river

I’m glad my mother was in Ace Hardware the other day in Columbia, SC and ran into Peggy, whose husband was my soccer coach and whose son I used to play soccer with—three decades ago—and that Peggy was going to be on vacation in Pawleys and was looking for a kayaking trip. Now I owe my mother the $4.50 finder’s fee, which I’m more than happy to pay because it was an absolute delight paddling with Peggy through the back creeks of the Waccamaw river system. We took Cow House creek with its two chillaxing alligators, then cut through the canal with pickerel weed in purple bloom and swamp rose in pink bloom and river lily in yellow bloom. Up White Creek we chatted naturally about this and that, about the people we knew, with the high tide water about as calm as I’ve ever known it to be. We made good enough time to tack on Vaux Creek, and the tide was draining when we got back to the river, which was good because a headwind kicked up. When you see people whom you haven’t seen in thirty years, you think naturally about the course of your own life, how it might have flowed away from your hometown and the people you once knew, but how sometimes the waters reconnect, braid back together, on our universal journey to the sea.
​