Streams and creeks may be the hardest portion
of a watershed for us to see. The wide, mirror flatness of rivers, their great
mass, the great scale of the bridges and dams across them all create such a foreground
effect in our perception that the little waterways recede and disappear from our
awareness or knowledge. We just don't see the little waters, and in an important
sense, then, these waters are not there. And because they are not there, we remain
unaware of the many ways that they function in the land and of the many ways that
they are abused. The invisibility of urban waters is extreme, and in many areas
the former streamlets have been seamlessly merged with gutters, ditches, curbs,
drains, and culverts. The area around Hamilton Place shopping center in Chattanooga
is a good urban location to observe and ponder the transformation of little waters
by road and pavement. What is left of the natural streamways in that area now
appears as a large grassy ditch visible behind the Olive Garden restaurant.
We do not have to go so far afield for our observation however. In Sewanee, the Guerry Hall parking lot is the upper limit of a portion of a streamway that eventually feeds Barnes Branch which crosses Hat Rock Road on the way into Lost Cove and Crow Creek. In times of heavy rain, the stream that was once there as a tiny threaded waterway reappears and runs through the parking lot. This little stream disappears into the "sinkhole" of a storm drain at the rear entrance of Woods Lab and reappears again in the "sewer" pipe that flows into the Japanese Garden across from Gailor Hall. From there for the next few blocks the stream flows in a semi-natural but greatly abused form--look at the streambank between Gailor Hall and McCrady Dormitory--until it re-acquires natural integrity around Hat Rock Road and recovers a natural laurel ravine watercourse. When the saturated watershed overflows the curbing on Georgia Avenue, few of us even see this as a stream; we see it instead as a failure of curb or parking lot design.
This streamlet and the next one parallel to it draining from the back side of the Bishop's Common are real, but abused small streams. For an experiment in small stream awareness, a good exercise would be to walk from the back of the Bishop's Common and to follow the "drainage ditch" for the next four blocks. A portion of it is represented in "People and the Land" as a small "wild place": just beside Georgia Avenue is a short segment where two large turtles live. Very quickly the stream disappears into weeds and brush and becomes inaccessible--but it is still there and it is still performing the natural work of a stream whether viewed by us or not.
Another exercise in small stream awareness can be conducted in Winchester and Decherd. On the edge of the Nissan property, a beautiful stream runs along Blue Spring Road. This stream eventually makes its way toward the Duck River Electric site and passes under the Dinah Shore Boulevard between Big B Drugs and Captain D's restaurant. Eventually, it makes its way under Sharp Springs Road and empties into Tims Ford lake. This little stream is nearly invisible for most of its run and few people would connect the sparkling stream by the Nissan fence with the fouled drain that rushes into Tims Ford lake. This small stream is an urban workhorse, receiving most of the lawn and parking lot runoff from McDonald's to Kroger. It drains thousands of acres yet is hardly given a passing thought because it quite literally is out of sight. Fortunately, it has not been channelized or stripped of its natural bankside vegetation so it can continue to function naturally in the watershed. If the stream is observed in the aftermath of a storm of heavy downpour, the importance of trees and bushes in protecting the stream can be seen. The stream gradient is fairly steep and the storm water will generate ranks of standing waves as it rushes past the boulevard bridge yet the streamside seldom caves in and little erosion of banks or yards occurs.
Current bridge-building style appears almost intentionally designed to keep travelers from seeing streams, but the little streams are there seen or unseen and they perform the most important work in the watershed. Whether they begin in one of the fascinating "cliff wall" springs common around the base of the escarpment or arise in the topographic indifference at the feathered periphery of the headwaters, the little streams collect the waters into streamed coherence. The little water are the beginnings of rivers.