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I’ve been thinking a bit about confluences of late. About change and about how you never really know when another tributary is going to enter the flow of your life, and how it might alter it. For the better, mostly. A new job, a new town, a new start, a new friend. They tumble through the woods that cloak the streambanks of life, and suddenly, there they are, coming in when you least expect them, bringing new possibility. And new turbulence, perhaps.

Across North Carolina, there are some pretty well-known confluences — well-known, at least, among lovers of creeks and streams and rivers. In the earliest days of spring, anglers flock to the junction of Contentnea Creek and the Neuse River to meet migrating hickory shad on their way upstream from the sea. The Yadkin River is one of the longest rivers in the state, gathering its waters from hundreds of tributaries large and small — among them the Roaring, Mitchell, Fisher, and Ararat rivers. And the South Yadkin, of course.

At the confluence of the Deep (right) and Rocky rivers in Chatham County, White Pines Nature Preserve safeguards 285 acres of wildlife habitat. photograph by Chris Hannant

One of my favorite confluences is on the edge of Chatham County, where the Rocky River flows into the Deep. Ribbed with rocks, the banks blanketed in wildflowers, the two Piedmont streams meet under the shade of tall white pines, far from their typical range. This area, in fact, is protected as the White Pines Nature Preserve. I’ve sat on the streambanks to watch wild turkeys fly across the Deep River, and a family of river otters cavort in the slow, languid pool of the Rocky River just before it meets the Deep. Farther downstream, the Deep meets the Haw, at Mermaid Point, to form the Cape Fear River. Legend holds that mermaids swam to that spot from the Atlantic Ocean to wash their hair in the commingling of pure fresh water.

Countless other confluences, from large to small to tiny, all share this feeling of coming together, of ceaseless movement, of forming something new. But that’s the only one I know that promises the possibility — however remote — of glimpsing a sea-maiden in real life.

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Deep in the farming country of north-central North Carolina, far off the road, hidden in big woods and rarely visited by anyone, a small stream tumbles out of the forest like a young rabbit, with a certain lack of abandon. You might even call it cheerfulness, especially if you’re paddling a canoe and can feel the shift in the water’s velocity under the hull.

I slip across the eddy line, into the shade of a knuckle of high ground clad in mountain laurel and sycamore. The seam where this little stream meets a larger creek is a visible line on the water surface, the affable, steady current of the latter giving way grudgingly to the coltish, vigorous flow of the tributary. Looking downstream, I can’t say for sure where their commingled waters become indistinct, where the two creeks become one. But I can see where they turn toward the east and head across the Coastal Plain, bound together now, one to the other, and making their way, eventually, to the sea.

I love this little spot. Here, at the confluence of two wild streams, there’s a fetching sense that something new is being born. These two creeks are governed by geography and geology and topography. They can no more alter their courses than the sun can decide to take a right-hand turn across the sky. They have no alternative but to come together. To join forces.

The rivers have no alternative but to come together, creating something familiar but altogether new.

And so, the smaller stream flows into the larger, creating something at once familiar but altogether new. Think about a Baptist choir meeting up with the Episcopal choir from the church down the street. It would take a few beats to work through the twists and turns of old gospel strains and even older liturgy, but sooner or later, all heaven would break loose.

I nose the canoe into the mouth of the smaller creek and paddle close to the streambank, its muds pocked with the prints of deer and raccoon. I want to probe farther upstream into this tiny creek, but the sun is falling, and the light is fading, and I don’t want to be caught in the dark. I whisper a promise to return, then spin the canoe around and paddle hard back downstream.

Recrossing the junction of the two creeks, I can feel the change. Where the two streams meet, a so-called “shear layer” of unsettled water is created by the different rates of flow. And hidden far below, differing levels of stream bottom can send more upwelling currents to the surface. As I cross the confluence, the canoe hull chatters with all the turbulence.

Somewhere far downstream, these waters will come to another reckoning. Eventually, all creeks and streams and rivers flow to the sea, and at that final confluence, the poet Kahlil Gibran wrote, “the river will know/it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,/but of becoming the ocean.”

Downstream of any change, life will be a little bit different, and there’s always a hint of fear in becoming something new. But more possibility, too.