Teaching About Place: Learning From The Land

Chapter 8. Meet the Creek

c h a p t e r 8 Meet the Creek e l l e n g o l d e y a n d j o h n l a n e The yellow public school buses will pull through the gate at White’s Mill at 9 a.m. and disgorge sixty fifth graders from Chapman Elementary School. It’s been raining for days, but finally it’s clear. Our four learning stations are almost set up for “Meet the Creek,” and sixteen freshman college students are busy spreading green and gray tarps on the ground and finalizing their plans to introduce four pods of wild kids to our learning landscape, Lawson’s Fork Creek. Lawson’s Fork is a tributary of the Pacolet River and one of the headwater streams in the Broad River Basin. Here at White’s Mill in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the stream is thirty feet wide and two feet deep at its deepest point, though the water level is up a bit today. The sound of the water falling over the dam just upstream is constant and soothing. The old dam, where a gristmill once ground meal for flour, was built from stone cut from the shoals now invisible beneath the pond. This old mill site is one of the most scenic spots on the thirty-mile creek, the only significant stream contained entirely within the political boundaries of Spartanburg County. Few citizens know of the stream’s existence, let alone understand its role in the local ecology, perceiving 1 1 2 m a k i n g c o n n e c t i o n s it as merely a drainage ditch for urban runoff. Through “Meet the Creek” we introduce a new generation to this place we’ve come to love, a living stream on the path to recovery from an abusive past. This stream, like the others in the South Carolina piedmont, has felt the strain of “progress.” Nearly all the rivers and creeks in the region are classified as impaired by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (dhec). All are unsafe to drink, and most aren’t fit for swimming. A few still can’t support aquatic life three decades after the Clean Water Act took effect. The floodplain downstream looks the way an outdoor classroom should look. We’re surrounded by big tulip poplars and sycamores, and we know the children will enjoy digging their hands in the tons of sand that were deposited across the plain last week by high water. Where the old mill stood there’s a rustic clubhouse used by the affluent subdivision now surrounding the property. Every year the homeowners are kind enough to let us bring the kids in for this day of discovery and excitement. We know from their teachers that many of the kids have older siblings who were with us for this event during one of our three earlier years, and their stories have left high expectations in the minds of today’s visitors. Unlike our first year, when we worried over the outcome, now we’re confident that this “Meet the Creek” will be as compelling as the others. Our college students will feel humbled and empowered, and the children will feel inspired to learn in this setting where they are free to be wild. L “Meet the Creek” has become a symbolic highlight of our work together during each of the last four years of place-based collaboration. We’ve e l l e n g o l d e y a n d j o h n l a n e 1 1 3 been reflecting this year on the beginnings of this undertaking, which has so enriched our professional lives and has had a broad impact on our institution and beyond. In many ways our collaboration was born of frustration as much as inspiration. An English professor by title and a poet and nature writer by avocation, John often feels trapped by the four walls of a typical college classroom. A toxicologist in a former incarnation, Ellen is a biology professor whose teaching load is weighted toward the premedical-minded students in her anatomy and introductory biology classes. Although we have been friends for years, before 2001 we had never worked together in the classroom, as the disciplinary divide between the sciences and the humanities is wide and...