Up Camp Meeker’s creek
Now is the winter of our content. It’s Damp Sneaker season, and I couldn’t be happier. Dutch Bill Creek is gurgling away happily, bringing healing and respite to all drought-burned wildlife that managed to make it through the long hot summer. On at least one front, wildlife is thriving: Camp Meekerite and OG board member Tony Tominia posted a picture on Facebook of two trees in the picnic area positively awash in ladybugs. I’m no David Attenborough, but I was pretty delighted by this picture, even if I haven’t the first clue what it means. Even back as a child, I knew that ladybugs were on the “good guy” team in the insect world. Tony also mentioned that “the creeks” were all doing well.
Wait a minute – creeks? Plural? I thought there was only the one, Dutch Bill Creek, running down alongside Bohemian Highway as it cuts through the middle of Camp Meeker. But of course that’s not really true, not if you look closer. If you look at a map of the Dutch Bill Creek Watershed, you will notice (at least) two things: one, that the shape of the Dutch Bill Creek Watershed bears an eerie resemblance to the country of Iran. Hey, I just report the news here. The other is that, running down the sides of Dutch Creek Canyon are multiple smaller streams that feed into Dutch Bill, at least when it’s been raining. I thought I might explore them here. If you want to get in touch with nature, a good place to start is becoming familiar with the various features of the local environment, and creeks are literally the lifeblood of that environment.
The big one, the father of waters in this watershed, is of course Dutch Bill Creek. It starts from headwaters along Graton Road just outside of Occidental. From there it turns north and plunges down the canyon it created, past Camp Meeker, Alliance Redwoods, and Westminster woods before turning northwest around a rocky scarp toward Mt. Zion, and then past some lands where the wild things are before cruising through the community of Tyrone, and from there sneaking behind the Pink Elephant to its terminus at the Russian River between Bartlett’s Store and the bridge.
Let’s look at the other creeks that run through Camp Meeker. On the Morelli Lane side, Lancel Creek is the big one. Lancel Creek runs parallel to Morelli Lane and drains the south side of the ridge that road sits on. The North Fork of Lancel Creek begins in a reservoir on the south side of Stoetz Lane before dropping through a slot canyon, slipping under Morelli Lane and escorting it to where the houses start before taking its leave to join Lancel Creek proper just 500 feet or so above Bohemian Highway.
On the west side of the highway, the big one is Baumert Creek – or at least that’s what I call it because it originates at Baumert Reservoir above the water tanks at the top of Mizpah. This creek drops steeply through a wild and majestic canyon past the top part of Market Street before ducking under Tower Road and then under Sequoia. From there it runs past where the “New England House” used to be on the old maps, and then into Dutch Bill.
Speaking of deep canyons, there is another creek that runs through the St. Dorothy’s archery range and under the trail (we here in Dutch Bill Heights just call it “the trail”) that runs from St. Dorothy’s to Alliance Redwoods. I dub this “St. Dorothy’s Creek” and move on to the one that runs past the Alliance Redwoods water tanks, just past the Canopy Tours headquarters, and on through Alliance Redwoods. Since they have been there longer, I’m calling this one “Alliance Creek.”
On our final stop in the “creeks of Camp Meeker” tour, we come to the southwest lobe of the Camp Meeker heart that sits between Hampton and Market Streets. Two humble creeks wash off the broad plateau just past OAEC on Coleman Valley Road. The larger of these two creeks makes itself known to us as it plunges under the bridge on California Street before dropping into a fairly spectacular little canyon between the houses on Van Ness and Railroad before slipping under Montgomery and Mission Streets in respectable culverts. I dub this one “California Creek” because of the impressive bridge on that street. Another, smaller creek does the same thing, dipping below Hampton Street (near Gilson), Grandview Street, Van Ness, and Montgomery via culverts before sneaking right under the house at 51 Mission. I’m tempted to call this one “51 Mission Creek” but I’m sure someone can suggest a better name than that.
