Rivers have a way of captivating people — inspiring reverence, love and sometimes a fierce instinct for protection.
Many of my colleagues in river science and conservation were drawn to this field through paddling or fishing. While my son — with a love of fishing that could only have been inherited from my ancestors — is tugging me toward angling, and although I certainly enjoy raft trips, I’m not particularly skilled at either. Something else seeped into me at an early age and drew me toward rivers.
I grew up with a creek in my backyard — Sulphur Springs, a tributary to the Chagrin River and one of Ohio’s few coldwater streams. Though I had no idea what a “coldwater stream” was or why it was so rare in my part of the world, the creek captivated my childhood imagination with hooks that, years later, emerged again to lodge deep within my adult brain.
As a child, I loved that my creek was always changing. It was really many different creeks during the course of the year: the one I forded with ease, its feeble flow wetting nothing but the bottom of my feet; the one that frothed and roared, its tame trickle now transformed into something that posed legitimate danger for an eight-year old. When the rain poured down I would eagerly run down the well-worn path to watch the creek’s brown water rising high against the banks.
I also loved that the creek connected places. It was a corridor of freedom that penetrated the hard boundaries of a childhood world. I wasn’t allowed to cross the “park road” bordering our backyard. But by following the creek, I could go under that road and emerge from a tunnel, blinking, to the mysterious and forbidden other side. Perched above a deep pool, I saw silver flashes of large fish fleeing my shadow. (The deep pool was formed by the force of the culvert-concentrated water plunging into the creek bed, contributing to downstream channel erosion…but of course I didn’t know that.)
I could also follow the creek upstream, creeping silently and unseen through neighbors’ backyards, to a miniature Paradise — a valley with a carpet of shimmering emerald green beneath tall trees. A waterfall cascaded lyrically into the deepest pool I knew — even during dry summers it was deep enough to wade in and cool off (it was another culvert-caused plunge pool, and the emerald carpet was an unbroken understory of invasive ivy, but again, ignorance was truly bliss).
Fifteen years later as I prepared to leave an internship in Washington, DC for grad school in California, I visited a library and flipped through ecology journals, seeking areas of research that might interest me. I found a special issue of BioScience dedicated to river floodplains. As I skimmed its pages — and this may sound hard to believe — a paper on the “Flood Pulse Concept” sent a thrill through me. Though a technical term and definition, it resonated and reawakened those memories: yes, rivers change and connect and breathe and live.
Those two hooks that had captured my imagination — the restless, ever-changing river that also connected different worlds — now captivated my brain. Rivers’ variability and connectivity underlay my dissertation research and my current work.
And, of course, they still hold my heart.
Aldo Leopold wrote that to have an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds. He meant that, when you know what to look for, you see what most others don’t: how tattered and depleted much of our world really is.
Take a flight over the Midwest, California’s Central Valley or the southeast Piedmont and you see a world that is mostly wounds. But when I am suspended over these landscapes, my eyes are drawn to the creeks and rivers, and they reassure me that wildness has not been fully banished from the world.
Though abused themselves, rivers and their fringing forests are bandages over the wounds. While most of the cloth may be rent, the riverine threads do their best to hold the quilt together. They are green corridors of wildness and mystery in otherwise tamed and homogenous landscapes.
The ivory-billed woodpecker may or may not persist but, if it does, it is only because of riverine forests’ long linear islands of refuge in a sea of soybeans. A colleague in California tells me of remote cameras capturing photos of mountain lions slinking through the floodplain forests of a Conservancy preserve on the Cosumnes River, dozens of miles into the Central Valley and far from their larger habitat in the foothills. They creep silent and unseen deep into a world of rice fields and subdivisions, much as I slipped undetected through my neighbors’ backyards, hidden within the creek’s tangled jungle.
A few years ago I moved back to Ohio, and now live overlooking some other, and as-yet unamed, tributary to the Chagrin River. (I’m sure my kids will give it a name, as they’ve already named some of its features, such as “Cosmo Zooey Island.”)
But I’m only a mile from Sulphur Springs. On Father’s Day, my family spent the afternoon at a wooded picnic area along its banks. I stood high up on its edge, watching my kids wade through its cool gentle current , and I beamed like some sentient ghost of a spawned-out daddy salmon come back to watch his progeny frolicking in his natal stream.
Do you love a specific stream or river? If so, tell us which one below in the comments, or just add your thoughts on what you love about rivers generally.
(Top image: Sulphur Springs, Ohio. Image credit: Jeff Opperman/TNC. Second image: Sulphur Springs in flood. Image credit: Jeff Opperman/TNC. Third image: An agricultural landscape in western Ohio. Although at first glance, the scene is dominated by agriculture (left image), the forests along the Huron River, its tributaries and old, now abandoned channels form long, connected strips of natural habitat, shaded in green for emphasis in photo on right. Nearly every acre of natural habitat in this image is associated with a river or stream. Image credit: Google Earth.)
Tags: Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold river, American river, California mountain lion, Central Valley mountain lion, Chagrin River, coldwater stream, Consumnes River, favorite river, flood pulse, Jeff Opperman, Ohio river, river conservation, river love, river science, Sulphur Springs
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Jeff, what vivid descriptions of your childhood memories; so wonderful that your children are able to experience similar experiences in the same Chagrin River valley. All kids should be so fortunate!
Wow, thanks for a great, well-written post really enjoyed it and retweeted it.
You asked about rivers, here is a post on my blog about
a river in Tokyo.
tokyo-green-blog.com/files/e599ebf3fac94a9ab8f5a6acd79ac9da-7.html
The Sipsey River, part of the Sipsey Wilderness, is my favorite waterway. In the summer it is an ankle deep river with a sandy bottom, clear cool water and small cascades all along a boulder strewn bank. In the winter swollen by rains it can be very challenging to get across. A very serene and peaceful place to be.
My current important place–Middle Cottonwood Creek
in the Bridger Range of the Gallatin National Forest – I often go just a little way up from the trail head, walk down to the water and sit on a rock in the middle of the creek.
There are steps of pools, small falls, the forest around it – pines, firs, maples, willows, dogwoods, etc are reflected in the water. Often I see and American Dipper (John Muir’s favorite bird as I have recently learned).
To find a quiet place beside or on water has always been important to me. Where I have always gone for quiet reflection or restoration, peace, inspiration.
When I was little I canoed on the Concord River in Concord, Mass.
Water and the lives it supports, the magic and story telling I feel when I’m there — Life Blood
That is a wonderful account of why you love streams, Jeff, and many of the reasons why you love these moving waters resonate with me, as well. You will be pleased to know that we are in the early stages of several projects which are aimed at restoring the coldwater hydrology and special ecology of, guess where? Sulphur Springs Creek. I am the aquatic biologist for Cleveland Metroparks, and we are working with Chagrin River Watershed Partners, Western Reserve Land Conservancy, and the local chapter of Trout Unlimited as partners. I would love to fill you in on the details if you want to learn more (I left my email when I submitted my comment). It is a small world, isn’t it? Cheers!
One thing I truly love about rivers and creeks is that they are a perfect place to pretend to go fishing while what you’re really doing is spending time watching the world go by on the currents. There is not much of a more noble pursuit.
My favorite is the Grand River in Eaton Rapids Michigan.
I love the Susquehanna…’spent most of my life until I moved to State College near it, on it and living more or less on its banks. its moods inform me and often reflect my moods and thoughts…
Those of us who connect to nature often sometimes have a special place (or places) that we know intimately, including across seasons and between years. Jeff’s story reminds me of those places in my life – rivers, seashores, etc. – that I have visited often enough to feel their various moods: tranquil and stormy, balmy and frigid, peaceful and tempestuous. Even when the changes are more subtle, being able to observe these changes and get to know this piece of nature better can feel like a gift. Something to cherish. Something that keeps hearts alive too.
What a great article Jeff! Judging by the comments, your story rings true to widely shared (and under-reported) human experiences.
My brothers, friends and I have enjoyed many memorable days back in “Hannah’s Creek”. This perennial creek is a fine 1/2 mile hike behind Mom’s house, hidden within a large greenbelt between Oak Ridge and Oliver Springs Tennessee. Like Jeff, we got to know it up close when we were young. The sense of health, densely inter-related life and value offered wonderful formative experiences. I am confident this was part of what led my brother Bill to join the staff of The Nature Conservancy!
My work in systems biology has also been impacted by that little creek and its rich ecology. Now that I live in California I have come to know the Eel, Russian and American Rivers, among other little creeks struggling to get by and grow in the populous SF Bay Area. I live in the city – but no summer is complete without trips to more than one of these rivers.
I also love the way that rivers, streams & creeks are always changing. Mark Twain wrote: “The face of the river … was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.” (Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi).
Wonderful. I’m still trying to put into words my love for a stream in Kentucky where I fished as a boy, seventy five years ago. You inspire me to continue writing about Kinniconick.