Let’s say you are a nascent dew drop, a dispersion of humidity, a few molecules of moisture suspended in the night air
that wakes up early one spring morning balanced on a rocky ridge, half of you on one side, half on the other, teetering
on the brink. And then imagine the ridge runs north and south along the Continental Divide and that
this stone age blade is too dull to cut you in two and you have to make up your mind to slide down
one side or the other, running off towards the parched and storied West or the staid and tired East, forced
to choose a watershed: the Colorado with its exuberant rapids, maybe the Columbia, all its salmon gone, or
that old standby, the listless Mississippi. Seems easy until you add in drought or floods, desert floors or seas of grain.
So, flow west young drop or trickle down the morning side of the mountain? Or stay put
hoping evaporation will lift the decision off the curve of your shoulders. You cannot ask your ancestors
who took their secrets with them to the ocean. Their choice was simpler, the country hadn’t yet discovered
it was divided and water just followed gravity and incline, knowing that wherever it found thirst, it found its future.