“So it came now, the dark gulp of the sea, roaring through the Wood.” -Emily Tesh, Drowned Country, p. 129

                Emily Tesh’s Drowned Country walks, in part, through an ocean that was once forest before the waters flooded over. Through the twists and turns of the book’s magic, a knot of friends travel back and forth through time: from the ocean bluffs they were born near to the Woods that lived there before the ocean washed over the land, and back again.
                In Illinois I live on earth that was once oceanfloor, and before that was forestfloor. Earth that knew glaciers and their long melting. I remember one of my first walks when I moved here, staring up at the clouds, trying to recognize the wonderful beauty of this particular place. The closest I could get was a scrap of song: the sky here’s like an ocean.
                I can’t travel like Tesh’s characters. But outside today, I wonder if we all walk the same grand changes. Forested bluffs worn away to oceans. I’ve been in those rolling waves. Lakes filled in with silt till they’re meadows. I’ve disappeared into those shallows. In my short lifespan it can be hard for me to see the currents of these changes. The Woods (Tesh says) see them differently. So today I’m watching the trees, thinking about what they might see, wondering what I can feel of time and earth and sky painting together.