A few thoughts… On time and water

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

It’s the summer solstice and I’m walking through my lower briar patch. If you know me, you may know what I mean. If you don’t, you won’t. My stroll is through a place that only about .0000000012% of humans know about; roughly 100 people. I’m one of those few who visits on a regular basis. It’s out of the way, you might say. 

A good clearance four-wheel-drive is necessary to get to the spot where it becomes necessary to get out and walk. After getting out of said vehicle, a visitor will walk uphill, upstream. And dodge devil’s club. And slap mosquitoes. And watch for bears, which, for me, is a pleasure, because I like to see bears. Just the other day, in fact, a momma bear and cub were wandering my place. I was pleased to see her and it. I say “it” because it’s not advisable — or easy — to determine the gender of a bear, especially if it’s a cub with a mom around. 

That’s not the point here, even though it’s a good point. The point might be that the part of the planet where I am on this solstice evening has been known to me for more decades than I care to admit to. My first trip through this place was when I was about 3. Maybe 4. And, I have been coming back ever since; sometimes with others, but more often alone. 

To say the place is beautiful is an understatement. I think it verges on spectacular, but I’m prejudiced. Its spectacularity — new word, Webster! — is not a long view of a big chasm sunk into the planet or some craggy summit poking up into the sky. It’s all in the details, myriad facets stuck together in such a way that the best way to try to absorb it is to walk slowly. Stop often. Look around. Listen. Be still. Become part of the place. Let it become part of you.

There is water here, that basic human need trumped only by oxygen. Good water; water that I am not afraid to drink unfiltered. I know where it comes from, having followed the thread of it to its high sources. The water — some of it — gets sucked up by the aforementioned devil’s club, and all sorts of other wild things; deer, cedar trees, cottonwood, alder, hemlocks, white pine, vine maple, bears, huckleberry brush, queen’s bead lilies (many, many this year), golden thread, wild strawberries, elk, moose. And me. 

That which doesn’t get removed locally for the good of these and other living things flows on and out of the mountains and joins the larger stream far below to benefit other plants, other critters, other people.

Water has made this place what it is today. After taking over from the glaciers 12,000 years ago, it has done a great job of creating a chunk of heaven. This bit of paradise is green, peaceful and filled with the white noise of falling water; water dropping off of rock ledges that formed maybe a billion years ago; dropping off of cast-offs of those ledges that dislodged and began rolling downstream maybe 10,000 years ago; dropping off of the boles of trees that fell across the creek maybe a hundred years ago. The resulting effect is one of pervasive antiquity. 

Even in its antiquity, there is always something new to see. The stream is not static, nor is the forest surrounding it. Rocks move downstream. Trees die and fall over. Or just fall over. Alder sprouts in profusion. Devil’s club proliferates. Huckleberry patches appear in the wake of those ursine favorites of mine, and ancient stumps and trunks are disassembled by the same in search of ants, grubs, bees and other bearish delectables. 

The creek mutates in the long term, following the path of least resistance in minute and momentous ways. It mutates in the short term at the whim of season and weather. The trail mutates at the whim of the stream. If the creek decides to run down the trail, there’s no talking it out of it. The trail adapts. The elk and moose and bears see to that, and I do my part, too. 

The shadows here this evening are deep and getting deeper. By the time I get back to the four-wheel-drive, it will be near dark, but I will take my time. This place is all about time; time to form, time to re-form, time for things to settle into good order. Even after all the decades since my first entry into this place, if I want to feel very young, a return trip will do it for me. 

Sandy Compton maybe should be writing about greedy planetary corporations bent on destroying the Earth and its creatures for profit, but he needed to take time away from thinking about that. So, he went for a walk. Find his books and other writings at bluecreekpress.com.