Rivers, creeks and streams: a retrospective look back, and a glimpse of what I treasure today
Handwritten journal entry, Fall
1986
Relaxed this afternoon in the shade of a sandbar beside Black Creek. The stream flowed by as moving leaves on the surface marked its passage. The water level was the lowest I’ve yet seen for the creek, and will get lower as the dry month of October approaches. Occasional breezes stirred the leaves overhead, cicadas droned in the trees, and yellow butterflies skipped and darted above the surface of the water. I could have fallen asleep had I perhaps been lying on a sleeping bag or thick blanket. Passed a very pleasant hour in thought. Didn’t even open the book I had brought along to read.
Handwritten Journal entry, 1985
There are few natural features of the landscape more symbolic of life than a perennial spring in the desert. In my Wyoming Atlas and Gazeteer, springs are represented by a little circle and curving “s”. Whenever I’m looking at that atlas (we used those in the days before Google Maps) and peering over the names of towns and streams and gulches and mountains, I occasionally see that marker for a spring. They are improbable, but in the arrid lands they do exist, flowing up from underground conduits, possibly just a trickle, possibly much more. They may form a tiny branch or creek that meanders down a bare mountain for miles until it merges almost invisibly with a larger stream. I saw this once on a hillside coming out of Cody, headed toward Thermopolis in Wyoming.
Life-giving, these springs sustained wearied and parched travelers and explorers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They must have been wonderful sights to behold when discovered serendipitously by desperately thirsty pioneers.
From a handwritten journal entry, 1982, Columbia, S.C.
The creek itself was quite small, three or four feet wide and and few inches deep, but it always seemed to be flowing about the same depth and speed, as if fed by a spring. At one point, I could stop and sit on a log and watch and listen as it flowed over a scoured out section of rock. Over ages this had formed formed a small “V” and was one of the few spots where you could actually hear the rushing of water over rock. It was a quiet and peaceful sound.
I can remember sitting there on Saturday afternoons, staring at the flowing water, hearing its gentle presence in a steady, rhythmic run downstream, listening for any differing characteristics of the sound. There were none. It was singularly uniform, utterly pleasing and soothing. Something about that moving water was immensely peaceful and comforting. It pulsed and flowed. I focused on that one spot for long moments, sometimes for longer stretches of time as I simply wanted to remain in that one spot in the woods.
When I was a young boy of 5 or 6 growing up on the outskirts of Harahan, a city just west of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish, I had my first encounter with what resembled a creek. In flat -as-a-pan south Louisiana, there are no flowing streams that I would later romanticize and dream about. There were, instead, sluggish bayous, slow-moving swamp streams and rivers, straight-as-an arrow canals, and, above all else, ditches, ditches and more of these stagnant lengthy stretches of standing water.
We had one such ditch along our property. It ran alongside a forest of bamboo trees (actually a type of fast growing grass that looks like a tree), and was an inviting spot for adventurous boys who had perhaps watched some type of outdoors show or TV series back in the 1950s when the relatively new invention of television swept the country. Everyone had to have one.
Regardless of where we got the idea, my younger brother and our friend Carl, who was my age and best friend back then, decided we would use a wide metal trough we found as a canoe or boat and travel down the ditch, rowing the trough with what ever type of paddle we could find. This would be a grand adventure.
However, we got impatient and decided to hop out of our makeshift “canoe” and run along the muddy bottom of the ditch pushing it as fast in the water as we could. What fun! There was just one problem. The ditch was filled of eels and we stepped on one too many, scrambling up the low bank of the ditch to safety on our first outing in the ditch. So much for our waterborne adventures.
When we moved to the suburbs of New Orleans in 1961, my brother and I graduated out of the childhood silliness of dodging slimy eels in ditches to the more grown up construction of forts on huge earthen mounds created by the clearing of 200 acres of jungly woods in back of our house for new subdivisions. Before the destruction of our beloved “jungle,” we played Tarzan and explorer games and had other such adventures, but nothing involving ditches or water.
It wasn’t until ten years later that I first experienced the beautiful sandy-bottomed streams of Southern Mississippi, and in 1974 I recall exploring a beautiful creek in woods deep in rural Richland County near Columbia, SC. This was on one of several backroads weekend adventures with my two good friends, Ralph and Eddie.
In an English literature course in 1972, my growing love of streams and rivers was clearly evident in a paper I wrote about one of the poet William Wordsworth’s sonnets devoted to the River Duddon in the English countryside. It was in these poems that I became acquainted with the symbolic and metaphorical uses of rivers in the great literature of the ages. To this day, I consider small rivers and creeks hidden in woods the embodiment of imaginative pondering on the mysteries of time and eternity, as the flowing water never ceases it magical, steady, and perpetual flowing over rocks, moss and lichens along its winding way, the murmuring sound of the water moving over rocks or fallen trees ceaseless, enduring, and timeless.
Journey Down the River Duddon
https://youtu.be/oFAsGo8pscA?si=wNKtik2p1NYpdMK1
By 1985 when I was in graduate school in Hattiesburg, Miss., I was canoeing stretches of the most memorable and idyllic small river I’ve ever known, before and since — Black Creek — a National Wild and Scenic River. I have written about it several times in my journals.
All during the 1980s when was traveling around the country every year, I crossed over hundreds of creeks and rivers. At many places, if the mood was right and the countryside sufficiently empty, I’d pull over and park, and walk across the bridge to the mid-point of the river and take a photo to remember the scene. This was well before digital cameras, so I had small prints made and later scanned or photographed them so I could post them at Flickr. Here is one such album of selected river photos.
https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/16FrA25FF5
When I was living in the Seattle area in 1992, I took many weekend road trips during which I drove along numerous rivers in the mountains and high plains of Oregon and Washington. Perhaps my favorite was the John Day River in central Oregon. Every mile along this river provides unparalleled scenes of topographic diversity and beauty. Every time I’d photograph the river, I’d marvel at this natural wonder coursing through the high desert, a ribbon of life in a dry land, nourishing great cottonwood and willow trees along its banks.
A photo I took of the John Day River
More about this river:
John Day River Basin – Oregon Natural Desert Association
Not far from where I lived in Edmonds, Wash., there was a favorite little stream I loved to hike along. The trail led steeply down 400 feet to Lunds Gulch Creek, which flowed to Puget Sound. I remember on a day off from work visiting the creek and park where it was located, and spending hours in the woods in this beautiful nature preserve.
Meadowdale Beach Park – Lunds Gulch — Washington Trails Association
I look back fondly in this early Spring of 2025 to the memories of cold mountain creeks and waterfalls. There is nothing so soothing as the sound of flowing water.
https://youtu.be/IvjMgVS6kng?si=_NHjXKK034pDB5Qn
I am not anywhere near a flowing stream now, and my traveling days are pretty much over. I have been settled in my new apartment since 2022. To my great joy, not far outside my door is a peaceful marsh with a tidal creek that I can walk along at various stages of the tides, of the any day I want to. Last night the tide was coming in rather quickly, and it was flowing over some partially submerged tree branches. The sound of the tidal flow was slightly audible, and it felt like I was walking downstream. One could see the very visible flow.
This little marsh creek has no source. It simply is the result of changing tides bringing water back and forth from the nearby tidal river up into the marsh area through which the creek meanders. This creek has many colors and moods depending on the season and time of day, and some evenings brilliantly colored sunsets are reflected in the water. I have taken many photos of this creek and marsh over the past three years, and what a blessing have such tranquility in a quiet refuge in the middle of a sprawling city.
Tidal creek and marsh scenes: