This is my Life

So let me tell you about my life. You know how normal people have jobs and are really busy? Well, I don't do that. I'm a senior in "high school," but I go to a really rockin' school that only makes me go one day a week. The rest of my week I spend "doing homework" and whatever else I want to.

The great thing about being a senior is all of the spring breaks. This year I have three spring breaks (two down, one to go) and graduate a week early. So this week I am off, and thoroughly enjoying it. This summer I will be working construction full time and then I'll be off to the U of D, so I am trying to spend this year having fun and enjoying my last year of freedom from responsibilities and work.

So today, I slept in till about 10, then hit my snooze button about 5 times. Then I got up, strapped a canoe onto the roof of my van and took Shane (that's my brother) down to the Big Elk Creek. I've been wondering for a long time where it goes, and instead of looking at a map we went exploring. We put in where Appleton Road meets Elkton Road, and just went from there. We wound through the woods for a few miles, then went through the middle of down town Elkton. West of there, the creek becomes tidal, spreading out gradually into mud flats that smell horrible and are really hard to canoe through at low tide. The Big Elk Creek meets up with the Little Elk Creek and together they become the Elk river. It winds several miles through the marshes and mud and then it turns huge, and eventually flows into the Chesapeake Bay. We made it to the C and D canal today, but stopped 7 miles short of the bay. Don't worry, in the words of California's fine governor, "I'll be back."

I love creeks and rivers. I find it intriguing how settlements and civilizations have grown up around the waterways. Now as America relies more on roads and airplanes for transportation, creeks slip almost unnoticed through people's back yards. You see a different part of the country from a creek. It's all the backs of things, what people try to hide from everyone passing in front of them. It's perhaps the easiest place to see the interaction between man and nature and the struggle for mutual existence.