Wading the Creek

I could tell you the best place to be on a late July day when the weather person says it will be ninety-five degrees by noon -- but, I don't think I will.  However, I will tell you this.  This place is better than staying in your house in the air conditioning; there all you will do is sit on the couch and watch television, maybe do a little cleaning, and then decide it is even too hot for that.

This place is even better than going to your favorite swimming pool -- which at first you will think is the only place to be --  until you get there and you see everyone else thought so, too, and there will not be enough room to swim.  There will only be enough room to wade through a crowd of people.

You might as well be on a crowded New York City sidewalk.  Only if you were in New York City, you could walk on the shady side of the street, which would be a cooler place to be than under the sun in the swimming pool, because the water there will be warm enough to take a bath in and soon enough you will wish you were back home in the air conditioning.

I could tell you where the best place to be on a horribly hot, late July day is and I will.  The best place to be on such a day is wading through a creek that slowly meanders between two steep wooded hillsides.  Maybe you are asking yourself this:  Why is this creek the best place to be on such a day?  Well, because if you are lucky you have a memory from your childhood of wading in such a creek.  It might have been a creek on your grandma's farm, or, it might have been a creek that you waded on a family vacation to the Smoky Mountains one summer.  But anyway, if you are lucky you have that memory and it is probably a good memory.  I can tell you this: wading in a creek as a grown-up will give you just as good a memory, especially if you have a fishing pole in your hands.

If this in itself is not a good enough reason to be wading in this creek on a scorcher of a July day, maybe this will convince you.  Here, giant sycamores, cottonwoods, beech, and poplars grow along the edge of the creek, reaching up into the open space above.  Under these grand old trees grow smaller maple and box elder, filling in the void.  So when you are wading in the creek, with the trees growing in such a way, it seems as if you are wading inside a tunnel of trees.  Only the big trees have more weight to hold and sometimes their roots cannot do the job and they end up falling into the creek.

But the reason I am telling you about the trees, is so you know when you are wading in this creek, the sunlight that falls across the water has first passed through the big trees and also through the smaller trees; and even on a hot July day, when you are here, under the shadows of the trees, as the sunlight touches your skin, it does not feel at all like a hot July sun, but rather more like a warm May sun.

The best place to be on a hot, late, July day is wading through the water in this creek.  This water is not anything like the water you will find in your favorite swimming pool.  The water here slowly lumbers along, constantly flowing, but never in a hurry to get anywhere.  This time of year the creek is not fed by runoff water; it is late July, not a single drop of rain has fallen in a month -- there is no water to run off of anything.  This creek runs through cave country and is fed by underground springs.  The water you wade through here has been underground so long that it has become very cool.  When you are here waist deep in the creek and you wade through the seeping springs, chills will run up your spine.

For the time being, this creek is away from development.  There are no roads or bridges across this particular stretch of creek.  On a hot July day, you can wade the creek with a friend and not see another person the entire day.  Behind you, you can float a small minnow bucket, a seine, and a cooler.  Sometimes the creek will become shallow enough that each of you will have to grab a handle on the cooler and walk it over the rocks, but most of the way the cooler will float.  At other times the creek will become deep enough where if you are six feet tall, you will have to wade the creek on the tips of your toes, hold your fishing pole above your head and bend your neck back to keep your mouth and nose above the water.  If you are not six feet tall you will have to find shallower water closer to the bank.

Catching fish is easy enough.  This particular stretch of creek has been forgotten about for now -- nobody ever fishes it.  In the shallow stretches of the creek, you seine, enough creek chubs to fill your minnow bucket and you are all set.  When you reach deeper water, you hook a creek chub through the tail, and gently toss it out into the water in front of you.

The smallmouth bass in this creek are mean, fat, and greedy.  You would not prefer them any other way.  And because they are not used to being caught, they strike again, again, and again.  The fish are big, too.  In fact, the fish are so big, that later on, when you are talking to other fishers, you will not tell them about these fish.  Only a fool would tell somebody else about this spot.  Besides, nobody would believe you anyway.  Not every fisher gets to see a five pound smallmouth bass walk across the water in front of them.  And then, because you are standing in its world, you look down as the fish swims between your legs, thumping your knees with its mighty tail.

Later in the evening, when the sun has disappeared behind the wooded hill on the western side of the creek, you know it is time to turn back.  Even though there is still fishable water ahead of you, those fish will have to wait for another day.  Wading back to the truck, you find a big tree that has fallen across shallow water and you have a seat.  Sitting on the tree with your feet in the creek and a beer in your hand, you realize you are cold.  You have been in and out of the cool water for almost eight hours and your body temperature is low.  You are not just cool, you are cold to the point where goose bumps are popping out on your arms and legs.  If you were in Alaska on a cold, January, day you would have to do something quickly -- goose bumps are the first sign of hypothermia.  Because you are here in this creek and because this is one of the hottest days of the year, you know you will be okay.  But thanks to those goose bumps, and thanks to the fact that you have been outside all day long, you know that there could not be a better place to be on such a terribly hot, late, July day.