Water dreaming

Water, Esther thought, has always been a strange element to me. I wonder if it’s because there are no planets in that element in my horoscope?

Fanciful thought, but there it was. Large bodies of water always filled her with awe. Not being able to swim probably had something to do with it.

In the arid desert country of her childhood the river had been a source of fascination and dread. Their lives, the whole town’s lives depended on it entirely. But of course no-one ever really acknowledged that.

And swimming in that river was perilous. There were drownings, frequent drownings, and the bodies often were irretrievable, caught on ancient fallen tree limbs fathoms deep, in the opaque green water.

And then there was the distant sea itself, visited only every few years in her childhood. It was so wild and so blue, so salty and full of turmoil and noise after the silent, solemn river. What was a child to make of that?

Once they had visited the Blue Lake at Mount Gambia: a caldera, and ancient blocked volcanic bowl, a vessel with steep sides, a still, silent mirror.

People swam there too. Imagine swimming in a pool so deep that no-one knows its measure?

Sometimes she dreamed she was flying across a hilly landscape and then out over the ocean. When she realised she was out of her depth, her dreaming self cried out to the Primordial Mother: “Mataji!”

And at once she was safe, clinging to the feet of the Great Goddess and then being lowered gently toward the green Earth.