Posted on January 14, 2019
The following text is excerpted from River of Redemption: Almanac of Life on the Anacostia, published in November 2018 by Texas A&M University Press.
At icy dawn, the city remains gentled in night’s deepest repose. Walking past slumbering bungalows and a shuttered gas station, through deserted streets, across empty railroad tracks and along the edge of a sleepy forest– I traverse a dark, noiseless mile to the frosted footbridge at Bladensburg Waterfront Park.
Upriver, near the confluence of the Anacostia’s northwest and northeast branches, hundreds of Canada geese huddle together, raising a dark feathered shield against winter’s white knife and its unusually sharp edge this January morning. Last night an angry north wind descended on the watershed, driving temperatures to a low of minus 11 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 20 degrees below normal.
Today’s river landscape testifies to the hard hand of that north wind. At low tide a rigid silt sandbar covers the west side of the riverbed, and a half-inch of ice caps most of the remaining water surface. Downstream, the river departs to the southwest through a luminous white forest, gleaming toward the heart of Washington D.C.
I stand at river’s edge in Bladensburg, Maryland, once one of the busiest shipping ports in North America, a nucleus for trans-Atlantic trade in tobacco cultivated by the hands of enslaved Africans. This soul-weighty cargo succored a fledgling British colony and fueled an American revolution, all while sending a webwork of moral and ecological fissures spidering through the foundation of a young nation.
The thought sends a tremulous chill through my bones, though the Bladensburg waterfront before me bears little witness to this tortuous historical fault line. A few memorials to the War of 1812 are all that’s left as direct physical reference to what happened here, and day-to-day this humble space exists as a much-loved nexus for people and the Anacostia River. But in the silted shallow riverbed and bare-turf landscape, the river remembers.
On a slow stroll along the park’s riverside walk, I step out onto a floating pier, where I encounter a single Canada goose asleep on the cold wooden platform. I stop, wondering why he is separated from the larger flock and surprised that he has not been roused by my presence. Inching a few feet closer I observe that the morning frost, which has settled on the river landscape, its trees, riverbank, and pier, has also laid a glittering glaze over the goose himself, whose head is locked tightly in the thick down of his back. When I approach within a few feet of the bird, he still does not stir. I reach out, tentatively, and lightly touch a tail feather, preparing myself mentally to be scared witless when the goose awakens.
The feather crunches beneath my finger–the goose remains utterly still. Here is a sleep my winged friend will not be waking from.
Leaving the bird to his eternal rest, I make my way to the bank on the opposite side of the river. Ring-billed gulls have gathered on the western shore, tapping their beaks softly against the thin crust of ice covering the mud flats, searching for soft-bodied creatures in the warmer earth below. Gulls are argumentative, pushy birds by nature, but today they are solemn and respectful of each other, and barely bother to look up when I approach. In this deep cold, there exists a momentary truce. We are all too busy surviving the deficit of light and warmth to meddle in each other’s affairs. There is too much to lose in January.
We all, each Anacostia and Earth resident in our own way, have strategies for surviving the deprivation moon. And in this month of scarcity and dark vulnerability, we each harden our creaturely resolve and lean, as ever, toward a universal prime directive– what Aldo Leopold called, “freedom from want and fear.” It is a desire never attained in life, not really, but ever sought-after for all who move about on this planet, whether they are rooted to the earth and reaching toward the sun, or walking, flying, or swimming in search of life’s next pressing need. This elusive prize fuels our action and existence, from humble subsistence to greedy conquest. How a creature or community pursues this fundamental freedom, will ultimately define it.
Leopold’s anxious ambassador for this universal endeavor was a meadow mouse, gleefully building his snow tunnels and food storage rooms, gathering his brittle brown grasses, all in the safe obscurity of winter’s white cloak on the Sand County land.
“The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build subways from stack to stack,” Leopold wrote.
For mouse, unlike goose and gull, a long harsh winter offers rest, a relative reprieve from the ever-keen eyes of winged predators. It is here, under the deprivation moon, he has a frosty window on a world free from fear and want. For this clever mouse, snow is a building material and shroud for protected transportation pathways out of the eyesight of raptors, and for storage rooms to house a larder of grass for a well-fed winter mouse. The hawk, whose great advantage of speed and vision is stymied by the snow, will hold on over hungry months, awaiting a warm spell or the spring thaw, when mouse pathways are generously revealed, and another winter has passed into spring–a season of increasing freedom from fear and want.
Gull flying over the Anacostia River in winter.
My Anacostia gulls, if they live through this trying winter, will surely experience a similar spring euphoria, and will undoubtedly squawk and caw about their spring fortune loudly and often. I anticipate shaking my head and rolling my eyes at their brash boasterisms sometime in a near warmer future, but in truth, they will then have earned bragging rights. Though they themselves are not modest, gull, like hawk and mouse, seek a modest fortune, nothing more than freedom from hunger, and a sheltering space insulated from the icy grasp of death. They harbor no desires for superfluous luxury, their pursuit is simple–they want only a chance at life in all its luminous elemental dimensions.
Today, that pursuit demands determination, discomfort, and an efficient stillness. Gulls keep their wings tucked tight, voices quiet, and heads down.
I do the same, substituting arms for wings, and leave them to their winter misery.
On normal days, even in winter, attempting to walk out onto the silted shallows of the Anacostia would be treacherous. Many have died in the urban sludge that has accumulated on the Anacostia bottom over the past four centuries of America’s pursuit of freedom from fear and want. Our proclivity to hound every manner of superfluity led to the felling of ancient forests, silting of the river and elevation of the historic riverbed some 40 feet–bringing an end to the bustling port of Bladensburg. It is now almost beyond imagining that ocean-going ships once docked at this spot on the river.
I test the earth of river bottom and find it icy-firm, a rare opportunity to experience a moment within the arterial wall of the Anacostia. We are all, always, within the body of a river. Every upland and lowland inch of the watershed plays a part in the river system, from my own backyard, to the headwaters at Sandy Spring in Olney, Maryland, to the smallest trickling capillary entering into the Watts Branch. But here, upon this artery at river-heart is where it all comes together.
On any given day the Anacostia, like all rivers, is ever new. It is the same water course, but eternally changing and ever changed, reinvented by moods of wind and weather, the magnetic pull of the moon on its waters, the restless angle of sun’s illumination, and the wingbeats, splashes, and songs of its wild inhabitants.
I stand in the middle of a unique moment flowing together with an infinity of distinct river moments–there is a timeless surge of power here that jolts the senses and urges me forward.
Cautiously I test each step before I take it, and when the river begins to give beneath my weight, I go no further. By this point I am nearly standing in the middle of the Anacostia and can view the sculpted work that winter wind and restless tides have made of the river. The deep freeze that came in the night during a higher tide capped the river in thick ice, but when the tide began to go out and the air began to warm, rigid sheets of Anacostia began to buckle and break apart, like a river-puzzle–each piece now set aglow at the edges by the subdued light of a far-distant sun.
The fractured ice gives new voice to the Anacostia, a grumbling, groaning river-resentment as tide and current jostle the river’s assemblage of broken ice sheets. But the real river drama must have happened sometime in the dark early morning hours, when shifting tide and climbing temperatures pried the largest pieces apart. This thunderous cracking, for a massive volume of water must have be something to hear–a soundtrack echoing the epic ecological dynamism that over so many eons of fire, ice, water, and wind–of continents colliding and seas ever-rising, ever-falling–created and continues to recreate this river watershed.
Somewhere in the earth beneath my feet there lies a record of the grand incomprehensible ages of river life. Somewhere, running deep beneath the riverbed, back through time beyond reckoning, it leads down to a primal era where river life radiates in its purest form, from some ancient infernal source, through a billion years of rock, clay, sand, and silt. Down 50 feet, 100, 500, 1000–there lie the hallowed earthen halls of river memory.
***
You can buy a copy of River of Redemption: Almanac of Life on the Anacostia at your local bookstore, online booksellers like Amazon, and you can get a signed copy in my online bookstore.
Posted on April 3, 2018
Over the past four centuries the Anacostia River has been given many names: the Eastern Branch of the Potomac, the other national river, the dirtiest river in the nation, the forgotten river. But for millennia uncounted prior to European arrival, for every creature that lived within the watershed, this river was simply everything.
This question is one of many addressed in River of Resilience, a nine-chapter web story structured as a journey from the headwaters of the Anacostia in Sandy Spring, Maryland, to the confluence of the river with the Potomac in Washington DC. River of Resilience is a story of time and place, a visually-rich geographic narrative of a wounded but irrepressible watershed, a story of those who are working to heal this river community, and an entreaty to join them.
The project features the writing and photography of Krista Schlyer, a senior fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers, and author of the forthcoming book River of Redemption: Almanac of Life on the Anacostia, due out fall 2018 from Texas A&M University Press.
The River of Resilience web story was created in partnership with Esri, creator of ArcGIS, using their story map platform Cascade, and data-driven maps created by the Esri story maps team. The project was funded by the District Department of Energy and Environment in collaboration with the Anacostia Waterfront Trust.
Category: Anacostia, Featured, Uncategorized Tagged: Anacostia, clean water act, doee, ecosystem, environment, esri, history, ilcp, krista schlyer, maryland, pollution, restoration, river, river of resilience, story, urban, washington dc, wildlife
Posted on January 16, 2018
There are some places in this world where life and beauty effervesce from the ground itself, places we simply can not lose. There are landscapes where lines must be drawn in the proverbial sand and we must say, no, you will not take this from the world. Not on our watch. Many such places exist in the US-Mexico borderlands, and Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge is one. Here is a place people will lay down their bodies to protect. It is that rare, that special. I want to show you why.
I wrote a poem about Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas, and worked with a talented group of filmmakers–Allison Otto, Jenny Nichols, and Morgan Heim–to translate it into a short film. Please take a look.
President Donald Trump has been banging his nativist drum demanding billions of dollars for a border wall. Congress has been deal-making and deliberating behind closed doors, preparing to bargain away the future of the borderlands in exchange for the Dreamers held hostage by the Republican Party. I don’t believe any of them know or care about what they are sacrificing to the altar of political power––all for a wall that will have no effect on human migration but will destroy one of the rarest eco-regions on Earth.
Please share this film with your friends and family, with your members of Congress. Pick up the phone and tell your Congressional representatives: the border is not a bargaining chip. The Dreamers must be saved from exile from the only home they have ever known, and the borderlands must be protected from border walls, fences and militarization. #noborderwall #saveSantaAna #cleanDreamAct #aysantaana.
The number for the Congressional switchboard is: 202-224-3121
The 75th anniversary of Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge is January 27. Many hundreds of people will be journeying to South Texas for a special rally for this endangered landscape. Santa Ana needs our help. If you can join us, here is some information about the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/419603675122981/ . If you cannot travel to South Texas, please take some action for Santa Ana the week of January 27.
For more information about the peril currently posed to the US-Mexico Borderlands, visit my web story: Embattled Borderlands.
Category: Borderlands, Borderlands Project, Featured Tagged: allison otto, animals, ay santa ana, beauty, birds, border, border wall, butterfly, center for biological diversity, defenders of wildlife, endangered species, environment, film, jenny nichols, mariposa4, mexico, morgan heim, nature, poem, politics, santa ana, savesantaana, sierra club, texas, trump, video, wildlife, wildlife refuge
Posted on April 14, 2016
The US-Mexico border wall boondoggle didn’t start with Donald Trump. Despite its exorbitant cost, wasteful, ineffective nature, and destructive impact, all of the current presidential hopefuls – on both sides of the political spectrum – have voted in support of border wall on the southern US border. Bernie in 2013, Hillary in 2006, Ted Cruz every chance he gets. There are many reasons why Americans could resent this reality: the waste of billions of our taxpayer dollars over the past decade; the useless, farcical nature of walls as a means of stopping people from moving across the landscape; the thousands of migrant deaths it has led to on our southern border; the environmental destruction it has brought to many national parks, wilderness lands and wildlife refuges. This film is about one reason, one very important reason why building a border wall is not worth the cost.
Category: Borderlands, Continental Divide, Featured, Photography Tagged: animals, barriers, Bernie Sanders, bird, birds, border, boundaries, climate change, Days Edge, donald trump, ecosystem, environment, film, HHMI, Hillary Clinton, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, jaguar, krista schlyer, Nathan Dappan, nature, Nautilus, Neil Losin, ocelot, president, taxes, Ted Cruz, Think Like a Scientist, video, wall, wildlife
Posted on February 18, 2016
Krista Schlyer writes on the beauty and memory of National Parks. “It isn’t just beauty we see in these places, and in infinite others in the National Park System–it’s memory. Memory of anoth…
Source: National Parks: Celebrating a Sentinel of American Memory
Posted on January 6, 2016
Marbled salamander
This forest was cleared to build a Whole Foods.
Category: Almost Anywhere, Anacostia, Writing Tagged: Anacostia, conservation, county, development, environment, government, nature, politics, prince george's, river, washington dc, watershed, whole foods, wildlife
Posted on November 17, 2015
What: Tattered Cover reading of Almost Anywhere
When: Thursday December 10, 7pm
Where: Tattered Cover Historic LoDo
1628 16th St. Denver, Colorado 80202
http://www.tatteredcover.com/new-event-calendar
#tatteredlodo
Category: Almost Anywhere Tagged: almost anywhere, beauty, biodiversity, book, bookstore, december, denver, environment, event, grief, literary, love, memoir, national parks, nature, road trip, schlyer, tattered cover, wild, wildlife
Posted on September 18, 2015
For 10 years, ever since the passage of the REAL ID Act in 2005, the wildlife, people and ecosystems of the US-Mexico borderlands have suffered the destruction of unprecedented militarization and the waiver of environmental and many other laws. Senator John McCain is working to expand borderlands destruction and disenfranchisement through a bill S750, cynically titled “The Arizona Borderlands Protection and Preservation Act.” I visited his senate office yesterday with members of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, and sat down with a staffer who listened politely and patiently waited for us to leave. Today I wrote this letter to Senator McCain via his legislative aide–asking him to withdraw his bill waiving all laws within 100 miles of the Arizona border:
Dear David,
Thanks so much for the meeting yesterday with myself and the Sierra Club. I realize there are many issues we see differently, but I hope we can find a meeting place of common ground in the borderlands. In this region over the past 10 years, our national parks, environmental laws and wildlife conservation efforts have been reeling blow by blow as our nation has erected walls and moved border enforcement further and further from the actual border. Senator McCain’s bill S750 would further expand that region of lawlessness to 100 miles from the border, stripping the land and its inhabitants of all laws, and putting all of southern Arizona at the whim of whoever controls DHS.
Border patrol already has unprecedented authority over all other federal agencies on the border, (and in the entire nation–with the CBP budget exceeding that of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined). People, environmental and civil rights organizations are essentially powerless in relation to the massive presence of DHS in the borderlands. I have seen the destruction that has come from this excessive power for a single federal agency. And I have been at the receiving end of this undemocratic imbalance of power–with my vehicle searched multiple times (nowhere near the border), being stopped and questioned by armed agents and intimidated just for being on public lands within 20 miles of the border.
DHS itself has repeatedly testified to Congress that it does not need or want further waiver authority in the borderlands, making all of the recent attempts to strip environmental protections from the region curious. Immigration is at net-zero and we know most illegal drug imports come through the ports of entry, and there has never been a single documented case of a terrorist coming across the southern border–so we have to ask ourselves, what is motivating the never-ending string legislation that aims to remove environmental protections and increase expensive border militarization that is born on the backs of American taxpayers?
Basically what we were asking in our meeting, and what the Sierra Club is asking going forward, is for a commitment from Senator McCain to protect our borderlands parks, refuges and people from further disenfranchisement and destruction. Please urge your boss to withdraw S750, and to oppose any other form of expansion of legal waivers on the border. And in the future to oppose any further attempts to add walls and waivers to immigration bills. The lives of the people and wildlife, and the ecological integrity of our national parks, wilderness and wildlife refuges on the border should not be handed over as a bargaining chip for immigration reform or electoral politics. We need Senator McCain’s help.
I am attaching a link to a slideshow/book talk that I have done around the country to help the public understand what’s at stake in the borderlands. I hope you will take a look at it and show it to your boss
.
Again, thanks very much for your time.
Best wishes,
Krista
Category: Borderlands, Borderlands Project Tagged: arizona, beauty, border, borderlands, congress, donald trump, environment, immigration, John McCain, mexico, nature, president, republican, sierra club, wall, washington dc, wildlife
Posted on June 5, 2014
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