One of the other major memories of aquatic bodies is the creek, pronounced crick. I understand the creed differently than the river, let me explain. As a child many of my happiest memories came from the time I spent at my grandmother and grandfather’s house a few miles down Peter’s Run Road in Tridelphia West Virginia. I remember I would always anticipate the drive and even break down the various sections of the drive. It was close to a thirty-minute drive but my strongest feelings associate to the last five minutes.
From the main road we would turn left onto Peters Run Road. For three miles we would follow a creek on the right. As I would drive I would see the hill and vegetation on the left, and a series of bridges on the right. We would pass "Ye Ol’ Country Church" on the left then a hill with a series of steps for drainage (this road was prone to mudslides). As we pulled toward my grandfather’s bridge I would begin to get a deep anticipation. The bridge was small and some would say it was a little nerve racking to drive over yet it was a strong bridge.
I remember as a child putting my hands in the creek and feeling the cool water run across them. Many Creeks in West Virginia had turned orange from the coal mines, my grandfather’s was not one of them. We were never allowed to walk in them barefoot because people had the tendency to throw bottles from their cars into the Creek. I didn’t need to walk barefoot, Sometimes I would enjoy just standing on the bridge and looking down.
In the summers on some Saturday morning’s my father and I would go and drop a minnow trap. Grandfather’s Creek fueled my ability to go fishing. The minnows would swim in the trap and not be able to swim out. As I got older friends and I would go to this place and drop the trap ourselves, sometimes we would just use a sane, at that age we were old enough just to go into the creek in our shoes, unless we could get a hold of some waders. I remember feeling the cold water rush against the waders… it was calming.
The drive filled me with anticipation. It was a different anticipation from descending into the river. The later was an anticipation of rebellion, and the joy that comes with freedom and the ability to keep from being chained. Grandfather’s house was utopia. At my grandparents house I had no desire to break the rules, actually I was filled with a desire for just the opposite. At my grandparent’s house I wanted to act well (this is not to say my brother and I didn’t get into our own stuff there). I would never sneak down to the creek when I wasn’t allowed, and I didn’t get into things I wasn’t supposed to. I was trying to be anything, I just had no desire to have my grandparents view me unfavorably.
As I got older I would help my grandfather tend to his yard and sometimes his garden. After a morning of hard work I would join them for lunch and then we would sit on the front porch, Grandma and I in the swing, Granddad on a wicker rocking chair. I once preached a sermon called, "A Glass of Iced Tea and a Front Porch Swing." To me this picture was heaven. I had no where to run to, and nothing to run from, I was safe behind the Creek, suckling at the bosom of the hills around us.
It was a different kind of freedom from the river. The river involved chaos, crossing the Creek involved peace. Cosmologically the Creek is at the opposite end of the river. The river was a place to descend into, a place where chaos ensued and we allowed ourselves to be swept into chaos, the Creek though it was calm like the words of the song, "Ripple in still water, where there is not pebble tossed, no wind to blow." The ripple in these waters came from the hand of God himself, an angel that came and stirred the water once a day.
We looked out across the big Pine, across the river to the road where cars and trucks would go to and fro busy with life. We would watch life from the outside I liken it to Lazarus looking at the rich man. He could see, but he was not there.
Memories fill my mind of the old horse swing that hung under the pine, in the summers. I remember the snow on the hill in front of and behind, being driven out on a snow day from school, Granddad getting out his old runner sled, and then letting loose. From the hill we would leave with a "swoosh," toward the Creek, we would see how close we could get, yet we could never make it in. That was fine though, the winter was not a good time to feel the cool water of the Creek.
Across the Creek we were free, but it was a different freedom. The deer would be down in the winter by the dozens, the turkey in the summer by the hundreds. The garden, full of green beans and corn in the summer, in the winter the snow like a blanket allowing the land to sleep. Across the Creek was hope, the anticipation of the drive reminding me of what is to come. Across the Creek… maybe I could say heaven, but it seems more like Eden. A body reborn, casting off the fallen nature, resurrection in its best form.
