Living Light Bubbles

At low water there is a pool just downstream from the North Unit of the Bowersock Hydroelectric Plant. A slight current seeps through the plant. Limestones on the levee, the blue sky, the weedy bank – all reflect on the near stillness.

But at the edge of the sand and gravel spit where I sometimes stand, my soles squishing at the level of the river water, the slight current rises up from the pool and rushes around the shallow point.

The sunlight, lowering its intensity for the winter, refracts off ripples too slight to be seen at the water’s surface and trails of fringed light bubbles appear a few inches below, slipping and slithering along the bottom.

The water, even the Kaw water, is so clear at this depth as to be invisible. And the bubbles of light appear to magically form out of nothing, living for the length of a single pace, were I willing to step in and get the tops of my shoes wet and perhaps annihilate their world. They quickly slide, one or two at a time, quickly after each other, a nano-something above the muddy sand, bending for the rust-colored mossy stones in their path. They shimmer for an instant, then are caught briefly in a net of shining crossing lines, flickering like flames under the water, before everything disappears into the murky depths on the other side.

As the sun was setting, I imagined that only I had survived to tell you of this non-carbon based life form of light bubbles about to go extinct in the night.

Perhaps they will return against improbable odds. Perhaps it will rain and their entire universe will be changed. They were something to behold for the moments they passed through my awareness.

And then I turned and walked away.

***

I went back to that very spot a month or so later. It was windier for one thing.

I saw no light bubbles. But as I crouched in the loose, water-logged gravel on that point,

a brown-feathered duck swam soundlessly into my vision. He was scarcely farther away from me than I am tall. There was some white on his head with brown irregular spots. His bill was pink.

He turned in the water and opened his bill as if to speak, and then he paddled away.

There is little more to be made of what I saw that afternoon, other than to say that I was there for a few moments.

And grateful.

***

I went to that spot yet again. I saw a few small colonies of light bubbles that afternoon. I walked along the shore and came upon a younger couple standing in the sand. Her cap was nearly the color of the duck’s bill and I stopped to mention that if they were in no hurry they might wander back up to the point and look for the light bubbles.

I later saw them standing down there, well below where I then sat on a bench on the levee, my jacket off in the low January sun. I saw the woman point with an extended arm toward the water at their feet.

I opened my mouth as if to speak, and then I turned my head and looked out across the river.

***

An eagle flew nearly over their heads and mine at about same the time the younger couple were looking downward, watching their step, as they climbed up to the levee from the sandbar.

In a few minutes, they approached, the woman had her brown hair tucked under the faded baseball cap about the color of the bill of a brown-feathered duck that had swam toward me at the very same place where only these few moments ago these very same two people had recently been standing on the river shore, this woman herself pointing toward the very spot.

We talked for several minutes – of the river and other things. I saw no reason to mention the eagle.

To me it’s not the coincidences that are amazing, but that I am here to see any of it at all.

If we don’t mess everything up, another eagle will be flying here on another day - and maybe then, these two will be here to see it.

***

I haven’t meant to tell you everything. If you have questions, ask the duck. I think he knows more than he lets on.

But I have seen those living light bubbles. One place you might see them is a point just below Bowersock North. If you don’t find them, well, don’t fret. Not everything is as obvious as a new pickup truck commercial.

***

I saw the woman in the cap with the pink bill walking with her fiancée, a few weeks back. We acknowledged each other but we didn’t speak. For me, the sighting was a welcome as an eagle flying over my head.

Enjoy life where you are. Light bubbles require more time and attention. Sometimes astonishment will just fly right over your head if you’re looking with your eyes open.

- for Charity and Tim