Where Flows the Creek: a Romp in the eDimension

By David Colin Carr

"You must enter the river as you entered life: with eyes focused on the journey. Would we choose life if we were looking only at its destination?" asks the otter as he entrusts the elf to rapids he has never dared attempt himself.

Intrigued by a dream, an aging elf adventures beyond the meadow creek he has called home since being sent into the wilderness as an orphan. Driven by insatiable curiosity, he sets off with only the words of a nursery rhyme to direct him:

 

If ever you're lost in confusion,
Turn to the creek and its flow:
Meandering, falling through gorge,
Through desert, in drought, or in snow.
Step forth with a stride quick and steady.
Trust guidance to come as you go.

 

Its course from the crest of the Rockies to the vast Pacific leads him through a colorful spectrum of lives and deaths of roadrunners that heal and hummingbird historians, a halfling and a blundering alchemist, both empathic and aggressive cacti, an effete bullfrog and a giggling mama bear. The lyrical prose builds till the Deepest Longing we each carry calls his heart Homeward.

Learn the ways of water and glimpse the biodiversity of our spectacular American West. Join the ever-changing dance of creek and elf as they pass among a delightful contingent of creatures who have lessons for Rowan's ebbing life . . . and perhaps yours.

 

PRAISE FOR WHERE FLOWS THE CREEK
by David Colin Carr

"A cult classic." Nancy London, co-author of Our Bodies, Our Selves

"Rich imagery to be enjoyed in small bites . . . like chocolate." Rev. Jane Bronson

"A charming, untraditional introduction to the realms of aging and dying and death." L James Johnson, author of The Jesus Principle

"Exquisite, precious, pure delight." Connie Clark, author of Joy After 50: A Woman's Guide

"But elves don't die!" Elizabeth Pomada, literary agent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eDimension Press
• Release date: Dec 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781935736110

Book preview

Rumbling

Where have I wandered?

For whom and for what?

Through years and through weather

It seems I forgot

Why I was sent. What was the need?

As I awaken, I sense something to heed.

It still is not clear what I lost while I slept,

While I drowsed and caroused,

While I crept and I leapt.

Although I was haunted,

The Treasure’s undaunted,

Still sharp and pristine as a high mountain peak.

Wherever it’s hiding, there I must seek.

The raven’s whispered warning rumored through the meadow: Rowan’s fallen prey to a Ponder again.

I fear it’s feeding on his mind, the lynx hissed.

His walk is unbalanced, his movements are brackish, a chipmunk chirped.

It’s hard to interpret his turbid speech, a coney whined.

Best to leave him be, the raven fretted as she spread the news. Every distraction deepens its clutch.

You can see him aging day by day, growled the coyote. He’s losing his power to resist these afflictions."

Remember his last Ponder? It cast a pall over the whole valley, the bighorn ram brayed.

And the blue grouse strutted about, grousing. It hunkered down like a winter fog.

Yes, the last Ponder erupted with the currant canes in spring, the raven croaked poetic. It ripened alongside their ruby clusters in July’s heat. She paused to let the metaphor increase the majesty of her knowledge. But then it clung tenaciously, even when their dry leaves scattered.

The blue jay, unwilling to be outdone once again, screeched, But it did wither with winter’s storms!

Despite the neighborhood concerns, the new Ponder began to dissolve on its second morning, as a late autumn snowfall snuck through the crack between night and day. As it melted over his forehead, a soft clump took form in his dream as his mother’s wake-up kiss. Then dribbled away. In his disheveled pineneedle bed, Rowan turned toward her languidly and smiled. A dawn, vacant as desert, responded sullenly.

He yawned, uncrinked his neck, wrapped his cloak tighter, and snuggled deeper. But beneath the pewter-dull clouds, a ragged remnant of dream still flapped teasingly.

Rowan blinked indignantly to latch the door that protects night images against the insistence of daylight. Stretching, he refilled the body he’d abandoned during his night’s adventure. Under the drab coverlet of a sky preparing for winter, he withdrew again.

A plump cluster refused to let him sleep. Indignant, he swung his legs over the branch and sat up, spewing needles that sprightened the white coat gathering below.

The texture of his world had shifted. More than the softness of fresh snow on the scratchy dryness of summer. More than the glide of season into season. A night of relentless dreams had worn down some bonds of his familiar fixicity.

The raven, circling playfully, scrawed out and descended, coming to perch next to him.

Oh, Mavening, Rowan’s voice was climbing across the gravel of a dry creek.

Can you believe! Her head tossed out a laugh, in case anyone was hiding in the brush. "I just caught an uncouth raccoon slinking up my oak. Must have been hoping for eggs benedictine or a juicy chick tenderloin. They’re the only species I know that wouldn’t blush at eating crow in public! I hid in the leaves above, still as a lizard. I watched her climb. As she poised to pounce, I shook my wings like thunder and roared like a loon. She bolted! The first flying raccoon on this side of the mountains!

"Despite her bad manners, I gave that fat outlander a lesson in natural history. My brood had fledged on schedule by the last full moon. Though I had to cajole the last one out of the nest yesterday. I’ve never had a babe more determined to mooch at home, despite insisting the berries I brought her were unpalatably dry, and demanding tales of my erstwhile lovers. I should have left her to starve. Well, some people’s children! as my mother used to say of the brats in our neighborhood on the eastern slope of the mountain.

"I have other things to do with my life than coddle a cry-crow! I’m almost embarrassed to admit how I tantalized that sulker as I flew in circles above her with an irresistible mouse liver I took out from brunch with my girlfriends. I let the aroma drive that missy-prim-toes frantic with wanting. I swooped in, then soared. She reached up, and out. I swooped high, then dropped. She stretched. And . . . dropped—right over the side of the nest. Well, dang, if that baby didn’t grow up in a hurry! She gasped and gawked and screeched till she figured out what her feathery appendages were meant to do in this world. When she’d practiced enough to circle back to my nest, I was settled in. I mean settled in—wings draped over the edges leaving her no place to land. And to show her that her nursemaid had retired, I held that succulent liver up in the tip of my beak, then let it slide right down to its final scrumptious rest."

I can empathize with her, Mavening. I was dropped out of my nest, so to speak, long before I knew what I was meant to do. And I had no wings to lift me up. Just the flow of the tide to carry me where it would.

"But look where it brought you, my stolid friend! Here. Among us! Do I need to review how much you have contributed to this community since time immemorial? Do you have a complaint you want to file with the Council?"

I was only grieving how much terror and confusion and wandering I passed through to get from my landing to our rock-strewn meadow.

"Get over it, Rowan. We’re all tired of hearing your if-you-only-knew stanza. Worse than my own mother. At least her poetry was worth memorizing."

You know, you could leave me alone and let me go back to savoring my early morning drowse.

Sorry if I’m sullying your morning with my giddiness. Liberation from motherhood always turns me a little wild. Now scaring that raccoon out of my tree has fed the fire. By contrast, you seem stuck halfway back in dreams.

I guess I am, Mavening. A song from childhood was just bubbling into memory, he apologized.

After an impatient pause, Mavening demanded, Well don’t keep it to yourself. I need to hear it.

So he sang in a watery schoolboy voice:

Wherever the elven-folk travel,

There the road has a glow.

But if ever you’re lost in confusion,

Turn to the creek and its flow:

Meandering, falling through gorge,

Through desert, in drought, or in snow.

Step forth with a stride quick and steady.

Trust guidance to come as you go.

"Well, it is time for you to move," she said, absently brushing snow from her friend’s shoulder with her wing.

Yes, time to move. Rowan’s voice echoed hollowly, then ebbed to a drawl. But I shan’t be wintering under the overhang by the waterfall this year.

"Where will you spend the winter then?"

Moving.

Exasperation tinged her inflection. "Moving where?"

A momentum was gathering up Rowan’s fringes. I really don’t know.

Our meadow’s not so large, Mavening observed with uncharacteristic logic, that there are many options for staying warm and dry when the snow drifts.

Precisely. Rowan’s answer had such unpremeditated determination that he shook like a lodgepole pine in an earthquake—leaving his joints more enthusiastically aligned.

Precisely! The snappy tone of his own voice convinced him.

Has your Ponder taken a turn for the worse? Mavening demanded. Fess up. Your vagueness is making my craw itch. What’s this Ponder all about anyway?

How many years have I lived by the creek?

Even the egg that laid the egg that laid the egg whose confines I escaped couldn’t remember that. Stop confusing the issue with more questions.

The point is, our creek has been home since before I sprouted these patchwork whiskers. It has bound me to our meadow by a song that only I seem to hear. So I have no idea where it goes beyond Lightning-Log Falls. That’s what set me to pondering. But the Ponder has not intensified. In fact, it’s moot now.

I’ve never known a Ponder to go poof in one night. Though we’d all be grateful for that. What’s changed?

"There’s no more need to weigh, measure, theorize, postulate, hypothesize, or even epistemate. I’m simply going off to follow the creek. That’s what I meant by moving."

"You can’t simply leave, she cawed, choking. For all I can tell, it’s dementia that’s rooting under that crusty skull of yours. Not a Ponder at all. You better have a good explanation or I’ll call a meadow council. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’ve been getting noticeably rickety in recent months." She stretched her neck half a circle to the left, then half a circle to the right, as if to determine who could have spoken those words.

Uff! her voice shuttered closed and fell into her bosom. It returned in a lower register. That’s something that’s hard to say to a friend. But, well, it is true. She allowed a rare pause. OK, now. There you are, it’s been said!

Rowan’s eyes were blinking, as if her words had nothing to do with him. As was so often the case.

How many times, she continued unfazed, "have I heard you quote your mother: A goat that gambols, gets snared by the brambles. Don’t expect me to help when you slip off a slimy log and crack your skull open. Face reality, you stubborn elf: how much stamina do you think you can squeeze out of those brittlizing old bones?"

"I really don’t know. Nor have I a choice, Mavening. My dreams usually deserve no attention, merely replaying the concerns of our community that I’ve fretted over by day. You’ve heard all of them—if you’ve listened. But last night was different. That dream was filled with strange places—places I’d never imagined existed. How do such things creep inside our heads? Even though I wandered through some spectacular landscapes before I arrived in our meadow.

"But now that I’ve dreamed these landscapes, I need to find out where they exist. Or at least that they don’t. I pranced through the dream in delicate silver slippers with star-sapphire tips lighting a trail through forests with rainbow-flowering trees, past gloomy hovels crowded with Tramplers. There were valleys vast and empty. And lakes echoing the cacophony of flamboyant birds.

Scattered along the trail were images from uncountable generations that have passed through our meadow—as many as the branches on this tree I’d guess. Even faces and happenings of the time before I was sent away from my home. I say, Mavening, even as old as I am, mildew has not tainted the attic of my mind.

The snowfall had ceased and soft autumn sun filtered through the pine. The raven was weighed down by Rowan’s pensive mood.

At last he asked, Have you fallen asleep? I’ve never known you to sit still so long. You usually swoop away even while we’re talking, as if you need to cool your wingpits.

Mavening looked him in the eye. You’ve been the best of friends, Rowan. She adjusted her purchase on the branch. You’ve listened wisely to my frustrations and longings. I sensed you might need just that from me now.

Oh, I’m fine, truly fine . . . But his breath hung in the air, the sentence dangling like an unattached participle. He yawned, tugged his nose, and brushed back his eyebrows. In another moment the words that had been left suspended unraveled their tether. That song and those slippers? They’ve pushed me beyond curiosity. They’re exploding into a drive for adventure.

Is that what you meant when you said ‘precisely’ with such clear . . . umm . . . precision?

Yes! Precisely! His voice rang like crystal.

Rowan squared his slumped shoulders and looked directly at her. I’ve appreciated all the surprises you’ve brought me from your forays beyond the meadow, Mavening. But now I have a specific request: I’ll need shoes for rough terrain. Nothing fancy, please. No sapphires, no silver threads. Something sturdy and practical. I don’t even care if they match—two lefts, two rights, no matter. Whatever you find lying around.

Released from his gravity, Mavening leapt into the air, spun a somersault, and shouted, By dinner time!

Rowan shuddered. His dream had literally taken flight, embarking on his journey without him. Come back a minute, he called after her.

Pretending to be out of earshot, she disappeared into the woods. But three moments later she glided round. Settling on a high branch, she peered down. Yes?

Would you come a little way with me? Just a day or two? Of course, I’ll walk at my pace, scrambling over rocks and slogging through dense brush. While you’ll be whizzing breezily in circles. But I’d like a little company . . . while I break in those shoes? Embarrassed, he added, No further than an easy day’s flight home for you. He turned away.

A tear glistened in each of the raven’s eyes as she dropped down beside him. She raised a wing and brushed his cheek gently.

I’ll be back by spring, of course, Rowan mumbled. I’d never miss a chance to uncle your next nestful—those little beings delighted with Life. Though I confess I don’t mind leaving you the feeding, cleaning, and sleepless nights.

I was ever so grateful, too, Mavening reminisced, "as you watched over them for me when they were merely eggs and not the slightest bit of fun. You’ve taught a dozen broods to be good neighbors, explaining what the world looks like from the ground peering upward, so they’d understand those who can’t fly or climb.

"And taking turns—I tell you! I was given only one beak, but so many mouths to fill! When they’d hear me flapping up to the nest, it was all cheep! cheep! cheep! cheep! so shrill, I’d want to turn away without landing. The day I complained, you dropped by and asked them, ‘Who hatched first? And next? And next?’ giving order to their exuberant chaos. That ended all arguments. At least until the next brood. You are a dear and clever elf, you know."

Rowan blushed.

You’ve taught them patience—something they’d never have learned from me, I’m afraid! The only time I can sit still is when I have eggs to keep warm. Her croak softened. Well, it’s actually not so hard then, when I’m all dreamy and relaxed. Must be hormones or something, because the rest of the time I’d rather be off exploring new territory or searching for gifts for my friends. Now excuse me, I have a challenging assignment. Shoes—by dinnertime. She flew off so fast, her shadow smashed into a branch and scattered into shards.

Before she left the meadow, though, she dropped in on a pair of orioles and ordered up a densely woven nest of their traditional design. But large enough to hold a crusty old raven. With a strong loop to suspend it. Tell the neighbors what you need for building materials. And don’t wait! You can start weaving while they’re gathering.

She was off, with a final word flung over her shoulder like an elegant scarf: Pronto!

Feast

Dark night gathers, old friends linger.

Call for the fire, for silence, and singer.