Fish Creek Musings

I happened to ride my bike through Fish Creek Park today. There are lots of bridges over the creek and I ended up crossing 6 of them. This time of year Fish Creek is quite shallow, less than knee deep in most places, and less than 5 metres across. The river has lots of rocks along the bottom and sides. People like to play with them.

In the summer they build little dams with rocks and dead branches. During the winter they pry them loose, take them up on the bridges, and let them fall on the ice. Often they don't go through because the river has frozen solid to the riverbed. It's one way of telling how cold it is, and what the weather has been doing recently. It's common to see rocks gradually sinking further into the iced on successive days. The sunlight warms them just enough to melt the ice a little so they settle in. Then night comes and things freeze up again.

In spring the creek turns into a fairly powerful little river. One would have to be quite careful about wading across it. There are several gravel bars that take on different shapes, and sometimes trees on the river bank get undermined enough to fall over. The parks people will clear it if it falls across a path, but they leave it in the river until a number of them accumulate. I guess they are harder to deal with, or need specialized equipment they don't want to bring out for just one tree.

Today the river is as gentle as possible. I was in a similar mood, riding through the park, taking the scenic route from an appointment to home. The park is still quite green and lush. There are paths everywhere through the park. Some are the main route that are either paved or topped with crushed brick. Others are just bare dirt. Horse riders use the park and they leave behind their own kind of trail. I didn't take the most direct route, nor the longest. The longest route would involve going up the sides of the banks and back down again. It's great if you're walking, but some of the paths are a bit steep for a bicycle unless you have a lot more confidence than I do.

Just upstream of bridge one somebody had built a little dam. I stopped and listened to the water for a while. The river noise suited my mood perfectly, with just the right amount of water rushing and gurgling and mixing with air over the rocks. The sunlight played on the water ripples, but didn't hide the bottom. Unusually, the park didn't have many people in it. I couldn't hear anyone at all, nor traffic noise from 37th street. Even the overall distant hum of the city was muted. The sunlight was warm, but not hot, gently evaporating my sweat. Faint flowery and water smells drifted on the slight breeze. I leaned against the bridge railing and tried to become a pure sensory organ. Each sense complimented the others in a way that hasn't often happened to me. Listening to the river and the faint breeze helped my nose bring in the scents and feel the air. The warmth of the steel bridge railing against my hands, arms, and thigh heightened my awareness of the sun through the trees and on the water.

I thought about how much better this was than being in the office, or even anywhere else at all. Then the thoughts of the office and work drifted away. I wasn't going to sleep. I felt more awake, and more alert in a quiet sort of way. Without getting any louder, the creek gurgled through my brain, rinsing away my cares, leaving them to float downstream and evaporate into nothingness.