The Meeting of the Waters

A few days ago, if asked, I would have said I lacked the spaciousness and sanity to write this month. I know it would have been an excuse born of scarcity and fatigue — but summer is flaring into autumn, and time can seem like a horse bolting for the barn in the back half of the year.

In a recent advisory on parents’ mental health, the Surgeon General cited an APA finding that 48% of American parents feel completely overwhelmed every day. In the ordinary overwhelm of modern life, friends exchange waves from afar with an undertone of “you can call if you’re in crisis; otherwise, just text.” Sound familiar?

But then there’s this: shadows lengthening across the field, the animalic resin of roasted chile and yellow clusters of Chamisa. In The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, the ornithologist and wildlife ecologist J. Drew Lanham reflects on the restlessness of autumn’s arrival:

“The Germans have a fine word for it: zugunruhe. A compound derived from the roots zug (migration) and unruhe (anxiety), it describes the seasonal migration of birds and other animals. In this wanderlust I want to go somewhere far away, to fly to some place I think I need to be. Nature is on the move, too, migrating, storing, and dying. Everything is either accelerating or slowing down. Some things are rushing about to put in seed for the next generation. A monarch butterfly in a field full of goldenrod is urgent on tissue-thin wings of black and orange to gather the surging sweetness before the frost locks it away. Apple trees and tangles of muscadines hang heavy. The fruit-dense orchards offer a final call to the wildlings. Foxes, deer, coons, possum, and wild turkeys fatten in the feasting. The air is spiced with the scent of dying leaves. The perfume of decay gathers as berries ripen into wild wine. Even the sun sits differently in an autumnal sky, sending a mellower light in somber slants that foretell the coming change.”

Something is shifting in the air. Equinox, the threshold of autumn, arrives with an invitation to notice the restlessness and, further, to consider the phenomenon of balance in nature. Because on Equinox, from Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), the light steadies itself between day and night, and in a hardly perceptible motion, the seasons turn toward each other, bow in symmetry, and exchange place.

I am reminded of a place in the Amazon I visited years ago. Manaus is located nine hundred miles arterially inland from the Atlantic Ocean, deep in the body of the rainforest. The city is home to more than half of the region’s human inhabitants and a staggering array of life: 40,000 plant species, 3,000 fish species, 1,300 bird species, 430 mammal species, and 2.5 million insect species.

In the latter half of the 19th century, fueled by rubber exports and indentured servitude, Manaus briefly enjoyed the status of the wealthiest city in the world. Colonial commentators dubbed it the “Paris of the Tropics,” thanks to its electricity, drinking water, and sewage systems—nouveau luxuries in its day.

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One of the city’s crowning achievements was Teatro Amazonas, perhaps the world’s most improbable opera house. First conceived in 1881, the opera premiered on January 7, 1897, with a performance of Ponchielli's La Gioconda by world-renowned tenor Caruso. By all accounts, the evening was magnificent. The finest materials had been imported from Europe, including 198 chandeliers—32 made from Murano glass—and 36,000 ceramic tiles arranged over the dome in an impressive mosaic of the Brazilian flag. The opera house’s most specific and transcendent feature was a 75-meter-high stage curtain depicting the water goddess Iara above a local site, the Encontro das Águas, or Meeting of the Waters.

The Rio Negro, as its name implies, is black, colored by decayed plant matter, and descends from the Colombian hills. By contrast, the Rio Solimões is milky brown and carries sediment from the Andes Mountains. When these two rivers meet, they do not immediately blend but remain distinct for six kilometers (3.7 miles) before finally merging into the great Rio Amazonas, the Amazon River. Their respective temperatures, speeds, and compositions contribute to an extraordinary symbiosis wherein they balance each other and flow together, reconciled to their mutual existence.

Of my time in Manaus, I remember the midday sun pressing downward on my shoulders and the taste of dark tannins in the wet air. The freshwater creatures on display at the local market gleamed slick and otherworldly. But most of all, I remember reaching my hands into two rivers as our wooden boat steadied between them.

As Equinox opens the door to Libra season, I’m reminded of the transmission of the meeting of the waters: two rivers centered calmly, two currents in harmony. Libra is symbolized by the scales held by Themis, the Greek personification of divine law and balance, who invites us to reflect on equilibrium—on the balance between light and dark, between movement and stillness.

When autumn arrives with its gold and slanting light, with its sweet bark, it offers us an earthly reminder. We are delicately set within these bodies and the turning of time, responsible for cultivating steadiness where we place our hands.

And one more thing: the word essay comes from French, essai (to try). In this pivot into the year's final quarter, perhaps trying is what we can do. We can show up and steady ourselves, one word, one day at a time.

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