A common activity of mine growing up was playing in creeks. I think I learned a lot from this experience, so much that I often think of little creek anecdotes when considering a given situation.
I’ll collect these thoughts here, see if they are helpful.
The neat thing about playing in a creek is you suddenly have an idea of what a creek is, even tho you probably could not describe it in a specific sense. This extends to rivers.
For instance, did I ever play in the same creek twice?
Well, of course not! I was a child, which meant I wanted to control and manipulate the creek to do what I wanted. I could dam it to create a pool, direct it to erode the sides, cover it in leaves for trapping unsuspecting bears/evil people who might be chasing after me. Normal stuff.