The Creek

A creek coursed through the woods of my youth, and my friends and I negotiated on our bikes the dirt paths that snaked their way to the water like tributaries.
We dug up worms and sat on the banks, our fishing poles either extensions of our hands or resting in the Y of a upright sticks, and caught catfish and sunfish and pike there. We waded through the tunnels over which the interstate eventually would pass and shot crayfish and birds and frogs with BB guns. We floated for what seemed like miles in flimsy inflatable boats acquired from the toy store and netted fish that we eventually allowed to fade and dry to a crisp in the summer sun. My friend Rick once hooked an eel that he swore he needed my help with, and perhaps it has grown through the prism of time, but we wrangled what I still consider to be a three-foot creature about six inches in circumference to the bank. We foraged there for snakes, too, that we sometimes vivisected with shovels. A state trooper on the highway once spotted me shooting my BB gun and stopped and yelled; I took off. He didn't stand a chance. Those were my woods.
The woods and the water offered us danger and refuge, from parental oppression if nothing else, especially the water, concealing its mysteries under opaque surfaces and vegetation and carrying us to points unknown. When we waded those waters, we sank to mid-shin in the soft bottom, the eventual extrication of our feet bringing rise to the fetid muck. A flood once buried the trails under three feet of water, and we forded our customary bike paths in hip boots and waders, acquiring a fresh perspective.
We hid pilfered cigarettes near drainage pipes and smoked after fourth grade let out. We pulled those cigarettes to our lips as smoke-induced tears formed in our eyes. Newports, Kools, Lucky Strikes, whatever we could get. I can still taste the Newports, enhanced by the allure of the forbidden, though sometimes the rains dampened our stash and rendered the matches unusable. Ditto the Playboys we discovered, the process of separating the soggy-then-dry, soggy-then-dry pages distorting the bodies of the partially clad women. Later we drank and smoked mind-altering substances in those woods.
A fence rose up at some point, blocking access to the paths down which we used to travel, long after I had left them behind. I could circumvent those barricades, but perhaps they're better left in place. I drive frequently down the long-since-opened interstate, and I point out the creek to my kids and tell them I grew up fishing there, and we look down at the creek as the water passes under the bridge.