Passage III

Creek Walk

On summer afternoons, my sister and I used to go on creek walks. Starting near the barn, we’d slide down an embankment into a stream that bisected the family farm. The water ran clear and foot-numbingly cold. We’d set off, walking downstream with the current, skipping under overhanging foliage. Our dogs trotted reassuringly at our heels, drinking from pools and splashing through the shallows. Cicadas buzzed in the hot Kentucky air. (34)

And always, we looked for fossils.

[1] But once our eyes had adjusted to the task, they were unmistakable: perfectly formed little stone disks. [2] Our father told us they were fossilized crinoids. [3] Some were embedded in larger stones, while others were loose among the pebbles. [4] Still others, the best ones, were cylinders as fat as my thumb, with hollow star-shaped centers, they’re outlines as distinct as when the crinoids were alive. [5] When either of us located such a treasure, we’d snatch it up and crow, “Got one!” [6] At first, they were hard to see. (37)

Growing up in Kentucky, these fossils were common. Eons ago my father taught us that our farm and everything around it had been covered by a tropical sea. Furthermore, in that sea lived a great variety of marine animals, including the crinoids; animals that looked like plants, with brightly colored heads atop segmented stems. The stems attached the crinoids to the ocean floor. I tried to picture the hills around our farm submerged beneath an ocean. I imagined crinoids waving in the current, then sinking into sediment that eventually turned into limestone. Otherwise, the fossils we plucked from the creek were pieces of those ancient stems, freezing in time.

The fossils fascinated us, both because of the span of geologic time they represented and because we could make them into jewelry. We strung them like beads or buttons onto thread to make: necklaces and bracelets. Around our necks and on our wrists, we wore fragments of Earth’s history, beautifully preserved.