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I remember Ricky was a lean boy with dark eyes and an army-surplus folding shovel. When the spring melt got rolling I would ride my bike two miles and meet him at the twin culverts that channeled Beaver Creek, under Beaver Creek Road. My father’s farm was all swamp and flatland, leaving me easily bewitched by moving water, Water that flowed — that didn’t just seep, or fester up mosquitoes — gave me Huck Finn fevers. We’d choose a culvert and clamber to opposite ends, then hang head-down at the waist to whoop back and forth. Our voices echoed flatly before being absorbed in the corrugations. Same with the pebbles we tossed at each other, which fell short and went ploop! Sometimes we’d gather on the same side and drop two sticks to see which came through first.

When we heard cars coming, we would scramble off the culverts and hunker in the ditch, hidden by the grasses. The drivers passed, never seeing us. Once while we were down there. Ricky knelt and drank deeply from the ditchwater, telling me to do the same. The water ran so clear over the tan sand you could see the individual grains. It’s pure, Ricky said, You can see it’s pure. And so I drank, too, and deeply. Later, when my mother heard, she told me about giardia and protozoans. To say nothing of dead deer and Atrazine.

His obituary was a surprise, even 30 years down the road. There had been no contact, although I saw him a couple times in his truck, an old L-model International. I had read in the local weekly about the deal there at the store with the gun, and I knew he’d been to prison. And now this, too soon. I made it to the funeral, that lopsided reunion, Those dark eyes, maybe he’d seen It coming all those years ago. He had some sadness on him, It came built in.

Two culverts and a halfhearted creek. I could do better. But grandeur is for postcard trips. I want the click and trickle of flat moving water, the shelter of the grass, a road close to home. The chance to slip from sight when I hear a motor. Hunkered in the ditch, I think about Ricky digging with that shovel. Making hideouts, he’d say. We never really finished one.

You learn not to pretty these things up. You learn to take them as they are. I go to (he culvert every so often and just sit quietly. I’m not looking for angels in the tag alders. I just watch the creek flow out the galvanized tube. Around the bend. When I was a kid I yearned to follow that water — on a raft, in a canoe, maybe just barefoot with a stick, Now I just sit there with my feet dangling, and I throw pebbles while the cold spring air makes my nose run, and I watch Beaver Creek slide smooth and quiet until It reoccurs to me that the world is constantly trying to bring everything level.

Aron, Laura, & more
• Aron Ralston, mountaineer >> On my first hiking trip into Colorado’s Maroon Bells — Snowmass Wilderness, I was scrambling along a high ridgeline above 13,000 feet. I was so awed by Fravert Basin’s deep-green alpine tundra contrasting with the red ridges of Maroon Formalion shales that I knew I’d move to Aspen, I did just that 2½ years later, and I continue to explore the area. • G. Love, singer, G. Love & Special Sauce >> • The summer before my senior year in high school, I did trail maintenance for the Student Conservation Association. I was stationed at Sportsman Lake, 12 miles deep in Yellowstone’s backcountry. I spent days working on trails, then chilled campside, cooking, playing guitar, and craving Snickers and beef jerky. On the way out, I climbed Electric Peak, where I found an elk antler, bleached white, just sitting there. It was a magical moment and I promised myself someday I’d go back and see if that antler was still there. • Leanne Allison, filmmaker, and Karsten Heuer, wildlife biologist (Being Caribou) >> The coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a sacred place where caribou have migrated for 27,000 years. It should never be forsaken for oil or money. • Wendell Minor, artist, illustrator of numerous books on America’s national parks and wildlife >> Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley is a timeless, primordial place. When you’re standing up above it, and realize those pepper specks down below are bison, you have the feeling you’re looking into a kind of Eden. • Tim Smith, Country Walkers Vermont guide >> Prospect Rock, in Johnson. VT. looks out from a clifftop south to Whiteface Mountain and Madonna Peak and west down the pastoral Lamoille River Valley. • Robyn Benincasa, captain, Team Merrell/Wigwam Adventure >> I’ve been running the trails overlooking the coastline in Torrey Pines State Park in Del Mar. CA, for 20 years now, and it’s always a spiritual experience. • P. Patrick Leahy, Acting Director, U.S. Geological Survey >> I favor the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, which may be some of the planet’s most dramatic and remote landscapes, and have unique ecological systems teeming with life. • Laura Bush, First Lady >> For years, a group of my best friends and l have hiked and camped for a week every summer. My favorite spot is always the last place I hiked, second only to the place I’m going next!

By: Perry, Michael, Backpacker