River Thoughts
It’s easy to imagine a day when the Pedernales River dries completely and people are left to wander the rocks of the old Falls and wonder what it must have been like when the river ran rough over them. Although maybe this is how it’s always been, highs and lows, because the river’s been running for nearly 20 million years. So, people have only seen it for a fraction of its long life.
It’s entirely possible in the next 20 million years the river basin will fill with dirt and debris and disappear because the earth will move and shake and maybe the ice will come again. Rest assured none of us will be here to see it and it’s easy to imagine that whatever does see it will be a life unimagined, because the dinosaurs thought they had it made until they didn’t and then we came along and no one knows what’s next.
Of course, part of being human is thinking we’re eternal as a species and sometimes as individuals. I think they call that hubris. And if a river that’s 20-million-years-old could laugh I imagine looking at us would give it a good chuckle, because as geologic time periods go our time on earth has been pretty quiet, partly because we’ve been here for no time at all. In fact, if the Earth’s history were compressed into a 24-hour day, modern humans would appear in the last few seconds before midnight.