August 17, 2004
Confluence
A little more than a stone's throw away, the rocky shoal where Goose Creek and Nameless Creek meet is a favorite hidden place to pass a pleasant hour. From my desk here, I walk out the front door, down the steps, across the front yard.
I hop over the rock wall between the yellowbells and out onto the gravel road, heading east. Fifty yards on and I cut across the rocky, Yucca-spiked field where we took out the spindly pines four years ago, to the edge where the flood plain pasture sinks down to the level of the creek channel meandering a path into the vari-colored gravel, rounded rock and sandy soil that once was mountain.
My secret spot is full of flicker and dance, flooded with the fluid purpose and predictability of water and gravity. The wet air settles here, unruffled by the wind that lifts the highest poplar leaves barely visible through the wall of summer leafery.
The smells of late summer settle in that calm along the creek, an aromatic steeping of dry Queen Anne's Lace and Yarrow and the dank fragrance of water come from underground only moments before it flows past me in the cool shade.
Riffles form from stones too large for the little streams to carry once a storm surge has passed, and the crystal water splashes there with sound and spray. Thin shafts of light strike through the canopy, dazzling eyes grown used to the crepuscular shadows in mid-day.
To my back, the rock bluff rises. The earliest wanderers in this valley would have seen it above the creek, just so, but that the forest on its crest held towering chestnuts and white pines fit for the mast of ships where now anemic woods of dying Hemlocks stand. The massive wall of stone speaks of permanence, or its illusion, as the water does of transcience and flow.
And here I sit for a quiet hour, between shadow and light, earth and sky, between those things that will last and those that move to the sea on these clear currents of time.
Larger image is in the gallery.
Nicely said. I really like the heft of "flooded with the fluid purpose and predictability of water and gravity." Thanks.
Posted by: Tom Montag at August 17, 2004 06:32 AM
I like the picture frame on your photos -- so cool.
Posted by: Terry at August 17, 2004 11:10 AM
Wonderful...thanks for letting us tag along.
Posted by: feste at August 17, 2004 12:07 PM
Ah, Fred, that was wonderful. I bet you're appreciating it all the more, now that you're about to start doing "public work," as the farm folks used to say.
Posted by: Lin B at August 17, 2004 11:02 PM