Snow Falls

Wolf Creek Falls after March snow

Garfield Park Reservation

Cleveland Metroparks

Ahhh, Spring Break in northeast Ohio.  Kali was able to get away from work during her university's Spring Break last week, so instead of flying to San Diego to visit my Dad, we drove to northeast Ohio to deal with Kali's mom's house and affairs.  I was in the Cleveland suburbs for a full four days, but was extraordinarily busy during the whole period except for one movie (The Adjustment Bureau; it was vacation time, after all), one walk at the Ohio and Erie Canal Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks, and one nice dinner to reconnect with my best friend from high school, who just happened to be in town from Los Angeles, also dealing with an ailing parent.

Oh, and I did sneak out to photograph two waterfalls in the neighborhood (sorry, Jain) on Sunday morning, March 6, after an inch of snow.

 Wolf Creek above the falls

The circulation system in the Garfield Park Reservation was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted's firm, and contains carriage roads borne over the small streams on beautiful native Euclid bluestone bridges.

A few hundred feet downstream of the falls, Wolf Creek joins the much larger Mill Creek.  Mill Creek is one of the major tributaries of the Cuyahoga River--and probably one of its dirtiest, too.  The Mill Creek watershed has been used and abused for years, with suburban development encroaching up to the very edge of the creek and combined sewer overflows adding nutrients and Lord knows what else to the stream.

Several thousand feet upstream of its confluence with the Cuyahoga River, Mill Creek plunges over the tallest waterfall (48 feet) in Cuyahoga County.  Until the Cleveland Metroparks resurrected the area immediately surrounding the falls a few years ago, it had been hidden away in the back of an industrial park, known only to local residents (and kids who were inclined to trespass to find any hint of natural excitement).  Now, it's been outfitted with observation platforms and a landscaped park.

Mill Creek Falls

Garfield Park Reservation (extension)

Cleveland Metroparks

Ever since the region was settled, the area around the falls has been industrialized because the falls were used a source of water power.  In fact, the falls is not even in its original location.  Early in the 20th century, the falls was moved 300 feet to provide space for a railroad right-of-way.  The neighborhood around the falls is depressed and post-industrial, with several large roads criss-crossing just upstream.

The gorge downstream of Mill Creek Falls

Railing at observation platform

Mill Creek Falls

To reflect the long relationship between people and the falls, Cleveland Metroparks developed an observation area with a decorative railing depicting the human history of the region.  On the right side of the railing, you may be able to discern the outline of a mule's head, a tribute to the mules that pulled canal boats on the Ohio and Erie Canal less than a mile away.

Five Days in Ohio

Deerlick Run, Bedford Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks

I spent five days in northeast Ohio from Saturday, March 6 through Wednesday, March10. I grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Garfield Heights, and my mother-in-law still lives there alone. Her mental health is deteriorating rapidly, and my wife and I had to make a semi-emergency trip to help her out. I may be back to Ohio on a fairly regular basis, or I may have to move her closer to us.

While I was there, I visited some of my old natural area haunts. On Saturday afternoon, soon after I arrived, I slipped out to the Bedford Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks system to visit Deerlick Run and Bridal Veil Falls while there was still a deep blanket of snow on the ground. Right up front, I have to confess that Deerlick Run is my favorite stream in the entire world. I'm sure that growing up within bicycling distance of the creek had a significant effect on my choice of a favorite stream, but there's no shaking the feeling. Deer Run, for a few hundred feet, runs over horizontal beds of shale creating a series of small falls alternating with shallow sheets of flat water. Then, as the creek approaches the lip of Tinkers Creek gorge, it breaks through the shale and tumbles over Bridal Veil Falls. The falls are fine, but it is really the intimate series of cascades and glissades above the big falls that captivate me. When I was young (and that means well into my college years), I used to spend hours playing in this part of the creek, wading in the water and sliding barefoot over the smooth shale slabs. Water quality in the creek has deteriorated a bit since I lived in northeast Ohio, but the stream's still pretty clean.

Deerlick Run, just above Bridal Veil Falls

Wooden stairway leading to the Bridal Veil Falls Overlook

Just below Bridal Veil Falls, Deerlick Run joins together with another stream of about equal size, and the conjoined streams empty shortly thereafter into Tinker's Creek, largest of the Cuyahoga River tributaries. Unfortunately, the second stream drains a heavily industrialized watershed and its water quality is poor. However, as the two streams approach their meeting point, they tumble over twin falls separated by only a thin point of land. It was too icy and dangerous to climb down into the gorge the day that I visited, but the opportunity to enjoy the twin falls head-on is a delight in summer.

Wolf Creek Falls, Garfield Park Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks

The next morning (Sunday, March 7), I ventured out to the Garfield Park Reservation of the Metroparks to photograph Mill Creek Falls in the snow. The lighting wasn't the best, but I got a few good images of the falls.

Wolf Creek really is little more than an open sewer now. When I was growing up in the area, suburban development was eating up its watershed, and the developers' answer to an irritating stream was to encase it in a huge concrete culvert. Out of sight, out of mind. Each year, more and more of the stream disappeared underground. But the portion of the stream in the Garfield Park Reservation was never buried. Like Deerlick Run, Wolf Creek flows for a short distance over horizontal shale bedrock, which makes for a very scenic stretch of water, before the creek reaches the lip of the falls. From that point downstream, the creek is not interesting; its bed is filled with rocky rubble. When I was growing up, I used to wade Wolf Creek above the falls, too. With that in mind, I decided to cross the shallow creek in my L.L. Bean boots to get a different perspective from the other bank. Unfortunately, the high nutrient content of the water has encouraged luxuriant growth of diatoms on the streambed, and the rocks were really slippery. I went down, and thoroughly slimed (or diatomed) my pants, my jacket, and my hands. Yuck! And, the image wasn't even worth it!

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We also took advantage of the fact that the refrigerated tobogganing chutes in the Mill Stream Run Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks were operating for the last day of the season on Sunday, March 7. It was sunny, beautiful, and mild as we carried the toboggan up the wooden stairs to the top of the chutes. The long lines gave us plenty of time to build up our anticipation. I sat in the front, my 85-year-old mother-in-law sat in the middle, and my wife sat in the back. As the attendant opened the gate and we slid toward the brink, my reaction was, "Holy crap!" I'll tell you, flying down the chute at 45 miles per hour made me so much more appreciative of the bobsled and skeleton crews at the Olympics. It was a blast!

Toboggan Chutes, Mill Stream Run Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks

Midwestern Memories

Wolf Creek Falls

I just returned from six days in northeastern Ohio, the area where I lived until I was 18 years old and where, until recently, most of my immediate family lived. Now, my youngest siblings have moved to the outer suburbs of Cleveland or to San Diego, California, but I needed to visit my elderly mother-in-law, who lives alone in one of the inner ring suburbs.

I decided to drive instead of fly because air fares were high. There's almost no competition between airlines for service between my home city and Cleveland; hence, there's no price competition, either. So, I made the 8-hour trip by car.

As I approached the Cleveland metropolitan area on the freeway, I started to get nostalgic pangs. The area was very important during my formative years, and it still has a grip on me, albeit one that becomes increasingly tenuous with each passing year. Part of the reason for its slipping away is that, when I visit natural places that were important when I was growing up, most have shrunken as a result of suburban development or, worse yet, have disappeared altogether. Thus, the "place" doesn't have the hold on me that it once did.

Most of the time in the Cleveland area I spent working on my mother-in-law's house, but I did escape twice--once to one of the wonderful Cleveland Metroparks, and once to a natural area owned by The Holden Arboretum in the far eastern suburb of Kirtland.

Wolf Creek Falls from above

The first site I visited was the Garfield Park Reservation of the Metroparks system. It's neither one of the larger nor one of the more interesting parks, but it was nearby and accessible. Its system of carriage roads was designed by Olmstead and Vaux (of Central park fame). Naturally, I gravitated to water, which, in Garfield Park Reservation, is either uninteresting and filthy Mill Creek or its more scenic tributary, Wolf Creek.

Wolf Creek, too, has always been a sewer--even 45 years ago when I first started to visit the park. It emerged from a big pipe where the stream had been buried in the newly-developed suburbs and was foul from its headwaters. Undoubtedly, sanitary sewer cross connections polluted the water. Despite its poor water quality, though, where the creek entered Garfield Park it flowed over hard, slick bluestone that created a fabulous slippery channel for several hundred feet before the water poured over a falls into a large plunge pool below. I can't begin to estimate how many times in the summer I "skated" along the streambed in bare feet up to the very brink of the cascade. Water quality hasn't improved any, but the creek is still amazingly beautiful.

One of the many crevasses on Little Mountain

For the second escape, I accompanied two docents who led a group of twelve walkers to Little Mountain, one of the natural areas protected by The Holden Arboretum. I would have liked to visit Stebbin's Gulch (another of the arboretum's natural areas, and one that has been called "the most sublime natural area in northern Ohio" [I agree]), but all visits to Holden's natural areas are by guided walks, and the Stebbin's Gulch tour was not scheduled for the time I was in northeast Ohio. So, it was off to Little Mountain, a natural area I had never previously visited.

Little Mountain is a high point in northeastern Ohio's glaciated landscape--hardly a mountain. It is capped with an erosion-resistant rock called Sharon Conglomerate. The conglomerate has a tendency to develop cracks that frost, rain, and ice erode into deep, vertical crevasses. Despite the fact that the crest of Little Mountain was the site of several successive hotel complexes that operated until the early 1900s, there is virtually no evidence of the resorts-- just a mature forest of Canada hemlocks and white pines mixed in with some yellow birch and oaks. A good afternoon walk.