plunge

This summer Josh and I drove across the prairies while they were green. Always I can believe the great plains were once an ocean: they still ripple with waves of light and shadow, and clouds build up like above water. Fieldbirds skim and swim the grasses, and waterfowl use the stars to navigate the clear elements.

We visited friends in a cabin at the edge of the Canadian shield, a Genesis place where the waters are still barely separate from land, and teem with life. Snapping turtles bask in the sun and reveal themselves not stone at the last moment, plunking into the water just as we jet by in a little boat. Ospreys sound the depths for flashes of silver and plummet down for the catch at nearly right angles. Pelicans sift through the evening light, feeding on the same fish we do, and loons break the stillness with their irreducible rippling song.

From the air in Pete's bush plane, it looked more liquid than solid, but both the water and the rock there go deep. And life clings to the rock, too: sprays of wild onion and enough blueberries to exhaust us with the picking. Foxes, wolves, and bears all seem unconcerned, content and munchy. Deer in abundance. The guys camped out on an unnamed island, a perfect microcosm of the place, and we went to visit them.

Now I love the cool sluicing of a good swim, especially an Ontario swim, but invariably I hesitate. I sun myself like a turtle on warm stone and only plunk in at what seems the last moment, long after our friends' boys have given up trying to sweet-talk or splash me in. Then, while they're busy catapulting off the island-edges of granite, I slip over to a gentler slope and slowly whoosh myself into what I've been waiting for all along.

For almost the past nine months now, I've been growing a small ocean inside me, and this ocean, too, teems with life. I know because I can feel every kick and see every ripple. And the past few weeks of rest have been an island of warm granite to me, a place to sun myself and chew on wild chives and let my black swim-suit soak in all the energy I can get. But I know that soon it will be time to let the waters of our baby's birth wash over me, and deeper yet -- for Josh and I to take the plunge into nurturing this new life.

When we drove back across the prairies late this summer, the green seas had ripened to gold; and the roads were amniotic, drenched silver with harvest rains.