We trudge down the pathway, past what looks like old underpasses made of stone; these are just narrow tunnels beneath the hill. We cross an old roadway– asphalt overtaken by weeds and shrubs– and we turn down toward the sound of running water.

“This stream won’t be as warm as the last one, but there’s a decent angler’s path alongside if you wanna follow.”

We’ve just come from striking out at Pete’s bass stream. It’s a little too early in the summer for them to be there yet, but this creek is an excellent trout stream and should be good for some brownies. Or so Pete says.

Pete goes straight to the head of this particular part of the stream. The water pours out of two of those stone tunnels that are built into the hill beneath what looks like an old railroad bed. It swirls through a sizable pool before carrying on down between the banks, bubbling over rocks and along the strong arms of fallen trees.

I sit down on one of the dry boulders at the base of the pool. There are reasons for this. One, it’s dry and not muddy. Two, it’s out of Pete’s casting radius. Three, it’s a great place to watch. The stream. The birds. Pete.

Whenever I come fishing with Pete, I always end up watching rather than fishing, and it’s not that I wouldn’t learn how to fish. It’s that the simple act of being here gives me just as much satisfaction as catching a fish. I think I understand why so many men and women like to slip away for a day, an hour, a week to the water.

Pete picks on me because one of my 21st-century vices is to watch ASMR videos on YouTube. (Think cute, modest Japanese head spa rather than cleavage lady suggestively eating foods she’s not actually eating). But a creek— with its rapids and its pools, its birds and its critters— is God’s ASMR. You step down into that creekbed, and even though you might be yards from a road, you step into another world. The sound of the water, the birdsong, the rustle of critters on the bank— they work together to turn off the brain. All of the thoughts, any worries or stress you stepped into the water with just melt away, carried by the stream.

As Pete moves down the stream, I begin my nomadic wandering, moving my perch as he explores all the promising spots. We don’t actually say all that much to each other. We’re just enjoying the water and the day together.

The sun casts shadows across the water, little patches of stained glass that flutter in the current. The trees grow warm near their bases as the day grows long. The sunshine pools above their roots— a cup of gold on the forest floor.

“Pete, there’s a huge one just there!” I spot the shadow in the depths, swishing its way around tree roots. It’s as long as my forearm and fat. A creek shark.

We learn later from a gentleman on our way back out that it’s most likely a muskie. Stranded here. A threat to the trout. He says he caught it and wished he’d kept it to eat so it wouldn’t wreck things in the creek, but he let it go for reasons I couldn’t quite hear.

___

At some point, we move down far enough on the creek, the angler’s path dwindles down to a dead end, humped over with beaver debris and deer thicket.

“You could wade here pretty easily,” Pete says. “It’s not that deep. And it’s not as slick as the last creek. That’s the nice thing about colder water. Those slimy weeds don’t grow on the rocks.”

I’m not great at wading. Maybe it’s my big flipper feet or my wonky balance, but I’m slow. And I always manage to find the rocks that stick up sideways, down which I slip like a greased-up kid on a waterslide.

The water is too cold to take a dip today.

Everything below my ankles turns instantly to ice. It takes my breath away for an instant.

The fish Pete catches aren’t huge. Some of them are almost bait fish. But they are colorful and wild. Their fins and tails intact.

Once I get in the stream with him, I become the fish photographer. 

“This one’s a brookie.” He shows me quickly. “See its redish fins and the way the dots change to worms on its top? That’s a brookie. I love brookies.” He lets it slip out of his hand gently, and it disappears into the water. “I think that might be the biggest Brook Trout I’ve ever caught.”

I’m not sure how far down the stream we are when I find a rocky shingle on the edge of a small island. It is flooded with sunlight. I sit down and sun myself like a turtle.

The whole time we’ve been in the creek, we keep hearing cars honk their horns. But we are out in the middle of nowhere with hardly a house nearby.

“What do you think they’re beeping at?”

“I think it’s that tunnel we saw just past the access. There’s a sharp curve on the other side. I think people beep to let anyone on the other side know they’re there.”

“Huh.”

The creek doesn’t do that. It doesn’t warn you about what’s around the bend. You’ve got to be brave enough to plow forward and see. Maybe a kingfisher darting through the air. Or a beaver tree gnawed to a precarious hourglass. Or maybe a creek shark drumming at the water’s depths with its tail.

One thing is certain. Nature forces you to be present, or you might miss the way the shifting light changes the face of everything. That the dying sun moves from the roots to the leaves and shimmers in the air above the haze of hatching bugs and the ever-flowing water.