I stepped into the little creek where it passed languidly beneath the derelict bridge, there beside the path leading down from the ancient pockmarked pavement. Mom's earlier, stern "watch-out-forsnakes" order echoed briefly in my thoughts as I entered the tea-colored stream. Caution quickly faded, however, as minnows and mosquitodevouring Gambusias fled before my splashing feet while crawdads hurriedly backed away under cover of puffy mud "smoke" screens.

Looking back, I remember the creek as a lovely thing, in a lovely place. But, nearly half a century ago, I was not there to contemplate beauty or seek serenity. It was not the pristine water, but its inhabitants, that called out to me.

I was 12 years old and had come to the creek to do battle, armed with a broken, grownup discarded fishing pole and a few dozen crickets captured from beneath Mom's flowerbed mulch.

In those days, my assault on the sluggish stream and the dank hardwood bottom through which it flowed was headlong and hell-for-leather. There were no aesthetic "pauses to ponder" and no stopping to smell the swamp roses. Like Stonewall Jackson pursuing Joseph Hooker's retreating legions at Chancellorsville, I moved doggedly upstream, casting baited hook beneath cut banks, naked tree roots, and half-submerged logs. Fat redbreasts, bluegills, and wriggling mudcats fell prey to my juvenile angler's prowess as brown water snakes hastily fledbefore my relentless (and reckless) advance. Sorry, Mom, but the inclination to "watch out" just wasn't in me.

Other wild "enemies" provided ferocious and persistent opposition. Boll-hungry mosquitoes and yellowflies took their toll. Briar bushes tore at me. Poison ivy, so subtle and yet so sinister, "rubbed me the wrong way."

Yet, more often than not, I emerged victorious, a mile or so upstream where the big spring pumped its clear, cold artesian flowinto the creek channel. There, with the last of my insectile "ammunition," I fought and conquered the redfin pickerel lurking beneath the spring's overhanging willow branches.

At last, homemade stringer satisfyingly heavy-laden with the day's "captives," I left the swamp to trudge, tired but happily, homeward across Mr. Jim Tom's back-property farm field, keeping eyes peeled for arrowheads along the way.

Back home ("Yes, Ma'am, I watched out for snakes"), catch cleaned and skilletready, Mom patiently gave me hands-on instruction in the noble art of Deep-South fishfrying. I ate to the bursting point and later slept that dreamless, guiltless sleep that rewards the weary.

Those frequent boyhood angling excursions up the creek more than four decades ago made more than mere memories. In many ways, they made me who I am. They continue to provide fodder for a fly-by-night scribe who has loved and chronicled the outdoors ever since. From the first crude scribbling to the present published works, the creek played no small role in their coming to pass.

The creek is changed now, I'm told. Beavers and Man have done their damage. The beavers must be forgiven, of course. So, too, might Man if he'd just clean up the mess he's made and "go and sin no more." Perhaps one day he'll learn. One may only hope.

Meanwhile, I wonder how the redbreasts and the mudcats are doing. Do they still hang out in the dark holes behind the logjams? Will the little pike still dart out to grab a fat, black cricket "plopped" into their hideaways by dirtyfaced, blackberry-fed kids with time on their hands and fishing on their minds?

Or are they, like so much else, choking and dying from things never intended for little creeks in dank hardwood bottoms? Are they now paying the ultimate price for Man's perpetual toga party? On second thought, maybe he (we) will never learn after all.

The dirty-faced kids? Well, they're no doubt comfortably ensconced in some comfortable room, happily having their senses simultaneously stimulated and dulled by the television and computer monsters. Too bad.

Can those children ever care that the creek may be dying? Will they ever scratch crickets from beneath a bed of pine needles, or catch a wriggling mudcat, or be warned to "watch for snakes?" More importantly, will they ever want to?

Who knows? Only time, what little the creek has left, will tell.

(Email Bob Kornegay at cletus@windstream.net)