound by my own skin, pressed against the rocks where the water had flowed too shallowly to carry my flesh any further.  The water dashed away, passing around the bend.  Leaving me to be caressed by the water chasing at its heels.  Never ending chase, flowing along…

I grinned in the strong summer sunshine, grateful to have been a part of it, even if for only a moment.