Look at the shapes water freezes in when it freezes over pebbles.

The pebbles create an image of themselves on the underside of the ice…

which melting follows, and air, which re-freezes in gaseous shapes.

Gas is not uniform however. When it blows as wind and breaks the weak ice up, it slides it against itself in wind sheers. Water freezes to hold these shapes as well. Water is very accommodating.

These are solidified forms of what it does with light and wind, instead of cold and wind.

Still, of course, beautiful, which is the word we use in my language to indicate a physically-apprehended balance that is right for life.

It’s no surprise that life freezes in those watery patterns as well, or that it gives them back to water.

It’s that kind of place.

Water takes on the shape given it.

It would be wrong to say it has no shape. It even has negative shape, that space where it is not. It is very accommodating. That is the nature of flow. That is a power in itself.

This taking on of a shape, that is water. The substance water is made of was not water until it did. Before that, it was the stuff of old stars.

Really.

Really.

There was never a Big Bang. There was an opening of potential into itself.

There is its folding back at its boundary, into its depths.

Okanagan Lake Shore, Vernon

Our ancestors had words for this, which means so did we. We should talk. Here’s what they knew.

Look at it closely. You know it too.

The hard part is to forget what we don’t know, but we can do that together.

So, what have your ancestors taught you about water? Hmmmm?