#WritePhoto Woodland Crossing

-
https://new2writing.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/woodland.jpg
Photo credit: KL Caley

I am writing this for the weekly #WritePhoto challenge by KL Caley at New2Writing.com. Read all about it and join in if you'd like!  

This week's offering is a quick read at 415 words.  

Woodland Crossing

 

“Oh, look! A stream neither of us has fallen into yet!”

My sister gives me a dirty look. “Hush! That’s just tempting fate.” She puts her hands over her mouth, then her ears, like the speak-no-evil monkey.

We both laugh as we approached the stream.

“I’m sure we’ve nothing to worry about with a little trickle like this. It’s barely two inches deep.”

“It’s too wide to step over, though.” Sis studies the damp-looking rocks sticking up out of the middle, trying to decide if she can cross it without getting her feet wet.

Me, I’m thinking about some of the streams I’ve fallen into. They were mostly big, fast, full of snowmelt or glacial run-off. Go big or stay home, as they say. I don’t intend to fall into this dinky thing. No drama there.

The trail continues on the other side of the stream, not very well-trodden. Much less so, in fact, than this side. Maybe there’s another way? Did we miss a turn? It looks like it would be hard to get across with dry feet. I mentally map out a route. Doable, for sure. No reason to go tramping through the underbrush looking for a bridge or something. No side-trails led off to other crossings before we got here.

“Just step from that rock, over to the big one, then one of the little ones and you’re on the gravel bar, if you can call it that. The beach. Whatever.”

Sis rolls her eyes at me. Then she takes the three steps across, and steps up onto the bank to watch me.

I take the first step. Reach my right foot for the second rock and feel the left slipping. Stick my right foot into the water with a curse for wet socks.

Somehow that foot slips as well. The rocks are all covered with the slime that grows in slow-moving late-season water, slippery as though it were ice.

Flat on my back in the stream I look up at the sky.

“From your lips to the gods’ ears, idiot,” I remind myself, sitting up in the water.

It’s not so bad being all wet, since the day is warm. What hurts are my sister’s giggles. All the way back to the car. Then she pulls out the dog’s towel and makes me sit on it, to protect the seat from my dirty, wet backside.

We never got to explore the trail beyond the creek, but I won’t be coming back.

 

###  

(This story is almost not quite true)

 

 

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2022
 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.
Don't miss a post--click the "Follow-it" link below!

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Let us know what you think! We love to hear from our readers!

Popular Posts

#WEP--The Scream

-
Image
WEP challenges are FREE and open to all. On the 1st   of the challenge month, there will be a   get-your-thinking-caps   on post. The badge will include the dates of the challenge and the winner’s   prizes. The InLinkz sign up will open on the third Wednesday and close 3 days later. It will contain no news, just the sign up. Participants link up with their DLs (Direct Links to their entry).  Learn all about it here .    My entry this time is based on an actual incident. Mom and my brothers will recognize it. My apologies to them for the non-trivial liberties I took with history and their personalities. We are now also meant to provide a tag line for our stories, so here's mine: What terrors lurk in the root cellar?     The Scream The house we lived in that year wasn’t much. The wind blew in everywhere you could imagine a draft, and some places you couldn’t. The old enclosed porch we used as a root cellar was worse. It wasn’t just the win...
Read more

Non-fiction Audiobook Review: Falter, by Bill McKibben

-
Image
Important stuff, but hard to hear. Title: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Author: Bill McKibben. Ready by Olivery Wyman Publication Info: Macmillan Audio 2019. 11 hours. Hardback by Henry Holt & Co., 291 pages. Source: Library Blurb: (Goodreads): Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And t...
Read more

#WEP: December Flash Fiction Challenge

-
Image
This December challenge wraps up the year of artistic inspiration from some great works of art. The WEP is open to all, following the simple rules: 1. SUBMIT your name to the list below on December 1 thru the 15th . Add your link (URL) 2. POST your entry, put WEP is in the TITLE along with The Narcissus badge within your entry. 3. STATE feedback preferences and word count at the end of your entry. 4. READ other entries, giving feedback if requested. 5. SHARE THE CHALLENGE on social media. Tweets are ready on the WEP blog. PLEASE NOTE: ENTRIES CLOSE Dec. 15th @ midnight (NY Time - check WEP blog clock) ALL GENRES WELCOME except erotica - 1,000 words maximum My story for this month's challenge is maybe cheating a little--I didn't write it for the challenge, but I decided that the common understanding of Narcissus and narcissism fits well enough, even if the story doesn't relate to the painting. I wrote this while trekking in Nepal last month, highlighting a character w...
Read more