A middle-aged man recalls going on many adventures with his father. However, one trip was different from the rest and it changed him. The man was ten years old at the time, and he and his father planned a trip canoeing down Cotner's Creek, near where his father grew up. His father let him make choices about the trip, but he never knew if his father had planned everything that happened or not. The boy and his father set off paddling down the creek. As they go, they stop seeing backyards off of the creek and it becomes more remote. The boy thinks it feels strange, like a different world. That night, the two stop and set up sleeping bags and a fire on a wide field next to the creek. The father tells a story about how he did the same trip with his best friend Gary many years before. The father and son talk about how the place feels strange, like it is between two worlds. The boy throws his napkin in the fire, and it rises upwards like a bird as it burns. Soon, they see a fire at the other end of the field, even though there is no chance that anyone else is there. The father makes a torch out of a branch and waves it up and down, and a few minutes later the fire across the field mimics the motion. The two ignore their "sister camp" and go to bed. In the middle of the night, the father wakes up the boy. The father tells the boy that if he says so, the boy should get in the canoe and push off, even if the father isn't there. The boy then sees that the swaying trees are actually appendages, and the clouds part to reveal a yellow moon that rolls around and looks at them like an eye. A mountain moves in the distance. The boy thinks that what he is seeing is maybe something ancient from the earth, a different dimension, or a god or demon. Two globes of light rise up from the ground across the field, and start moving towards them. The father makes two torches with rolls of toilet paper on sticks, and the boy sees shadows climbing over the fields towards them. The lights across the field mimic the movement of the torches. The father takes the torches and ventures into the field, telling the boy to count to one hundred and leave if he is not back. The boy does so, paddling down the creek until he gets to a bridge. After a bit, the father stumbles out of the brambles next to the creek. He looks gaunt, and his beard is longer than it should be. When the father sees the canoe, he calls out "Gary," and then sees that it is his son. The two agree to not tell the mother what happened. The boy, who is now middle-aged, recalls that he and his father did not speak about the creek until many years later when his father was on his death-bed. As he died, his father said he was not afraid of what lay out there. Now getting older himself, the man muses that he also has no fear, because he knows that there are mysteries out there that will never be known, and people can give the universe meaning.