Creeking
The act of exploring small streams
I spent hours at a time, as a young child, playing in creeks. Creeks that only flowed for a few minutes during a downpour, or for a few days during snowmelt, or for a few months before disappearing. Spring-fed creeks that were never more than a trickle but never dried up. Perennial streams that cut deep valleys, winding down to the Minnesota River from the plains above.
Driveway Creek, that emerged from a deep ravine through a culvert under the highway, where I would redirect the flows, build small dams, walk its full extent until it dried up and I awaited the next rainstorm. Bluff Creek, that cascaded magically over cliffs and rockpiles, where a mere leaf or branch could redirect the waters over different falls. Here I always felt, even as a young one, that it was not my place to intervene, only to observe and to be in presence. Acorn Creek, that emerged beneath an old oak and flowed down across open rock. Firefly Creek, so named for the swampy area full of summer fireflies where it emerged from the earth, a continual burble that disappeared back into the ground after a few hundred feet, that my father and I eventually tapped to feed a waterfall birdbath in our backyard and ultimately barrels to water our garden. Strawberry Creek. Sacred Heart Creek. Rice Creek. Skalbekken Creek. All of them followed, explored, known as friends, within the limits of public property and sometimes beyond. “Creeking”, we called it, discovering the small rapids, the places where the waters flowed along logs, under them, rippled over rocks and roots, disappeared into gopher tunnels and bubbled up again, meeting the water striders, the minnows, the tadpoles and dragonflies.
Over the past weeks, since my re-embodiment process, I have once again found myself drawn to creeks, to discover the riffles and meanders and giant riparian cottonwoods that hide among houses and roads and pastures.
Unless you live in an area where watercourses have been ditched and channelized, creeks are hidden corridors of wildness. They still follow the paths that they have followed for hundreds and thousands of years: capillaries collecting the lifeblood of the living planet, growing and merging, seeking the sea. The photo above is only a few steps off of a major street, a block from a giant shopping center - and yet not many people take those few steps to visit the creek, or even acknowledge its existence.
Creeks appear on maps as blue lines, but really they are fractal branching networks, and it is impossible to say exactly where a creek - or indeed even a mighty river - starts. Nor do they really end. They join forces, and ultimately enter the great oneness of water that is the ocean. I imagine them as collecting stories, of all of the trees and gardens they have touched, all of the creatures they have flowed through, so that to commune with a creek is to be a part of its watershed, to dip our own story into the multitudes.
I live just south of the divide between the north and south branches of Dunawi Creek. In big rains, a little swale to the north flows across our orchard and garden, from where it would continue southwestward if it were not interrupted and redirected west by our street. The creek itself is just five minutes’ walk, at a point where it flows from the relative wildness of ash glades amidst pasture and its headwaters on the south slopes of Bald Hill into a more urban environment. But even the urban portion has its wildness - at least two beaver dams, and willow thickets full of Lincoln’s sparrows and song sparrows and kinglets.
Dunawi means “wise old woman” in the Kalapuyan language of the indigenous people of this area, but that name was only chosen recently to replace a rather unfortunate name that white folks gave it, so we don’t actually know what the Kalapuya called it, and we will probably never know. Draining just four square miles, it is about as small as a creek can be and still have a name and a blue line on a map.
Fifteen minutes’ walk to the north or northeast will take me to the north branch of Dunawi Creek, which charts a wilder and swampier path from the east slopes of Bald Hill through restored wetlands and undeveloped woodlands. It is perhaps more known to citizens of Corvallis because it regularly floods a particular underpass, a situation often magnified by the area beavers.
Thirty minutes’ walk to the northeast is Oak Creek, which drains an area of hills and mountains to our northwest rising up above 2000’. Perhaps five times the size of Dunawi Creek, Oak Creek flows year round and has a gravel bottom rather than the silt and roots of Dunawi - though its pebbles are only slightly rounded having traveled just a few miles from their mountain origins.
Several giant cottonwood trees hide in plain sight along Oak Creek, including this one tucked in on the southwest edge of Oregon State University. Stepping into the creek channel feels like entering a different world, far removed from the lawns and sidewalks and brick buildings.
Forty-five minutes’ walk to the southeast is the Marys River, which drains 310 square miles of coastal mountains and rolling hills, from the wetlands of Finley Wildlife Refuge to the high slopes of Marys Peak to the steep verdant valleys around Harris Bridge and Blodgett and Summit. In our climate its flows vary more than 1000-fold from summer drought to winter flood. In summer it is open for creeking, wading, exploring, swimming in the deeper holes. In winter it is a force to be reckoned with, quietly pulsing with energy, swift and perhaps 15 feet deep, with floating and overhanging trees creating a precarious path for paddlers.
One hour’s walk to the east is the great Willamette River, draining some 3500 square miles above our location, up into the high Cascades where snowmelt and springs and human reservoir interventions keep it flowing strong through summer drought. The Willamette is far too large for creeking, but open to floating - an activity that is less foreign to my fellow humans, though perhaps few do it as I do in quiet solitude, noticing the kingfishers and osprey and mink along the banks. I am not myself a water creature, and I am always a bit uneasy being carried along far above the riverbed, trusting in my life jacket and knowing that, unlike the fish, I cannot breathe beneath the surface, cannot find comfort in its frigid depths. So while I enjoy paddling on occasion, I prefer to seek out and know intimately the small streams, the ones that few others notice.
Unless we live in a desert where the creeks flow for a few days out of the year, we are - all of us - surrounded by flowing water. If you wish to become rooted, to know and belong to your place, I encourage you to explore, to name the creeks too small to be blue lines, to sit by the small waterfalls, to meet the creatures and plants and trees that live in and along their courses. We are never too old for creeking.
I and friend have recently undertaken a modest project to locate streams on the west side of the Jordan River in Salt Lake county, UT, with the help of older maps of the area. One of these streams is within a 20 minute walk of my house. It mostly flows underground, but not entirely and it flows into a small lake/pond also close by. It is one of the few places you can see moving water on this side of the valley. I hope to find the source of this little stream called Decker Creek in the next little while. Looking at the maps, I think it might be spring fed.
You've just unintentionally helped me realize why, while my house and garden have come to feel so much like Home over the last few years since I moved here, my neighborhood has always felt somewhat disenchanting and not at all restorative to me. There is no good creeking to be had within even a 30 minute walk that feels the way that you've described creeking here. Partly this is because my neighborhood is a dull grid of 90 degree angles, no flow and curve like the rest of nature, but also partly because the city hates our houseless neighbors so much that most of the nearest creeks are fenced off or posted with no trespassing signs. The one exception is the Periwinkle Path that follows Periwinkle Creek for a a couple miles through town, eventually ending at Grand Prairie Park. The path is so highly trafficked with other humans, often idiots antagonizing the ducks and other creatures therein, and there is so much litter strewn about, that I go out seeking that Creeking feeling and just come home feeling sad and angry at the disrespect others show to these tiny alcoves of wildness within our town.
Much to think on. Thank you.