The River and The Creek

I grew up along the shores of a river near the place where a large creek joined it. One was big, quietly powerful, traveled miles and was a major waterway. The other was smaller and seemed at times to move in different ways. Shallow and rocky it had a kind of familiarity the river could never have.

The river was the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. It had been a major thoroughfare in times past. native tribes utilized it for travel and trade as did later white missionaries and settlers. Where I lived it ran west to east along the north side of Bald Eagle Mountain. It sat in a wide river valley, rich in farmland from the periodic floods of the past and even present.

The creek was Pine Creek, Tiadaghton in the native language. It was the largest tributary of the West Branch and flowed generally north to south through a 1000 foot deep gorge it had cut with its waters after the last ice age receded. The valley floor was narrow, probably never more than half a mile wide at any point until the waters neared the Susquehanna just a few miles west of my home. Pine Creek was not a thoroughfare. Its steep sides and numerous rattlesnakes made it a more dangerous and even hidden passage to the north.

The River allowed some form of civilization to develop. The Creek did not. Until the great logging boom in the mid- to late- 1800s it remained a wilderness dotted with tiny villages. Cities formed along The River as early as the pre-Revolutionary War era. The Creek remained wilderness for much of its length with wild forest land on each side.

It still is. Not like the great inaccessible wilderness areas in other places. This one isn't that far from I-80 or even the New York metro area. But it is still wilderness. The first 15 - 20 miles of the headend of The Creek is within state forest or park land. An attempt was made to make it a wild and scenic river but that fell short. We used to joke that there are more bears and deer than people in the Pine Creek Valley. Those of us who lived in the town where The Creek and The River join probably joked out of a sense of uncertainty. Civilization on the edge of wilderness is always uncertain. As the recent book, The World Without Us shows, it wouldn't be long before wilderness would win if we weren't always fighting back.

And there probably are more deer and bear than people in the valley. Not to mention rattlesnakes, which I am told can still be seen along the Pine Creek Rail to Trail on a hot summer afternoon. That's one reason to watch where you are going. That, I hate to admit, was one of the reasons I was somewhat afraid of The Creek area when I was young. I didn't want to meet one of them unexpectedly. That and a Brooklyn born and bred mother who was more afraid of swimming at a dam-created beach on Little Pine Creek than at Coney Island.

Yet that wilderness found its way into my soul and hasn't left. Without it I would not have eventually ventured out to the Boundary Waters many years later, wilderness that didn't have roads but portages and paddles. I would not have learned to see and hear nature. I would not have become entranced by the flow of water in and through my own life.

With all this I am getting ready to bike the 60 miles of The Creek. I will be finishing up two-weeks from today. I have never been on the upper 17+ miles. That's the part through the state parka and forest land where no roads go. It is too wild and narrow. I am sure it looks a lot like the lower 43 miles, all of which I have driven along many, many times over the years. But it will be different. I will be on my own power. I can't paddle the whole way, especially in summer. There's not enough water. But on the bike I can take my time and listen. To the water, to the wilderness and to my soul.