I was sixteen and my father had put a bullet in his head, in the dead of night, in the home that he and I shared with my mother, equally melancholy but impenetrable, like petrified wood. My river would diminish to almost nothing at this point, slowly trickling through the ragged terrain threatening to surrender to the ceaseless drought before ebbing and vanishing entirely. And it did, although the gash my river had carved in the land remained quietly and patiently, for the water to return and the seeds of the surrounding vegetation slept knowingly, of the wisdom and spirituality I would eventually begin to perceive in my life. For years, torrential rains would eventually quench my land’s thirst for water and a trickle would turn into a stream, and the stream would again gain enough water and momentum to be my guiding river once again, and yet, it was a beautiful piece of my landscape I often took for granted. I knew it was there, but I stopped sitting on the banks, peering into the simulated glass at the river rocks sleeping softly and inconspicuously below.