The River

In keeping with the rural them, I guess I'll start by talking about the river. It has come to my attention that a childhood spent wading a river, hunting for crawdads is not as common as I had once thought. 

It seems to me that I spent just about every day of my childhood up to my hips in the river. I suppose that it was probably just the summer months. "The river" in fact, means so much to me that I could hardly explain. It has a life of its own. The river in question is the Pilchuck River, described by some as a creek, to which I always took offense. It was always a noble river to me and deserved to be recognized as such. I spent my entire childhood in the same house, my parent's still live there. You could throw a burnt pancake into the river without stepping off the back porch. That's how close it is. There was a steep scramble down the bank to get to the rocky shore. It helped if you grasped the ferns on your way down, for balance.

The river would change every summer. During the winter flood season it would swell with rainwater and completely reinvent itself. So each spring, as the waters receded, I was always eager to see what my new playground would look like. Usually there was a huge log jam right in front of the house. Sometimes a new sandy beach would arrive, sometimes a new deep pool or changes to the rocky shore. Every year it was different. The log jam was a source of eternal joy, providing fort-building materials, imaginary swords, guns, spears, walking sticks and actual tennis balls - which for some reason were always washing down the river from someplace upstream. 

The river provided fish and crawdads for capturing. Small minnows were often captured in a plastic drinking cup. Bullheads (sculpins) and crawdads (crayfish) could be caught by hand and stored in a plastic bowl or tupperware. Crawdads always offered some excitement as they were not only exotic-looking, but they pinched! And the bigger the prize, the harder they pinched. I would tote various river creatures around in a cup or bowl for part of a day and eventually release them if they didn't die during captivity. I was always frustrated at how easily they died.

One day I broke into the abandoned trailer that occupied a clearing in the woods next door and discovered a snorkeling mask. This changed my life. I began enjoying the river like never before. You can actually swim right alongside trout! They don't seem to mind you one bit. From then on, I would spend countless hours clawing my way across the river bottom, hand over hand, overturning rocks and exploring every nook and cranny I could stick my nose into. I often found snagged fishing lures, which I regarded as great treasure. Some of them no doubt my own. A river is almost never represented in the world of underwater exploration. You usually see tropical oceans, and occasionally cold water oceans, but very very rarely a freshwater lake or river. Too bad. It's beautiful under there. The water is crystal clear, the stones are more colorful when wet, there are sleek, silvery fish everywhere and the entire environment is alive with motion and activity. It's a shame so few people ever know what that's like. I can't believe how I never noticed how cold the water was. Just a stupid, skinny, shirtless kid, so enamored by the fish that I didn't notice, I guess.

That's the basic overview of the river. Maybe some other time we'll talk about fishing there or building forts, or the raw power of the winter flood, but for now, I'm out of inspiration. 

UPDATE:

I just remembered river shoes. We used to have a little cabinet that sat next to the back door. In the drawers on top were mittens and winter hats, scarves. In the bottom was a big pile of crusty, cracked, sandy shoes that we called river shoes. I think everyone in the house had a pair. It's what happened to your old sneakers when they wore out; They became river shoes. An old pair of sneakers is ideal for walking around on the rounded, slippery river rocks. When you go barefoot, you inevitably jam your toes in the wedge-like cracks between two rocks, bruise your ankle bones and do all sorts of painful damage to your feet. But with your river shoes on, you can run and stomp without holding back. Sandals won't get you there - no side protection.