A Message From The Beautiful River

A photo-essay by Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence’s September 25th World Rivers Day Actions.

For #WorldRiversDay, I went to the Beautiful River. It is called the St. John on maps, but its name is Wolastoq (Beautiful or Shining River) and the people (Wolastoqiyik) who gave it this name still live just miles from where I'm standing, as well as up and down this long river. The water marks the international border between the United States and Canada. From where I stand in Maine, there are no visible boundaries, just a quiet flowing current and teeming wildlife that acknowledges no distinction between nations.

I wanted to listen for a message from the river. I'm worried about it. Ten miles northwest is a paper mill that spans the international border with Canada. It has been caught releasing dioxins and other toxins over the years, but no formal, consistent or independent studies have ever been done.

As I sit on the banks of this calm, idyllic river, a muskrat hurdles from the shore to plop into the water. I will never swim in this river. Unlike muskrat, I have suspicions about what lurks beneath the mirror-like surface. I have no language with which to warn this furry creature who has been cracking crayfish and mussel shells along the rocks. Nor can I communicate with the pair of great blue herons swooping on heavy wings to stalking spots in the shallows.

I survived cancer at 37. No doctor will say what caused it. It boils my blood that there are too many potential causes to pinpoint it. I was a vegan, a dancer, healthy in most regards. I want to scream at the paper mill, or the PFAs spewing factory I worked near in college, or the superfund site I toured as a young artist, or the radiation still setting off detectors where I protested nuclear weapons. I may never know what exactly caused my cancer. But we should know - there shouldn't be tens of thousands of potentially cancer-causing substances in our lives. 

The Beautiful River flows silently here. Just at the horizon, a short fall of rocks invokes the song of water over stone. I'm listening through human ears, hoping to hear the river echo my fury at my fellow humans' behavior. But a river is not a human being. The scope of its lifespan carves through rocks and reshapes geology. It is the child of ice ages and glaciers. It recalls centuries like passing thoughts. 

When the river speaks to me, it is with the voice of a stirring epoch, a giant and unfathomable being. "You poison a river at your own peril," the river warns. "I will go on. Rivers endure. It is our nature. But the creatures that live alongside and within me ... that is what is endangered. Moose. Beaver. Black bear. Otter. Eagle. Trout. Crayfish. Frog. . . Human."

The river is right. We humans dump our toxins into rivers, skies, land at our own risk. And it is killing us, make no mistake. I am living testimony to those dangers. I came to the river to listen through my human ears ... but the river spoke through its voice. It looks upon our entire ecosystem's existence as just one of the many it has birthed. The muskrat and great blue heron are my evolutionary brother and sister. The mussel is our cousin, the crayfish a distant uncle. We are bound by the ties of evolution and ecology. When we hurt each other, we all suffer. That is what the Beautiful River told me.

It took time to sit and listen, to hear the river instead of myself. A human scoffs and scorns and grandstands as a savior or destroyer. A river remembers the scale of time and the scope of continents. It does not need saving. We do.

This photo essay is part of Campaign Nonviolence Action Days - Sept 25th World Rivers Day. This writing was read by hundreds of people and shared widely. Rivera Sun also recorded a message of solidarity with Backbone Campaign’s 11-13 actions happening along the Snake River in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to #BreachTheDams, protect salmon, and the orca that depend on the salmon population. Watch the message here>>