Snow Falling Along the Merced River

Snow begins falling while I'm sitting by the river that winds its way through the middle of Yosemite Valley.  Birds splashing in the water along its edges don't seem to notice, although some begin to play with a little more excitement.  The large flakes quickly change the landscape, covering the rocks and trees, and unifying everything in a common blanket of white.  My thoughts turn to the Ahwanechee who used to live in this valley.  Did Chief Tenaya's band gather inside their shelters during heavy snowstorms to share stories, traditions, and concerns?  Or did they go out and play?

I think of friends and their struggles with illness, poverty, failed vocations, or troubled relationships.  I sense that if we all lived here our sorrows would not strike as deeply because our community would be close by to share the burden.  Our expectations would be simple -- to live this day as best we could.  Living in harmony with nature, our basic needs of food and shelter would be met. 

Black Hawk, chief of the Sauk and Fox, spoke of this sense of community:

We always had plenty; our children never cried from hunger, neither were our people in want....   The rapids of Rock River furnished us with an abundance of excellent fish, and the land being very fertile, never failed to produce good crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes....   Here our village stood for more than a hundred years in the Mississippi Valley.  Our village was healthy and there were no better hunting grounds.

The call of a Steller’s jay brings me back to the storm.  I must have been thinking for some time because now I'm covered with two inches of snow.