Home waters

Are you aware that the work "brook" has two very different meanings? They are

1. a natural stream of water normally smaller than and often tributary to a river, and,
2. to stand for

Synonyms for the first meaning include:

beck [British], bourn (or bourne), brooklet, burn [British], creek, gill [British], rill, rivulet, run [chiefly Midland], runlet, runnel, streamlet

And why, you are by now thinking, do we care about this? To which I answer: because I've recently rediscovered that there are reports that brook trout exist in some "streams" relatively nearby and, apropos of yesterday's "I believe I'll go fishing" assessment posted here, this drib of information is just the motivation I need to spend less time in a chair in the living room and more time in the seat of the Jeep looking for those streams, their access points and assessing their potential fishability.

is this a brook, creek, stream, rill or run?

Photo by J. Harrington

In a directly related vein, I've noticed that the British and some other cultures have many more terms for small streams than we Americans use. In fact, we have a difficult to impossible time agreeing on the relationship among brook, creek, etc. Follow this link for one example and this link for another. If, as several folks and indigenous peoples assert, language is a critical connection to our places, the lack of clear, consistent language for our  flowing waters would seem to be reflected in our treatment of them more as waste disposal systems than as sources of life and our drinking water.

In any case, I'm hoping through a search for local brook trout populations to find a version of my own home waters, a stretch of brook, creek, or river I can visit regularly and get to know intimately.

Hamlen Brook

By Richard Wilbur

At the alder-darkened brink 
Where the stream slows to a lucid jet 
I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat, 
And see, before I can drink, 

A startled inchling trout 
Of spotted near-transparency, 
Trawling a shadow solider than he. 
He swerves now, darting out 

To where, in a flicked slew 
Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves 
Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves, 
And butts then out of view 

Beneath a sliding glass 
Crazed by the skimming of a brace 
Of burnished dragon-flies across its face, 
In which deep cloudlets pass 

And a white precipice 
Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down 
Toward where the azures of the zenith drown. 
How shall I drink all this? 

Joy’s trick is to supply 
Dry lips with what can cool and slake, 
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache 
Nothing can satisfy.

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