Saw this post on the Louisville Trail Nuts Facebook group and thought it captured many of our feelings about Cherokee Park and Beargrass Creek and asked permission from the author to print. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

Tributaries

A Pre-Birthday Reverie

They are barely noticeable,

until a hard rain comes

and then from a trickle to a rush

Tributaries appear like watery spider webs

in the heart of Cherokee Park

They feed Beargrass Creek until it’s pregnant

and gives birth to floodwaters

and raises a pond

that engulfs part of Boundary Road,

just down a ways from Big Rock,

making it seemingly impassable

And It stops me in my tracks

A vehicle comes from behind me,

creeping cautiously and then it eases to a halt

And, the driver considers,

“Should I tempt fate and proceed”?

After a few moments, she thinks better

and turns her car around and

Returns the way she came

But not me.

I’m out on my feet for a long Sunday run

I wade through the waters,

nearly knee deep in some parts

It’s fun at first and then it starts to suck

My feet become numb in the frigid murkiness

I search for a route to high ground and find a bypass

Around the newly made swamp

I climb hand over hand up an embankment

to a soggy trail

Now out of the hyperthermic wetness

and from my perch

I see ducks at a standstill

in the torrent of Beargrass’s current

On the surface they look calm, detached

But I know they are fighting like hell

underneath the surface and their

webbed feet are paddling hard

to stay in place

and not be taken away downstream

I am hours from completing my

60th trip around the sun

Tomorrow is my birthday

and I cannot think of a better place

to be than surrounded

by the tributaries that

feed my source and enable

the constant flow of wonder

into the river that is my life