The Stream posted 7/3/2008 7:59:48 PM | 2 kudos what's this?     report abuse

custis

THE STREAM

Bruce and I wound our way alternatively through shafts of sunlight and dark forest shade as we traveled along the narrow trail with our gear in our hands. Within a few minutes we came to our spot. The sun shone brightly through leafy Alders to reflect upon the dancing waters of a clear, sandy bottomed stream. The little brook was only about a yard wide but was a focal point of living activity. Immediately upon our approach we could see lightning like streaks zipping this way and that. Occasionally one would hover still in the crystalline medium and we would have a second or two to admire the beautiful little trout before it flashed away.
Here was a long abandoned pumping platform next to a relatively deep hole where the water fell over a long fallen log about three or four feet into a dark pool. This was the first fishing hole along our way. We would quickly bait our droplines and drop the worm bedecked hooks into the depths beneath the tiny waterfall. There would be either instantaneous strikes on one or both lines, or, nothing. If nothing, we would soon move on downstream. The stream was paralelled by an ancient wooden waterpipe, the original purpose of which, was a mystery.
Wound with thick iron cord, the pipe still carried water when I first saw it at age seven. Here and there along it's length, lesser or larger leaks sprang forth, revealing the pressurized contents. Within two or three years the pipe became still and empty, a decaying relic of some obsolete need. This old fluid conduit with it's kept secrets was our path through the dark and tangled vegetation in the moss hung fairlylands that bordered the creek. Following it's mossy length through the tunnel of foliage, we would fish our way downstream, ever closer to the distant bay, fishing the scattered deeper holes, turning loose most of what we caught except for the rare twelve or thirteen incher that occasionally cropped up.
I will never forget my astonishment the first time that I felt a heavy weight on my line and pulled up an enormous black monster of a salamander with bushy red gills. The Neotenic larval form of the giant Pacific Salamander. Neoteny referring to individuals who, for whatever reason, retained the gills and physical appearance of juveniles while reaching sexual maturity.
Even weirder were the larval Lamprey eels we sometimes found. Odd little things that looked like silvery snakes about four or five inches long, hanging onto mossy underwater rocks. Less common were the stumpy little Sculpin fish that we sometimes seen on the sandy bottoms. In appearance, they were identical to their cousins who frequented marine tidal pools, yet they would quickly die if placed in salt water.
These were lazily pleasant springs and summers of childhood. Although Bruce and I grew and eventually parted ways, I continued to return to that place for many years to come. The pipe gradually decayed into invisibility, but the stream continued to flow in a pleasant illusion of timelessness. My conscience would no longer allow me to harm the stream's prescious little living jewels with a cruel hook. Instead I merely watched and reveled in their living beauty.
Years later, I was a grown man living a hundred miles away from that stream. My mother called one rainy night to tell me that Bruce had suddenly died, at a tragically early age.
The rain outside pounded on my roof. I stepped out and listened to it patter on the tin porch cover. The stream would be muddy and noisy in the darkness now, swollen with the coastal rain as it carried it's load of silt and other debris towards the salty bay.
I was filled with a longing to go back there, to sit amongst the Ferns along the banks of that rushing water and remember my childhood friend over a couple of beers and a tuna sandwich. It was never to be. The men with their chainsaws and bulldozers got there first. When I finally did get there, it was a hollow homecoming. Where the trout stream flowed there was only dust. I found myself standing in a barren wasteland where the cool water ran no more.
In the morning sun I closed my eyes and felt again, the coolness of a spring downpour. Two little boys hunkered amongst the Brackens and Sedges with their droplines in the water, Spanish moss hanging from treelimbs around them, eating soggy sandwiches from worm begrimed fingers. Laughing..................

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Blogs by custis: Back to Carara The Journey----August 17--2008 August 14--2008 Travel log--August--2008 naturalist-part two A day in the life of an amateur naturalist. The North Spit--Part Four The North Spit--[part Three The North Spit--part two The North Spit The Fever Is Upon Me. The Universe, Man and Extraterrestrial Life. The Stream The Storm Biographical musings-2 Biographical musings. Lost Lands--Part Nine--Conclusion Lost Lands--Part Eight Lost Lands--Part Seven Lost Lands---part Six Lost Lands--Part Five Lost Lands--Part Four Lost Lands--Part Three Lost Lands--continued The Lost Lands--From the travel journals of Custis Long