Folk Tales/The Stream and the Wind

The Stream and the Wind appeared as a text based story on the Purple Moon Place website. It was featured on Dana’s secret pouch page. On the link to the story Dana says, “Here’s a story I liked as a child...”

The Story
The Stream and the Wind

There once was a stream that wound its way down from the mountains to the sea. On its journey, it leaped over rocks, rushed down waterfalls, and rippled over wide, shallow pools dappled with fish. Sometimes it became choked with reeds or dammed with tree branches – but always the stream found its way through these obstacles and continued on its merry path.

Years went by, and cities grew up where meadows had been. Cows were replaced by cars, and forests turned into streets. Wetlands that once helped the winding stream were drained for men to build houses on. Instead of a marsh there was now a wide, sandy plain.

One day the stream tried to cross the plain. But it found that, however fast it flowed, it disappeared into the sand and was lost. How was it to make its way to the sea if it could not cross the sand?

The wind, whistling its way through the land, called to the stream, saying, “I can cross the sandy plain and so can you – with my help.”

“How?” asked the stream.

“Let me take you into my breeze as a million drops of water, and I will carry you up into the sky.”

“If I do that, I will no longer be a stream,” said the water.

“Yes, you will,” replied the wind. “I will carry you over the plain, and then you will drop from me as rain above the forests beyond. All the raindrops will flow together and become a stream once more.”

“That sounds impossible!” said the stream.

“Yet I have done this for millions of years,” said the wind, “over bigger deserts than this!”

“How do I know you are telling the truth?”

“Rely not on me, but on yourself. Search your memories and you will find that you have done this many times, for it is the endless cycle of life. Even the mighty ocean itself can be found in the drops of a mountain stream.”

As the wind spoke, it seemed to the stream that it DID remember flying high above the ground. But still it doubted its own memory, just a little.

“What happens if I refuse?”

“Then you will trickle into the sand here and be lost forever.”

Then the stream believed what the wind said was true. It cast its waters into the air as a fine mist and was carried away… over the sands and the city blocks, past the valleys and the hills, until it fell as a soft rain over the forest beyond. And as it fell, and joined other drops that rushed their way to the sea, it became a stream again…then a river…then the deep blue ocean itself.

And as it flowed, it cried, “I remember now! I have done this before! Next time, I will not doubt myself.”