Pick a word – Runoff

(Note: I’m going to try something that you can participate in, if you like. Some of my blog posts are going to have a title starting like this one with “Pick a word” followed by a word with enough specificity to spark some thought and creative writing. If you’re a writer, this is a technique that can help you get the juices flowing in the morning. I’d love it if you’d share some snippets of whatever you write about my weirdly specific word choices in the comments.)

So, with no further ado: Runoff

Early spring is a special season in northeastern Oregon. It’s the season of brown runoff water in the well that tastes like clay. But in a good way.

a wild early spring, bunch grass and pine trees in the fading glow of evening under a dramatic blue-gray sky - image by Arie Farnam

I think there must be minerals in there that my body needs because there’s an instinctive pull toward this water.

Yes, it’s untreated and probably un-permitted well water. My family has had a well since before I was born. Most of the year, we are conserving water and obsessively checking the water level in the cistern that the well water is pumped to in order to gravity flow into the house.

But not in the early spring.

At this time of year, the last of the snow is melting in the high mountains. This year there was only a very little bit of snow, and the runoff is weak and already starting to dry up. The farmers In the valley are all worrying about a summer drought and everyone is worrying about wildfires in the summer months.

My family is busy filling big black tanks for an emergency fire-suppression supply of. The well and the cistern are still full, the seasonal creek--that runs between my mom’s house and my little writing retreat cabin—that we call “the studio”--is still trickling.

Runoff is water that’s here today and gone tomorrow. We can only store a little bit of it. It flows away through the soil, into the Grande Ronde, the Snake and the Columbia, and then we’re stuck, high and dry when the summer sun hits.

There are some things that can’t be saved and rationed. The runoff season is like that. I am ultra-busy with grad school and work, applications that are of crucial importance for the rest of my life. I’m in a fragile window at the end of my MFA program where the springs of the literary world may flow for me, just a bit. A recent MFA graduate is like a shiny new penny to editors. Not a big deal, still small potatoes, but shiny and fresh. Recent grads aren’t just any writers, since an MFA is a fairly major deal. And they haven’t had enough time to tarnish, to appear to be mediocre or lacking in writerly discipline.

I need to focus on my work right now, if I want to have a fighting chance to publish and make a living as a professional writer.

But I also know the creek won’t be running long. I need to go out to the ridge and hear the runoff burbling down the hillside under the wild plum trees. I need to breathe the moist, mossy springtime air and walk on the springy, tender earth before all the tough grass and shrubs start taking over. My whole body longs for it, and this is the only time for a whole year when it will be like this.

I love the ridge and the Blue Mountains, even in the scorching summer or the bleak winter months. But there is nothing like this time of year. The usually harsh and brittle land is soft and new for a few brief weeks. Most of the wildflowers aren’t open yet, though buds are everywhere, and tiny grass widows dot the meadows with pale purple.

And the soundscape is breathtaking. In the golden light of a spring evening, meadowlarks, mountain blue birds, and chickadees fill the luminous air with gentle melodic calls. There are no harsh screeches or caws from the crows and magpies just now. Only the sweetest songs—trills, coos and soft hoots. It’s runoff season.

It’s a season to contemplate effervescent things that one cannot grasp in the hand and save for later, the fleeting things none can horde.

We say snow melt is runoff. It is there one day and gone the next. We say teenagers “run off.” Sometimes it’s fickle friends who disappear into different interests or other schools. Sometimes it’s kids growing up and moving out as they should. Sometimes it’s frightened or angry kids running away from rough situations.

We also use the term “to run someone off.” This is a hostile, but active, role. One might run off a wild animal, a stray dog or a casual thief. These things are not precious and desired, like water or childhood or second chances. But they are precarious in their own way. They are all margin-dwellers, something or someone that exists on the edges of survival. These are the ones we run off.

Runoff. Ephemeral, uncaptured, free for you but also quick to flee. A thought and a moment to glimpse, to drink in, but not to grasp or to grab. The snowmelt is a gift of the dying winter. The fledging young is the fruit of a dying childhood.

Don’t hold. Don’t grasp. So quick, the seasonal creek is dry, it’s music silenced for another year. Far too early this time. But I must be changeable in a changing climate. Don’t grieve. Let go of what must pass.