The Falls of the Ohio

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

e.e. cummings

Growing up on the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky, I visited the Falls of the Ohio. The Falls are a 390 million-year-old fossil bed on the floor of the river. Fossils tell the geological story of the river; of how the river has sang and danced for millennia. As a writer and teller of stories, I deeply connect with the story of wonder, strength, patience, and constancy the Falls tells. Our natural world tells us all about all of that.

My first dream career was to be a geologist.

I have always been fascinated by the Falls’ story. My family took tours of the Falls guided by geologists who could interpret the stone, sand, and bones. The fossils connected me to my earth, my river, my home, and my story. The fossils were substance in a world that often slipped through my fingers. The fossils gave me a glimpse of the vastness of life and time itself. That always made me feel better. The fossils were proof that my life — my existence — fits in to a much bigger narrative that does not begin and end with me. Geologists were grand interpreters of a language I wanted to understand. Maybe, if you think about it sideways, writing is the way I interpret the science (and art) of my life. So, I guess I am not really off course from my early life plan.

Sand from the Falls

My husband suggested we have a sand ceremony in our wedding. This was no average sand ceremony with random sand. During our wedding, our mothers poured sand we had collected from the Falls and Virginia Beach (where he grew up) from two separate cylinders into a single cylinder. The cylinder sits in our living room. Our stories, as told in the sand from our birthplaces, are both distinct as fine particles of different elements from different places, and one as the fine particles that can not be separated. We are now both distinct and one.

Stones and Fossils

Fossils, like those in the Falls, tell the story of how the Ohio riverbed has been smoothed, carved, worn and polished overtime. Fossils are evidence of our interconnectedness with our earth and the force of nature. Fossils are history and evolution and change. Fossils are powerful and infinite and wise. The fossils of the Falls link me to my birthplace in real and meaningful ways. Fossils are a narrative of existence — of birds that sing and stars that dance. Perhaps my lifelong connection to the Falls foretold my writer’s journey of learning how to sing and dance with words.