My first memory of having a passion for the Delaware River was in the summer of 1955. My family was summering in Smithtown, a storybook village nestled in Upper Bucks County. Our property was tucked between the river and canal, bisected by Smithtown Creek to the south. A summer cottage, 50 yards from the Greystone house, hung regally on the riverbank, the creek lapping at its side yard. It was the spot of choice for the myriad guests who came to languish with us in the dog days of summer.

On one such sultry evening, my Aunt Honey, taking center stage as usual, whiskey and water in one hand and a cigarette with holder in the other, turned to me and said, “It needs a name, sweetheart, what should we call this delightful cottage?” I was the youngest and surprised to be given such an honor, but without missing a beat, I stated adamantly, “The Creek House!”

The creek, which dried to a trickle in the summer, was our playground. My older sister and I explored its ravine that climbed to a waterfall and then up a slope behind the property. We hiked until we fell exhausted onto the flat boulders that had been carved out over thousands of years of erosion. On days after a sudden summer downpour that left pools of water throughout the creek, we splashed each other, our squeals echoing up and down the ravine. With dusk descending we slid down the moss-covered rocks and ran madly about the manor’s yard catching fireflies.

My parents, uncle, and aunts, holding court through the day and carousing with their friends into the night, would barely notice our absence. Even bedtime was an adventure when we snuck out of our room to listen for the rumble and click-clack of trains chugging along the Jersey side of the Delaware River.

In mid-August the party was over. Hurricanes Connie and Diane converged to form a deadly fury of rain. As the river swelled its banks, it took bridges, homes, cars, and people in a rampaging rage. My aunt, the only one at Greystone at the time, was rescued by boat from the second floor of the main house. But the Creek House was not so lucky. The angry churning was too much for the structure and it was swept into the wreckage, smashing into bridge pylons three miles to the south at Point Pleasant.

In some locations, it dumped 20 inches of rain in 24 hours. Ninety-nine people were killed. The hurricanes washed away 150 highway and railroad bridges including four Pennsylvania-to-Jersey bridges. The Davis Cabins campground in Stroudsburg was hit with a 30-foot wall of water and the entire village of Upper Black Eddy was submerged. In Easton, where the Lehigh River flows into the Delaware, the high water level reached a staggering 44.4 feet.

Diane was the first one billion dollar hurricane in U.S. history. That bridge at Point Pleasant was never rebuilt. Its towering stone supports still stand as an eerie reminder of what can happen again.

We still spent summers at Greystone after the devastation. My sister and I still played and explored while my family and their friends gathered on sweltering summer days, but the mood was melancholy. My uncle died a few years later. They said it was his heart but I knew they meant it had broken. Aunt Honey remained the center of attention, but she more subdued. My parents eventually sold their share in the property and took us to the Jersey shore for vacations. After years of trying to care for such a damaged house, my aunts had to sell it.

It didn’t take long before they realized how much they missed the river valley. They bought back some land and rebuilt their lives in a new home set back from the waters and raised on concrete pilings with dramatic vistas. Aunt Honey was reborn and her stories resumed. I grew up and on with my life. Moved out west, moved back, married, divorced, remarried, buried parents and my aunts, had children and grandchildren. The river, the creek, and the canal continue to flood but it can’t keep me away. Through it all, I keep going back.

And every time I make the descent into the valley and see the majestic river that has shimmered, and swirled, and stormed past me for my six-plus decades, I know it will always be the Delaware where I experience that feeling of transcendence; where I find my religion.

Marianne Fluehr is a freelance writer who still plays on the banks of the Delaware River. Her stories have been published in the Bucks County Herald, the Chestnut Hill Local, and the Springfield Sun.