Down Along the Arkansas River

I voted about three weeks early. I snapped a photo of myself with my "I voted" sticker and posted it on Xitter with the statement, "I just voted for the first woman president of the United States."

Within minutes, someone responded with a photo from 2016. In that photo, I was also sporting my "I voted" sticker alongside the statement "I just voted for the first woman president of the United States."

The person who responded typed: "How'd that work out for you?"

I woke post-election on Wednesday bleary-eyed and empty, hungover as if I'd been on a week-long bender. But I hadn't consumed anything. Not for days. The night had been brutal, checking my phone for vote counts and electoral college totals every thirty minutes or so.

The world I entered that morning was new. But it wasn't fresh. It wasn't beautiful and bright. It was what it was, a sinister dank. Outside the sky drizzled and the streets were empty.

Flabbergasted. Mystified. Bewildered. I was all of those. But I wasn't angry, a marked difference from 2016 when I raged around the house until my wife kicked me out with the admonishment, "You need to get your shit together. Don't come back until you do."

I made the bed, dressed, brushed my teeth, and stepped into the drizzle just as it turned to a feathery snow. I can't account for the tranquility I felt stepping into the world that morning. I knew that in the days ahead I would be filled with sorrow and anger, blame and more bewilderment.

Outside the coffee shop a woman approached. "The leaves," she said. "They haven't dropped yet."

"It's almost a month behind schedule," I told her. "A lot of the leaves haven't even changed color."

She nodded. "I'm afraid for the trees. If this snow keeps up, it'll gather on all the leaves and weigh down the trees and break the branches."

I looked up through the leaves and into the falling snow, little crystals dotting my glasses.

"Nothing is normal anymore," she said.

"We don't live in the world we grow up in," I said and passed inside to buy a cup of strong, black coffee.

Down along the Arkansas River, a man wrapped in a blanket sat under an elm. Snow gathered on top of him, and I considered striking up a conversation. But I couldn't. If I began to speak, I might cry.

Nothing would ever be the same again. But hadn't we already arrived in that place where nothing will ever be the same again? Hadn't we already started down that road?

I closed my eyes and stood in the middle of the trail, breathing, sensing the slight sting of the snowflakes on my cheeks, on my hands. I stood there that way for a long time, my feet rooted into the soil. Then, I walked up the trail to where the cottonwoods grew thick and rich.

I cut off trail and down into the bosque. Snowflakes tumbling onto leaves that shouldn't still hold them whispered a music akin to cloistered chimes. Ahead, trailing prints in the gathering snow, a fox crossed, assessed this meager human, and sauntered into the brush. At the river, an osprey rushed from the bank and on great feathers of brown, black, and white...slid across the chilled rolling waters and up the river.

---

JIM O'DONNELL is the author of Fountain Creek: Big Lessons from a Little River, and other books. He lives in Taos, New Mexico.

GIVE TODAY