The creek represents the misguided human instinct to claim ownership of nature. The children love the creek, and they know it well enough that they consider it their own. When they decide to visit the Reservoir, they find it by following the creek. Though the creek’s source is the mysterious Reservoir, and changes at the Reservoir affect the creek’s flow, the children trust the creek to be their guide. The creek’s connection to the Reservoir is the first hint that the creek is more than just a playground for the children. Since it feeds into a larger body of water, the creek is literally deeper (hence more free and dangerous) than it appears.
The moment the children are first in danger, when a bull in a paddock threatens to charge them, they lose sight of the creek. When they find it again, they realize it has stopped communicating with them, and is no longer their creek at all. This apparent fickleness on the creek’s part symbolizes how nature does not necessarily follow the human will. Though the children thought they had ownership over the creek, in reality the creek remains a force of nature that is not beholden to them. Yet the creek is not actively malicious: it fulfills its promise to guide the children to the Reservoir, and as a result of this success, the children reclaim the creek as their same old creek. It only takes a moment for the creek to desert them again, however, as it disappears into the Reservoir. Not only is the creek not bound by human ownership, it does not follow the rules of human friendship and loyalty.
When the children run home, they find the creek has once again become foreign to them, and they are completely disoriented as they try to find their way back. They move from wishing the creek was still theirs, to wondering if they will have to sleep on its banks when night falls, to fearing that the creek will send evil eels after them. Now that the creek isn’t obeying them, the children quickly reimagine it as a force of evil, again imposing a human role on the creek––if it will not be their friend, it must be an enemy. Their sudden fear of the creek mirrors the parents’ fear of the Reservoir, suggesting that it is human instinct to misinterpret and mistrust uncontrollable nature.
The Creek Quotes in The Reservoir
And for so long we obeyed our mother's command, on our favorite walks along the gully simply following the untreated cast-off creek which we loved and which flowed day and night in our heads in all its detail [...] We knew where the water was shallow and could be paddled in, where forts could be made from the rocks; we knew the frightening deep places where the eels lurked and the weeds were tangled in gruesome shapes; we knew the jumping places, the mossy stones with their dangers, limitations, and advantages; the sparkling places where the sun trickled beside the water, upon the stones; the bogs made by roaming cattle, trapping some of them to death; their gaunt telltale bones; the little valleys with their new growth of lush grass where the creek had ‘changed its course,’ and no longer flowed.
We saw [the creek] now before us, and hailed it with more relief than we felt, for [...] it had undergone change, it had adopted the shape, depth, mood of foreign water, foaming in a way we did not recognize as belonging to our special creek, giving no hint of its depth. It seemed to flow close to its concealed bed, not wishing any more to communicate with us. We realized with dismay that we had suddenly lost possession of our creek. Who had taken it? Why did it not belong to us any more? We hit our sticks in the air and forgot our dismay. We grew cheerful.
The Creek Symbol Timeline in The Reservoir
