The creek that runs through the back of my property is difficult to access. I like it that way. It keeps out the unwanted guests. I usually cut through a culvert that sits between mine and my neighbor’s property that someone cut into the land years ago to redirect the water during floods. The walls of the makeshift arroyo have been built using old grocery carts filled with rocks and what looks like old metal chainlink fence posts. It sounds ugly but it’s all grown over with wild roses, green brier, Rose of Sharon and privet so you can’t really see the carts all that well unless you are really looking for them and no one goes down there to look for them.

Someone poured a sidewalk back there once upon a time too and installed a fence at a place they marked the 100 year flood line on a map that was left behind in my house. The sidewalk is cracked and wonky now and covered in mud and vines. Nature is taking back that space. It was foolish to try to build anything down there. The fence is a tangled mess, obliterated by a flood about 18 years ago. It’s acting as a berm now catching branches and mud and human detritus every time it rains. Each year less and less of the metal wire is visible. It is being absorbed into and changing the shape of the landscape.

The rocks in the culvert where I walk are small and sharp. They slice and puncture my wading boots no matter how carefully I walk. Broken glass and old car tags are embedded in the mounds of rock, making for a pathway that will easily snag a boot and bring down a careless walker so I tread slowly and stick to the center of the culvert so I am less likely to tumble. It’s not a bad shortcut even if it is hard on my boots. I’ve been through several pairs of wading boots over the years. They all leak and wet my socks as soon as I step into the water. Some have duct tape wrapped around them because a few years ago I thought I might be able to extend their period of usefulness by covering the holes and staunching the flow of icy water but it just made the boots ugly. They all still leak. I haven’t thrown them away though. I still wear them because they protect my feet from the sharp rocks. I just know when I go down to the water that my socks and feet will get wet.

There are several boulders that form a small bluff to one side of the culvert’s exit. They define the shoreline at the bend and are craggy and covered in moss. These rocks have been slowly shifting over the past few years. One boulder has already tumbled down from the top and landed on the little stone jetty below where I used to cross from one side of the creek to the other. I often find golf balls and soda bottles wedged into the crevices between the rocks now. The lowest boulders act like litter getters. It’s unsightly on that side and I’d like to clear that debris but whenever I start poking around, things shift and small rocks tumble down into the water and I begin to imagine the boulders toppling if I tug too hard on the trash. Humans may be scare down there but their secrets and trash are deeply embedded in this wild space. They won’t be easily moved.

Sitting up on that rock overhang before heading down into the creek to go cleaning and gleaning is one of my favorite things to do when I’ve had a bad day and need to step out of the raging river that is civilization to clear my head. Unfortunately civilization and the weather have both been pretty stormy this past year so all landscapes metaphorical and literal are feeling treacherous. Both are fragile, unpredictable and ever-changing. This little hideaway though, far from the proverbial madding crowd, can be a a real life saver for the few minutes I spend there when I pass by. I just have to be careful. I certainly don’t want the rest of the boulders to tumble down on top of me and become a life ender. There have been days after big floods have washed through that I believed this could happen. It’s a little unnerving when down there alone, as I usually am. If those boulders tumbled, I could be pushed into the water and covered by rock and dirt and no one would know where to find me. Of course, I feel similarly about the human world these days so I don’t let these imaginings slow me down. I just move slowly and deliberately –in both worlds.

The boulder that has fallen does make it hard to reach the other side so climbing is really my only option for leaving my property and entering the shallower waters where I can wade and gather treasure. I could, of course, wade into the water chest deep and go around the boulder that way but I’d soak my clothes and chill my bones. Or, I could hop, skip and jump over slippery rocks downstream and attempt to scale a ladder of beech roots that are just barely holding together the bank on the other side. The land on that side isn’t mine though. I’d be crawling into someone else’s yard for several yards until I could hop down into the water on the other side of the bend. Too risky. The tree roots could snap. So could territorial neighbors.

In the past I used to duck and run quickly across my closest neighbor’s field to reach the water. There is a path at the edge of the field that leads down to the water. My old neighbor cleared that path years ago so he could come down and fire up his generator to pump water from his creek to his garden but floods destroyed that shed years ago so I was the only using that path for almost 15 years and then he died and no one came down there at all except for me and the coyotes and raccoons.

I don’t really know my new neighbor all that well so I stay on my land or down in the water and I slip and slide through the mud as quietly as I can until I pass her place and I scale the boulders at the bend that marks the place our properties meet and lower myself down into the spot where I can wade through the calmer and shallower waters alone. I wade for a good long distance away from my home without going onto anyone’s private property. I can spend hours under the bower of shade trees, picking up polished glass or pretty bits of pottery and looking for native plants and bird watching before I come to the bridge where humans cross over the water in their cars. There is a school and a park down by that bridge so that spot marks the end of my journey. That’s where I always turn back because humans are scary.

There are also fallen and snapped trees to crawl over or duck under as I move my way along the waterway. Every now and then strange things will be in the middle of the creek too, reminding me that I am downstream from the scary folks. Things like old tires, barbecue grills, and pylons get stuck in the mud. There has been a wheelchair stuck in the rocks for almost a decade. With each storm, it gets covered a little more with new layers of silt and rock and old squashed beer cans. One day it will no longer be visible. I’m probably the only person that knows that it is there. Lord knows where it came from. There is a story there for sure, but it is being buried in silt. That sort of debris doesn’t seem to wash downstream as quickly as the downed trees.

So many giant trees have been knocked down and carried downstream by flash floods over the years and they often get snagged in my bend. Sometimes they are there for just a few days between rain events but often they get stuck for years before they break away and continue their journey downstream. We used one massive tree as a bridge for almost two decades and then one day it just vanished. Others crash into my back field and snag on other trees, some time taking the standing trees with them when they depart. After a season of storms, I can get so turned around in my own back yard that I have to pull out my phone and use GPS to find my car or house or call my kids and ask them to holler down toward the water so I can follow their voices home.

Right now the water is really low. We’ve been experiencing a drought and you can only hear a slight bubbling as the water trickles around the rocks instead of over them. When the rains return, the water will burble and splash and make beautiful and peaceful sounds and when it storms again, it will roar and thunder and the water will churn red. It’s an unpredictable living thing that creek. I stay away on storm days when she is riled. The force of the water cuts into the shoreline and carries debris from places unknown. I would surely get swept away. I’ve seen the water carry a dumpster downstream! I know to keep a very safe distance during the rainy season.

When we have gullywasher storms, I watch the water rise from the safety of my second story window and marvel at the amount of human detritus that travels from mysterious places upstream. Basketballs, Gatorade bottles, Big Gulp cups and trash bins bob a long until they become snagged on the cypress knees or get caught on the branches of the trees that are temporarily submerged during these flood events. When the water recedes, and I go down to assess the damage, the trees look like they’ve been decorated with Christmas tinsel–only the tinsel is made of plastic shopping bags that have been shredded by and tangled on the gnarly outstretched branches of the trees. It’s simultaneously beautiful and horrific. I find bizarre things under the not Christmas trees too. Things like mattresses and real estate signs and clothes find their way downstream. It’s a surreal scene that always makes me wonder where the final stop is on this weird ride. There must be a giant junky graveyard somewhere filled with plastic and secrets and shame.

It’s a beautiful early autumn day here today and I am feeling the call of the water but I won’t go down there. Not yet. I don’t usually visit much in the summer because it’s pretty overgrown down there and it takes a lot to wade through the briers and brambles. The mosquitoes and ticks are pretty bad too but cooler temperatures and the changing light and the dropping acorns drumming on my shed roof are telling me that it won’t be long before I can answer the call. When the ground is carpeted with feathery rust colored bald cypress needles, I’ll know it will be time to grab my gleaning bucket, don my holey boots and head down to the water to relieve it of a little of the burden it carries. I will fill my bucket with the broken bits of other folks lives and I will bring them to my studio and clean them up and give them new purpose. I will conjure counterspells for the water and myself and my family . I will conjure some for the raging river that is civilization–the one river I will keep my distance from for a while.