I’ve always felt blessed that I grew up in the rural area that I did. Mud Run was the creek that ran below my house. We could see it out of almost every window. Sometimes alone, sometimes with dear friends and family, I waded in it, caught crawdads, watched tadpoles turn into frogs, picked watercress to eat on the spot, hiked along it for miles, explored its source, its floodplain, its length, its depth and its beauty every day of my young life. Its babbling was the soundtrack of my youth. I learned as much from this brook as I learned in school. The permanence of its modest but magnificent flow became the natural embodiment of my faith, my hope and my love. It nurtured me, shaped who I am, and I am forever connected to it. Back in the day, should any entity small or large threaten its existence in any way, my family and our neighbors would have run them out of the valley. Times have changed. The law is no longer reliably on the side of beauty and sustenance of creation. It has become a commodity, something to take without responsibility to give back. This is an absolutely heretical corruption. I am grateful that members of my family are still near our original homestead and will still fight for the soul of this creek because it is our soul. No action is too small to be important. I learned that from the magical babbling of a beautiful little brook.