Oh, how I love cleaning out the loft. Find from this morning:
The Creek at Red Rock
I took my sister down to the creek sometimes. She objected to crunching through the twigs and dead leaves covering the forest floor on the way there, and she was afraid of snakes,though we never did see any. My little brown poodle Co-Co came sometimes too, sniffing around the woods, trying to smell everything he couldn't smell in the suburbs. Never able to make it down the steep embankment to the water, he would bark at me from the edge of the woods, guarding me from ashore. The adults didn't come at all.
"My" creek is actually the thirty yards or so of it that touches my grandparents' land. Downstream, it crosses the street under a bridge and widens out on someone else's land. Upstream, I only know that it keeps on going, further into the woods, and onto someone else's property. One bank of the creek lines the side of the farm, edged by a strip of woods a good fifteen feet thick. The incline here is so steep that I used to rely on the young saplings to keep me from tumbling to the rocky water beneath. The other bank is very narrow and even steeper, leading directly up to the street. That unclimbable bank is covered with goldenrod, prickly shrubs, stalky pink and violet flowers, and ant-covered Queen Anne's lace.
I never missed a trip to this place when we visited Red Rock; I always brought a spare set of clothing 'just in case.' Once when I was ten, I made one last trip to the water right before we left for home. Two men were fishing way upstream, a father and a son, I guessed, standing on the bank and talking loudly. I wanted to show these men that this was my place; I wanted them to admire how easily I crossed over the rocks. I was also proud because I was wearing a brand new outfit that day -- black black jeans, a shiny red blouse with a butterfly collar, and a velvety black vest with rhinestones on it. The shoes I don't remember, but they weren't sneakers, and they weren't meant for climbing slippery rocks. One moment I was proudly crossing the creek, and the next I was sitting in a foot and a half of cold water. At first I was mortified that the fishermen had heard the gigantic splash, but they didn't even notice me.
Most of my journeys were less adventurous. I had to find a safe place to cross the narrow stream. The banks were too steep to sit on, so I either perched on the largest of the boulders or crouched in whatever dry sand I could find. I looked for the two-inch silver fish that swam in the middle of the widest parts. Sometimes I threw pebbles into the midst of them, just to see them dart away.
If I was lucky, and it was a sunny day, I would fin tiny frogs sunning themselves on the rocks. I didn't want to disturb them; I just wanted to touch them. But the frogs didn't like my friendly gestures, and soon they were scrambling for cover under the larger rocks, where they lived. I could have spent hours trying to coax them back out into the sun, but usually I got bored and left. If I returned after a while, though, there they would be, taking in the sun as if I had never been by.
My biggest challenge, however, lay under the bridge. The creek was wider there than at any other place I knew of, maybe six or seven feet across. There were no rocks there, and the only way to get under the bridge was to shuffle along the foot-wide ledges on either side of the water. The water wasn't deep, but my fear of water snakes and stepping on something I couldn't see kept me out of it whenever possible. The underside of the bridge was only about five feet from the surface, and the ledge began a few inches above that, so the taller I got, the more I had to duck. The sun didn't penetrate here. It was another world. It always felt ten degrees colder under here, no matter how hot it was outside, and the cement walls were clammy to the touch. The grid-like ceiling was covered with layer upon layer of cobwebs. Sometimes I would run into one, or a spider would suddenly drop in front of me, stratling me so that I would slip into the water and run out into the sun, yelling and frantically waving my arms about my head.
A gigantic fish lived beneath this bridge. This was the fish that the smaller fish swam near whenever they were threatened. Now this fish might have been all of six inches long, but it was the largest fish I had ever seen swimming in my creek. It was shimmering silver, like a larger version of the tiny ones that darted around my toes upstream, but much thicker. The way that fish looked at me, with contempt and challenge in its eyes, convinced me that this fish was not only intelligent but arrogant. I had to show it that I was both smarter and faster. He never left that bridge, however, and that made him extremely hard to catch. The ledge was slippery and narrow, and it was hard to see in the murky darkness.
My chance came one day when I found him dozing only a few inches under the bridge. I crept up behind him, trying to keep my balance on the gravelly, steep bank. He saw me. I splashed my foot down into the water to keep him from going further under the bridge, thrust my arms into the water, and grabbed wildly. My palms closed around the slippery flesh. I was so surprised to feel his violent wriggling in my hands that I instinctively flung him away from me. The fish was no less surprised than I was, and as he raced downstream I imagined him trying to smooth his ruffled scales and regain whatever dignity a fish has.
Last spring I went to Red Rock again, and visited the creek. What I saw of it still looked the same; the water was still running, goldenrod still bloomed on the far bank, and a couple of frogs were sunning on a rock. But now a six-foot barbed wire fence, put up to keep my aunt's dog, Shadow, out of the street, kept me from my little creek. For now, I am content to watch from a distance. One day, though, I just might be found in jeans and a torn tee shirt, trying to get a foothold amidst the burrs and prickles on the nearly perpendicular far bank, scrambling down from the street to see if that fish is still there.
c. 1991
Lynn Anne Christie
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