Credit: Kathleen Scavone
Mellifluous creek music merges with the distinctive call of a pileated woodpecker as I visit Bradford Creek in South Middletown. Willow and fern leaves drip with precipitation while a slow-moving newt and an even slower banana slug navigate the riparian zone at the creek’s edge. They say that metaphors about rivers can symbolize the passage of time, a journey, or a transformation. If you spend enough time on a creek, it whispers the storms it has undergone. It tells of energy and translates the story in its movement. The scent of the creek’s wet rock and dark roots along its cool, blue-green ribbon provides possibilities. Water striders, sculpin, crawdads, and beetles are the characters under the cottonwoods’ shadows.
Here on the creek is a microcosm of life in Lake County. A corner of this vast county that speaks to me with each season, each critter I am blessed to view, each of the myriad flora and fauna that live along its shores. Fox antics, tree frog acrobatics, piebald deer, dragonfly drama, and oh, so much more have performed their now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t magic acts. How many times have I smiled at the thought of, “If I hadn’t decided to look over there just now, I would have missed seeing …” You fill in the blank.
Alder, oak, elderberry, willow trees, and more line the creek and speak their volumes. From a mast acorn year with its bounty of shiny brown nuts to the worm-like structures of alder’s dangling clusters of catkins, to the soft scent of an elderberry bloom, I am reminded of who these lands supported for thousands of years. Wappo Indians thrived in South Lake County over the mountains into what is now Napa County. Did they find comfort sitting against the back of a moss-softened oak as I do now?
Gregorian chants known as ‘the beautiful mystery’ come to mind while listening to the modified music brought about by copious April showers as the creek hurries by. Many genres of music, including country music and chants, have a way of providing a means of focus. I confess that I have been reading Louise Penny’s detective novels based in Quebec. Her novel, The Beautiful Mystery, gave details about the mysterious powers of Gregorian chants and the insightful effects of calm reassurance they can have on both chanters and listeners. Bradford Creek is a beautiful mystery.
Whether you are devoted to cloud watching, music, or history in the landscape, there is majesty and dignity in earth’s voices. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best, “He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments is the rich and royal man.”
