As I walked up the gravelled driveway and through the iron gates I felt at peace. I decided to sit for a moment on the wooden bench that stood at the top of a small hill just past the spot where the driveway ended and the manicured lawn began.

As I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the sun bathe my face, the story of the arrowhead came to mind. It always did in this place, even when I consciously tried to ignore it. It was one of the most significant memories of my entire life and yet I was not even present for most of the events that made up the story.

I knew those events only because my brother and sister had told them to me over and over again in their completely dysfunctional way. Maybe that’s why the story was so precious to me. Perhaps what was so important was really the memory of the three of us sitting in the back yard or in my room on a rainy day, me pestering the two of them to tell the story just one more time. I don’t know. But I have never had any difficulty recalling the story in its entirety.

It started on a Sunday morning after we had got back home from church. We had been good so mom agreed to let us go out to the park to play for the afternoon.

My older brother Jason had been talking about crossing the creek at the back of the woods just behind the park for a long time. He didn’t want to do it in the summer or fall because the creek was almost dry then. That would have been too lame. But in the spring when the snow on the mountains was melting, that little creek started bubbling and gurgling – sometimes it even overflowed its banks. That’s when it aroused his interest.

Jason led us down to the creek and we all watched as the water went tearing by. He tried to size up the distance across the creek and how difficult it would be to jump across. Darian and I sat on the grass a few feet back from the bank.

"We can do it. I'm sure we can!” Jason said. Darian seemed convinced but I was not. I crawled up to the edge of the bank and stared across the short distance to the other side.

"See, Annie! Trop facile!”

Jason knew how much I hated that girlish nickname but he used it anyway. He also knew that it annoyed me when he used the only two words of French that he seemed to have learned after 6 years of immersion.

"Peut-être trop facile for you", I responded in the most manly voice I could manage, "but maybe not so easy for me! I am definitely too short. I will fall into the creek and you'll never see me again until some Forest Ranger finds me living with wolves a thousand miles from here."

Jason was not very empathetic.

"Don't be such a noodle-head, Annie. You will not fall in. I won't let you. We'll all hold hands, take a good running start, and fly over this creek like it was nothing. You'll see."

Jason reached out his hand to me but I crossed both my arms and my legs and settled firmly into my spot on the bank of the creek.

"I'm not going and that's that" I said. I then gave Darian a warning.

"If you decide to listen to him you're not being very smart."

Darian stared at me then turned towards Jason.

"Anoka may not be the bravest kid on the block, Jason, but this time he might be right. Are you sure we can make it. It does look pretty scary."

"Come on, Darry. I would never make you do anything really dangerous. Mom would kill me if you or Annie got hurt. Look, it's not even very deep."

Jason took a broken branch a few feet long and tried to stick it into the bottom of the creek bed about halfway across. On the first attempt the current caught the branch and almost tore it out of his hands. But on his second try he aimed the branch a bit upstream and managed to jam it into the muddy creek bed leaving a few inches sticking out of the water.

I was not impressed.

"You almost lost that old tree branch. If that had been Darian she'd be halfway to the wolves by now!"

My grim assessment was made without even a hint of a smile. Darian was definitely looking nervous at that point.