"I walked, all one spring day, upstream, sometimes in the midst of the ripples, sometimes along the shore. My parents were downstream, not far away, then farther away because I was walking the wrong way, upstream instead of downstream... there I was, slopping along happily in the stream's coolness. So maybe it was the right way after all. If this was lost, let us be lost always. The beech leaves were just slipping their copper coats. Pale green and quivering they arrived into the year. My heart opened, and opened again. The water pushed against my effort, then its glassy permission to step ahead touched my ankles. The sense of going toward the source. I do not think that I ever, in fact, returned home."
– Excerpted from "Upstream" by Mary Oliver

"Live water heals memories. I look up the creek and here it comes, the future, being borne aloft as on a winding succession of laden trays. You may wake and look from the window and breathe the real air, and say, with satisfaction or with longing, "This is it." But if you look up the creek, if you look up the creek in any weather, your spirit fills, and you are saying, with an exulting rise of the lungs, 'Here it comes!'"
– Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"