Bowman’s Creek, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania

Now into the fall, early October—I’m reminded of a September two years ago, passing through Tunkhannock on my way home from my son’s first cross-country invitational of the year at Misericordia College.

It was wet, having rained for several days, and I pulled my car into the rest stop that borders Bowman’s Creek along Route 29. When I used to fly fish more often, this place had been a favorite, but today as I walked under the towering trees, toward the creek’s edge, I came only to see the water.

Often a rather lazy bend in the creek with a deep pool, the water rushed from upstream where everything glittered on the riffles reflecting an almost noon sun in the sky. Strong storms filled the creek freshets, the water streaming through the center of the deep pool and downstream. In this direction, with no glare from the sun, I could plainly watch the path of the creek.

As I walked along the creek’s edge, where rocks littered the low-lying shore, evidence of where the water must have run still higher, I steadied my eyes on the ground to keep from twisting an ankle or falling as I moved upstream to explore. It was here, however, that I noticed something for the first time. As I kept my head down, along my path, the water at the edge of the pool seemed to be moving in reverse, and as I looked more carefully, I could see the plants along the edge of the creek pulled upstream rather than downstream. The width of this water might have been two feet in a stream much bigger, but there it was, moving contrary to the deluge coming down the creek.

I followed the water’s path a little bit, aware of eddies that form in streams, but this one seemed much larger. As I hadn’t intended to walk very far, I followed the contrary water just a short time before I decided to leave my little discovery at Bowman’s Creek. Now, of course, I wish I might have traced it further along its path to grasp a better understanding. Instead, I have an unsolved mystery.

Indeed, I hadn’t intended to write anything about this, but the experience still strikes me. Much like the way Ralph Waldo Emerson describes his experience in Nature of walking through a simple, barren field, only to find something thrilling. Here, too, was something thrilling that I almost I almost missed. Sometimes it seems too strange. Something we expect to be predictable, like the water in that creek, can suddenly change direction. We too, of course, can be like that water—changing our direction, and like Emerson’s transparent eyeball, I’m reminded to keep looking, to stay ever alert, because there’s always something just waiting to be discovered.