In Barrington, R.I., in 1965 when I was 12, the water was our summer playground and the creatures within it were our playthings. The Barrington River originated in a tidal estuary, flowed through town on its way to Narragansett Bay, and beyond that emptied out into the Atlantic Ocean that edged the state to the east.
Close to home, the river edged our neighborhood. TheRoad from her house. In the woods, we feared a mythical group of mean boys we dubbed the Kids of the Path; at the water we ruled, semiwild and unsupervised, as the Kids of the River.
