Our River : The Old Swimmin' Hole

We are blessed with a beautiful place to fish, play, wade and swim just in front of our house at Pure Water Hollow.  It's across the road and down the steep bank, but once you climb down there you are imediately transported into another world!  Being the warmest day we've had thus far this year, the children decided  to visit that other realm to enjoy a cool respite from the 92 degree sun.  Today wasn't the first day they took advantage of our old swimmin' hole this year, but it was the first day that the camera made the journey.

Along with the pictures, I would like to share parts of a famous old poem from James Whitcomb Riley:

The Old Swimmin' Hole

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep

Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,

And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below

Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know

Before we could remember anything but the eyes

Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;

But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,

And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore,

When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore,

Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide

That gazed back at me so gay and glorified,

It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress

My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness. ...

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days

When the heat of summer made so many run-a-ways,

How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane,

Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane

You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole

They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole. ...

 

Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall,

And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all;

And it mottled the worter with amber and gold

Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled;

And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by

Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky,

Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle

As it cut acrost some orchard to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.

I'm not going to finish the Whitcomb poem, because the happy poetry of the Pure Water Hollow Homestead "swimming hole" will continue to be written for many, many more years.  (As you may know, Whitcomb's poem ends in sorrow with time catching up to the old swimmin' hole that he remembered.)

I do have a few more pictures of the adventures from this afternoon.  Simon and Timothy enjoy finding treasures of the river.  You saw Timothy's find of the milk jug in the picture above.  It actually floated past us and he ran along the rocks of the river bank chasing it for a couple hundred feet until he caught up to where it paused in a back-current eddy, and then waded out to save it! 

Simon's treasure was half buried in the river bank.  Here he is excavating his find:

It turned out to be a really neat jet fighter toy that Simon was very happy with!

 

Timothy thought it was pretty cool, too!

 

Before we left, some cows from across the river agreed with us that cooling off in the river was a good idea.

And I can't leave without sharing some photos that Timothy took of himself.  With the screen on the camera flipped over, he could see his face like a mirror.  I thought they were cute:

That smile sums up the time we spent down on our river pretty well, I think.