I started documenting the creeks in Peoria County in 1995 as a personal project - I had always been interested in hydrology and the county's waterways don't get much attention from official sources. I used to bring my walkman on every survey - the creek sites are early mornings, before anyone else is out, and I'd have the Enya Watermark tape going on the walk in. It was good for paying attention. Quiet enough that you could still hear everything. The creek behavior in this area has always been slightly unusual: small reversals, unexpected pooling, drainage patterns that don't match the topography. I mapped this as a technical problem for two years before I decided it wasn't a technical problem.
I joined the HADP ring after Warren posted his Richland Creek data. I watch Northern Exposure reruns when I'm not out at the sites - it's a show about a doctor dropped into a strange Alaskan town where nothing quite fits the logic he brought with him. I find it comforting. I understand him better than I used to. I recognized the pattern immediately. What I recognized was not just the reversal behavior - it was the feeling of standing at the creek when the reversal happened. I had documented that feeling in my own notes but I hadn't shown it to anyone because it didn't seem like data. Reading Warren's report I understood that it was data.
Standard morning survey. Flow rate 0.4 fps northward, consistent with elevation gradient. At approximately 6:40am, flow rate dropped to zero. Duration: approximately 4 minutes. Flow resumed southward at 0.3 fps. No upstream obstruction visible. No precipitation in prior 72 hours. No explanation available from topographic data.
Third reversal event documented at Site Alpha. This time I was ready with a stopwatch. Pause at zero: 7 minutes, 41 seconds. Flow resumed S. I noticed the exact moment of resumption had a brief surge - 0.8 fps for approximately two seconds before settling to normal 0.3. Like a caught breath.
Surveyed a second site approximately 3 miles northeast of Site Alpha. No reversal events, but I noticed something different: the creek appears to flow at a slight angle to the channel it has cut. The physical channel runs NNW. The surface flow runs N. These are approximately 8 degrees different. I have verified this with multiple instruments on three separate visits.
A creek cannot flow at an angle to its own channel. This is true by definition. I have no explanation.
I visited Site Alpha specifically to document it for the ring. When I arrived, I felt something I've felt before at this site but this time I tried to describe it precisely: it is like being at the edge of a decision someone else is making. The creek is making a calculation. I know that sounds irrational. I am writing it down anyway because Meredith Osse told me to document my perceptual responses as data and I think she's right.
During the visit, a reversal event occurred. First one since October. Duration: 11 minutes, 4 seconds. At the 6-minute mark, I looked at the bank and saw what I thought was a survey stake. When I walked over, there was nothing there. No mark in the mud, no disturbance. I had clearly seen a stake.
I visited the Peoria County coordinate from Dale's Series A list. I want to record exactly what I observed, even though I don't fully know what to do with it:
The creek at that location ran in the expected direction. No reversal. No anomalous bearing. Normal flow, normal rate. I was prepared to note "nothing unusual" and leave. Then I stood at the bank for approximately ten minutes and something changed in how I was perceiving the site - not what I was seeing, but how I was understanding what I was seeing. It was as if the creek suddenly became more fully itself. Like it had always been making a decision and now I could hear what the decision was.
The decision was: the water already knew which way it was going to flow before it arrived at this point. It had already decided. The channel was not directing it. The channel was the record of where it had already decided to go.
I haven't posted in a while. I've been going out to the sites more frequently but I've been writing less. The writing feels like it's getting behind what I'm observing. Like I'm always describing what I saw last time instead of what I'm seeing now.
Site Alpha reversed seven times in June. I didn't log individual events. I just sat with it. I have the start and end times written down somewhere. I'll post them eventually.
I have started to notice that I know when a reversal is about to happen before it happens. Not because of any physical cue - the water doesn't change before it changes, the air doesn't shift. I just know. I will be at my desk and I will think: now, and then I will drive out and it will be happening. I have done this eleven times. I have been correct eleven times. I noticed on the third time that I had been listening to the same song on repeat for the previous two hours without registering it. Just the tape cycling. I don't know what song it was. I had stopped hearing it somewhere along the way.
I haven't been able to watch TV at night. I turn it on and then I just sit there not hearing it. Something else is louder.
I stopped bringing the walkman to the sites sometime this summer. The batteries drain completely in under ten minutes out there - I put in fresh ones three different times and they were dead before I reached the bank. I don't miss it. There is enough sound here already if you're quiet enough to hear it.
I went to Site Alpha last week and sat at the bank for four hours. The creek reversed twice. During the second reversal I put my hand in the water.
I don't know why I did that. It wasn't a decision I made. My hand was just in the water. The water was cold. While my hand was in it I felt the reversal not as a change in direction but as a correction. Like the creek had been wrong before and was now right. Like I was feeling what "right" felt like from the inside of something that had just become right.
When I took my hand out the feeling stayed for several minutes. I drove home with it. It was not unpleasant. I keep wanting to describe it as clean.
I went back. I put my hand in again. The reversal did not happen while I was there. I waited. Nothing. But while I was waiting I realized I could hear the creek from the inside. I don't mean I could hear it more clearly. I mean I understood the sound differently - not as water over rocks but as a statement. The creek was saying something. It has always been saying something. I was only now in a position to hear it.
What it was saying was very simple. I am going to write it down: you have been here before.
I have not been to this creek before 1995. I know this. The creek knows something different. I am trying to decide which one of us is correct about this.
The documentation continues. I think it has always been the point.