Where Do You Want to Be?
Picture yourself where you most want to be. Is it here, right now, where you physically are? Are you at peace in your current surroundings? When you close your eyes, inhaling deeply, do you feel yourself contently grounded in the present? Or, do you hear faint chirping? Crickets. No, not crickets, tree frogs. Spring peepers.
Water is tumbling over smooth, silver-grey river rocks slick with algae. Your feet slop and squish out of mud puddles as you swing your legs over fallen trees. Oh, you aren’t there yet?
The wind is whipping strands of coppery hair across your freckled cheeks. You are haven’t quite reached the mill. Your eyes are focused, your reflexes are quick, even though you are bursting at the seams with daydreams and plans.
Wet gravel crunches under the tires of your ’87 Gambia red Volkswagen as you pull into a patch of dirt. Careful now, don’t dent the bumper or pop a tire on a low buried stone. Or worse, slip off the edge and slide down the muddy cliffside into the creek. Sure the car is old, but you are new. New to driving, new to almost everything. Thump, thump, thump, as you roll up the old school manual windows. It is time to pack up your stuff. You don’t have to endure another track right now from that Joan Jett cassette; the same tape lodged in the deck since May.
The journey isn’t far. Just a brief jog up a crushed limestone slope, between the humbling pair of dark, steep oracles, watching over the gate. Less than mountains but more than boulders, these grand rock faces feel like they could shield you from destruction or just as quickly smack together like a vise.
Passing by the stone sentinels, you turn right into the underbrush. Your feet slop and squish out of mud puddles as you swing your legs over fallen trees. There is an island of sandy mud and rock and water-soaked logs waiting for you past the smooth, silver-grey river rocks slick with algae. You sway a bit, slip a bit, but you make it unscathed to the massive tree with the thick, tangled roots growing right into the creek water. Your favorite tree.
A summer or so ago, you were here with rowdy friends. Everyone waded right into the brook pond (a fifteen-foot bowl chiseled into the bank) as if there weren’t massive snappers down there ready to devour a toe. The drop off was just as sudden as you feared, plummeting you down into the murky depths of the whirly-pit. Except, you launched off your friend like he was a springboard, simultaneously shoving him into the water as an alternate sacrifice to the river gods. What selfish things we can do when we spin into survival mode.
In your defense, a sizeable snake did cut through the water along a girl’s bare waist. This isn’t a community pool. None of you belong here.
Crushed pilsner cans, bits of burnt wood, and a few unmentionables provide evidence that someone else’s rowdy friends were recently here, too. But today, you are delighting in the earthy, silty musk of the creek’s tranquil island alone.
Well, aside from the spring peepers, songbirds, butterflies, and snappers, that is. No joke, you’ve seen scaly, spiny, grumpy hell turtles of prehistoric proportions lurking in these waters. Even now, you are testing a crawdad to find out if he’ll grab on to a twig. There are always lots of crawdads here. And water skidders. If you are quiet, you might catch a glimpse of sunnies.
Employing a log as a rustic park bench, you rummage through your bag for a sketchbook and pens. If any living thing deserves to be immortalized, your favorite tree definitely does. Scratch, scratch, scratch, inky lines scramble to form the curves and twists of your favorite tree onto paper. You always did struggle to portray the utterly random chaos of waving leaves, glinting in the sunlight. Gnarly wood and curled branches, however, you’ve got that down to a science.
“Miss… miss…”
Don’t look up from the page. Maybe he’ll walk away.
“MISS! You’ll need to move along now.”
Great. You haven’t nearly finished sketching the –
“The landowner called with a complaint. Reported trespassing, and I need you to return to the trail.”
This isn’t the first, or the last time you’ll be uprooted from a peaceful sketching session by an officer of the law. Fortunately, he is several slabs of river rock away, so you wave and lumber back to the designated path.
The path used to be part of the railroad system. Now it is a haven for cyclists, equine enthusiasts, whopping bullfrogs, and feisty chipmunks.
Is this where you want to be? Somewhere else, then. Can you go there now?
