Sand Creek’s waters snake west from the eastern plains to their confluence with the South Platte River near Commerce City four miles north of central Denver. The South Platte River supplies drinking water for people and livestock along the northern Front Range along with  water for agricultural irrigation.  Sand Creek is a small tributary only 15 miles in length.  Where it borders the Suncor oil refinery, the largest oil refinery in Colorado, Sand Creek’s water flow is slow and nearly silent. The Suncor refinery sprawls across the landscape, pours up to 3.5 million gallons of water daily into Sand Creek and discharges pollutants that include polyfluoroalkyl compounds – PFA’s or “forever chemicals” – as well as benzene, arsenic and dozens of additional chemicals.  The refinery has been operating since 1931.  Despite decades of public outcry, State and Federal government air and water emission standards are not enforced and licenses for air and water pollution are extended repeatedly. Outrage has grown fierce in recent years.  More people realize the oil refinery requires hospice, not rehabilitation.

Sand Creek is a sad site for me. I come here when I fear the sadness. Maybe my anger, too. I know beneath the surface of sadness is a depth of grief I fear will overwhelm my capacity to cope with global scales of abuse, pollution, poisoning and violence we inflict upon Gaia and all her creaturely life forms. A few times every year since 2013 I have come to sit beside the Creek’s near still waters or wander the banks.  Sand Creek is almost unknown, hidden, small and silent beneath the profligate power of Suncor and our financial system’s delusions of well-being. Here in this place, I feel a broken-heart guide emerge and speak to me. I know the Creek’s animate soul as a kindred voice.  Sadness becomes mere humility, then gratitude, then love and a peculiar peace before an immense grief for our whole history across the earth, across my country.  There is no direct connection between the flow of Sand Creek and the waters of Big Sandy Creek, 100 miles Southeast, where American soldiers massacred Arapaho and Cheyenne men, women and children in 1864.  However, I cannot dismiss the name in language spanning 160 years.  The words, “Sand Creek”, connect one event of mass homicide on the High Plain with a relentless, continuing ecocide along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains today. Sometimes I feel our tolerance of cruelty, violence and senseless abuse of nature we share with all life is too much for memory to bear.

The water holds strength that lasts through long time and continents. It endures with a steady presence and most simple witness to the Gift of life where I am open to the Gift as given.  It is not an exuberant joy.  But joy none the less. Just before leaving the site, I summoned enough creative energy to fashion a scrubby RadJoy bird in gratitude for Sand Creek.  I heard the creek quietly say, “thankyou”, without stopping along its course.