I left my dorm in the late afternoon, wearing the same thing I wore to sleep the night prior, a yellow poncho, and crocs. The crocs, as I have come to learn repeatedly over the week since I’ve had them, were a great decision. My pajamas – an ensemble featuring an XXL t-shirt and sweatpants – were not, for reasons which I will divulge later.

It was a nice day out – and by “nice day”, I mean it wasn’t scorching hot; the air wasn’t oppressive in how it hung about, and the sun had decided that being out for a week was rather overdoing it, and it really should just dip behind that cloud and give us all a nice reprieve. It was overcast, and as I departed, I quite thought it was going to rain. I smelled it on the wind that whipped through my hair and rustled forebodingly across the trees. The scent of rain is indescribable (or maybe I’m just bad at describing things), but it gives the air a sort of metallic tang. To be frank, I wouldn’t have minded if it had rained, as I was wearing my poncho for the first time, and I rather wanted to break it in – so to speak. But it was not to be, alas. The sky returned to its regularly scheduled program of blue, bright, and annoyingly picturesque.

Now, I subscribe to the opinion that half of the adventure is the journey and not the destination. My sit-spot was a long way upstream Carvin’s Creek, solely because as soon as I found a place I figured would work, I spotted something more interesting further up. Truly, like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun – if the sun was an interesting outcrop of rocks, or a small waterfall or something. In nature I am like a five-year old child; fascinated by everything. Because of this, I’m afraid I have damned myself to a long trek through mud and sediment. It might not be an issue now, but once it gets cold…well.

After about 30 minutes of plodding around the creek, during which my sweatpants got soaked even after I rolled them up (pro tip: don’t wear long pants in creeks!), I found a suitable place. The roots of a tree that I cannot identify jut out from a shallow cliff-face. An oblong conglomeration of roots and trunk form a seat of sorts, that I used to observe the space around me. I sit facing south, where a large tree bridges the water, (see my shoddy rendition and the real thing below). To the east is a field with cows.

 

The tree roots/stump I sat on

My sketch

The scene the sketch is based off of

The air smells musty, earthy, like mud and grime. Sulfuric almost. The odor is not too overbearing, though, and is relatively easy to ignore. The whole area is in a transient state as summer turns to autumn; some leaves are fresh, green, still determinedly stuck to their branches. Others are faded, yellowed, like an old sheet of papyrus. They fall and float downstream. East of me is a shock of purple, a deep indigo. A type of wildflower I later identify as a blue lobelia. A pale green lichen colonizes the bark of the log I sit on, as well as small patches of dark moss.

Directly beneath me is the water of the creek. It’s brown and clouded from when I stirred up debris. Eventually it settles, and the mud-tinted clarity returns so I can see the bottom, which is populated with rocks; flat and jagged and not yet eroded smooth. Occasionally a twig or leaf snaps off and falls or a fish nips at the surface and ripples undulate outward. Otherwise it is still; the current not as noticeable here.

I’ve noticed ants, black and thick and about a centimeter long, scurrying this way and that on my log. Sometimes one crawls on me and I place it back on the wood. I believe they’re carpenter ants, though I am often wrong. Crickets chirp in the east, and another insect trills in time with them. A bird warbles a call I don’t think I’ve ever heard before (see video!). Fish and crawfish dart about underwater.

Link to the video with the bird calls!

It was easy to fall into the lull of the babbling water a few meters upstream, and the whisper of the wind shaking the leaves. Occasionally, however, I was pulled rather rudely from my reverie by a tree limb cracking behind me or a branch falling into the water. I will admit my heart jolted each time, because anxiety is a fun thing that I have.

I have decided to observe the patches of lichen on the tree bark behind me, the water level of the creek (I am quite curious as to how drastically it varies in dry/wet seasons, as I have seen hints that it actually gets quite high on occasion…), and the blue lobelia that grows out from the cliff face, somewhat mirroring the clump of roots I sat on.

Blue lobelia

Lichen

Creek levels

At 3:09 I jumped back into the water (dunking my sweatpants in water again, ugh), and made the long trek back home.