Snakes, Squirrels, Rabbits, Frogs and Passage To The Sea

SNAKES, SQUIRRELS, RABBITS, FROGS AND PASSAGE TO THE SEA

     The "ravine," where Ramble Creek trickled all the live long day, was more than just a place to find frogs and throw stones in the still pools. I saw it as a natural portal onto the rest of the wide and amazing world. I knew the creek rambled its way to Lake Ontario, and from my early forays into school geography, I knew that one could travel to the Atlantic Ocean from there, and that made this little amber creek, dazzling in the sunlight, so poetic and alluring to me…..as if it was the clearest path to liberation, and eternal freedom from my oppressors. I loved my oppressors, don't get me wrong. But it's just the pull of nature, for a kid to want to leave the nest before the wings were strong enough to enable flight. From the moment I first arrived at Ramble Creek, as a wide-eyed child, in my father's arms, I wanted to get down and explore. One of my first serious adventures, down in the hollow, was during the winter, when a small section of the creek behind the Creighton Apartment block, had been cleared for skating. Merle had acquired some "Bobb Skates," and this was my first skating lesson. It didn't go well. There were quite a few other kids, that day, managing to stand, and eventually, I learned from them how to balance upright. Even from skates, I saw this as a watercourse route leading somewhere…..beyond what I could see clearly down the ravine. When I'd come down to its embankment, on early summer mornings, so cool and refreshing, I wondered what it would be like to sail off on a raft, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, toward all kinds of amazing adventures. I can not tell you how many plans I had, to build the kind of raft, that I could sail out of the creek, and into the expanse of a Great Lake. I was always looking for newly fallen trees, so that I could harvest the trunks to add to other forest waste, to strap together for a good, secure, floating raft. The crazy thing about this, is that I knew full well, the only way I could ever do this, was in the spring, when the water was running fast and deep. All the children in that neighborhood were ordered away from the creek when the water flow became substantial. I knew the current would have killed the raft before it drowned me. I'd already faced near-death once, when I fell through the ice with my snowsuit on. And as I was up to my chest in cold water, the current was tugging at my boots, sucking me below the other remaining section of ice further down. As my mates ran like hell, some guardian angel was able to alert my mother, and possibly Anne Nagy, (I'm not sure of this), who somehow managed to pull me out of the current, toward shore. My boots and snowsuit were so full of water, that it doubled my weight, so it wasn't an easy extraction whatsoever. I know that the cold water had begun sapping my capability to stay upright, so however Merle arrived on that scene, and whoever got the message to her, my life was hanging by a thread, in the place I loved so dearly.  "You nearly drowned today Teddy," she said over and over that night, as I sat covered in blankets watching the television. I know she was right, as I was the one facing my own demise. This event came after I had experienced the vision of an angel, during a terrible illness, and I always wondered if the same angel had something to do with my rescue. She may have been getting a little concerned that I had a death wish. In later years, I would have two other near-drowning experiences, and another in a serious motor vehicle accident with my school chums.

     Even though I came within a whisker of slipping below that ice, on Ramble Creek, and washing out to Lake Ontario, (that I had wanted to do onboard a raft), I never feared being in that ravine, or near the flow of water. I was a little more respective about walks on thin ice after that episode. I also had a few questions for my mates, and why they had whipped off home, when they should have been hauling my wet ass our of the brine. They were scared of getting in trouble. Geez, is that all? In that ravine, I saw nature at its most gentle, and I watched its rage, when, after a storm, or a quick spring melt, it was a raging torrent to its mouth into the lake. I watched all the creatures react to these circumstances, and what the weather did, to keep them in hiding, or in cool places when the climate was hot and humid. I watched the minnows and water spiders, the snakes sunning on the flat rocks, old chubby raccoons ambling along the banks, and the rabbits that would all of a sudden dart across a path, into the tangle of vines and shrubs that grew thick and hardily in the basin. The hue of the water, in Ramble Creek, changed throughout the day, depending on how much sunlight spotted down through the hardwood cover. It might seem amber to almost golden, in sunlight pockets, and serpent black, in the maturing low light of early evening. The rippling water gyrated in concentric, moving shadows, silently in the sandy pools, and when the water was particularly diminished, the flow would become turbulent with white water, breaking over the above surface rocks. The crows and chirping birds flitting from bough to bough, gave this place a jungle aura, teeming with life forms……to the thankfulness of the patient voyeurs, who were satisfied to sit and watch a natural day unfold.

     There is another foggy memory I have, that I have played with, and embellished to serve specific purposes, for years, and in dozens of stories……, about a girl I had great affection, as a wee floppy-eared lad. Her name was Angela, I believe (but I may be incorrect), and she lived in a house that backed onto the creek. I knew her from my class at Lakeshore Public School, and she knew me best, from watching our little Harris Crescent Gang, marauding through the ravine, like Tarzan and the Apes. She'd play on a creaking old swing set, in her backyard, waiting for the next time Teddy Currie might pop out of the jungle. One day, after school, she invited me to her house to play.  I didn't have girlfriends, except Ray Green's sister, Holly, who was just a good mate, so I was a little nervous about a girl summonsing me to an undetermined social encounter. I did emerge from the brush, and tangle of vines….(from a plant species I never identified), and followed the path she pointed out, as the best way across the creek to avoid a soaker. I didn't make it anywhere, without wet feet. Angela invited me to play on the swing set, which I concurred would be okay, and while we didn't talk, I could feel an aura I wasn't familiar with…..and as it turned out, it happened to be my own. Something clicked here, and I was getting pretty electric, swinging alongside this beautiful angel-sent creature. The only crush I'd ever had, to that point, was the pop I used to buy at Walmsley's Variety Shop (I think this is what it was called). Orange Crush. A human crush, oh dear. I was a rookie at this kind of stuff, and as my mother told me bluntly…….."Teddy, you're not dating any one until you're sixteen." She started telling me this when I was five, and couldn't have cared less if I ever dated. So here I was, still pretty much a kid, with a date, on a swing, and my God, the old heart was going pitter-patter. We were on the swings for about an hour, talking a little about school, and friends from class, when I heard the Herculean bellow of my mother, on the hillside above (which was pretty much the apartment parking lot), commanding me to come home for dinner. I remember being shocked at how long we had been swinging, as it had only seemed a few moments. Possibly Merle had a suspicion I had found a femme fatale. Angela didn't want me to go. Which was funny, because I knew enough from my occasional glances in the mirror, that I wasn't the cream of the crop, of good looking lads in my grade. My big ears usually kept me in the "best left to mature" grouping of classmates, with thick glasses, pants pulled up to their chests, and those who had odd and bushy uni-brows. Generally I wasn't a keeper, but that supposes, someone like Angela had reason to make that judgement. On this occasion, she decided I was worth a wee and measured investment of emotion. On a trial basis.

     As I headed to the creek bank, to hop the flat rocks to the other side, Angela grabbed my hand, and I stopped in my tracks.  "What's this," my body asked my soul? I stood with her for a bit, watching over the babbling creek, in this widened portion nearing the lake, and when I looked at her, gads, she had tears streaming down her cheeks. Again I asked myself, "What's this all about?" I went from being shocked that a girl would find me "swing worthy," to actually causing her to cry at news of my departure. I think at that moment, one old soul had encountered another. Maybe we were, without knowing it, in the historical sense, recreating a scene belonging to two other lives, of once upon a time, parting at this very point of local geography. Maybe a separation because of war. Possibly we were the spirits of a former boyfriend / girlfriend alliance, broken-up by circumstance. I don't know, but the sadness of that occasion was overwhelming. What had begun as a play-date with no strings, had ended with such melancholy, that it was hard to forget…..hard to let go of that little pink hand, so warm in mine. I almost fell into the water, looking back, at her tearful expression, and watching her clasp hands at the waist, and looking as if we had been together for years, rather than a few moments, on a creaking swing.

     I have no recollection of Angela after this. When I'd trek down the waterside path, to the back of her house, I never saw her again, and I have no memory whatsoever, of meeting her again in class, following this strange and perpetually haunting afternoon. I told my mother this one day, and she said, without hesitation, "Teddy, you were swinging with a ghost." I wasn't terribly familiar with what that meant, entirely, or what a ghost represented to the human-kind. For all these years, and with what ghosts I have witnessed in my life, I have always wondered about Angela, and just what made that hour in my life so darned eternal.

     Surely you have had similarly haunting encounters like this, to write down, in your own personal biography. We've all had curiously romantic liaisons we can't explain or justify simply, or rationally. Even after all these decades, I will see someone who instantly reminds me of this little girl, of once, who used to live on the shore of Ramble Creek, and I can almost feel my heart skipping beats. Both so much older now, could it be? Is it possible? Most of us can relate to one or more romantic situations in our lives, that was more enchanting and mysterious than the others. I just had mine a little earlier than most. Was it a ghost? An over-active imagination? The over-active imagination of my mother? Or just one of the raging enchantments, inherent of the Ramble Creek experience?