One day, I left the confines of Morecz-nina's property and walked across the gravel road at the side of her house and down to the railroad tracks nearby. No train was coming from either direction, so I crossed the tracks and walked into the tall grasses and prickly shrubs on the other side, drawn by the sight of fuchsia-colored flowers growing on tall stems. Then, a short distance away, I saw it – a sparkling, beautiful creek; water burbling and flowing quickly, brown rocks glistening in the sun under the shallow water, tadpoles scooting into marshy grasses at the side of the creek. I felt like Columbus discovering the new world. I later learned that it was Saucon Creek. I never knew that a creek was so close to Morecz-nina's house. It couldn't have been more than twenty or thirty feet across at its widest, but to me it looked like the Mississippi and I felt like Huckleberry Finn. I took off my shoes, socks, and dress and waded into the creek in my undershirt and panties. I was five or six years old at the time and this was the neatest adventure I'd ever had. I touched the velvety mosses on the rocks in the creek, I gasped as fish (small but real fish!) swam by, and I carefully caught tadpoles, not sure what I would do with them, but glad for my trophies just the same.
…In the years when our family had troubles that permeated every corner of our lives, my two refuges were school, where I would have been happy to stay for 24 hours a day, and Morecz-nina's house, where I would always find hugs, kisses, cookies, and the escape of exploring the creek and its environs. Much later, in my college years, when I first read and fell in love with Dylan Thomas's poem 'Fern Hill,' those Saucon Creek days came alive again in meaning and memory: "In the sun that is young once only/ Time let me play and be/Golden in the mercy of his means … in the pebbles of the holy streams."