EROSION

7/11/2020

At the bottom of a picturesque coulee, where the view is 360° of karst hills of unclimbable terrain, lies a world that belongs to an aging couple. Due to the fact that meandering rivers disappear into another valley, the owners sought solitude. They came to this spot through fate and friction. One was the son of parents who saw the beauty and tranquility of this paradise and constructed a home with toil and tears, while the other was fighting for her place in the sun. After many life battles, she found it years ago with him. Together, they took the reins from his parents who went as far as they could until nature branded them with the gift of arthritis. Unable to overcome the steepness of the bowl that was their inspiration for decades, time and gravity sapped their strength and redirected their ambition to find their final resting place elsewhere. Years of tough physical work had left behind a dozen wood framed structures that were always a decade away from decay. When building with wood, one must remember to keep the bark and the roots intact or the critters of the soil will eat the naked, sleeping timbers. Only stone can guarantee a millennium, but it is cold and memorializes death. Now that nature has aged the offspring to the failing years, the couple are in a struggle to keep the valley from claiming their estate, but the outcome is apparent. As the variable flow river has been removing life from that valley for over 400 million years, its purpose is fixed. In time, the couple will be unable to resist gravity’s grip and that family’s work and memories will flow out of that coulee and be deposited thousands of miles away into the Gulf of Mexico just like the millions of lifeforms that have lived there before them. The astonishing thing is that no matter where one stands on that property, there appears no entrance or exit. It is this deception that keeps life working to attain happiness in their isolated, personal heaven.