It is obvious that McCarthy uses his extraordinary skill with language to paint the settings of his stories in rich and deeply intense detail that intimates a close love and knowledge of nature.
Then he was straddle-legged with one foot on the bank and the other in the creek, the water boiling between his legs, ribboning high on his calf. He got the other foot down and turned, carefully, facing upstream, standing with the thin brown wings of water flying over his shins with a slicing sound, standing so in an illusion of fantastic motion. (p.178)
But several places in this book, and after the deadly, almost living river of Suttree, I wonder why McCarthy always paints his water brown. Here in particular, a creek, away from the muddying debris of man, seemingly safe in the cool forested mountain, a fast moving body fed by the rains, yet it carries the undercurrent of evil perhaps, just as all the other workings of life; such as man.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology