I’ve been down this road a thousand times. But never during the stark suspension of January. Even though the sky is a clear summer blue, and the orange sun is shining against the tree tops like a June sunset, there is a definite authenticity of winter. The evergreens are the odd ones out, while the maples and alders silently and without motion compete to show the most bark. It’s chilling.

     And now I descend . . . into the woods.

     For the first time in a long while, I see our fishpond’s bottom. There are no fish (so it’s not really a fishpond I suppose), just dead leaves in a thick blanket over the bottom, that I imagine would taste like brown freshwater seaweed. The pond is low, and no water runs from it to its sister pond. It’s an unsharing time of year; hoard what you have cause the big freeze is a-comin’.

     Susie Creek runs along the left; it’s loud for such a small volume. Hard to imagine that this insignificant creek forged this valley. It must have taken centuries of unnoticeable erosion, and for what? So that its tiny trickle could be echoed for passer-bys to hear? Or just because the creek had nothing else to do?

     Closer to the point where Susie Creek and Lyre River join, only the deciduous trees grow on the sloping flat. Towering, branching maples mostly, spaced by strangling shrubbery that have orange berries in the summer but are now stark.

     It’s been a mild winter, and such is evidenced by the shallowness of the river. Usually by this time, the water has spanned over the peninsula between the two water bodies, engulfing the shrubbery and leaving the tops of only a dozen or so river rocks exposed. I flash back: days long past, spent playing here with my brother. We would jump quickly from rock to slippery rock, then attempt the final leap to the trees that fell long ago. We mostly got our legs wet, and if the rocks were slick enough, the walk back up to the house was horrendous. Wet pants, shirt, socks, and jacket in thirty-five-degree weather weren’t even silenced by the sloshing of the ice water in our boots. However, we never learned, we just grew out of it.

     There’s a rock in the creek, whose back is sticking up out of the water and making miniature rapids. I wonder if the rock has ever touched that molecule of water before, or that one. And if so, where was the rock? Deep underground, serving as just one part of a continuous filter for an aquifer? Up high in the Olympics, in this very same creek? On the shore of the ocean, before someone who lived along this creek fancied its looks and took it home? When time isn’t considered, everything is small. If we could only get rid of time. But you would have to know what time is to get rid of it. Does time even exist? Or is it something we made up to further complicate life?

     One of the greatest things of beauty I have ever witnessed: a maple, pushed out over the creek. It’s probably been dead a decade or three, covered with moss. The fallen tree gnarls out at a 45-degree angle and directly beneath it runs the final rapids of Susie Creek. When the maple died, it was probably in its teens, ready to become one of the biggest in the area. After its last moment of life, the creek kept running, the birds nesting, the river rocks shifting and shuffling. And later, two trees sprouted up on the old tree’s back. Two young, vibrant maples standing vertical on the old twisted trunk. Life and death are one, a viscous, beautiful cycle. Creation and destruction do not struggle, they coexist. Just as without the desert there would be no forest, there would be no life without death.

     Up in the high altitudes of that tree are ferns. Single ferns poking out of the moss, then bushels of ferns nestled in the intersections of limbs. The wind and birds could be the best friends a fern ever had; they give the gift of spreading the plants amongst the heights, free from predators and the floods.

     A kingfisher sits perched at the next bend down. Does he see fish that I cannot? I would imagine such a creature has developed an eye for these things. Will I see him pull a mighty steelhead from the liquid ice with his talons? Not today.

     If you’ve never stood on a rock in the middle of a creek, you should try it sometime. You are alone on an island. There is nothing about you but observation. The sound of the water, the cool of the air. I have been to the city, and no laundromat smelled as clean as this. This is nature, the roar overpowered by the silence, creation, destruction, absolute, void. The epitome of life and Earth.

     The ascent from the woods is as depressing as it is enlightening. The now-incredibly-obvious structure of the land we have tainted contrasts severely with the untouched serenity of where I was. I notice how our man-made pond struggles to keep its body, while the archaic creek rages on.

     The primitive soul deep inside half-wishes to shed my coat, shoes, notebook and run wild into the woods. I could live so simply, amongst the ferns and rocks. But I return to my home, where my hands will regain their normal temperature and the television will be loud and the phone will ring. I’ll watch the news and soon forget what I’m missing a quarter-mile from my bedroom door.

Copyright  @2001 Christopher Mair