SWIMMING HOLE
It's just a couple miles or so past the corner store. The one with the sign that hasn't changed since at the least, last July, when I came here for the first time.
MILK
NIGHT CRAWLERS
The perfect combination of things completely unrelated but never to be separated in my mind.
Another mile and you lose cell service. That constant tether unraveling. Oh no. What ever shall we do. A brief pulse of anxiety. Fading with each minute. Past a bridge and park on the side of the road. If the windows are down you can hear the falls. Rolling over and over and over the rocks. Sitting here watching and listening I wonder to myself, "would the water make any sound if there was only more water or is the force of it hitting the rocks the noise maker?" I think yes. Both of these are possible.
//
The bridge is the same combination of graffiti. Spray paint. Tags. The usual high school fodder. Nicknames; "TMONEY", "SPARO", "F$CK GOD!", "P*SSY", all the poetry is here. A proclamation, "Damn it's nice out!" It is nice out.
//
The water is cold but not icy like in Colorado. No snow melt here. I decide it's from rain. Could be wrong but I'm no geologist so I move along. It feels good on the legs and small fish nibble on my calves, a four foot long water snake swims around and slowly starts pulling itself out of the water and onto a rock. "Not poisonous!" I declare. Well pretty sure it's not. No flood of the metallic adrenaline in my mouth that I get when I happen upon a nest of water moccasins around the lakes I usually run. The human body, an instinctual machine that sends out physical danger warnings when something that can kill you is near. I find this fascinating. The snake now completely out of the water, sunning himself, or maybe herself. Poisonous or not, I figure the only way to tell is to look under it and I shan't be lifting it.
//
The kids, 13 of them, do what kids do. Climb ever higher, wet craggier rocks, my heart rate rising. As much as one would think I'm an a adrenaline junkie, I always attempt caution, especially when errors break bones. The bones of other peoples' children.
As kids left alone will do, tribes form, or rather a hierarchy evolves. No conch or violence. Just those who have discovered, sharing their treasures with the group, a fearless one considers climbing a rope, feels how hard climbing ropes really is and returns to looking for rocks to skip, chilled and shivering they lay on the black rocks and all is okay in their world.
#hugsandhi5s
