They Move Downstream So Quickly, Don’t They?

We watched our creeks slowly dwindle since mid-May. I wondered if, come the heat of summer, we would have enough flow in Goose Creek to water the garden, while Ann’s worry was would there be enough water in them for the girls when they came to visit the end of June?

Thanks to the copious spring rains, the fractured rock reservoirs below ground were charged to some goodly percent of capacity (nobody knows how much water that would take). So even though every storm mass either spilt north and south of us, or vanished into thin, dry air as it approached northeastern Floyd County, the creeks were adequately full for the building of dams, harvesting of minnows for catch-and-release, and cold water for squirting other little girls or large dogs on a hot afternoon in the dappled shade.

We’ve had a couple of frog-chokers here recently and expect more strong storms again today, but remnants of the dam remain, a fragile reminder of a time our eldest grand daughter was happy being a little girl, content to be free of shopping centers, television and team sports.

You have to wonder…you know, really…the time will come when a week at the grand parents is, like, so boring and uncool. Only the younger one will come then, and unless she changes drastically, she won’t be as happy immersed in grit and grasshoppers as her fearless sister. And then, she’ll age out, and not care to come over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house anymore.

And so, I’m gratified to have captured a few of those wet moments from a time that flows downstream, away from us, like Nameless Creek, bound to mingle with the seas of Time Immemorial, an ocean of memories filled with the growing up and moving away of so many small children–you, me, all of us who have hurried through our childhoods, in a rush to grow up and become someone and some thing we cannot imagine.

But some of us build dams, just to slow things down a bit.