The Creek - Part One

 

There is something magical about flowing water.  Every kid should have the privilege of growing up with access to a small stream.  Hours of fascination can be spent exploring cool shallows for minnows and polliwogs, or floating pretend vessels along in the mild current.  As spring turns to summer the tadpoles become frogs, to be caught, examined, and released.  Reports of a mythical, monstrous snapping turtle lurking in the gloom below an overpass adds fear and danger.  As does ice.  When it forms in the winter or crumbles in the spring, the risks of breaking through weak ice elicit dire warnings from protective mothers, even though the stream is still only eight inches deep.  Coming home with a soaker is a dead giveaway that you have survived being through the ice.

As I entered adolescence, we moved from the proximity of a small tributary, closer to a much broader and deeper channel of what was known as the creek.  Here, we could launch a canoe and navigate narrow passages through the thick bulrushes, alive with red-wing blackbirds, muskrats, and insects, out to the main channel and freedom.  One friend, the worldly Norman, introduced us to the punt – a narrow, shallow draught, flat-bottom, square-ended boat propelled by a long pole.  An interesting lesson that ultimately proved unwieldy in the towering cattails.  Swimming was never an option since the sluggish current meant a bottom of muck and leeches, and the attraction of fishing was soon quashed with the discovery that the creek contained only catfish and carp.  Beyond the far bank were rolling fields and woodland, bordered by the rail line a kilometer or so beyond.

Martin lived closest to a wider expanse of the waterway, his dead-end street giving way to three-hundred meters of ungroomed, rough, twisting trail through woods and marsh to the water’s edge.  One summer, Martin’s father decided to turn over a fair chunk of lawn to put in a garden.  Ever resourceful, we surmised the far bank of the creek must have fertile topsoil.  Martin volunteered us for a mission to obtain the precious loam for the new garden.  His family had a twelve-foot aluminum boat on a trailer, with a six-horsepower fishing motor attached, and one afternoon, armed with shovels, four of us wheeled the boat on the trailer down to the creek.

We launched the boat, climbed aboard, and set a course across the water, searching downstream for a suitable spot to harvest the nutrient-rich treasure.  After about a kilometer, we spotted a bank with exposed soil and a decent place to beach the boat.  We tucked in and rapidly filled it to the level of the seats.  Pleased with ourselves, we barely noticed that it was difficult to shove the boat back into the water.  We crossed the channel and headed home.

Given the slow-moving nature of the creek, we quickly ran into a dense mass of floating vegetation.  The motor began to choke and forward progress came to a halt.  The propeller was completely snarled with weeds.  We cleared the prop and started the motor, which immediately became re-entangled.  Forward momentum was not achieved.  Reverse also proved fruitless.  After some experimentation, we discovered that plunging a revving propeller into the water produced the most headway.  For the next hour, the routine was clean the prop, start the motor and rev it out of the water, drop it into the water, advance ten feet, repeat.

Eventually, we cleared the weed mass and made it back to the launch point.  Winching the boat onto the trailer was tough, but the rollers allowed us to guide it smoothly into position.  That’s when the fun really started.  Hauling the trailer along the relatively soft, flat terrain of the marshy area, under a baking summer sun, was arduous, and another hour later, when we reached the trail through the woods, we were about halfway.  The struggle intensified as we tried to navigate hills, dips, and tree roots across the path.  Headway was slow and our shadows were growing long when we realized we were all about to be late for supper.  The decision was made to reconvene afterwards and finish the job.  Figuring the heavily laden boat was safe from thieves, we removed the motor and gas tank, and lugged them home to Martin’s house.

When we returned at 7pm, we were all too exhausted to move the load another inch.  We began to bail cargo until we could advance the boat, ditching more with each new obstacle.  Finally, we removed the boat from the trailer, dumped the remaining dirt at the side of the trail and dragged the boat home empty.  The garden was planted without the benefit of our efforts.  Gardens can be magical, too.