There’s an old creek by my home (Wilson Creek) it meanders its way through the lower parts of my neighborhood after beginning in my backyard. One piece of this creek is particularly special. The tiny overpass through the creek acts as a point where two things meet, where nature and people come together. In one brief moment one can become engulfed in the majesty of the place. Feeling enclosed as the trees cover one side of the creek bed as though fingers curing up from underneath it. Then you notice the water, scarcely deep enough to get your feet wet in most places, it doesn’t rumble of thunder or moan. Instead it trickles quaintly as the water skids its way through the tunnel just beneath the road. If you look carefully, really carefully you can watch the bits of dirt and rock get picked up where the water is the fastest. This new sediment then gets deposited as soon as they were elevated when the stream slowed once again.
You could hunt for crayfish in the summer, checking carefully under each and every rock, just sitting there in the dry bead in the middle surrounded on all parts by the passing water. You can almost see the life bustling from within the creek. The crayfish, the bugs, all of them make their home in this one tiny section. They spend the entirety of their lives in an area the size of my room. How monstrous and buffoon-like must I appear to these tiny creatures? Moving around their home clumsily. Perhaps they fear me? Ought they not fear that which can create or destroy them as I can? How powerful I feel, like a god even with I toy with them. Prodding into their homes with a stick, scattering the life-forms away from their little dream world. What does it feel like I wonder to have your entire life shaken about, say, you’re but a fish in water near a thrown stone? The expanse of life about me is immense. Hundreds of creatures come about me; Whether by water, ground or air. The fish, ants and dragonflies welcome me. Even the very trees themselves, that which shields this entire place from the complete harshness of the sun, they are alive around me drowning me in their presence I am but a part of the greatness of the creek. How paradoxical it seems to find a singular area to make one feel and once god-like and omnipotent and like a cog stuck in some perpetual motion machine.
This is the memory I have of Wilson Creek. The place in my childhood all my own. A simple curiosity led me to wonder what existence it was like further downstream. Hit the books I did, until I discovered that the creek had been modified heavily since its discovery by the Europeans; Irrigation took its toll on the creek I had grown so fond of. Where the creek around me looks pristine, and with flora, fauna and life in abundance; the areas further along were not so lucky. God-men took from nature its beauty for its own design. Draining the life from it with watery passageways into their fields for their crops to grow from whence they wouldn't. For hundreds of years it had happened. Since the 1700’s when the land was but scratched and not scared. The duality I felt at the realization rushes through me. I realize that the very men who built these farms were no other than myself; Human, and so caught up in our own existence that we forget all else.
The banished and manipulated creek however is no more. Bernheim forestry and Kentucky universities have come together it seems to fix all of the problems that man has wrought to the creek. Not only did they replant the areas around it with its original inhabitants. They rebuilt the stream in its entireity. Senior Vice President of UofL’s research put it this way “What’s unique about the Wilson Creek project… is its comprehensiveness. Streams have been modified or enhanced before, but not fully restored.” The creek of my childhood gets the tender love and care of its maintainers once more. After being the focus of so much destruction. It’s a miracle I suppose that the creek itself is restorable at all. It had in parts eroded uncontrollably going straight down to the bedrock, acting more like an axe, rather than its normal sandpaper like attributes. Man in all of its wonder can, it seems give life as well as take from it.
It takes little more than lifting a few rocks it seems to reach a sense of euphoria in enlightenment. To extract from nature its drama; this mystical place of my childhood, I wish to share it. To teach my children to see, to understand where others only manipulate. Bernheim seems to share my goal on this matter, save that it’s not restricted to my children but to all who care to listen. Especially those who own a home on my creek. They seek to instill in them a bit of respect for the brevity of their actions, to make perhaps benevolent caretakers from fallible men.
How magnificent it was to know that some other soul caught the understanding of such a place as I did, In mass even. Many men with many titles trooped across my creek, engineers, biologist, arbitrators. All for the goal of cleaning up the destruction of the other men, with different titles that came before them. This group had an ambition that set them apart from the other men. They sought completeness “The restoration of Wilson Creek …. Is being hailed as an unprecedented opportunity for engineers, biologists, arborists and landowners to see what happens when a stream is rebuilt virtually from scratch.” Not only are we inviting nature to scab itself over our mistakes (revegetation) we are cleaning the wound, replicating it, so that it doesn’t have to do its job twice. Allowing the creek to snake and wind so that erosion remains local and the debris comes as though brushed sandpaper and the soil is not cleaved. Letting the ground itself be the filter and reservoir. Allowing the area around it to swell with the seasons to create water pristine and bristling with life.
This watery crossroads, a place that allows for the intersection between two great forces, the ever-present nature, and the ever ambitious man. What is it that calls to us more, our appreciation, our understanding of the world; this drive to comprehend insurmountable beauty? Or is it something different, and more sinister, do we only seek to know to manipulate and destroy? Are we capable of no benevolence only shortcomings? And I, what do I think? I think I shall sit. Pondering things at a creek. As men have done for longer than there were men to create or destroy.
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“The Restored Streambed”. Photograph. n.d. Web. Jun. 19. 2011. |
“Wilson Creek After Restoration But Before Revegetation”. Photograph. n.d. Web. Jun. 19. 2011.
While reading over this I realized that there are few references in here as to what this means. And even fewer references to who cares. Most of this is about the pretty colors locked away in my head. I do however make a few implied comments about the importance of understanding the brevity of my creek. When i talk about the conundrum of being god-like and minuscule in terms power. I also mention something about how even though i felt god-like i could still recognize my capacity to be benevolent or malevolent. This is what i think i shall turn into an argument. I do not want this paper to read like a boring "HEY this is what i think. THINK IT TOOO!!!!!" i've read enough of those to last me lifetimes. I want to make my reader feel. To feel with me, I want my reader to understand the complexities of the human condition and come to face the fact that in terms of our environment we are at once god-like in out power to create and destroy it and but mere fly's at which to swat at. Showering that we have to power to create and destroy the world around us, but that what we create and what we destroy is intrinsically related to who we are, how we are able to live. I want to express this through a long metaphor. To make them understand that this creek is beautiful but vulnerable. And, that while the prospect of prodding at our landscape like one prods with crayfish is fun and human. It is not in our best interest for at the end of that road, leads us in a world unfit for even our own god-like existence.
ReplyDeleteMuch of this will be emphasizing points as i say them above. Using my research as cogs in the greater argument. Showing not demanding understand from my reader that we have a responsibility here.