![[The Ohio River Speaks] Shitting Geese, Omega-3s, and the Arithmetic of Atrocity](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Shitting-Geese-Omega-3s-and-the-Arithmetic-of-Atrocity.jpg)
by DGR News Service | Jun 30, 2020 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Toxification
The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, and fourth part of Will’s journey.
By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks
Sometimes I ask the Ohio River questions. And, sometimes she asks me. West of Salamanca, New York, a few miles before the Kinzua Dam traps the Ohio River in the Allegheny Reservoir, I sat in a kayak listening. She was speaking, but I did not understand.
The water was slow. The river’s face was smooth. And, the surface reflected a blue and white mosaic created by lazy cumulus clouds drifting across the sky. She pulled me ever so gently downstream. The sensation was powerfully familiar, but I did not know why.
A mother merganser swam with her five chicks along the closest shore. I smiled at what looked like exasperation on her face as she tried to keep her children moving in the same direction. For a few moments, she anxiously eyed a space downstream where a bald eagle had disappeared into the trees. When she looked back, one duckling had gone one way and one another. The other three didn’t know who to follow.
My mind slowed to match the river’s pace. The random, anxious firing of disparate images that form my moment-to-moment consciousness throttled down until my thoughts almost disappeared entirely. They were replaced by the fullness of my experience of the river. The sun, glinting off a passing dragonfly, left a trail of turquoise light. Bugs skimmed the surface, and appeared to me like the tips of invisible pens writing disappearing messages that only the bugs could comprehend. On the edge of my vision, I saw a splash and the telltale ripples of a leaping trout.
The enchantment continued until a wedge of passing Canada geese pointed right at me. They swept low and the goose flying point shat. The shit slapped my plastic kayak – a direct hit. The honking geese laughed. And, I did, too.
***
I knew the metaphors she presented me with were meaningful. What could be more meaningful than being shit on? But, I wasn’t sure what the Ohio River was trying to communicate until a few days later.
I was listening to an interview given by agricultural critic Richard Manning, author of Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization and other great books. Manning was asked about the global food shortage and whether there would be enough food to feed the world’s human population over the balance of the 21st century. Manning answered no and pointed out how we are already failing to do so “drastically.” He explained that the people who say we are not failing often assume that humans need a certain amount of calories per day (2000 is the most common number). They multiply this number by the world’s total human population. Next, they calculate the total caloric value of the planet’s corn, wheat, and other grain production. Because the total caloric value of agricultural grain production is greater than the calories they claim are needed by humans, many people declare there is no food shortage.
Manning argued, however, that 2000 calories of carbohydrates are not adequate daily nutrition. He pointed out that high carbohydrate diets are, in fact, making humans sick, and that most humans are not getting the nutrition we have evolved to need. Omega-3 fatty acids are one of the most important things missing from most human diets. Omega-3 fats are vital for brain health and, thus, for achieving human potential.
A major problem, however, is that the world is running out of this essential nutrient. Omega-3 fats primarily come from animals, especially cold-water fish. Manning mentioned a study conducted by British scientists. I found the study titled “Is the world supply of omega-3 fatty acids adequate for optimal human nutrition?” by Norman Salem, Jr. and Manfred Eggersdorfer.
Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are the most important Omega-3 fatty acids for human health. The study’s abstract stated that “EPA and DHA originate in the phytoplankton and are made available in the human food chain mainly through fish and other seafood.” However, “the fish catch is not elastic and in fact has long since reached a plateau.” These acids do occur in vegetables, but “vegetable oil-derived alpha-linolenic acid, though relatively plentiful, is converted only at a trace level in humans to DHA and not very efficiently to EPA, and so cannot fill” the gap in human need for EPA and DHA. The study “concluded that fish and vegetable oil sources will not be adequate to meet future needs, but that algal oil and terrestrial plants modified genetically to produce EPA and DHA could provide for the increased world demand.”
The realities of human nutritional needs, fish population collapses, and human population growth confronts us with a series of choices. We can attempt to provide all humans alive today with adequate nutrition. And, in the attempt, exhaust cold water fish, turn the oceans into algae farms, and violate the very DNA of terrestrial plants, while creating mutant plants to serve us. We can work to reduce human population to a point where humans and cold water fish can both thrive and exist. Or, we can do nothing. And, the most privileged among us may enjoy adequate nutrition – for a time – while more and more humans fall victim to malnutrition, while fewer and fewer of us may realize our full human potential.
I remembered the trout I saw leaping near the Allegheny Reservoir. I remembered the ripples whispering with the trout’s passing. I thought of other fish who provide Omega-3 fats: the mesmerizing schools of mackerel twirling like underwater whirlpools, the once mighty runs of red salmon who made so much noise swimming upriver you could hear them a mile away, and the hardy cod who call the deep, cold seas of the North Atlantic home.
***
While I was trying to understand the Ohio River’s message contained in these experiences, I went looking for information on her fish, specifically. I landed on the Ohio River Fish Consumption Advisory Workgroup’s website. This Workgroup is a “multi-agency workgroup consisting of representatives from the six main stem states (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) as well as the US EPA and the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission.”
The website featured rows of photos of fishermen holding up individual fish of different species. Under each photo, text described how often each species can be eaten and the chemical reason for the advisory. Under a photo of a walleye, for example, the text read “1 meal per month – PCBs.” Under a photo of a sauger, the text read “1 meal per month – Hg.” Under a photo of a white bass, the text read “6 meals per year – PCBs.” But worst of all, under the photos of both a common carp and a channel catfish, the text read “Do not eat – PCBs.” PCBs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency “belong to a broad family of man-made organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons.” Hg is mercury.
This made me nauseous. But, probably not as nauseous as eating a common carp or channel catfish would. I wondered how it made the fish feel. I wondered how the chemicals made other animals who eat the fish feel. Mergansers eat fish. Bald eagles do, too. Canada geese are primarily herbivores, but they occasionally eat fish. Hopefully, they observe the advisories and eat less than one meal per month or 6 meals per year.
As I thought of all these creatures, I sensed I was getting closer to understanding the Ohio River’s meaning. That’s when the familiarity I felt while floating in my kayak came back to me. The first physical sensations I ever experienced must have been those I felt floating in my mother’s womb. But, I’m not just my mother’s son. I spent the first, most formative years of my life drinking the Ohio River’s water. I am the Ohio River’s son, too.
But, that wasn’t all of it. The Ohio River pushed me on. My memory drifted farther into the past. Floating was likely our oldest ancestors’ first activity. Floating is familiar because the first motions of Life on Earth began in the movement of water. I saw the primordial oceans receding, glaciers melting, and the Ohio River being born. The Ohio River is a mother. She is also a daughter of the Earth.
Her voice became clear then. I understood what she was saying. On the kayak trip, she showed me her children – mergansers, a bald eagle, a dragonfly, and shitting geese. A few days later, she drew my attention to global problems confronting humans, fish, and her kin, the oceans. To understand these problems, I delved into studies describing the extent of global destruction and found the fish advisories. Then, as I considered the pain industrial poisons cause the Ohio River’s children, she evoked the familiar sensation of floating in a mother’s womb.
The key was the word “familiar.” The Ohio River was asking me for news of her family. She gossips with her sister, the Mississippi, when she joins her near Cairo, IL. But, the Mississippi only offers correspondence from around North America. She listens to her cousins in the global water cycle, the clouds. Clouds and rivers speak similar, but not the same, languages. Sometimes the wind brings tidings from the oceans. But, the wind talks too fast and never stays long. With access to global information at my fingertips, she wanted my help.
Her questions may have been clear all along. Perhaps, my heart prevented me from hearing.
***
The news, of course, is heartbreaking. The 2018 Living Planet Index and Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet Report found that on average the abundance of vertebrate species’ populations monitored across the globe declined by 60% between 1970 and 2014. The study’s authors explained that humans are causing this decline through overexploitation of species, agriculture, and land conversion. This means that, in just 44 years, humans have destroyed more than half the world’s vertebrates. Things are worse for global freshwater species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish which have declined by 83 percent between 1970 and 2014, equivalent to 4% per year since 1970.
This is the arithmetic of atrocity. Every year, due to human destructiveness, the Ohio River’s family grows smaller and smaller.
The 2016 version of the Living Planet Report found that almost half (48 percent) of global river volume had been altered by flow regulation, fragmentation, or both. The authors noted that completion of all dams planned or under construction would mean that natural hydrologic flows would be lost for 93 percent of all river volume.
Most of the Ohio River’s sisters, like she is, are held captive by dams.
Just like the numbers are grim for the animals who live in water, the news is gut-wrenching for the global water cycle. Water is being poisoned on a massive scale. For example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization states that every day 2 million tons of sewage and other effluents drain into the world’s water. Industry discharges an estimated 300-400 megatons of waste into water bodies every year. And, globally, it is likely that over 80% of wastewater is released back into the water cycle without adequate treatment.
The water forming the Ohio River’s body and the bodies of her relatives is being poisoned.
I read these statistics out loud to the Ohio River. I’m not sure how I thought she’d respond. I waited for several days. Nothing came through my dreams. Inspiration was absent. Writing about other aspects of the river failed. For the first time, the Ohio River had nothing to say to me.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem. He is a practicing rights of Nature attorney and a member of DGR.
![[The Ohio River Speaks] Everyday Ecocide and Garden-Variety Genocide](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Everyday-Ecocide-and-Garden-Variety-Genocide.jpg)
by DGR News Service | Jun 25, 2020 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Listening to the Land
In this writing, taken from ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk shares the history and songs of the River. Through documenting the journey with the Ohio River, Will seeks to strengthens others fighting to protect what is left of the natural world. Read the first, second and third part of Will’s journey.
Everyday Ecocide and Garden-Variety Genocide
By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks
Just a few miles from where the Ohio River sang me her song of peace, she showed me war. She did so through a succession of experiences that forced me to confront the pervasive violence that maintains our way of life.
I originally planned to begin my journey with the Ohio River in March. But, I left my parents’ home in Castle Rock, CO just as the first states started issuing shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of COVID-19. To wait out the virus, Melissa Troutman, her parents, and grandparents were gracious enough to let me stay in a little house on their property, not far from Coudersport and near the Ohio River’s headwaters. During this time, I was lucky enough to spend time with Melissa’s 89-year old, Italian-American grandfather who was born and raised in a house built a few yards from the Allegheny River in Coudersport. The family calls him Pop-Pop.
Put your shoes on when it rains.
Pop-Pop was a boy when, in just a few hours spanning July 17-18, 1942, nearly 30 inches of rain fell on Coudersport and the surrounding region. In fact, I found accounts of the “flood of ‘42” reporting that 30.7 inches of rain fell on nearby Smethport, PA in a 4 and a half-hour period.
Pop-Pop described how fast the river rose. He watched from an upstairs window as the neighbors’ chicken coop was torn clean-off its foundations only to collide with his family’s house. The impact shook Pop-Pop’s house “like an earthquake.” The cellar in Pop-Pop’s house had a drain that ran down to the river. After the chicken coop slammed into his house, he heard something in the cellar. He didn’t have time to put on shoes before he ran down to the cellar and found “the whole Allegheny River shooting up through the drain.”
The water was already up to Pop-Pop’s knees. But, he wanted to gather the jars of canned vegetables that were swirling around and crashing into each other. Some of the jars had shattered. And, as Pop-Pop grabbed as many jars as he could, he sliced his foot on underwater glass. Luckily, Pop-Pop’s sister was training as a nurse for deployment during World War II and she was able to stop the bleeding and mend the wound. With classic Italian mischievousness, Pop-Pop asked me what I thought the moral of the story was. When I hesitated, he said, “Don’t walk around in a cellar barefoot in a flood!” When I told him I would try not to, he responded, “Well, when it starts raining really hard, make sure you put your shoes on.”
Trout Splash Lullaby
The flood of ’42 was part of a series of floods in the 1930s and 40s that motivated towns throughout the Ohio River basin to implement so-called “flood control.” After Pop-Pop told me the story about cutting his foot during the flood, I asked him for his favorite memories of the Allegheny River. Pop-pop leaned back in his chair and the humorous light in his eyes was replaced by a wistful one.
Pop-Pop explained that his boyhood bed was placed beneath a window facing the Allegheny River. Not far from this window, hungry trout chased minnows from the river’s depths into rocky shallows. Nearly every night, the feeding trout splashed so loudly they woke him up. He loved to lie awake listening to the splashing trout and, eventually, the sounds put him back to sleep. “Those trout were the best lullaby,” he said.
When Pop-Pop told me the flood story, he looked me directly in the eye. He may have done so to judge the best times to strike with a well-placed joke. But, when he told me the story of the trout splashing outside his window, he did not look at me. He looked beyond me. He looked out the window we sat by to a place I could not see. I got the distinct impression he could still hear those trout splashing. After a few moments, he met my gaze once more and said, “Ever since they put in the flood control, they don’t splash like that anymore.”
A few hours after Pop-Pop shared his memories with me, I sat in my favorite recliner in front of an east-facing window in the little house Melissa’s family let me stay in. A light rain grew heavier. I smiled, put on a pair of thick-soled, rubber boots, and contemplated the other morals of Pop-Pop’s stories.
A Tune of Trucks and Songbirds.
Thirty yards from where I sat, I watched the rain falling on a ridge forming part of the edge of the Ohio River basin. Little rivulets of rainwater flowed towards me. They were just beginning the long journey to nearby Mill Stream, on to the Allegheny, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. Across the road, I studied the hemlocks and a pipeline right-of-way forming the edge of weary woods. A few mature hemlocks sighed with a wind whispering of former glory, of the majestic white pine and hemlock forests that grew here before a post-Civil war logging frenzy left the hills naked and exhausted. A woodpecker disregarded the rain and beat a rhythm while eating from a hollow tree trunk.
The tree’s hollowness reflected mine. I wondered if the scene might have been peaceful if it wasn’t for the sadness Pop-Pop’s story left me with. As that thought formed, four trucks carrying radioactive fracking wastewater to a nearby storage facility banged and clattered by on the gravel road running across the ridge. Diesel engines snarled to pull the toxic loads. My angst infested the sound. For two weeks, the trucks had been running day and night. During the day, songbirds did their best to fill the gaps between trucks, but the little hearts of birds are only so big. Night was worse. With few other sounds to compete with the trucks, they only grew louder. I was grateful for my prescribed sleep medication, but my hosts were not so lucky. Each morning, bags under their eyes were a little puffier, their eyes a little more bloodshot, and lines on their faces were harder-etched.
I tried to think of some way to help. If the truck drivers would have taken some time off, I might have succeeded in ignoring the destruction the trucks represented. Regardless, I heard the violence caused, and enabled by, this culture’s addiction to industrial energy in the sounds of grinding metal and the rapid explosion created by the smashing together of air and diesel in the truck engines. I saw the global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rising with the clouds of truck exhaust. As the heavy loads rumbled by, I felt the land shaking with fear, trembling in her efforts to support all who depend on her despite her worsening condition.
Expressions of Life & Death
I wanted to distract myself from the trucks. My favorite distraction is writing. So, I grabbed my pen and notebook. I opened it up and was greeted with the last line I wrote in my last session: “All natural phenomena are expressions of Life – even ones that cause death. COVID-19 is a natural phenomenon. So, what is Life expressing through the virus?”
I sat with the question, but was afraid to answer it. I was afraid to describe something that has caused so much pain to humans as something positive like a lesson, or a message from the Earth, or even worse, an event necessary to draw human attention to ecological realities. I put my notebook down and sought distraction in my laptop. I ended up at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus map with its confirmed cases and death counters when the screeching brakes of a passing truck taking a curve too fast invaded my awareness.
And, that’s when I realized what Life expresses through COVID-19. Human encroachment into formerly remote and biodiverse lands is a major cause of the spread of pandemic viruses through human populations. Much of this encroachment is caused by humans seeking to exploit so-called “natural resources” like wildlife and land. The fracking trucks, and the industry they are part of, were a textbook example.
COVID-19 is another example. COVID-19 is a message from Life. It says: When humans violate Nature, when humans continuously invade Nature, when, humans wage war on Nature, there will be casualties.
With this in mind, I went looking in Coudersport for the flood control Pop-Pop told me about. As I entered town, a sign announced that I was crossing the “SPC Mike Franklin Memorial” bridge over the Allegheny River. But, when I walked onto the bridge, I did not find a river. I found a concrete tunnel. I found the flood control.
The Silence of Industrial Concrete
Water hurried through the tunnel. It made virtually no sound as it flowed over the barren, flat slabs of industrial concrete. There was no soil or stone for the water to dance over. There were no trees to offer shade for the water to linger under. There were no fallen leaves or branches for the water to twist and twirl with. And, without these, the water could not muster the songs of peace I had heard before. With the beauty of those songs still so fresh in my memory, my ears strained with anticipation and sought the Ohio River’s soothing songs. But, there were no songs. There was only an aggravating silence.
As the silence persisted, images flashed through my mind. I saw government workers scraping away the river bed. I saw them leveling the infinite inconsistencies on the river’s bottom and banks. I saw them pouring concrete slabs in perfectly ugly squares below the window from which Pop-Pop had once listened to the trout splashing as they chased the silver streaks of minnows across multi-colored pebbles lining the shallows. I saw them destroying the physical features that combine with water to create the liquid friction that gives the Ohio River her voice. Then, I saw the most disturbing image: I saw government workers pouring concrete down the Ohio River’s throat.
This hurt, but the Ohio River wasn’t finished with her lesson, yet. I followed the concrete tunnel about a few hundred yards to where Mill Stream converges with the Allegheny River. At this “convergence,” what I truly saw was concrete slabs arranged into two converging tunnels to form a massive letter Y. I stood in the crease of the Y, hoping the lesson would soon be over, when I stumbled over a small concrete marker set in the ground. The marker read: “In Memory of Jim Bushline (1936-1995). Writer, angler, friend. And, the Goodsell Hole. ‘For a century the greatest trout producing pool in Pennsylvania.’” This was a memorial for Jim Bushline. But this was also a memorial for the Goodsell Hole. It was commemorating the death of this natural community.
White Man’s Footsteps
The pain threatened to overwhelm me. Hoping that a direct question might yield a concise answer, I asked the Ohio River what she needed me to learn from these experiences. As I was listening for an answer, Melissa (who was accompanying me to help me learn how to use my new camera) pointed to a patch of what I had ignorantly assumed was weeds and said, “Look at this plantain patch. It’s one of the biggest and most healthy patches I’ve ever seen.” She explained to me that plantain is not a weed. Plantain is a soothing medicine. It has long been used to treat painful skin conditions, chronic digestive issues, and general nervous system ailments. When Melissa held a plantain leaf up to show me the way the leaf’s veins resembled the concrete convergence we stood near, I knew that despite the Ohio River’s voice being stolen by flood control, she still found a way to offer medicine by helping plantain to grow nearby.
As Melissa continued to describe plantain, the Ohio River’s lesson finally became clear. Some Native Americans, according to an herbal website Melissa found, call plantain “white man’s footsteps” because plantain proliferated wherever Europeans settled. I thought of the destruction of the Ohio River that followed the white man’s footsteps through her basin. Plantain is also known as “soldier’s herb” for the way the plant has served as battlefield first aid and infection prevention for centuries.
The Ohio River spoke to me through plantain, a plant that is a common resident of lawns across the United States. It can be found almost anywhere. War, today, can also be found almost anywhere. Plantain is an everyday, garden variety herb. To live today is to witness everyday ecocide and garden-variety genocide. To live today is to live with war.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem . He is a practicing Rights of Nature attorney and a member of DGR. Photos by Melissa Troutman.
![[The Ohio River Speaks] Peace: A Song the Ohio River Sings](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Wills-Ohio-River.jpg)
by DGR News Service | Jun 21, 2020 | Culture of Resistance, Listening to the Land
In this writing, taken from ‘The Ohio River Speaks‘, Will Falk describes the communication, the journey and the relationship shared. Through documenting the journey with the Ohio River Will seeks to strengthens others fighting to protect what is left of the natural world. Read the first and second part of Will’s journey.
Peace: A Song the Ohio River Sings
By Will Falk/The Ohio River Speaks
My physical journey with the Ohio River began where she seeps up through a mat of mud, maple, and bigtooth aspen leaves high in a hollow ringed by round hills in Potter County, Pennsylvania. The brilliant documentary filmmaker, journalist, and Potter County resident, Melissa Troutman and her energetic, thoroughly aquaphilic terrier Runo, took me to find what the maps label as the headwaters of the Allegheny River. If you were presented with a map that displayed only the blue lines of the Ohio River and her tributaries but did not label the tributaries’ names, and you were asked to identify the Ohio’s headwaters, you’d most likely point to the beginning of the Allegheny. In fact, the word “Ohio” is an anglicized version of Ohi:yo’ which is the name given by the Seneca to the whole passage of water beginning in Potter County that runs all the way to the Mississippi.
But, I arrived at another destination, there, too. It was a destination that cannot be driven, hiked, or boated to. It was an internal destination, a place inside of me I needed to reach. As we hiked, I searched for the best place to introduce myself to the river. The Ohio River bubbles up from dozens of springs scattered across the hillsides. She picks her way through tree roots and moss-covered stones before enough of her waters join together to form the first ribbon resembling a stream. Rivers measure time in distance. And, the Ohio River doesn’t wait long – maybe a quarter mile – before she’s three or four feet across. After another quarter mile, she’s ten or twelve feet across and two or three feet deep in places. Rare, small brook trout dart from shadow to shadow in some of the deeper pools and patches of delicious wild leeks crowd together on the muddy banks. We arrived where two ridges crowd together, creating steep inclines on either side of us.
Water noisily pushes out of a spring and over a crop of stones.
The stones must have been arranged by the glaciers who left them there to form a staircase into the secret rooms of the Earth. When the glaciers left, moss moved in to cover the staircase with their rich, green carpets.
This was the place.
I have formulated two basic questions for the Ohio River to guide this journey: Who are you? and, what do you need? When you ask someone these two questions, you should be prepared to answer them yourself. So, standing where spring water joined the young river, I began with who I am. I started with my name and explained that I am a writer and lawyer. I told her about my mother and father, my sister, my extended family, and how much of my family lives downstream from where I stood. I told her that I was hoping to write a book about her.
This was easy enough. But, I dreaded the second question. I dreaded it because of what it meant I’d have to share with the Ohio River. More than anything, I need help with the despair that haunts me. As I stood next to the river, an impulse came to me. In a gesture of raw and spontaneous honesty, I placed my palm in the water and touched the river’s face. While doing this, I opened myself to the memories of my worst struggles with despair. I let the images flow unhindered through my mind.
This is how I told the Ohio River what I need.
I cannot touch my readers. And, even if I could, it is not possible to pour my experiences into you like I poured them into the Ohio River. I will, however, try to distill these experiences into words to describe what depression feels like for me. A major part of me wishes to keep these experiences secret. But, if William Styron is correct, and the prevention of suicide will be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of the pain of depression, then perhaps my experiences will contribute to this growing general awareness.
When the night’s shadows begin climbing through the bedroom window, the distractions have run out, and the last remnants of peace flee, the whispers persisting at the edges of my consciousness grow louder.
The whispers sew dissatisfaction, discomfort, and despair. They gossip about my fears, inadequacies, and insecurities. I try two things at first. I ignore them. Then, I reason with them. Ignoring them works for a while, but they always come back, especially when I am tired or stressed. Stress seems perpetual. Writing publicly and honestly about ecocide is stressful because to do so you must gaze at the problem without looking away. Arundhati Roy was correct when she wrote: “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” Being a lawyer comes with a different set of stresses – the deadlines, the desire to represent my clients to the best of my ability, the undeniable, first-hand experiences of injustice in the so-called “justice” system, the frustration accompanying that sadistic irony…
Reasoning with depression works for as long as I have energy to argue with it. “If writing is so stressful, if being a lawyer is so difficult, why not quit?” the whispers ask. At the first, tiniest sign of doubt, the whispers become bolder, more aggressive. I scramble to fight them off, but I tire. My back spasms. My legs tremble, wobble, and cramp. The acid of anxiety rips through my gut. Finally, I collapse. The whispers seize their opportunity to feed and I sink deeper and deeper with ravenous doubts burrowing into me.
I’m desperate for peace, but I’d settle for the absence of war.
Sleep is a viable tactic, at first. But, when I sleep, I dream. And, depression poisons my dreams. Nightmares hold me in replays of the worst times in my life. Or, they project the worst possible futures. Night terrors force me awake as I spring up in bed screaming and shivering. I try to remember a time when I did not feel like this. Memory’s well opens before me. I know, from experience, the water is cold. Maybe the fear that accompanies my plunge attracts the worst. Or, maybe it’s a harsh rule of consciousness that says you cannot use memory to run from memory. Seeking any memory opens you to all memory.
I am met, first, with the darkest images. I thrash about trying to get away and then, failing that, simply to produce some warmth for myself. My personal history appears to me in those freezing waters like a funnel. I see my life descending, even from birth as if it was predestined, to those chilling moments where I stand in front of the bathroom mirror grinding sleeping pills into a powder with a butter knife. In my countless replays of these memories, I have pressed my consciousness so forcefully over the events that the details are preserved in crystalline clarity. I remember how wrinkly the dress shirt I still wore that evening from my day’s work as a public defender was. I remember the satisfaction I felt upon realizing I’d never have to wear a tie again. I see the wry smile that formed on my lips as I opened my wallet to find one single dollar bill – my bottom dollar. I remember the smell of lacquered wood through the paper as I pressed my nostril to one end of the rolled bill while pushing the other end into the powder. I remember the mild, humorous surprise at the ease at which the actions came to me. Where did I learn to do this? I had never snorted anything before.
After I inhaled the ground pills, I dumped the rest of the bottle into my hand. I remember how one pill stuck in the lines on my palm. I wondered what a palm reader would say about that. I remember the way the pills clacked against my teeth. The scariest detail I remember – the memory that haunts me the most – is the strange sense of calm that washed over me as I put on my pajamas, climbed into bed, pulled the blanket to my chin, and folded my hands on my chest. The pain, I knew, would soon be over. There was ecstasy in that knowledge. I wish I never felt that ecstasy. It can be so seductive sometimes, so welcoming, as it reaches towards me with a warm smile offering what it promises is the ultimate antidote for the pain.
I flee the memory and swim as hard as I can for the surface, but shades of guilt catch me on the way up. There’s the residue of guilt that surrounds my memories of attempting suicide. There’s the guilt that attaches to my inability to stamp the memory of that poisonous ecstasy out. There is also the guilt that accompanies my realization that I am cycling again, that I have forgotten all that I have learned, all that I have promised myself about revisiting the past.
I wonder if I am an addict – addicted to despair, addicted to guilt. I remember that the word “addict” comes from the Latin addicere. The definition of addicere includes “to be bound to” or “to enslave.” I definitely feel enslaved, bound against my will, to depression.
At times, these memories cause me to want to fall to the ground, punching and kicking like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I am angry, but more than anything I want to convert the emotional pain into a physical pain. Physical pain, at least, has an identifiable source. The pain of depression is rooted nowhere, but hurts everywhere.
I do not punch and kick the ground. Instead, I weep. Eventually, I exhaust myself. I sit wet from sweat and tears. My mind settles down, but an empty, hungover feeling takes hold. It’s happened again like so many times before. I am scared it will never not happen again. The void remains.
Sharing is dangerous. Writing these experiences on a page gives them a physical reality.
Speaking them out loud – even softly, just above the sounds of flowing water – gives them a life they did not have before. And, what is shared, cannot be unshared. Though I was exhausted, I was reluctant to pull my hand from the water and the Ohio River’s face. I was reluctant to break this connection with the her. When at last I did, I found a stone to sit on, and sighed. I gathered myself and finally asked the Ohio River who she is and what she needs. At first, all I heard was my own anxiety. Is that how you introduce yourself to a river? Will the Ohio River think I’m just feeling sorry for myself? Am I just feeling sorry for myself? As these thoughts bounced around my skull, the breeze blew some lingering rain from the aspen branches above me.
The drops fell into a nearby pool with the small sounds of distant chimes. And, the song began.
I focused on the rain water dropping into the pool for a few moments. Then, a few feet away, my ears located the liquid murmurs of water brushing a submerged stone’s face. After a few seconds, my hearing drifted to a melodic trickle deftly running over a bed of gravel. Each instance of moving water colliding with a pebble created a new and unique note. Each of these notes formed a tune more complex and soothing than any human has ever played. I don’t know how long I sat there. My consciousness spilled across the landscape, gently beckoned by a diversity of sensory details. My awareness flowed over each inch of water I could see. Inch by inch, I experienced new delights and fascinations.
Finally, I slipped back into myself. As I returned, I realized my mind was empty of anxiety.
The river pulled me from the war in my head and embraced me with her calming voice. She approached me sensually, intimately. She showed me her softest parts, those fragile motions of water that form her body. When I asked the Ohio River what she needs, she answered with what I need. Peace.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem. He is a practicing rights of Nature attorney and a member of DGR.
![[The Ohio River Speaks] Can a River Save Your Life?](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Can-A-River-Save-Your-Life.jpg)
by DGR News Service | Jun 13, 2020 | Listening to the Land
In this writing, taken from ‘The Ohio River Speaks‘, Will Falk describes the urgency in which he seeks to protect the natural world. Through documenting the journey with the Ohio River he strengthens others fighting to protect what is left of the natural world. Read the first part of the journey here.
By Will Falk/The Ohio River Speaks
Can a River Save Your Life?
The first headwaters of my journey with the Ohio River are located in despair. Despair and I have a long-term, intimate relationship.
Seven years ago, I tried to kill myself. Twice.
Suicidal despair is a failure to envision a livable future. The future never comes, so the future is built with the only materials at hand – experience. At times, my experience is so painful, and the pain lasts so long that, when I peer into the future, I only see more pain. When this happens, I sometimes ask: If life is so painful, if life will only remain so painful, why go on living?
I cling to my reason. I live for my family. I have seen the pain my two suicide attempts have caused my mother, father, and sister. My family also includes the natural world. I have been enchanted by the stories the Colorado River tells. I have watched the stars next to ahinahina (silverswords) on the slopes of Mauna Kea. I have seen a great horned owl dance on setting sunlight filtered through pinyon-pine needles.
This doesn’t mean, however, that I do not experience despair anymore.
Sometime last year, a spark flew from our shared global experience to fall into a tinderbox of my recent personal experiences and ignited the strongest inferno of despair I’ve felt in a long time.
I ended a long-term romantic partnership with a woman who, at one time, I thought was the love of my life. I moved in to my parents’ basement in Castle Rock, CO. And, an environmental organization I love working for almost internally combusted.
These realities are personally painful. But, they’re not unique. It is a global reality – the intensifying destruction of the natural world – that is the deepest source of my despair.
The love I feel for my mother and father, for my sister, for rivers, mountains, and forests, for ahinahina, great-horned owls, and pinyon-pines makes me deeply vulnerable. It wasn’t until I noticed the way people have been obsessively tracking confirmed cases of COVID-19 that I realized most people do not pore over studies about rates of ecological collapse like I do.
While COVID-19 is very scary, I find reports like the one from Living Planet Index and the Zoological Society of London in 2018 documenting a gut-wrenching 60% decline in the size of mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations in just over 40 years to be even scarier.
I am cursed with a profound sense of urgency to stop the destruction of the planet.
If millions of people are killed every year by air pollution, then each passing year is, to me, a heinous disaster. If dozens of species are driven to extinction every day, then each passing day is an unspeakable tragedy. If thousands of acres of forest are cleared every hour, then each passing hour is a horrific loss.
If all these things are true, then each passing moment screams more loudly than the last for the destruction to stop. I haven’t found many others who possess a similar sense of urgency. I haven’t even found many others who possess this sense of urgency among fellow environmentalists. The lack of urgency displayed by environmentalists is especially frustrating because environmentalists are aware of the problems we face. Despite this awareness, most environmentalists are still drinking a stale Kool-Aid brewed with the substanceless sugar of ineffective tactics.
For example, I am a practicing rights of nature attorney. In 2017, I helped to file a first-ever federal lawsuit seeking rights for a major ecosystem, the Colorado River. For the past few years, I’ve worked for a nonprofit law firm, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), that has developed a strategy for enshrining rights of Nature in American law.
American law defines Nature merely as property. Property is an object that can be consumed and destroyed. CELDF’s strategy, specifically, and rights of Nature, generally, seek to transform the status of Nature from that of property to that of a rights-bearing entity. This is similar to how ending American slavery required transforming the legal definition of African Americans as property into African Americans as rights-bearing citizens. Those with rights have power over those without rights.
And, in a culture based on competition, those with rights oppress those without rights.
A key component of CELDF’s strategy involves helping communities affected by environmental destruction to use their local lawmaking functions to enact laws granting Nature the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve. These laws also give Nature legal “personhood” which empowers community members to bring lawsuits to enforce Nature’s rights. Currently, under American law, if community members want to sue to stop environmental destruction, they must frame the problem as violating their rights as citizens. It is often more difficult to prove that environmental destruction directly harms humans than it is to prove that an activity harms an ecosystem.
If Nature was recognized as a legal person and communities simply had to prove that an activity violated the rights of Nature, then many destructive activities would become illegal. On the surface this may seem like a great strategy. However, this strategy depends on convincing too many people in power, who directly benefit from the status quo, to embrace and enforce rights of Nature. The powerful derive their power by exploiting Nature. Enforcing Nature’s rights would undermine their power. This is why they react so violently whenever their power is truly threatened. Even if convincing all these people to give up their power is possible, it will likely take decades to change the legal system into one that respects rights of Nature.
In CELDF, we are working hard to reinvent our strategy to reflect the recognition that legal change, by itself, is taking far too long.
Nevertheless, most tactics employed by environmentalists are based on achieving a voluntary transition to a sane and Earth-based culture. But, do we really think this voluntary transition is possible? And, even if we do, don’t we have to admit that this voluntary transition is taking a long time? As time slips away – and so much is destroyed and so many are murdered – shouldn’t we be most concerned with stopping the dominant culture as quickly as possible? When I suggest that we have an open and frank conversation about what it will take to truly stop the destruction, I am often dismissed as being unrealistic and too extreme.
This causes me to despair. When I despair for too long I become depressed and anxious. When I am depressed and anxious I shake, tremble, fidget, and pace. Over the years, I’ve learned that when this happens, my body is telling me to move. Unsurprisingly, one of the best medicines I’ve found for mental illness is exercise. Lately, though, my typical regimen for managing despair hasn’t been working. No matter how much I exercise, no matter how much stress I shed from my day, no matter who I spend time with, the flames of despair keep on licking the edges of my consciousness. The lack of urgency I find reflected around me also causes me to question my perception of reality.
Are things really as bad as I think they are?
It is natural to seek validation from other humans. But, most humans I know would rather not join me in my despair. Psychologist R.D. Laing in The Politics of Experience was correct when he wrote:
“If Jack succeeds in forgetting something, this is of little use if Jill continues to remind him of it. He must induce her not to do so. The safest way would be not just to make her keep quiet about it, but to induce her to forget it also.
Jack may act upon Jill in many ways. He may make her feel guilty for keeping on ‘bringing it up.’ He may invalidate her experience. This can be done more or less radically. He can indicate merely that it is unimportant or trivial, whereas it is important and significant to her. Going further, he can shift the modality of her experience from memory to imagination: ‘It’s all in your imagination.’ Further still, he can invalidate the content: ‘It never happened that way.’ Finally, he can invalidate not only the significance, modality, and content, but her very capacity to remember at all, and make her feel guilty for doing so into the bargain.
This is not unusual. People are doing such things to each other all the time. In order for such transpersonal invalidation to work, however, it is advisable to overlay it with a thick patina of mystification. For instance, by denying that this is what one is doing, and further invalidating any perception that it is being done by ascriptions such as ‘How can you think such a thing?’ ‘You must be paranoid.’ And so on…”
Similarly, it is easy to seek answers from television and computer screens. The internet provides more access to certain forms of information – like graphs, statistics, and written reports – than ever before. However, answers provided by graphs, statistics, and written reports will always be secondhand. I do not want to risk the invalidation of the experience of others that many humans are so adept at. Neither do I want to settle for secondhand answers.
I want to see for myself.
Earth is vast. Ecocide is extensive. I have neither the time nor the resources to rely solely on firsthand knowledge. Fortunately, the Ohio River is vast enough to implicate global reality while remaining small enough for me to witness with my limited budget and finite time. Meanwhile, my body urges me to move. So, why not put that movement to good use? Instead of killing birds, I’ll kill two drones with one stone, by embarking on a journey with the Ohio River. I can write, with eyewitness testimony, about how bad ecocide has become in the Ohio River basin. At the same time, I can ask the Ohio River if her waters can quell this despair burning within me.
I know I am not alone in my despair.
William Styron wrote in his poignant exploration of despair, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness: “The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many in stances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is general awareness of the nature of this pain.”
As I travel with the Ohio River, witnessing her many wounds, I will describe my pain. If she will help me bear that pain, I hope my story will show how a river can save your life.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem. He is a practicing rights of Nature attorney and a member of DGR.
Photo by Melissa Troutman.
![[The Ohio River Speaks] Headwaters: The Journey Begins](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Headwaters-The-Journey-Begins.jpg)
by DGR News Service | Jun 10, 2020 | Listening to the Land
Originally named Ohi:yo’—“beautiful river”—by the Seneca, the Ohio River is now the United States’ most polluted river. The dominant culture teaches us to view natural beings like the Ohio River as objects to be used, consumed, and destroyed for human benefit.
This is a primary reason the destruction of the natural world is intensifying. How would our relationship to the natural world change if, instead of viewing nonhumans as objects, we viewed them as living beings capable of speaking to us? As allies who desire to communicate valuable lessons to us?
Where Does a River Begin?
By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks
This journey – like the Ohio River – has many beginnings. A river’s physical beginnings are often called headwaters. Water wells up from the ground or falls from the sky. Then, aided by gravity, water navigates the specific peculiarities of the land to collect and form the first wet trails distinct enough to earn names such as creek, brook, or stream. These creeks, brooks, and streams tirelessly search for each other, perpetually seek communion with their kin. And, when enough of them join together, they become rivers.
Where should we say a river begins? Which of those first passages of water in the round Pennsylvania hills or the thickly-wooded West Virginia mountains, which of those first liquid motions over white Indiana limestone or black Kentucky coal can we name as the beginning of the Ohio River?
Many mapmakers seem determined to pinpoint precise headwaters for the world’s rivers. This is strange because the idea that a river has only one starting point is belied by the very maps declaring this to be true. Google Maps has grown to be one of the most widely used maps in the world today. When I look at Google’s map of the Ohio River basin, I am told that the Ohio River begins at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburgh, PA.
Tracing the River’s Veins
But, if I follow the thin ribbons of blue twisting and curling across the map to their disappearance on the page, I am taken to dozens of different places. I trace the thin blue line representing the Allegheny River to the hills of Potter County in northern Pennsylvania. I trace the line representing the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh and the line quickly splits in two. The map continues to label the western line “Monongahela,” but the eastern line is labeled “Youghiogheny River.”
I follow the eastern line up into the mountains near Aurora, West Virginia where it disappears. I go back to the line representing the Monongahela but it splits in two once more at Point Marion, Pennsylvania. The western line once again remains “Monongahela” and the eastern line reads “Cheat River.” Following the eastern line south, the Cheat River splits in two, one “Shavers Fork” and another “Black Fork.” The “Black Fork” line is joined by a line labeled “Blackwater River” which then splits into three lines named the “Dry,” “Glady,” and “Laurel” forks. These three lines then disappear in the hills of West Virginia near the Virginia state line.
Tracing each of the Ohio’s tributaries’ tributaries’ tributaries would take a long time. At the very least, we should understand that arbitrarily locating the headwaters of the Ohio River at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburgh is inaccurate, at best, and downright dishonest, at worst. So, why are geographers, topographers, and cartographers so determined to name a river’s headwaters? Is this a peculiar side effect accompanying the choice to don the suffix “-ographer.” Or, more likely, is it a symptom of the colonial impulse to control, to define, to destroy ambiguity, to produce one true answer as there is one true ideology, one true religion, one true God.
Stories Are Rivers and Rivers, Stories.
The Ohio River is not so much concerned with either accuracy or honesty as she is concerned with creativity –the land she shapes, the communities she forms, the songs she sings, and the lives she makes possible. Metaphor is a creative channel. It is a way of knowing far older than science or philosophy. I suspect that metaphor is a way of knowing far older even than logic. The Ohio River beckons me to swim in the channels of metaphor.
Stories, of course, are rivers and rivers, stories. The story of my journey with the Ohio River has many headwaters. These headwaters will flow into streams of written consciousness, lyrical vignettes, and fluid reflections. Like water, they will seek their kin who share thematic similarities and topical currents. The strongest writing, achieving a certain depth, will collect in pools as essays and chapters. One day, I hope, these stories may join together to form a book worthy of the Ohio River.
As I begin this journey, I feel the headwaters of many stories gathering within me. They well up from my lifelong love affair with oceans, lakes, rivers, and marshes; with fish, turtles, toads, and tortoises; with ripples, tides, waves, and the way crescent moons are best seen from a still pond face; with the infinite voices water sings with; with all water creates and all the lives water facilitates.
Blood and Water
My experiences as a practicing rights of Nature attorney and my work to stir bravery in the souls of those who love Nature begin gathering as another headwaters. I feel the waters in my body boiling for the respect they deserve. My heartbeat pounds, insisting on the sacredness of the water in the blood my heart works so consistently to move. My organs agitate against the poisons they must filter out of my daily drinking water.
I find the trickle of yet more stories in my family history. I recall how, in Evansville, IN on the banks of the Ohio River, my grandmother was prevented from being a Poor Clare nun. And how, if this didn’t happen, I would never have been born some 30-odd years later in Evansville not far from the Poor Clare convent. I hear the metaphors growing in clarity. The other sisters feared my granny was too talkative to take a vow of silence. Fortunately, my granny’s signature chattiness, her need to gossip and share stories, are properly understood as a beginning of my life’s story.
Current events are natural springs of stories. As much as I wish I could bury some of those springs, plug the wells, I can’t. I can’t ignore the images of black people being murdered in the streets for having the simple audacity to walk those streets. I can’t deny the scenes of indigenous people being teargassed on their own land for having the simple audacity to protect water. I can’t forget the reality that the natural world is being polluted, clear cut, dammed, consumed, and driven to extinction for having the simple audacity to exist. Thunder clouds and lightning appear on my inner horizon. These are the dark stories. The stories of mental illness, psychiatric hospitals, and court-ordered involuntary commitments. I need the rain, but I fear the acid that may fall with the guilt and shame. I fear the floods. I fear where those floods may carry me.
Rivers and Stories: More than One Beginning
Just like the Ohio River, it would take far too long to trace these stories’ tributaries’ tributaries’ tributaries. It is enough to say this:
No river has only one beginning. No story has only one beginning, either. But, writing is linear and sooner or later, but before the story is heard by a listener or read by a reader, the story teller must locate all of the story’s headwaters and direct her audience’s attention to one beginning. I will need some time to decide where that will be.
Give me a few days, and I’ll be back with my decision.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem and a practicing rights of Nature attorney. Rights of Nature advocates work to transform the legal system so that it recognizes the “personhood” of natural beings. For the rest of 2020, Falk will travel through the Ohio River Basin asking the Ohio River the two questions he asks any client who steps into his office: “Who are you?” And, “What do you need?”
Featured image: Not far from the Ohio River’s true headwaters in Potter County, PA. Photo by Melissa Troutman.
