The Place Where You Live

Running from east to west, Copeland Creek bisects the Sonoma State campus into two unequal sections. Along the south bank runs the fire-bike road; between it and the creek runs a path, not always continuous, which can be entered at several points from the road. To walk onto that path is to step into a parallel world, a brief tunnel of alternate experience. A damp coolness brushes our cheeks, freshens our lungs even in the height of summer; a hush envelopes our senses, wraps around our ears. The bustle and hum of campus, the rush of cars along Rohnert Park Expressway fade. Well-shaded from an over-arching canopy of willows and alders - yet a still light pervades, present even on these grey, moist days of winter.

            Today, in mid-February, the creek is singing the busy tune of a babbling brook, unlike six weeks ago when it roared with the torrent of rain overload. Along the bank across from me, the high water mark still shows in spots a good six or seven feet above todays busy but not threatening surface. That flood-water weekend, the creek spilled over this edge of the bank and surged, a small but raging river, towards the campus ponds, lodging small broken trunks and large branches in the crotches of sturdier trees, stripping leaves from the reeds and blackberry canes. As the creek receded, it left small dams of twigs and branches, the reeds and canes combed over in one direction like a bad toupee, ends buried in mud. Everywhere: debris and mud. Lots and lots of thick, dark, silty mud.

            This is the nature of winter creeks in Sonoma County. Channels lie on hold through the summers, dry and dusty, waiting for the winter storms, eager to gather the runoff and send it on to the ocean. For the most part, the land has adjusted to the onslaught of rains, the rivulets, the brooks, the creeks, the rivers carved to the depth necessary to carry away each winter’s load of water. The interweaving roots of the native alders and willows provide porous support for the banks, holding them firm yet allowing water to soak through into the spongy earth behind.

            This is a delicate equation calibrated between precipitation, the density of the earth, the placement of rocks or trees or bridge bulwarks. But sometimes the equation is tweaked, unbalanced, the carrying capacity breached, the banks runneth over. The deposited mud adds a thin layer to the tops of the banks, while the torrents gouge the channels deeper and wider - and, in time, a brook permanently becomes a stream, a stream becomes a creek, a creek becomes a river.