(* Video *)

River Beings

May 2, 2013, Middle River, Swoope, Virginia.

The Middle River runs through this cattle farm.  We are about twelve water miles downstream of the highest gathers, a series of springs on a farm at the hamlet of McKinley,  and the trickles and tributaries give the flow a thirty-foot channel through Wheatlands, as this farm has been called since 1813. Downstream, the River merges with the North and that combined flow takes on the South at Port Republic to laze and loop northward under the name of South Fork, Shenandoah River, merging with the North Fork at Front Royal to make the main stem of the Shenandoah for its 65-mile run to the grand conjoining with the Potomac at Harpers Ferry.  Much of the nation’s history, tranquil or tragic, is written in that storied drainage washing the feet of official Washington.  Here in the high headwaters, too, we see our share of the sinister.  

What began this morning as a hike to greet the River’s spring arrivals -- a Solitary Sandpiper, a Spotted Sandpiper skimming the flow on stiff wings, a Great Egret, two Black-crowned Night-Herons – took a cloak-and-dagger turn.  A muskrat crossed the river to vanish under the bank at my feet, peculiarly close to an obvious intruder it seemed.  Then came strange scuffling sounds and a red streak shot away across the river, the early sun a neon pulse in its fur.  It humped up the bank and the bushes shook with squalls of protest.  A desperate contest thrashed the grasses until a muskrat tumbled down the river’s bank and swam upstream, dragging (or driven by?) a snaking tail. A noisy melee continued in the brush for some seconds. Then quiet resumed, leaving only a string of unanswered questions, like a Congress adjourned.  Did the escaping muskrat fight off the mink? Or did it leave behind a sacrificed family member? What happened in the hole in the bank under my feet? And are minks really foxy red or was that just a tricky light?  The river beings guard silence.