Cracked Window

Where did all the creeks go? That’s what I’m wondering, thanks to a Google terrain map of my Northeast Portland neighborhood.

Zoomed in as close as I can get, I see unlabeled squiggly lines in several parts of Irvington that typically indicate water’s fickle flow. One crosses my street a few houses to the south. Yet no creek exists.

The neighborhood has been developed for many decades. My house was built in the 1920s. The neighbor’s house across the street was built in the 1910s. I see no evidence of vacant land anywhere that once accommodated meandering water routes.

No doubt Google has access to maps based on contemporary survey data. So why the tease to what use to be?

Imagine if the creeks returned one day, adding geographic variety — and potentially rain-swollen chaos — to our neat and symetrically plotted urban lots. I feel a petition drive and bumper sticker sale coming on.

How will Atticus, my son of nearly three, see his past at my age, more than a half-century hence? At his fingertips he’ll have countless digital photographs and videos chronicling his life. Hundreds are already burned onto hard drives and into his brain: the boy loves to sit on my lap and watch them. The Early Years in umpteen million crystalline colors, viewed again and again.

My early years are chronicled in precious few aged snapshots, incongruous on a computer screen. In some, poignancy emerges from ethereal haze:

The photographer’s ghostly shadow, dead mother hovering over faded sons, their youth fading like film undeveloping.

Still, I’m grateful to see us then. But how did we feel in the moment? File can’t be found.

In the end, no matter how many megapixels fill up a memory drive, they don’t record what’s lost. Maybe at my age Atticus will vividly relive the past by logging into an emotion capture program. You’ve got mail old feelings! That’s the killer science-fiction ap I yearn for. But using it might be too intense to bear.