Eternal Recurrence

The other day we were hiking at Eaton Canyon, where the desert trees have hunkered down for a long dry season, and I was thinking about eternal recurrence. I know that's a ridiculous thing to say, except I also think all of us probably think about eternal recurrence to some degree or another when we go hiking in nature, and that's why we go hiking in nature, partly—to escape for a little bit from the measly perspective offered by our once-only lifespan and to help us feel connected to the bigger things.

We walked over a streambed of parched rocks where, a month ago, there'd been water almost up to our knee; and this was enough to get me thinking: where does the water go? And where does it go, after that? And then again where? (My line of questions is as sophisticated as any two-year-old's, though only on my best days.)

If every drop of water on this earth stays on this earth, then it's like we live inside a fishbowl, and this water is the same water my parents drank as children, and their parents; it's the same water that swallowed the Titanic, that flooded Johnstown; the same water walked by Jesus, parted by Moses; the same water carried into the caves of Lascaux and mixed with pigments to make the oldest art we know; the same water where dinosaurs swam, where the heat from the Sun sparked the very first life on Earth, during the fiery heat before Earth had earth.

Later, the dog bounds up ahead to run with another dog, instant happy friends; and then we pass through a small clearing where a burned-out stump of tree tells the quiet history of a years-ago fire. There's a monarch butterfly, which we're told come, every last one of them, all the way from that single spot in Mexico—but this one arrives at us today tireless with cheerful flickering wings, flapping and unflappable.

The trail is footprints on top of footprints on top of footprints. One set leaves a pattern in the dirt shaped like a heart, and we follow this trail of hearts, one after the other. We look at every person on the trail: are you the heart-maker? And would you know it if you were? Because who among us knows the shape of their own footprints?

At the end of the trail, there's a waterfall, spilling from some overhead rocks, and before that, from who-knows-where. The water hits the ground and patters in a dance, and the people who collect underneath do the same. Then the water roils downstream and disappears, we don't know where.

But it will be back, this water. It always is.

When we return to the parking lot, a policeman stops us to ask if we've seen anything, and we're not sure how to answer: we've seen so many things. But while we were hiking, a man parked his car and then used it as the place from which to leave this earth. He shot himself in it and he died.

No, Officer. We didn't see a thing.

When the water spills away, where does it go? And will we recognize it again, when it comes back to us? Will it recognize itself?