Phto

The sky began to brighten in the north on that early-March day, as the roiled, greasy-gray clouds of the allnight storm began their retreat to the south and west.

We sloshed our way along the bank of the creek, "our creek' to us, a pair of ten-year-old males. We had decided on a tour of inspection of our holdings to see what damage the storm had wrought. And the creek was still there, still wandering its earnest, four-foot-wide way through the meadow, which was spongy underfoot with the gray-green, dead-alive promise of what would soon be grass. The rocks had not been harmed, we noted with satisfaction, and the pool beside the willow was still a pool, despite what must have been a temptation to go and join the sea. But the grass along the edges, and along the upper bank--the tough, fibrous evergreen grass that seemed to defy everything in its turn--was lying flat in its place, all tips pointed regimentally after the departing waters. So we were somewhat angry with the water, as a bully who destroys a myth.

But the overall loss was slight. Our creek was still alive and our plaything, and there were no other little boys to take it, and claim it, and mother it, and dam it with clods of tough, worm-filled sod and its own rocks. And there was none to pelt its muskrats and scare its minnows and trap its crawdads and capture its tadpoles. So we inspected --hermetically sealed in parkas and overshoes--sloshing through the drowned grass and rat-furred moss with the utter confidence of proprietorship.

We worked our way slowly, examining every inch, the way one does for hurt to valued property, while the excited air buffeted us with the first live messages of coming spring.

George found two marbles just below the gravelly spot beyond the willow pool, one chipped a little and the other polished by the sand and water to a better-than-new luster. I found a small earthenware jar with a clear, glazed finish and a kiln burn on the bottom side. I told George the jar was