A River’s Return

An excerpt from Atmos Magazine. Buy a print copy here.

Climate writing labors under a mandate to supply hope. Devastated but unable to look at the devastation, we want people who will assure us that things will be fine. Hope, we hope, will let us off the hook. After talking to DeHoff and Weisheit, though, I wonder if hope could look like something else.

Imagine you love a river. Imagine that the river starts dying—and then imagine that you stay. Imagine not looking away, imagine noticing. Imagine staying in the lean times, in the hard times, in the times where you think all is lost. Now imagine the cottonwood shoots, the first beaver dam. Imagine a rapid heaving up from the depths, foam in the air.

The truth is we are always on the hook. In fact, more times than not, we are in love. We love places that change us, that change. We let them down; they break our hearts. And when that happens, we want to leave. But if we stay—if we look—sometimes the dead return