Doppler and I just took a walk outside. Skies are partly cloudy. The air is cool and refreshingly dry. There is a breeze, but not enough to rustle the leaves or cover the sound of Jepps Brook.
Judging by Google, I am the main chronicler of Jepps Brook. It’s the tiny stream a few hundred yards from my front door.
When a brook is small the effects of weather are pronounced and happen quickly.
This week, a month’s worth of rain has sent white water rushing over the smooth boulders that lie in Jepps Brook’s bed. It has temporarily widened the brook, much like a snake that’s swallowed a mouse.
The brook is loud tonight. It’s not New York City loud. You can’t make that comparison.
There are no individual noises, like car horns or sirens. The brook’s signature is white noise.
I have driven past Jepps Brook nearly every day for 23 years. I always slow down. I always look. I am never disappointed. It is endlessly beautiful.
On nights like tonight you don’t need to see it to know it’s there.
When we leave I will miss Jepps Brook as much as I miss any person.
Jepps Brook is apparently a special ‘serenity place’ for you…I had a similar one on the side of our hill in Huntsville, Alabama as well.
Locally in SoCal we have mountains to look at, bits of the desert, and, for me, way up in the Golden Trout Wilderness is a small stream that drains the high meadows up there. True, the high meadow is a hard place to reach, but the view and the silence is spectacular.
I’m sure you will soon find another spot to pause at and collect your thoughts…always a good thing to have handy after a tough day.
Video it Geoff, so that you can put it on screen and play it back on those nights when it is so dry out there, the brush snaps and crackles. You’ll have to ride out to Apple Valley and/or into the mountains to replicate that sound. When the concrete gulches that are the LA river are full, the rushing water is loud—not calming like a full brook.
Good Luck and Happy Living. At least we’ll have your blog.
Willow Brook in Meriden was my nature refuge when I was a boy. Flipping rocks to grab crayfish, knocking on a hollow tree only to have a flying squirrel glide out, using it as a frozen highway thru the brambles in the winter.
Sloshing around in it was my start to a life-long love of the outdoors and the natural sciences. My first heartbreak was when the area was developed as Bret Drive and Jodi Drive.
I still think of it almost every day. You’ll keep your brook in your heart, too.
Thanks for your insights, best of luck to you and your family, and keep blogging.
When I was a teenager we lived in New Hartford near the Farmington river. I used to love walking and sitting by it just about evey day.When it rained a lot (like we’ve had lately) the river would spill into the pond behind the apartments, which was kind of exciting. I even liked exploring what the river washed up after it receded. When we had to move I really missed that and was never able to replace it. There was nothing as nice or as special to me.
Where I work now we have an empty lot in back and there’s a stream that runs past it. Not as accessable because they have to have it fenced off to keep stupid people and kids out but it’s there. I understand there used to be a dairy on the spot back in the day. I can see why you’d put a dairy there, It’s still a nice spot.