It is fun to be back at the place of my childhood summers. You might say that there are three streams that flow nearby each with its own flow and traffic. The property isn’t quite square with the world, so its borders aren’t exactly on the compass directions, but I’m simplifying for the purpose of this blog post. To the south is the highway. The highway that runs along the border of the property is no longer the main road. After I grew up the Interstate Highway was built with its twin bridges about a mile farther upstream. The bridge that is at the corner of the place used to take a lot more truck traffic. We’d hear the jake brakes as the westbound trucks slowed to cross the bridge and enter the town. The eastbound trucks were accelerating, shifting from 7th to 8th or 9th gear as they crossed the bridge, making about 45 mph up the hill and going through the rest of their gears on the flat at the top. I spent some of my childhood hours under that bridge. I could cross the river by walking on the girders that support the highway. I could feel the vibration of the bridge as the trucks crossed. I could lower myself to the island int he middle of the river and explore it without getting wet.

I have a cousin for whom that stream defined a big part of his life. He spent many years and millions of miles driving big rigs on the highway. He can tell the difference between a Volvo 670 and 780 at a glance. He can discuss the merits of Peterbuilt, Kenworth and Freightliner. He can go on and on about his dislike of the Eaton autoshift and Volvo’s similar system that are, in his words, “ruining the profession and making it so that idiots can drive trucks.” It won’t be long, he says, and you can mark his words, before computers will be driving the trucks and there won’t be any jobs left for real people.

A mile downstream from the place to the north is the railroad trestle crossing the river. The engineers blow the whistle before crossing the trestle and each has a distinctive way of making the sounds. We could hear them in the night and also hear the rumble of the trains on the rails as they crossed the river. We were warned to never cross the river on the rails because you can’t outrun a train, but we did so on occasion when there was no train in sight or sound, feeling like we were undertaking a dangerous mission. We climbed on the trestle and floated beneath it on our inner tubes.

I have another cousin who was captured by that stream. He worked for the railroad all of his working career until he retired, mostly installing and repairing electronic switching equipment and later managing sections of track. He can tell you whether the train is carrying grain or coal or consumer goods. He knows the code of the cars in the train and can tell you who owns or leases them, where they are bound, and often what is in the containers. He knows why some wheat and barley from Montana travels by train and other travels by rail. He can explain how the coal traffic used to go east, but now heads west since the disaster with the tsunami and the nuclear plants in Japan. He knows about unit trains and the locations of the large loading and unloading facilities.

It is the third stream, defining the eastern edge of the property, however, that has defined my life. The boulder river starts in the high country with the drip, drip, drip of water coming off the edge of the glacier and melting from the snowpack, running into rivulets that run into streams that run into forks that become the river. The East Boulder joins the Main Boulder about 19 miles upstream and the West Boulder joins the combined flow about 3 miles later to make up most of the flow that runs by our place, with a couple of other creeks added in along the way. The river is a living entity that snakes and turns and moves. Right now it flows nearly 100 yards farther away from the building at our place than once was the case. The shape of the stream has changed, also with the sand deposits in different places and the deep pools where the big trout swim, changing location as well. It is, however, the same river, the mighty flow of millions of water droplets heading down to the Yellowstone two miles from our place - a mile beyond the railroad trestle. I’ve floated down that stream many times and fished it so many times that I am quite familiar with both banks - at least with the way they used to be. Lots of trees have fallen and new ones have sprung up over the years. And the river reshapes its banks at will. If you live by the river, you can hear the rocks clattering as they roll about and become even more smooth and rounded with the flow of the stream. We played, paddled, waded, swam, fished, fell, and generally messed about in the river all of our growing up years. It is the river that taught me that I am waterproof. Getting wet is not the worst thing that can happen. It was the river that taught me to go with the flow. You will always lose if you fight the river. You can run faster than the river flows on the shore, but in the water, you will go slower. The force of the river is great enough that you can’t stand in water up to your knees.

And ever time I come to the place it is the river that I hear the most. My ears have learned to filter out the sounds of trucks and trains and move them to the background. I’ve lived in other places for nearly five decades now, but each time I return, I remember that I am a child of this river and its music restores my soul.

I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.