Fooling and catching the trout matters a little less each time I visit this heavenly place in the woods. I’ve been coming to this creek for three decades, and almost every Father’s Day, or close to it, each of those years. I always feel privileged to have access to the creek through the generosity of the landowner. At first, as I discovered the creek’s idiosyncrasies, I was eager to try my developing skills with a fly rod and catch the wild trout that lived there. Nowadays, I’ll fish a little bit. I’ll watch my son fish.

Mostly, I make the pilgrimage for the same reason people walk the Camino de Santiago — for a spiritual journey, to in some way leave the Earth a while, ponder all that has happened and pay homage to the mysterious powers that make life possible. I think of people I’ve loved and lost — classmates, roommates, departed friends and colleagues, aunts and uncles. It’s Father’s Day so I think of my father and father-in-law. I think of my brother who left too soon. I wish they could be with us, on the banks of this old creek.

Away from all the foolish noise of life, away from the thing I’ve spent a career commenting on — the news of the day — I get to rest my soul for a couple of hours. This is my spirit-home. All I have are trees and fallen trees, flowers and fallen blossoms, ferns and bushes and thorns, the comic cackling of crows, the chirp of songbirds, the zen of running water and the reminder to be grateful for every minute of life.

Sometimes I just sit on a log and watch the water. The creek is mesmerizing. Moving water and birdsong are the only sounds here, save for a distant chainsaw now and then.
Spring drought has reduced flows in the creek this year.
Wild rhododendron
Fallen rhododendron blossoms
Looking downstream in the gorge area
Wild brook and brown trout live here
I come back each Father’s Day to maintain the ritual, to remember absent friends, and to rest my soul.

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Published by Dan Rodricks

Dan Rodricks is a former long-time columnist for The Baltimore Sun, winner of numerous national and regional journalism awards, a radio and TV personality, podcaster and fly angler. His narrative memoir, "Father's Day Creek," was published in May 2019 by Apprentice House at Loyola University Maryland.

9 thoughts on “In spiritu: Father’s Day Creek”

  6. Love, love, love this post, Dan. I gained a momentary feeling of the peace you describe just reading the post. And a longer sense of peaceful atmosphere remembering my own encounters with mountain peaks and valleys, beautiful, calm lakesides, tumbling waterfalls, and many more nature-created wonders. Thank so much for sharing this. ❤️

    Diane

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  7. I like your choice of natural surroundings that isolate you and give you both praise and solace. I too, have found those places – sometimes the desert, sometimes the rivers up around Harper’s Ferry, and sometimes the woods in which I live near the Lochraven Reservoir. But I don’t need nature “in the raw” to find refuge. Today I found it in a symphonic performance of three pieces by black composers, most artfully linked together by the incomparable James Conlon and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He made a “work” out of these compositions, welding them together and performed without the normal “breaks” between them. He took a piece by Adolphus Hailstork dedicated to the shocking death of Martin Luther King, another piece by a younger black composer exploring the implications of the Rodney King incident called “56 Blows” and a 3rd pieces by another young black composer searching for a way out out of these travesties “Awaken the Sleepers” by finding justice. You can find information in the latest edition of “Overture”, the BSO’s program publication. I am white, I am 83, raised in Nebraska and Arizona, lived in California, Washington DC, Wisconsin and now Maryland for 30 years.

    I was driven to tears by this music. I left all my troubles and frustrations {growing old ain’t for sissies!) behind and let the harmonies, the rhythms, the pathos and pain wash over me. It took me away to a place where I found hope and honesty, beauty and passion, inspiration and introspection much in the same fashion I found as a teenager chasing thunderstorms across the Arizona desert.

    Relief is where you find it in your heart. It can be from nature, but human beings are part of nature as well, and if enough of us find hope and solace in each other, we move forward toward that promise that has united us for nearly 250 years. That is MY flowing water as well.

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  9. A good read. I have to say the pictures had me trying to figure out where the place was. Previously Dan has written about fishing the Gunpowder near I-83, but the mention of a “landowner” made me think this couldn’t be the Gunpowder—also it looked too shallow. But wherever it is, D.R. has certainly found an unspoiled, peaceful spot! The water looks so clean enough to drink.

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