It was perhaps 300 feet from where it once rested. Mostly destroyed, tangled with branches, buried a foot in fresh silt. Will, the friend I built it with is moving out of the house soon. It doesn’t feel unrelated. I deferred to him regarding its construction, he worked for The Vermont Youth Conservation Core building trails and things of this nature. Generally I think they last a bit longer than one season, but the storm that swept it away was unseasonable. 
The water level was up a few feet, nothing approaching this design could have possibly survived. These brooks are alive, ever changing. The deep part we had planned to swim in, the deep spot for swimming Will had christened is no longer the deep spot, it’s just another silty pool.

I followed the brook twice again as far as the bridge had been swept. I found pieces of it tangled along the way. I have no doubt there are splinters travelling down the Winooski, heck, they might already be bobbing around the lake on their way to New York and the sea.

As I walked down and back I saw the fresh face of the brook, formerly a river, if only for an evening. There were new rocks, old rocks moved, and dots of quartz revealed in the smoky light. A strange reality of climate change this; following the debris from a strangely intense storm beneath a sky made hazy by forest fire smoke. 

I picked up each beautiful piece I found, and I even discovered my next target: a piece too large to even budge. It’s milky white with streaks and pocks of black. It had been hidden by the bank for nobody knows how long.