Walk to any creek, river or lake. The water is no longer one bright rippling sheet: it lies along its own slope, its surface detail rides the current, foam gathers in patches where the water actually runs fast, and still water carries small wind ripples. It is clear late summer Sierra water, so pale cobbles keep their color in the shallows and only the deep pools go green blue, and the trees and the sky reflect on the surface.
Where a sheet of water climbs a bank as flat triangles, that is the drawn shape of the ground. Narrow creeks cut into their own beds, with pools and banks you can walk, were built and measured and stayed switched off at the time: carved everywhere at once, two creeks meeting at the edge of a piece of the world could tear the land by more than a meter. Since November 5 creeks in new worlds on the mountains terrain run between smooth banks that slope to the water.
