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Sweetwater

That is not a river.
Neither is it a lava flow.
It is the Sweetwater Swamp
after, and on, hot days.

It has a real name:
Sweetwater Wetlands.
I am not sure it is water, at all,
or even that it is wet.
It was thick!

Once it was water.  Then it was wasted; that is to say, used, in homes like ours, then shipped off to be reclaimed.  After being run through a city-sized processor, it is pumped into a system of holding ponds where enthusiastic forests and fields of trees and reeds compete with each other to make the best of what might be called "nutrients" and water and sun.  Often, there are dozens of birds at the Swamp, turtles galore, and more birders than birds.

Yesterday, I was the only person there.  I saw almost no birds.  It was, I shall admit, not a prime time of day to see birds in the desert, especially because the temperature was very high.  Had there been birds, they could have walked on . . . on the water.  There may have been a thousand turtles beneath the crust, but if there were, they showed no desire to come up for a breath of hot air.

Almost all alone, oddly all alone, I was startled by a peculiar, almost scary noise.
It vibrated, almost visibly throbbing the air.  It took a few minutes, but I finally decided it was an amorous bull frog.  A really amorous bull frog.  Or maybe just a belligerent one.

Sweetwater Swamp returns water to the earth.  That is sweet.

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