Beginner's Creek

Description

Many of those essays have been centered in the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho. In each of the two previous collections, River Earth and Catch and Release, the essays largely described personal and family stories that revolve around moving waters, or at least used those waters as vehicles by which to inform my writing.

At first, I thought this set of essays to be no different from the earlier ones, save for the age of the writer. Yet, a close friend recently led me to think otherwise…My friend wrote that she found this collection to be more soothing and reflective than the earlier ones. Perhaps this new perspective in my writing comes from age, or from a settling out of the disequilibrium produced by multiple life disturbances, or even from a growing reluctance to encounter difficult choices I’ve made more recently. I do know that whatever sense is conveyed in these essays cannot escape the personal history that carried me here. Trying to understand that history brings me to the point from which to return to the beginning.

I don’t think it is particularly morbid to acknowledge that I’m sixty-eight years old, and know little of the future for me—maybe twenty years, maybe thirty, maybe none at all. Ardith, my wife of forty-five years, recently asked me about my schedule for the coming week. I replied, “I don’t know, Ardith. At my age, it’s tough enough trying to remember the past, without having to remember the future, too.” I do know that my past has been infused by a family of great courage, kindness and insight. And I know too that I have been granted much good fortune to share with them my times on my beginner’s creeks.