← Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Bodhi and Joey and the Winter Creek - A Gentle Story about Listening Differently
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Hey, it's Eric. Before we begin tonight's episode, just a quick reminder. You're about to hear a few ads that help to support Listen to Sleep. If you'd rather drift off without them, you can join Listen to Sleep plus and get every episode ad free plus bonus stories and meditations. Just go to ListenToSleep.com and click on Support to learn more.
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- [01:30]
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Hello friend, it's Eric. Welcome back to Listen to Sleep. It's been a dryish winter up here on the mountain. We haven't had any snow and not really even that much rain. But I've been thinking lately about some of our winter's past. Like the one when Bodie turned six. A real winter. The kind that changes everything for a while. More of you write to me about Bodie and Joey than pretty much anything else. You want to know how they're doing? You tell me how much you love the stories of the adventures they're having up here on the mountain. And I don't know, maybe it's because you see their joy in the videos of our walks that I post on Instagram and TikTok or maybe it's because their friendship is so uncomplicated. Maybe it's because they're just who they are without apology or performance. So tonight we've got another story about the boys, about the winter the creek went silent, about learning to listen differently, about how things don't disappear, they just change shape for a while. If you are somewhere warm tonight, this might cool you down a little bit. If you're somewhere cold, maybe it'll feel like company. Either way, I hope it helps you rest. And before we get started, a quick word. If you're enjoying these stories and want to support the work I do here, you can do that by joining Listen to Sleep plus and it gives you access to over 500 episodes and ad free including bonus episodes and early releases. Your support really does make a huge difference. It's just me making this podcast and you can learn more about all the great perks supporters get@listentosleep.com support and there's a link in the show notes you let's take a deep breath in and out. Just letting go of the day, feeling the weight of gravity pulling you deep down into the mattress. Another deep breath in and out. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. This is your time. Quiet time. One more deep breath in with me and out. If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay, just let yourself drift off. Bode and Joey and the Winter Creek Long ago, or perhaps just last winter, when the mountain wore its coat of white and the mornings came late and left early, there lived an old man and his two dogs in a cabin among the Douglas firs. Bodie was the older dog, a German shepherd, boxer mix, 80 pounds of muscle and dinner, dignity going a little gray around the muzzle. At 10 years old, he moved with care through the world, not slowly exactly, but deliberately. He knew where the deer bedded down in the Manzanita, and he knew the particular call of the Steller's jays, when they meant business versus when they were only complaining. Most of all, he knew the creek that ran past the cabin, knew its voice in every season, every weather, every time of day. Joey was four years old, 40 pounds of cattle dog chaos with ears too big for his head and a spotted coat that never stayed clean for long. He believed most problems could be solved by running at them very fast, then running around them, then running at them again from a different angle. His tail never stopped moving. He thought the world was full of excellent things to chase, excellent things to dig up, and excellent Friends he simply hadn't met yet. They were different, these two, but they were also brothers. The cold came first that winter before the snow. It came from the far north, somewhere far away from the mountain, farther than the range of mountains beyond, from some place where winter could not be contained. The temperature dropped and dropped and kept dropping. The old man brought extra wood for the wood stove. The water in the dog's outside bowl froze solid even in the middle of the day. Body had seen cold before in his 10 winters on this mountain, but never cold like this, never cold that bit through his furry paws and thick coat and made his breath hang in the air like something solid. And then the snow came. Not the first dusting. They'd had several of those already, little gestures from winter gone by noon. This was different. This fell all through the night, thick and steady. It fell through the next day and the next night and the day after that. When it finally stopped, the world had gone soft and white and strange. Bodie woke in the dark before dawn, as was his habit. The cabin was warm from the wood stove, but he could feel the cold beyond the walls, could sense it pressing against the windows. He went to the door and waited. When the old man awoke and came down the ladder from the loft, he let him out, as always. Bodhi bolted out the door and suddenly found himself in snow up to his chest. He sometimes hopped, sometimes waded through it to the creek, his usual path, invisible in the sea of white. His back legs protested the cold, but he kept going. He'd gone to the creek every morning for 10 years, every season, every weather. The creek was his morning, his way of listening to the mountain, of knowing what kind of day was was coming. He reached the bank and stopped. The creek said nothing. Bodie stood very still. In 10 years, through droughts that turned other creeks to dust and storms that sent this one jumping its banks, through all the seasons turning and turning again. The creek had never stopped talking, never stopped its song over stones, its gurgle under fallen logs, its endless conversation with itself and the mountain and anyone who would listen. Now there was nothing. He moved closer. The snow had buried the banks, but he could see where the creek should be, a white ribbon winding between the bay laurels. He pushed his nose down through the snow, down through the cold powder, until he touched something solid, ice, not the thin skin that sometimes formed on still pools there and gone. By noon this was thick, solid, silent. Bodie sat down in the snow and waited for the creek to start talking again. The sky lightened slowly, gray at first Then pale blue at the edges. The Douglas firs stood dark against it, their branches heavy with snow. Nothing moved. No wind, no birds, no sound but Bodie's breathing making clouds in the air, and he waited. The cold seeped up through the snow into his haunches, but he didn't move. The creek would start talking. It always did. He just had to wait. Joey burst out of the cabin two hours later, when the sun finally rose enough to make the snow sparkle like it had been scattered with black broken glass. He launched himself off the porch in a spray of white, disappeared completely into a drift, and emerged, snorting and delighted, his face covered in powder. The world was new. The world was white. The world was clearly full of excellent things to do. He found Body sitting by the creek in exactly the same spot, exactly the same position. Joey bounded over, or tried to. The snow was so deep he had to leap like a rabbit, all four feet leaving the ground with each jump, his spotted coat flashing through the white. He arrived at the creek bank, panting and grinning, looked where Body was looking, cocked his head, looked at Body, and looked back at the creek. The grin faded a little. He sat down next to his brother, their shoulders touching. They sat for a while. The sun climbed higher. The shadow of the madrone tree crept across the snow. A chunk of snow fell from a Douglas fir branch, where, with a soft whomp, Esteller's jay called from somewhere up the mountain. Then another answered from somewhere down. Joey tried very hard to be still. He made it almost three minutes. Then his ears swiveled, catching some sound Body couldn't hear or wasn't listening for, and Joey's head tilted back, following something in the air above them. The snow was still falling, not the thick curtain from the blizzard, but the finest dust of flakes drifting down through the Douglas firs like thoughts falling slowly. Joey watched one spiraling down, down, turning as it fell closer, closer, and he opened his mouth. It landed on his nose. The flake melted instantly, but for just a second before it did, Joey saw something. Lines, branches, a pattern like the tiniest star he'd ever seen or like. He looked at the frozen creek, looked back up at the falling snow, looked at Body, and his tail started wagging. Joey began leaping straight up into the air, snapping at snowflakes. He caught them and they melted. He missed them and landed in snow up to his ears. He would go to catch one, saw the pattern for just a heartbeat, and then it was gone. He'd try again and again, missing, catching, seeing, not seeing, the whole enterprise clearly. The Best game ever invented, and Body watched him. After a long moment, after Joey had crashed into three different drifts and emerged, each time more covered in snow than before, Body's tail moved just once and just a little. Joey stopped mid leap and looked at Body, Snowflakes caught in his whiskers. Come on, he said. Body looked at the frozen creek, the ice that said nothing. He looked at Joey, covered in snow and grinning like an idiot, tail going like a metronome, clearly believing that jumping at falling snow was a reasonable thing to do. Body stood up. His back legs were stiff from sitting so long in the cold, protesting the movement, but he stood. Joey immediately leaped straight up, missing the snowflake he was going for, and crashed into adrift. Bodhi watched the snow falling. The flakes were small, sparse, falling slowly through the cold air. He watched one spiraling down toward him and opened his mouth. It landed on his nose instead, melted before he could see anything. Joey bounced over, shaking snow from his ears, and they stood shoulder to shoulder, both watching the sky, breath making clouds between them. Another flake. Body caught it on his nose, but it melted before he could see it, and another Joey caught it but never saw it. They tried for a while there by the silent creek, catching and missing, seeing and not seeing. The sun climbed higher, brilliant on this white world. Steam rose from their panting breaths. Joey's tongue hung out and Body's legs were beginning to ache from the cold. Then they heard a sound and both dogs froze. It came again, a dry rattle, then a low croak, then what might have been laughter, if ravens bothered to laugh. Two ravens sat in the madrone tree on the far bank, watching them. Their black feathers looked even blacker against the snow, their eyes bright and knowing These ravens were old. They'd been on this mountain since before Bodie was born, would be here long after he'd crossed the Rainbow Bridge. They watched everything with those black eyes that missed nothing and judged most of it harshly. One of them croaked again. The other clicked its beak, a sound like disapproval, or maybe amusement. Hard to tell with ravens. Then they dropped from the branch and flew upstream, following the curve of the frozen Creek. They flew 20 yards, stopped in another tree, this one a bent oak, hung with snow, and they looked back and croaked once. Joey looked at Body, Body looked at the ravens. The boys loved to bark at the ravens and chase them, and the ravens had led them all over the mountain playing this game. Most days the ravens just like to steal things from the porch and throw pinecones at Joey's head and. And occasionally they would scream at both of them for reasons that were unclear. But now the ravens were quiet and looking back, waiting. Body started walking upstream. Joey followed immediately, high stepping through the deep snow, his tail making question marks in the air. The ravens flew ahead, tree to tree, always stopping to look back, and the dogs followed. The creek bed curved left between the bay laurels, then right past a fallen log, climbing gradually up the mountain. The snow was deeper here, untouched by sun or wind. Bodhi's shoulders pushed through it, making a path. Joey sometimes walked in Bodhi's footprints, sometimes had to leap from one to the next to keep from sinking completely. They walked for a long time. The forest was silent except for their movement through the snow and the occasional croak from the ravens urging them forward. Body's legs ached. The cold was in his bones now. Joey's enthusiasm was just hitting full volume. The raven stopped in another oak and waited. When the dogs caught up, Body heard it first. Water. Not the voice he knew, not the lower down song of the creek by the cabin. This was higher, faster, laughing over stones. He moved forward, pushing through the last drift, and there it was, the creek running clear and loud in a place where the sun hit just right, where the current moved too fast for for ice to form even in this unprecedented cold. The same water, the same creek just upstream. Still singing. Bodie stood at the edge and listened to it, the voice he'd woken to every morning for 10 years, the voice he'd thought had gone silent. It was here. It had been here all along, just different and not where he had expected it. He put his head down and drank. The water was so cold it hurt. His teeth, made his head ache and tasted like stone and snow and the heart of the mountain. Joey drank too, then immediately started trying to catch the water in his mouth, snapping at the current like it was a game he could win, like the water might hold still if he was just fast enough. He got a nose full and sneezed explosively, staggered back, shook his head, and tried again. The ravens croaked. It sounded almost approving, or at least less disapproving than usual. Then they flew off, back toward the cabin, done with whatever kindness they'd decided to extend for reasons they would never explain and probably wouldn't remember tomorrow. Body and Joey stood by the running water a while longer. The sun was high now, the cold a little less sharp. Joey finally gave up trying to catch the uncatchable water and sat down next to Bode, panting, his sides heaving completely Satisfied with how the morning had gone. Then Body turned and started walking back downstream, following their tracks in the snow. Joey bounded along behind and then beside him, occasionally veering off to investigate something. A snow covered stone, a branch, a smell that might have been deer or might have been fox or might have been nothing at all. Then racing back. The sun was brilliant on this white world, making them squint. When they reached the cabin, Bodhi went to his spot by the frozen creek. He stood there, looking at the white surface where the water should be singing. Then he lowered himself down carefully, his back legs stiff and protesting, until he was lying in the snow, his ear pressed against the ice. Joey watched him, tilted his head, looked at the ice, looked at Bodie. Then he lay down too, and put his ear against the frozen creek. At first there was nothing, just cold against his ear. The faint creak of ice settling and the distant call of a jay. Then underneath something, a whisper, a movement. Water far down, still flowing beneath its winter blanket. The same creek Bodie had known for 10 years, just quieter, just underneath, just different for a while. Joey's tail thumped once against the snow. They lay there together, listening to the water under the ice until the old man called them in for dinner. After that, something changed in their mornings. Body still woke before dawn, still went to the creek. But now Joey came with him, stumbling, sleepy eyed, out into the dark cold, grumbling his way through the snow. But coming when the snow was falling, they would stand in the pre dawn stillness and watch it. The temperature at that hour was the coldest it would be all day. The snowflakes lasted longer before melting. Joy saw the patterns, those impossible tiny stars with their lines and branches. Sometimes he couldn't see them. Sometimes Bodie saw them too. Caught them on his nose, saw the design for just a heartbeat before it disappeared. Then Body would lie down by the creek and listen to the water underneath. Joey would lie next to him, listening to something he never would have known was there if the cold hadn't come, if the creek hadn't frozen, if Body hadn't been sad about it. The days were short. The light came and left early. The cold held firm. One morning, after they'd been doing this for perhaps two weeks, perhaps three, time moved different in winter. A Douglas squirrel came down from the trees to yell at them. This particularly grumpy squirrel lived in the big fir by the creek and had strong opinions about everything. He sat on a snow covered log and chattered at them, his tail jerking with each syllable. Joy lifted his head from the ice to look at him. The squirrel chattered louder, clearly offended that Joey was lying on the ground instead of chasing him like a proper dog should. But Joey just put his head back down on the ice. The squirrel's chattering sputtered to a confused halt. He sat there for a moment, tail frozen mid jerk. Then he crept closer, curious now, and put his own small ear to the ice. His tail stopped moving entirely and he stayed like that for a long moment. Then he looked at Body, looked at Joey, chattered once softly, not grumpy at all, and ran back up his tree. The ravens, watching from the madrone, croaked. It sounded like approval. Another morning when the sky was clear and the stars were still out, Body caught a snowflake on his nose and the pattern stayed visible in the starlight for three whole seconds. He could see every line, every branch, every impossible angle. It looked like the ice on the creek. It looked like frost on the window. It looked like nothing and everything all at once. Joy, watching him, saw Body's eyes go soft. They stood in the pre dawn dark, breathing clouds, and more snow fell around them, those tiny, perfect, impossible things that existed for just a moment before they became water again. Winter had settled in on the mountain. Some mornings the ravens came and sat in the madrone tree, watching them with their black eyes, occasionally croaking commentary that might have been approval or might have been mockery. Some mornings the ravens stayed wherever ravens go when they're not being mysterious and difficult. Some mornings the boys caught snowflakes and saw the tiny stars, those impossible patterns. Some mornings the flakes melted too fast to see anything at all. Some mornings the sky was clear and cold and dark, the stars still out, the world holding its breath before dawn. Some mornings clouds hung low and gray and the light came reluctant and late. Some mornings the squirrel came down to listen to the ice with them, a small ear pressed to the frozen surface, his tail still. Some mornings he stayed in his tree, chattering and shaking his fluffy tail at Joey until Joey chased him exactly three times around the big fir before giving up and going back to the creek. All of the mornings were cold, all of them were quiet, and all of them had Body and Joey together, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the mountain's winter voice. Then one morning, it might have been a month after that first blizzard. It might have been more. Bodie was lying with his ear to the ice when he heard something new underneath, not just the whisper of water moving, but a crack, small and distant like the ice shifting, like winter, beginning to think about what came next. Like something loosening deep down. He didn't lift his head, didn't tell Joey, just listened. The sound came again, then again. Not breaking exactly, just considering. Bode kept his ear to the ice and listened to winter, thinking about spring. Listened to the water moving underneath, patient and unhurried, waiting for its time to come back around. Joey lay beside him, listening to his own sounds. The water, the ice settling, his own heartbeat and Bodie's breathing. Next to him the ravens sat in the madrone tree and watched the sky turn from black to gray to pale blue. The grumpy squirrel was curled in his nest in the big fir, warm and asleep, dreaming squirrel dreams. And underneath the ice the creek kept moving, kept singing its quiet song, kept waiting. The way some things do, the way all things do if you give them time enough. When spring finally arrived, and it would, it always did, the ice would crack and break and melt. The creek would sing loudly again, would jump its banks with snowmelt, would rush and laugh and talk to the mountain in its spring voice. But that hadn't happened yet. For now it was winter. For now, the creek whispered under its blanket of ice. For now Bodie and Joey lay in the pre dawn cold and listened and watched and learned. For now this was enough. This was everything. The world was white and quiet and cold and two dogs lay by a frozen creek and snowflakes fell through the dark and the water moved underneath. Patient as mountains. Patient as time. Patient as time. As the turning of seasons that would come round again. The way they always do. The way they always will. Rest well, friend. Good night.