water

cycles of life

A stream pulls life to it. A watershed effect: collecting, moving, simultaneously present and passing through. Feet, comfortable one minute ago, suddenly confined by shoes and socks, work themselves bare and dip into the flow. Algae-coated stones slick the bottom, permanently cool, inviting curiosity. The water accepts the probing fingers as it did the feet, enveloping without pause or comment. Water does not complain. Eyes trained from childhood pick out the flat stones favored as hiding places by salamanders and crawdads, hands follow, lifting and turning in a smooth motion, raising a tiny storm of sand from the bottom of the stream bed. One second, two, and the storm has been settled by the steady flow, revealing…nothing but smaller stones where the bigger one had been. Either no creatures were hiding there, or they fled for shelter before the sand cloud was whisked away. It is the lesson of streams, the first lesson learned by children desirous of catching small water creatures. Most rocks hide no prize, keep turning.