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SUSTAINABILITY Recycling • Resources • Lifestyle
A Winter Hike to
Find the Source
I love topographic maps. It’s easy to lose
track of time, while poring over these
drawings that show the Earth’s natural,
and human-built, physical features.
After studying the map of the eighty-
acre Cabin Creek watershed, which drains
into the Chattahoochee River, a friend and
I decided to walk the creek and its two
tributaries as far as we could go upstream
on each—hoping to find their sources.
Following the contour lines on the
map, we noticed that Cabin Creek rises
from a place a few hundred yards above
a small, man-made lake — not far outside
the boundaries of the Chattahoochee River
National Recreation Area. One of the two
streams flowing into the larger creek also
appeared to be dammed in its headwaters,
near or at its source.
On a chilly, overcast morning in
December, my friend and I walked down
a well-beaten trail in the national park and
turned into the silent woods, crunching
piles of leaves that released the pungent
smell of late fall. After crossing a small
ridge, we descended the slope of the ravine,
seeking the water that we knew was at its
Above the Water Line
1
Sally Bethea
Sally Bethea
is the retired
executive director
of Chattahoochee
Riverkeeperand
current board
president of
Chattahoochee
Parks Conservancy.
bottom: the creek that defined this little
hardwood gorge over hundreds of years.
The clouds began to part and the
temperature warmed. Patches of blue sky
allowed sunlight to shine down through
bare branches, illuminating the flowing
water in Cabin Creek, when we reached its
banks. As we walked upstream, listening
to the sound of water falling over rocks
on its way to the river — a sound more
beautiful to my ears than a symphony —
our companions were tiny fish, varieties of
moss, ferns, and birdsong. The water in the
foot-deep pools below the small waterfalls
was a stunning shade of blue-green.
I adjusted my eyes and concentrated on
tree reflections in the gin-clear water that
offered a mirror to the beeches, hickories
and other hardwood trees growing on
26 February 2021 | [d
the moist slopes of the ravine. Further
upstream, we found a massive beech tree
with a circumference of one-hundred and
twelve inches, indicating that it is about
two-hundred and ten years old. This tree
could have been a seedling in 1809 — the
year that Abraham Lincoln was born.
On one side of the beech’s trunk, we
found carvings in the thin-skinned bark,
including a crude drawing of a hand,
enlarged over the years as the tree grew. I
laid my hand with fingers spread against the
cool, smooth bark — within the much larger
outline of the handprint — and wondered
who made this carving and how long ago.
I also wondered, not for the first time,
why people find it acceptable to vandalize
and harm American beech trees with their
knives.
Nearing the park’s boundary, we looked
upslope
and saw the earthen dam that creates the
lake we had seen on our map; the seep or
spring that gives birth to Cabin Creek is
somewhere on private land. Pleading back
downslope, we found several fallen trees
covered with turkey tail mushrooms in
amazing colors and sizes. Scrambling over
and around the deadfall, we eventually
reached the mouth of the first tributary: the
place where its waters enter Cabin Creek.
Our second upstream trek was a bit
more strenuous, given the steeper slope of
the ravine. Our first discovery was a large
tulip poplar tree with massive roots that
extend into and across the small stream,
creating the structure for a stair-step
waterfall, when there is sufficient flow.
Further along, we found several swampy
areas with a surprising amount of sediment
for the largely-protected stream. I stopped
to admire rock outcrops, beech roots and
ferns. It was almost more natural beauty
than I could absorb—until we looked
upslope and saw the second earthen dam
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