Lessons I Learned in the Creek

“The life in us is like the water in the riv­er. It may rise this year high­er than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the event­ful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell.” 

~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

If you walk out my front door and down the hill, then push through the low-hang­ing tree limbs and step care­ful­ly through the black­ber­ry bram­bles, you’ll soon find your­self at Lower Howard’s Creek, a lit­tle upstream from the Kentucky River. This lit­tle piece of water­front is not much to look at, maybe fif­teen feet across at the widest. It flows beside the Old Stone Church, the old­est church in Kentucky, where peo­ple have been wor­ship­ping for over two cen­turies. But for most of my life, I’ve talked to God not inside the church but sit­ting on a large, flat piece of lime­stone right there beside the tributary.

This slice of water was close to the house I grew up in and if ever there was a place where mag­ic flows, it was this creek. As a child, I spent count­less hours catch­ing craw­dads and pick­ing the wild peri­win­kles that grew in the shady spots along the water’s edge. It was a place to find both fish, gleam­ing in the sun­light as they dart­ed in the shal­low water, and trash, the ever-present signs of pol­lu­tion from uncar­ing humans. My broth­er and I would pack lunch­es and spend the whole day float­ing in inner tubes that we tied to trees so as not to drift too far down­stream. There was dan­ger too. A dis­card­ed piece of wood could be a boat or a cof­fin. Once, a fat snake fell out of a tree above us and swam away so quick­ly I thought I had dreamed it, a mov­ing S that was there one sec­ond and gone the next. At the end of the sum­mer, my broth­er would be as brown as a berry, tak­ing after the Native Americans in our patri­ar­chal fam­i­ly tree. My genes tend toward the Irish and Scottish matri­ar­chal side, so I was always in some state of freck­ling, burn­ing, or peeling. 

As an adult, I’ve wit­nessed this lit­tle water­way in every sea­son and weath­er. I’ve watched it rush past dur­ing spring rains, erod­ing the creek bed in tumul­tuous eddies of red­dish clay. Skated across it in win­ter, when the shal­low­est part froze sol­id. Whiled away sum­mer hours star­ing up at the trees, the water stag­nant and unmov­ing, the mos­qui­toes relent­less. I’ve seen it dry as a bone dur­ing drought years. 

The creek is both con­stant and ever-chang­ing. Many of the rocks that line the bed are mil­lions of years old, yet the creek today isn’t the same as the creek tomor­row. Just like, as Thoreau writes, the life in us.

Looking back on the last few years, some days felt like a drought, lack­ing the won­der and tra­di­tions that give our days mean­ing. Perhaps we were bored stiff by the monot­o­ny, days and weeks bleed­ing into each oth­er. Other days felt stormy and unre­lent­ing. The more we strug­gled against the tor­rent, the more we were washed away. There was fear and ris­ing water lines but also beau­ty amidst the dis­card­ed beer cans and weed-choked hillside. 

It’s been hard to see the big­ger pic­ture. From where I stand, all I see is a small creek. But pull back enough, and I can see that it’s one branch of a mighty riv­er, and each riv­er leads to the even might­i­er ocean. The strength of the col­lec­tive is sup­port­ed by each small, unique indi­vid­ual. For each indi­vid­ual is her own creek, air, and water in a con­stant but ever-mov­ing dance.

So we take where we are and what we can see and print those lessons on our hearts. 

Be still occa­sion­al­ly and lis­ten to the bab­bling of the brook, the cos­mic truths bare­ly audi­ble in the whis­pers of water. 

Don’t fear the water’s rush, but respect it. Know when to stand against the fray and when to let the move­ment sweep you off your feet.

And above all, flow with the cur­rent and not against it, dodg­ing rocks and trust­ing that a peace­ful stretch is just around the bend.