A creek that nurtured my soul and lifted my spirits during bad times

When I lived in southern Mississippi, there was a lot of turmoil in my brief time as an instructor at the university there, and I had to tough it out for a year. It was the most toxic and miserable work environment I have ever found myself in. But there was no getting out of it. I had signed a one-year contract. I could barely tolerate it, but I did indeed manage to survive the experience with my dignity more or less intact. This was during the academic year 1986-87.

To relieve the weekday stress, I liked to take off into the rural countryside around Hattiesburg, just driving to be driving, having fresh, country air pour into the windows of that trusty car that had already carried my across the country twice and which caressed my care-wearied soul.

I would get on the Interstate for a few miles, then turn off on backroads heading to Purvis where I’d invariably make my way to Ward’s Hot Dogs and get a chili cheese dog, fries and a frosted mug of root beer. This was invariably my order, most Saturday afternoons when I made this trip. I’d finish with a small, soft swirl vanilla cone in hand as I headed out the door to my car. Then it would be a short drive back out into the country, and I mean real, “blue highways” country, just the kind I love. No cars, narrow, winding roads and plenty of woods and farmland interspersed with big oak trees along every stretch of road.

I’d soon be bumping down a sand track to the banks of Black Creek, one of the first National Wild and Scenic rivers in the Southeast, and a magnificent creek to float a canoe down, which I did on a number of occasions, oftentimes finishing up right at the landing I’d pull up to when I wasn’t canoeing.

Located deep in piney woods, this creek, more of a small river actually, is one of the most beautiful streams I have ever seen.

As much as I love rivers, this is the only one I have ever canoed on. I remember going out for all-day excursions with my brother and sister and friend of theirs. But I also made a number of seven-mile trips by myself, navigating a long canoe fairly well over sandbars and sunken logs, keeping up with the current, which in places could be quite swift. In retrospect, it was foolish to do this alone so far out in the country, but I was still a relatively young man then, and I had no qualms about it. Remember, too, this was in pre-Internet and cell phone days, so if something had happened to me.. well, I never thought about that.

There were plenty of times when I could thoroughly relax and enjoy stretches of calmer currents through pools and areas where the water was deep and slowed almost to a standstill. It was in those places that I could give my fullest attention to the wondrous sounds of the natural world all around me, calling out to me in birdsong, or through the rising and falling buzzing of cicadas on hot afternoons. Butterflies skipped and darted out of sunlit patches in the stream. Herons perched in trees along the bank. I drifted and paddled along, lost in the finest kind of reverie imaginable.

So lost was I in the peace of the river and the quiet all around, that when I pulled into Big Creek Landing at the conclusion of the trip, the sound of the canoe scraping the sand on the river bottom jarred me abruptly out of my reveries. The special mood of the day had to yield to more ordinary realities. It was time to head back to town. The young man from the canoe outfitter was there to pick me up. It was usually a contemplative drive back.

I have to mention another detail about some of those canoe trips. After I had shoved off from the bank at the beginning of the trip, I was rather far upstream on the creek, and for a while it was narrow, only about 30 feet wide. I liked this special stretch because the trees crowded overhead, and it was cooler under the sheltering canopy. Also, here, as farther along as well, I would look over to where the tiniest littler feeder creeks, some probably springs, merging into the main stream in a tiny miniature version of the larger creek it emptied into. It was like there was a little delta formed at the mouth of this tributary, and the water flowed seemlessly over white sand into the larger whole. Sometimes I would get out of the canoe and explore these tributaries, or, if they were larger streams, I’d take the canoe on a side trip up into some of those areas near the meeting of waters.

When looking at detailed maps, I’m always curious about those convergences of creeks and rivers. Once they meet they are larger and faster-flowing, but the smaller stream is no more. That’s the way it must be, though, for they all have to greet the ocean eventually.

I would occasionally write about these canoeing experiences in my journal, as I did on September 13, 1986:

Relaxed this afternoon in the shade of a sandbar beside Black Creek. The stream flowed by as moving leaves on the surface marked its passage. The water level was the lowest I’ve yet seen for the creek, and will get lower as the dry month of October approaches. Occasional breezes stirred the leaves overhead, cicadas droned in the trees, and yellow butterflies skipped and darted above the surface of the water. I could have fallen asleep had I perhaps been lying on a sleeping bag or thick blanket. Passed a very pleasant hour in thought. Didn’t even open the book I had brought along to read.

Those days spent canoeing, or walking along Black Creek, were the best thing about the two years I lived in southern Mississippi. Depression and anxiety faded away, down the creek to the Gulf of Mexico.

Still flows the Duddon, and shall forever flow, wrote the poet William Wordsworth. I think of Black Creek that way, too.