In summer when I was a kid in Peoria, we used to go down to the crick and catch blue gills and frogs using bits of raw bacon on hooks at the end of the most rudimentary fishing poles. The creek was mostly just storm water run off that wended through the still undeveloped ravines behind our suburban neighborhoods. Some places, it would pool up into little habitats and watering holes for rabbits, squirrels, minnows, and small fish and amphibians like the blue gills and frogs we would catch and release. Water bugs would skate on the surface and mosquitos would lay their eggs in the millions. Robins and jays and blackbirds were plentiful. I look back now and sometimes imagine it from the blue gill or frogs point of view. A strange morsel of alien animal flesh and a painful tugging at the cheek. Up into the air struggling in panic. A hand bigger than my body encasing me briefly. Another sharp pain and back into the water of my home. It seems kind of a frivolously cruel thing looking back on it that way. But it was my connection with the natural world outside of school, or a zoo, or TV shows starring French scuba divers visiting colorful coral reefs or wild-life adventurers wrestling pythons or crocodiles between insurance commercials. The crick was our Walden - our Galapogos. Now, kids rarely get to see even that much.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:09:29 +0000
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