When they were little, all strapped in neat and safe in car seats and booster seats and the front seat was my domain alone, I would pack the minivan with a whole cooler alongside the sand toys and beach towels.
We would drive into the state park and park down by a picnic pavilion beside a quiet creek. Just deep enough for me to sit in with a chair and a book, though I didn’t do much reading then.
They would climb all over the banks and under the rhododendron. Children being children, they would restack rocks and alter the flow, until later, when my mother told them about leave no trace and they reluctantly took their dams apart when we left. Lunch would be sandwiches smashed in the bread bag and they would eat all those and the chips and the box mix brownies and practically lick the pickle jar when nothing else was left. I’d take them home, sun-kissed and sleepy, grateful and regretful for one more day of summer down.
Later, as naptimes ceased, we took friends with us to this special place—as though it belonged to us and not the state of Georgia. The moms would gossip in our chairs and alternate who had to do the rescuing when a child stranded themselves on a rock that seemed too far away.
But the last time we lingered on the bank, scents of hot dogs and wet moss hanging in the air, tossing boiled peanut shells into a bag, my older children lamented being too big for creek days. They want to swim where the water is deep, where they feel a tad bit reckless, I suppose, for diving in although I’ve raised them to respect the signs and warnings.
But this summer, we drove dad’s truck down a dirt road because the minivan scrapes the gravel and the fancy new SUV doesn’t feel as suited to the outdoors as the brand would have me believe. I left it parked in the garage as we followed vague directions into the woods in search of a new swimming hole.
Tucked away in the forest, we hiked a near mile up and down the mountain slopes. But an easy trail, in comparison to some. I won’t be hauling a big cooler but I filled the backpack with granola bars and apples alongside a library book that might actually get cracked open.
Here, in this wide bend of the Chattahoochee, the water runs swift and white before pooling deep and dark.
There are plenty of rocks and shoals, but the DNR has laid a wonderfully sandy beach, and the sun sets down the river and streaks the silver water all pink and orange in the evening. They scampered up the water like wild things, like children of another time, and I watched and smiled and knew.
We hadn’t lost those easygoing creek days. We’d simply needed to upgrade to a new one.
Lindsey P. Brackett writes books and makes pizza. Find her latest novel, “The Bridge Between,” anywhere books are sold. Get a free novella at lindseypbrackett.com.