Evening Prayer on the Rio Grande
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by Elaine Dent
We had come to the day of silence on our Epiphany Pilgrimage to New Mexico. After enchiladas in the pueblo, experiments with pottery making, studying ancient Indian carvings on volcanic rock, and learning new songs to sing, we would rest from human words. We would have space to be still, listen and reflect on our week's journey.
A day of silence was new to my daughter who had accompanied me on this pilgrimage, so I invited her, silently of course, to join me for a walk. We put on our thickest socks, our walking shoes (we wished for snow boots), grabbed packs with journals, and we two pilgrims trudged out into the cold, maturing afternoon.
Shadows stretched blue across the white snow. One pilgrim behind the other, our feet crunched in the path of former seekers of the day's sun and sky. If I lost my daughter's shadow hovering around my feet, I knew to slow my pace and honor her city gait, unfamiliar with nature's slippery pavement on the ground.
Finally we branched off the snow-tramped way of other two-legged folk and headed into the Basque, an area of aging cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande. This is where the four-legged ones make their home and playground. Our feet plowed snow past the fallen tree with white bark weathered smooth, through reddish stems standing bare from a former season of flourish. Our footprints mingled with those of swifter, lighter jackrabbits. Beyond stumps that must have served fishermen as campfire seats, the river reached from horizon to horizon, moving, breathing, faintly singing. Its glassy turquoise reflection slipped through the ribbons of snow bank on either side.
Without needing to talk, we dug out comfortable hollows in the snow and placed our cushions on the frozen ground. We strangers had apparently arrived in time for evening prayer. A few others had gotten there before us. A family of Canadian geese moved farther out into the water to give us plenty of room to watch the Sandia mountain. Sandia means watermelon, and this mountain imposingly rose above the land beyond the river, absorbing the remaining yellow warmth of the afternoon sun. One or two at a time, ducks flew in and took their seat on the quiet river. Some had black plumes on their heads, others a white streak and rusty chests. They chatted, fussed and laughed with one another over matters beyond my comprehension.
More geese, both in number and species, flew in, organized in larger groups now, soaring and circling in formation before gliding in for a landing. Occasional stray ducks joined these geese lines, filling in the gaps within their soaring V-patterns. The whir of wings whipping air only a few feet over our heads fanned prayers of awe in my heart. As the sun sank near the distant mesa behind us, the water fowl gathered in earnest; they streamed in from the west. Sand Hill cranes coasted in from a nearby nesting site and added their distinctive squawking harmony to the river's rising prayer of honkings, quackings, chirpings, flutterings, and splashings. The congregation had assembled, and the liturgy was underway.
The temperature dropped quickly in this desert land while the praise of the winged ones swelled and the mountain's yellow folds opened into the rose, watermelon glow for which it is named. Amidst all the noisy praise, the sun slipped silently away from the congregation's worship. For a brief moment the reddened mountain and the translucent, pale light of the river held the sun's parting gift of illumination, blessing the creatures with an afterglow of radiance. I was moved to prayer and tears.
But we mindful pilgrims needed to retrace the unfamiliar path before dark. Psalms from the chorus of river folk continued in full voices as we rather wistfully left this place of prayer early. Even while we were re-crossing the Basque, late cranes continued flying into the gathering. We heard their songs echo off the river waters while we once again slipped our way on the icy path of human ones. The sharp, stirring wind rustled the cottonwoods, and we sank deeper into our coats and hoods and even deeper down into our souls, full of what we had witnessed.
Our now-hurried presence startled a lone goose dallying in the irrigation ditch along the path. He must have had his reason for missing the river's evening prayer, but he rose wearily at our passing and, in the enveloping darkness, veered east toward the river to join his brothers and sisters as the night's great silence began.
Elaine and her daughter, Becca, were part of Shalem's New Mexico Pilgrimage in January 2007. To view a chronicle of this pilgrimage, go to http://web.mac.com/annkulp/iWeb/Epiphany.