It is nearing twilight, and I have come home to stand at the edge of the woods.

My ears at first can only pick up the chirping of crickets and tree frogs in the still of the South Carolina summer evening.

But then, daring to move in closer, I hear what I came for, the sweet trickle of the little creek that winds its way behind the woods and back yards and under the road of our childhood neighborhood.

A small but mighty waterway, it connects ancient mountains to endless sea.

And childhood to me.

I hear the tinkle and rush of the water, and along with it the memory of me and my sisters’ voices: “Mama, Mama, can we play in the creek today?”

We race down the street and through the patch of brambles along the side of the road that belongs to nobody, to a slab of slippery rock rising out of the burbling brook.

Shrieking and giggling, my sisters and I slide again and again down the length of the boulder into a soft bed of sand and clay and cool water, our fingers digging in beside us in the dappled summer light.

Some days we go on down the road and around the bend, to another piece of the creek that is deeper and darker, almost hidden in the tall shade of pine and oak.

In the curve of the stream, behind a house, we don’t know whose, a rope swing dangles over the black water as “Splash!” One loud cannonball each alerts somebody we are here and that we might should hide. But first, we float on our backs, our eyes resting in the clouds.

On around the road under a bridge, down a mud hill descent, more trees overshadow another stretch of creek, this section shallow, marked by a hopscotch of timeworn stepping stones.

The water dips in and out here, interrupted on a rock pile here, rippling there, always on the move, driven by a force I can’t name, yet resonating deep inside myself.

No sister joins me here as I skip along in solitude in this, my own discovered part of the creek, singing: “Climb every mountain, ford every stream.” I am Julie Andrews. I am Vasco da Gama. I am happy, free from childhood’s demands. “Til you find your dream.”

Now, on this night these many decades later, I feel the creek calling me back to the sweet play of childhood.

I also feel it calling me forward, bringing me to the secret of the creek, lessons of rhythm and flow, time and timelessness, a beginning with no end.

Indigenous cultures, including the Cherokee who lived here before we did, knew these lessons instinctively. The land for them was alive, a keeper of stories to be respected and revered, a teacher providing a sense of place and connection to something larger than themselves.

There was a time when access to such truth was easier for us too, before our society became driven by money and production, before we turned a blind eye to how we were destroying the land to get there. Even in the 1960s when I was a child, outside was more present than inside.

Ben Logan, in his 1975 Wisconsin memoir, “The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People,” wrote, “Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave. The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments, saying, ‘I am here. You are a part of me.’ “

I couldn’t have known so long ago that my playful time at the creek was building into a deep and lasting truth for now.

Standing here, listening and remembering, I feel the power and comfort of this, a melody that can yet sing me to dreams on my pillow.

I wish at this critical juncture in our planet’s story that we all find such a chance to remember.

May we not forget.

____

©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC