This afternoon, as the dirty, salty snow melt runs across the Indiana asphalt, I hark back to hiking on hot Carolina summer days and watching the cool, clear water flow from its mountain source and shimmy ever so delicately over the rocks' surface. I would give anything to spend a barefoot hour there: my feet in the water, lying on the cool rock, sun beating down from its heavenly perch with such intensity as to make me believe it wishes it could join me on this perfect afternoon.
It intrigues me how such diverse experiences, those of Indiana snow melt and a Carolina mountain stream, can be so connected to one another. I have always been drawn to water, not so much its presence but more its movement. I think this comes in large part from spending time with my paternal grandfather, a man who has shown me and taught me more about the outdoors than almost anyone else. He now owns about 50 acres in the middle of South Carolina and has moved the path of his creek several times now. I think he sees the flowing water as a thing to treasure; a thing not unlike life. So often we think that when our time comes to leave this world things stop, but they don't. And so they don't stop for us, either, really. I think my grandfather sees in the water's coursings our own journeys, never ceasing, overcoming dams and falls.
