Silas Creek and Me

As a young pup, from age seven on--in human years--I spent a lot of time in a creek down below my neighborhood--Silas Creek. The name now has a biblical ring to it for me, but back then, it was just the creek where my two older brothers and I spent hours digging up crawdads, gobs of slimy blue clay and where we blew up many a plastic battleship and jet fighter with fire crackers.  It was where we recreated Robin Hood's fight with Little John (We lived in an rea called Sherwood Forest, for real) and generally beat up on each other.

This creek was pretty wild for a more or less urban creek. Trees provided a thick canopy of shade; it flooded now and then, as creeks do.  Wild things were there-a family of ducks, the occasional snake, minnows, salamanders, frogs, tadpoles.  This is all a boy kid needs, maybe a vine to swing over the creek on for Tarzan hollering.  God, we were so loud, I'm sure we scared the shyer critters away, humans included.

As childhood idlyls go, Silas Creek was a good one--close by, but not too close--out of parental earshot; wild but not too wild.  The thing that makes this creek more than this is that my parents have stayed all these years--1959 on- in the same house, and I have visited this creek and walked the same bridge over it again and again, year after year.  The story of its degradation into a ditch in the rough years of the 1970s to its  more recent restoration gives this creek a touchstone quality. It lets me track how the city I grew up in--Winston-Salem--changed its practices and the way it looks at this creek, and presumably other, creeks over time. 

It is not a happy story.  As more houses were built along the creek flood plain, residents complained of the flooding and the snakes.  Bulldozers came one day and a few hours later the creek was nothing but a deep ditch. Everything in it was gone.  What water flowed was brown and barren.  It seems now like a perfect symbol of one view of nature--it's inconvenient.  Fix it so it's convenient for homeowners, safe for overprotected children. 

You can imagine my anger at age 18 upon witnessing this desecration. This 'maintenance' went on for years. 

Finally, thinking began to shift and the creek was left to grow back some. Trees came back, minnows returned, water cleared, and the city set up a "riparian zone" where no mowing is allowed and posted signs explain why.  The creek has become a site of ecological restoration, an attempt to reverse the damages of the past, a limited success story.  But I don't see any kids down there in it, doing the things we did. 

More later . .  .