Riparian

“I recognize this creek by it’s sound,” she said as the water gently bubbled and tumbled around a large piece of mossy fractured quartz.  The sound of small creeks have always evaded the traps of my adjectives and adverbs.  The unique effervescent gurgling and trilling thumps of tumbling Appalachian creeks are a music that can only be learned by ear.  Oceanic sounds can be orchestrated and soothingly replicated.  The inspired wavering arias of lonely creeks can be remembered but never reproduced.  The sound of a single creek, heard by lovers, is a lifelong secret.

Before our son was born, we struggled for months to find a word that evoked the frail audacity of these mountains streams that searched their way though the forest.  Sometimes the best way you know a thing is to know its opposite, so we named him “Stillwater”. And sure enough, his incessant scrambling vivacity is the perfect contrast to his name.

We had been wandering some new trails near the house and trying to make a loop of it when we realized that we had arrived at a familiar creek. The broken rocky ground gives the water places to play and reemerge around, under, and over mossy boulders amidst the earliest of spring flowers.  Trilliums poised to bloom and trout lilies pushed their odd variegated leaves through the duff and running cedar.

I have felt lost to myself this year, unable to find the real person amidst this collection of habits and responsibilities.  I knew the person that got me here better than I’d like and feel some relief at his absence, but a stage without actors is a more despairing place than no stage at all.

“I recognize this creek by it’s sound,” she said.  And I thought of all of the times I have stood in the middle of a flowing creek and tried to listen to the upstream noises with one ear and the downstream noises with the other.  Try it if you never have.  It’s one of my best tricks.  Your mind will flicker with the illusion of water flowing between your ears and its a lovely replacement for the buzzing cloud of flies that serves as “thought”.

Maybe these are the days of recognizing that letting go is wiser than grasping.  There are a thousand ways to make something happen but only one way to let it happen.  All of life flows away downhill from us.  Moments pass; patterns remain.

There is music in the sound of water.  It plays for everyone and no-one without prejudice or goal.  There have been moments where it was the only sound in my life and I think those are some of the best moments I’ve collected.

“I recognize this creek by it’s sound,” she said. And I was glad she said it because I had been listening only to my own thoughts.  The Gregorian chants of doubt and duty blocking out the capricious spritely songs of spring.  Looking and listening are the surest antidotes to thinking.