Sacred Footsteps

Time flies as they say. As you get older, life has a way of speeding up it seems. I’ve found the older I get, the more I reflect on days gone by-even decades gone by. That’s no different than most people I imagine.

I recently read a tweet posted by Pastor Rob. In it he said he was at Drake’s dam working. Rob has mentioned a few times that nature is one of his sacred pathways. I can understand that; being surrounded by God’s creation in the quiet noise of nature gives a man a sense of peace and after all, that is one of the things Jesus taught us by example, disappearing in the wilderness to be alone with the Father. This is a story for another day though. I really just want to pen some thoughts about last Sunday on my own walk in the woods.

My dad passed away in 1997. It seems like just yesterday that he left us. My brother and I are avid outdoorsmen because of dad. It’s been that way since the very first time we held a 4-dollar, Zebco 202 rod and reel combo in our small hands. I’m guessing my first experience fishing was probably in Big Rock creek between the train bridge and the swimming hole at the park now known as Klatt Park. Yes-for those that don’t know this was the only place around that had public swimming. There was a sand beach, a shower house that always had a turd in it (the things you remember from childhood), and a concession building.

Sunday afternoon I grabbed my spinning rod (an upgrade from the Zebco 202) and headed to Plano. For quite some time I’ve felt the urge to step back in time and retrace some sacred footsteps. Intentionally I left Sam at home and went alone. I needed to be alone with the past for a couple of hours; alone with my dad, my brother, an old friend named Phil and alone with myself.

It’s amazing how unchanged an old hangout so close to town can remain. As I stood looking at the massive train bridge, several memories came front and center such as walking carefully across the boulder-strewn, light rapids under it without slipping and getting wet, or worse yet-cracking my skull open and floating to the fox river never to be seen again. Is there anything better than the imagination of a young boy with an adventurous spirit? I recalled the time Phil and I met a middle-aged guy just downstream from the bridge who taught us to use corn to catch carp, and so we did. We caught stringers full, took them to the Plano hotel and sold them for five bucks! Both the buyers and the sellers saw the deal as mutually satisfying. The residents we sold the fish to had carp for supper. Phil and I used the five bucks to feast on sweet rolls and candy. We believed we got the better end of the deal-I still do, those were carp after all! To this day I still advise people to use corn for carp bait.

There’s a spot near the bridge where the old millrace waterway enters. Standing there Sunday I looked across the creek spotting the huge boulder that years ago had a trailing eddy that often yielded a smallmouth bass to a carefully cast #2 purple buck tail Mepps spinner or yellow Rooster Tail. On this particular day however, the boulder and the eddy yielded only a fond memory. For me, that was all I really came for.

I walked the bank of the creek further upstream, marveling as I did when I was a kid at the spawning run of Redhorse. A Redhorse is a species of sucker that spawns this time of year. I could see them in the fairly clear water that is typical early in the spring. By now I’m being especially intentional to take in the surrounding smells as I walk. The fragrance of the creek, the weeds and the wildflowers have a way of stirring a few more memories; memories that await me at a very special place from my childhood known as Drake’s dam.

Ambling my way past the Main street bridge I glimpse upstream and think to myself, if I didn’t know I was in Illinois, I could have presumed to be in any number of places in these fifty states. I sometimes get caught up in wrong-thinking, that beauty in nature cannot be found in Illinois; and that this state is void of God’s artwork but that is far from the truth. Sometimes you have to put some effort it finding natural beauty. This is God’s way of protecting it, I like to think anyway. Those most willing to put effort in seeking hidden treasure will be those most likely to protect it. As I make my way closer to the dam, I notice a contraption in the woods about 100 feet from where I stand, and recognize it as the gate mechanism that used to be part of the small foot-bridge over the millrace tributary just ahead of me. Old, worn and rusted are the rack, pinion, gears and cogs that once controlled the flow of water that downstream powered the old grist mill. Why (I wonder) was this historical work of human hands abandoned like that? I find it rather odd that the city of Plano has chosen to proudly display a huge bomb, an obscene weapon of mass destruction quite frankly, at the veteran’s memorial and yet here this mechanical beauty that promoted life and vitality to the city is left abandoned and forgotten.

I moved on toward my ultimate destination and the dam came into view…remnants of it I should say. A few years ago it was destroyed because ecologically the dam had for years restricted water flow and prevented it from cleansing itself. There is still plenty of the old structure remaining. The end-walls are still there and just as I remembered. I hadn’t stood at this place for approximately 36 years. As I walk the bank I find myself looking for fish hooks, sinkers and bobbers in the hopes I would find one and if I did-could it be mine? Standing on top of the south end-wall I gaze down at where I’m standing and remember having once built a campfire there. I look across to the other end at that wall and remember the steps that used to be there. Steps you wonder? As a kid, it never made sense to me that whoever built this dam, had to put steps inside where the water flowed, making it hard to walk up, instead of putting the steps outside and out of the water. Years later I learned that these weren’t steps at all, not for people anyway. These steps were for the fish. The Army Corps of Engineers had these steps (known as a fish ladder actually) put in so the fish could swim upstream past the dam. The only problem with this was that the Corps didn’t know that suckers and carp don’t quite have the ambition or other attributes that made them use the ladder like the salmon and trout of north woods waters do.

I meandered around some more and eventually spotted a bobber in the water and so I couldn’t help but wonder if that red and white ball of plastic, of a design unchanged for decades, could perhaps belong to me. Probably not, though it was nice to fantasize about it for a moment. More memories began to flood in such as shedding clothes down to nothing but my “tighty-whities” and sliding down the dam on my butt. My friends were doing the same. There was always a nice carpet of green moss on the dam surface which made it slick and great for sliding. What fun we had! Mom always knew where I spent time during the week when on Saturday, laundry day at our house, she saw green underwear in the pile. All I can say is that my mom probably went through several gallons of bleach on my account. I don’t recall her ever complaining about my underwear being green.

To this day I believe that kids would be better off leaving their mom a pile of green underwear instead of a pile of garbage that requires professional help to get to the bottom of. I’m grateful for this life and my childhood. I’m grateful that my dad helped me to lay some sacred footsteps that I could follow from time to time. If I ever find myself wishing I had done this or done that I really just need to slow down and remember a time in my life that molded my spirit and connected me to nature and laid down the sacred footsteps to a place that I know; a once secret place that is my Heaven on Earth.