Riffles and Runs

A day in Greater Cleveland.

Illustration by Contra. Source: Tim Evanson.

The little girl turned her head away from the minnow in the tank to look back at me. My son watched the fish as it fluttered and darted in the water. I thought I saw a faint smile on her face but there was nothing there except for a distant sadness that seemed out of place in the countenance of a girl of four or five.

We spent that Saturday at the Rocky River Nature Center, nestled within the Cleveland Metroparks, a conservation area sprawling over 24,000 acres. The land is Edenic. A refuge of glittering rivers, creeks, falls, virgin forest, and ledges of stone hewn and broken by antediluvian waters. The center itself is flanked by a stretch of Cleveland Shale that rises exposed on the bank of the Rocky River. Inside are exhibits of the valley’s wildlife and a giant hollow oak tree with toys for kids. That’s where my boy was when the girl approached him.

“Come on, play with me,” she said.

She had light brown hair pulled into a short ponytail with a pink tie and wore Spider-Man shoes and a matching shirt over charcoal sweats. A button nose beneath oval eyes of hazel set in a determined little face.

He kept running and climbing about. She picked up a tarantula plush toy and chased him around the hollow.

“Come on,” she said, holding the spider against his back. He couldn’t stop laughing. He turned to face her, and they were off, the Spider-Man shoes a blur of blue and red.

They played and ran from one exhibit to the next as I followed him and an older couple kept up with her at a distance. A kingdom of beavers, coyotes, owls, fish, and turtles. They’d stop from time to time to examine some creature, pressing up against the glass like curious little hunter-gatherers, before bolting off together to the next thing. Press a button to hear the brush wolf yip and yap. They squeal and run.

The kids pause before a tank with darters, sucker fish, and a lone minnow. The man and woman accompanying the girl are well into middle age.

“I caught her a fish like that once, and she wasn’t interested in it,” the man told me, nodding toward the tank. “Seems she likes them now.”

The man said he was the girl’s grandfather and that she had been in the care of her grandparents since birth. I did not ask why.

The woman told me that the girl hardly spoke until recently after they put her in a daycare with other kids. She is coming out of her shell, and she seems resilient.

The kids took off again. We followed them. Flashes of the soles of little shoes. The girl climbs on a chair and shows my boy her best hop. It is short but impressive enough that he demonstrates a little leap in return. They dash to the life-size Dunkleosteus, an armored fish who stalked the aquamarine ocean that covered Ohio before time. They play in the maw of a monster with a bite big enough to bisect a shark.

We stop again. The man tells me that he works second shift. He is old and exhausted but cares for the girl like any father would. The woman says the girl has a hard time sleeping and is often up before the sun; she is restless through the night. The girl keeps looking back at me with that strange stare. I smile every time.

They run and run and we follow them. Our newborn is getting fussy and it is time to leave but the girl and my boy are so happy.

The grandparents decide it is time to go. The girl looks at me again and her grandpa asks if she wants to hug my boy before they depart. She nods.

He is suddenly shy. I lean close to tell him to say goodbye to his friend. He turns for a hug and she embraces him and kisses him on the cheek. Her grandparents say she has never done that before.

On the way out, we stop and the minnow glides across the front of the tank, where my boy and the girl who hardly sleeps stopped to look. He peers through the glass at the small fish, adapted to life in swift riffles and rocky runs. It stares back at him for a moment and then passes out of sight.

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