https://youtu.be/bGLHadex0B0
I wake up most nights just after midnight. It is then that I do my best thinking. Last night was no different. I have nothing in particular to worry about, so I just lay there and think and inevitably end up back in Nickerson and I can hear a lonesome train whistle coming from the track that ran about 3 blocks from the house. Mostly what I hear is silence, but the silence is broken occasionally by a coyote. Rarely it is a wolf, but rarer still is a panther, or mountain lion drifting up from the river. I love the river and I especially love walking the banks of a river or creek.
There is so much to see, or at least there was back when I was a pubescent girl with a vivid imagination. Maybe it was just that back then the river and the cemetery were the 2 places I could go to escape the tedium of every day life. Mom let me go to the cemetery with no qualms, but she worried when I walked along the creek. Now granted Cow Creek ran past Nickerson on one side and Bull Creek on the other. Access was restricted when those 2 flooded which they did every Spring. The fact that the third and final escape was the Arkansas and it was always running high. I went back to Nickerson a few years back and was surprised that nothing had been done about flood control, so they were pretty much busy building little dirt dams here and there to keep the water out of their houses.
There is just something about a quiet stream far from the city. Little spiders skate across the surface where the water is still. Tiny minnows gather in still places. Baby frogs find their first water legs in pondlike places. The abundance of flowers and mosses gives hope to a world that is still living away from the crowded city. I am terrified of snakes, but in the wilderness they do not bother me at all. I just back up and go a different way. I am in their territory and that makes a world of difference. When I find one in the goose house, it becomes my duty as superior human to kill it. In the wilderness, I am the intruder.
Do you know what a crawdad house looks like? If you come upon a small hole with balls of mud piled around it, that is a crawdad house. I used to think a crawdad was a tiny lobster, but late in life I learned they were the cockroach of the creek. I still like them. When they are in the water they mostly travel backwards. When Bret was 4 years old I took him fishing at the park and he caught a crawdad. Actually the crawdad caught him because it had a grip on his hook and when he let go, he fell to the ground. Bret was terrified of the "crab". Jiraiya and I found one by the ditch a week or so age. He and his daddy went back and found it and it was nearly dead, so Bret put it in the duck water. The next morning we found its lifeless body near the duck water. We had a funeral complete with rivers of tears for the poor little crab.
If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget my life in Nickerson, Kansas. I go back there sometimes. I do not know any of the people there, but I haunt the places I used to walk. Bull Creek was a dry creek bed last time I was there, but I still recall how it could fill the banks and overflow across the fields when the Spring rains came. I remember my brother catching a bull frog and putting it in my skirt with instuctions to take it to the house and find something to put it in. I was mortified that it would bite me. As luck had it, I opened my skirt to show it to Josephine and it leapt into the house. She almost beat me to death before I recaptured it. I think I told you she was mean.
I want to go back home next Spring. I will drive 96 Highway and the State Patrol will have a man at every bridge, because the creeks all flood in the Spring. It is just something that we can count on. Since Kansas is flat it floods easily. I love Colorado, and my life is here, but I think when I die, my soul will live in Kansas.
At least I hope so!
I wake up most nights just after midnight. It is then that I do my best thinking. Last night was no different. I have nothing in particular to worry about, so I just lay there and think and inevitably end up back in Nickerson and I can hear a lonesome train whistle coming from the track that ran about 3 blocks from the house. Mostly what I hear is silence, but the silence is broken occasionally by a coyote. Rarely it is a wolf, but rarer still is a panther, or mountain lion drifting up from the river. I love the river and I especially love walking the banks of a river or creek.
There is so much to see, or at least there was back when I was a pubescent girl with a vivid imagination. Maybe it was just that back then the river and the cemetery were the 2 places I could go to escape the tedium of every day life. Mom let me go to the cemetery with no qualms, but she worried when I walked along the creek. Now granted Cow Creek ran past Nickerson on one side and Bull Creek on the other. Access was restricted when those 2 flooded which they did every Spring. The fact that the third and final escape was the Arkansas and it was always running high. I went back to Nickerson a few years back and was surprised that nothing had been done about flood control, so they were pretty much busy building little dirt dams here and there to keep the water out of their houses.
There is just something about a quiet stream far from the city. Little spiders skate across the surface where the water is still. Tiny minnows gather in still places. Baby frogs find their first water legs in pondlike places. The abundance of flowers and mosses gives hope to a world that is still living away from the crowded city. I am terrified of snakes, but in the wilderness they do not bother me at all. I just back up and go a different way. I am in their territory and that makes a world of difference. When I find one in the goose house, it becomes my duty as superior human to kill it. In the wilderness, I am the intruder.
Do you know what a crawdad house looks like? If you come upon a small hole with balls of mud piled around it, that is a crawdad house. I used to think a crawdad was a tiny lobster, but late in life I learned they were the cockroach of the creek. I still like them. When they are in the water they mostly travel backwards. When Bret was 4 years old I took him fishing at the park and he caught a crawdad. Actually the crawdad caught him because it had a grip on his hook and when he let go, he fell to the ground. Bret was terrified of the "crab". Jiraiya and I found one by the ditch a week or so age. He and his daddy went back and found it and it was nearly dead, so Bret put it in the duck water. The next morning we found its lifeless body near the duck water. We had a funeral complete with rivers of tears for the poor little crab.
If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget my life in Nickerson, Kansas. I go back there sometimes. I do not know any of the people there, but I haunt the places I used to walk. Bull Creek was a dry creek bed last time I was there, but I still recall how it could fill the banks and overflow across the fields when the Spring rains came. I remember my brother catching a bull frog and putting it in my skirt with instuctions to take it to the house and find something to put it in. I was mortified that it would bite me. As luck had it, I opened my skirt to show it to Josephine and it leapt into the house. She almost beat me to death before I recaptured it. I think I told you she was mean.
I want to go back home next Spring. I will drive 96 Highway and the State Patrol will have a man at every bridge, because the creeks all flood in the Spring. It is just something that we can count on. Since Kansas is flat it floods easily. I love Colorado, and my life is here, but I think when I die, my soul will live in Kansas.
At least I hope so!
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