Creek walk

It's about one-thirty in the afternoon and a pack of Snicketts sisters and cousins walk down a country road to the creek...

Sun is bright and we're all going to burn... but there's breezes and cooling water for the eager rock hunters ready to comb freshly rattled banks for unusual pieces...

Patience and little A get busy with little red metal shovels in the shallows... as little A declares over every rock... “I found an arrowhead!”

Their mothers and Aunt “Onion” pace the rocks – somehow meeting no snakes – for piles of deep red jasper and geode formations and what Sally believes must be a whole cow's tooth...

Pause in the shade of a young tree as the land bakes... but not unkindly as it did earlier in the week...

A couple of hours later back at the farmhouse... rinse off mud and algae with the garden hose... dogs barking... chickens scuttling over rocks... Irish and little A leave for church...

Sally brings out glass bottles of cold and bubbly pomegranate kombuchas and Dot's pretzels to share at the table while we discuss theology and apologetics and the spirit world... and Patience lounges on the couch browsing a decade of photos on my phone...

After five on the road back north... ruby glow in the west...