Scarred

Jocassee, we’re losing ye. Or so it feels, seeing where fresh chunks of mountain break free and slide underwater. With each chunk goes a favorite holly tree, beech, or mountain laurel, one by one, into the cool deep depths, exposing crescent scars of raw earth all around the lake. There are winners in the process: belted kingfishers and Northern ruff-wing swallows take advantage of newly exposed soft soil to build circular nests into the banks. There’s beauty, of course, as we bear witness to earth’s ceaseless movement: how it arranges itself in colorful layers; fingerpaint strokes of white kaolin streaking through iron rich clay uplifted megaannum ago in the slow-motion crush of continental plates. ~K