Hold The River Banks Up

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THE SLOUGH Kitty O’Connor The slough as we knew it was more of an empty moat. A ditch that marked the perimeter of my grandparent’s seventeen acre walnut orchard. As children, my cousins and I were tasked with gathering all the stray nuts that had fallen into the slough during harvest. We pretended to be alligators, chomping up and down the ravines, reenacting the living history of this swamp. It was definitely manmade, none of us had ever seen water in it, but we knew our parents’ stories, and that was more real than a technicality. Mere proximity to the slough would cause my dad to reminisce about how much wider it was when he was a kid. How the slough would flow consistently with water. How he would float in his homemade boat, paddling around the perimeter of the orchard. What a complicated feeling it is, to be handed the gift of memories and the weight of loss at the same time. I saw most of my town through the lens of my dad’s memories; for it was these things that used-to-be that remained most definitive and vivid for my dad. His relationship with the past often seemed more solid than the one he held with the present. Change is more than just something being different. It is when the reason you love something, the very way in which you connect to something, no longer exists. The population in my hometown has quadrupled since I lived there. When I left home nearly twenty years ago, I relied on a singular fact to help new friends understand the depths of my rural upbringing, “my hometown didn’t have a stoplight.” This statement is no longer true. Now, everytime I near a stoplight back home, I am compelled to say, “there weren’t any stoplights here when I was a kid.” I will continue on about how narrow the road used to be, how much lower the speed limit was, and how my brother and I would push a homemade car across what is now a highway. I can’t relate to what my hometown has become, but I sure can relate to my dad. 10
HOBBES & THE ALLIGATOR GAR Kitty O’Connor As a boy born on a hot summer morning in his New Orleans living room, Hobbes entered the world silent with eyes wide open. He has spent his first six years on Earth blinking as infrequently as possible and questioning everything. Hobbes sat down one humid morning to discuss origins and action with an Alligator Gar. The following is a transcript of this meeting of earnest pleas and jaded survival. Hobbes: What do you mean you’re prehistoric? Pre means before. How can you be before history? Everything is a part of history. Alligator Gar: I am before the history you know or have been taught. Hobbes: So if you teach me about yourself, will you no longer be prehistoric? Alligator Gar: You will be more informed. I will still be prehistoric. I have not changed. Hobbes: Why haven’t you changed? Alligator Gar: I haven’t needed to. I am able to breathe in water that other fish cannot. My enamel scales are armor. I am strong. I am clever. I stay in the depths. Hobbes: No one knows about you. Alligator Gar: That is part of my survival. Those who know about me are misinformed. They think I am a nuisance. Fishermen think I deplete their food supply. Hobbes: But if you are so elusive, no one will learn the truth. Alligator Gar: If I come out, I will die. Hobbes: Not if you speak your truth first. Alligator Gar: They do not know my language. Hobbes: Teach them. Alligator Gar: They do not care, and they don’t have the patience. Hobbes: Some do. Alligator Gar: But not all. The ones who don’t, the majority, will be my death. Hobbes: But if you don’t tell anyone, no one will ever know. Alligator Gar: You know the truth. You speak their language. Who are you telling? 11
Page 1 and 2: H O L D T H E R I V E R B A N K S U
Page 3: INDEX INTRODUCTION CHRIS STAUDINGER
Page 6 and 7: PRINCIPAL OF THE SHELTER Carolyn Vo
Page 8 and 9: HER PATH Yusuf Ihsan Young She runs
Page 12 and 13: SPOKES AND DITCHES Karen Deel Manch
Page 14: LOVE YOU, BABY nostalgia Chris Stau
Page 17 and 18: I do not walk alone. The oddly smil
Page 19 and 20: shorter lives. They returned their
Page 21 and 22: +++ Find a bucket and fill it with
Page 23 and 24: time is the sea and we are all our
Page 25 and 26: we fight the hard fight against the
Page 27 and 28: Now we’re an hour’s drive away
Page 29 and 30: 13. If we’re going to lose everyt
Page 31: Many thanks to Turtle Cove Environm

Hold The River Banks Up

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