I love low rivers in summertime. Hereabouts, we are blessed. Our rivers, though bug-friendly, do not house the nostril-clogging swarms found further north. Nor do they choke on the fetid overgrowths found in the South. The South’s people-eating alligators give way up here to mud puppies and the occasional snake. They can hurt, but seldom kill.

In springtime, snowmelt can make our rivers treacherous. Some among us like white-water rafting and kayaking. I don’t. A septuagenarian, I no longer need threatening stuff to feel invigorated. A sunrise or a sunset is more than enough to prompt, “Thank you, God.”

Low water in summertime invites wading. Happily, there are modern boat shoes and sneakers to shield my ticklish soles from river stones, and to help me stay upright as I slip-slide along moss-slickened shallows.

At home, we have a half-acre pond. It is inviting in its own right, with its usually placid surface and tempting fish.

But rivers have currents.

I respect currents, in the same way that I respect our area’s black bears. Both can kill. The bear’s power, claws, teeth and menace are obvious dangers. River currents, however, are deceptive.

People splash, stand, swim – and in an instant one is missing. There is no gore, no torn-up ground, no awful mass of twisted metal or fire-blackened planks and beams. Drowning victims slip below the surface, leaving no trace.

So, yes, I respect river currents. I am never totally at ease, not even in two feet of water, because moving water creates holes and hides snags. Get a foot caught, or trip and hit one’s head, and the end result can be just as final as anything a charging bear can administer.

But moving water, like flickering fire, has its own mesmerizing effect.

Our pond’s very placidity invites ennui. It is good to sit there in early morning, sipping coffee as the pink-blue clouds turn pure white at the end of sunrise. Soon enough, though, the urge to get up and walk around will take effect.

Not so with the fingers of a softly burning nighttime fire, the logs pulsing with the wind-stroked glow of their own conversion into vapors and ash.

Not so with the lazy, almost imperceptible current of a slow-flowing river in the evening, the darkling boughs of overhanging trees deepening its shadows. The circles made by alighting bugs or feeding fish ripple into nothingness. The occasional leaf or bit of wood bobs its languid way along, perhaps shifting direction after bumping a rock, bound downstream for somewhere out of sight.

The fire’s vapors, some visible as smoke, others tangible as heat that pulsates back and forth on unclad forearms, also are en route to somewhere out of sight.

Both fire and water carry things along. Fire wafts ashes, sparks, leaves and the occasional insect. Water buoys bugs, leaves, little eddies and the occasional insect. Fire warms. Water cools.

Either is good to sit beside of a summer evening.

It can be both.

A small ring of stones or a long-unused wheel rim from a truck can hold the driftwood or brought-in logs that feed a bankside fire. Sitting shoreside, it is possible to experience the motions of the fire and, through the ripples of its rising warmth, see the swirls and eddies of the river just beyond.

Fire and water. Such opposites, yet they have such similar effects.

They both move, yet they induce motionless in those of us who absently stir the ashes with a stick, or sometimes bend to grasp a stone and revive the almost forgotten question of, “Can I still skip a stone for six hops?”

Sitting behind a streamside fire, it sometimes seems that life stands still.

Yet the vision itself belies the stillness. Darkness creeps in on us, reducing the scene to the glow space around the fire, hiding most of the river’s current behind the reflection in the water of the slowly fading flames.

A new log or two resuscitates the fire. No action of ours is needed for the river. It seems as though its supply of upstream water is endless, as is its gift of water flowing downstream out of sight.

Illusions, of course. The fire will eventually die out. The river will change from summertime somnolence to autumnal chills and ice-gripped winter, then surge in spring to flex the power that can fell mighty trees, move huge rocks and, yes, kill people.

But in summertime, as the heat of a 90-degree day fades into breeze-borne coolness, there are few pleasures in life that can beat the satisfaction of sitting beside a stream, or behind a fire, or both.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.