The Creeks With No Name

This appeared on Sunday, May 6, 2007

If you call up Google maps on the Internet and type in Downingtown, Pa., with a little trial and error you can see a satellite image of the creek that runs behind the Downingtown Friends Meetinghouse.

Not to be a wiseacre about it, but it‘s a friendly creek — big enough not to be a mere drainage ditch but small enough for children to splash around in on a hot summer day while their parents do whatever it is adults do after Quaker meeting is over, without them getting in deep trouble. Or hot water, if you will.

But here‘s the rub. So far as I can tell, it does not have a name. It is a tributary of the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek, so it has a purpose in life. It makes a contribution to the greater good, to the larger whole, and yet it is left nameless — at least on printed maps.

And it is not alone. Looking at the latest edition of Franklin Maps‘ atlas for Chester and Delaware counties, I found countless examples of identifiable bodies of water that have no identity ascribed to them. (Well, countless only in the respect that I really didn‘t feel like counting them.) There they are, drawn onto the map like small blue veins stringing along the countryside of West Whiteland or East Nantmeal or whichever Coventry you care to examine, and they are as nameless as Clint Eastwood‘s character in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly."

They are the Orphan Creeks of Chester County.

Now, I am certain that everyone reading this has their own favorite creek in Chester County, although I‘m going to bet that a good 65 percent immediately go with the Brandywine, east or west branch, as their personal favorite. Fine. If you want to go with the obvious choice — if you want to root for the Yankees or the Cowboys or one of the easy winners — I‘m not going to denegrate you. What some people lack in creative selectivity I‘m sure they make up for in other ways, like an acute passion for dusting or dishwashing.

Me, I go Valley Creek. Not the Valley Creek in Valley Forge, mind you, but the East Bradford-West Whiteland Valley Creek. If the Brandywine Creek is the Pennsylvania Turnpike of Chester County creeks — flat, straight, wide, well-trafficked, boring — then Valley Creek is San Francisco‘s Lombard Street.

It curves and weaves and twists its way through the woods, emerging here and disappearing there, only to turn up crossing your path just a few yards up the road when you least expect it. It‘s clean and swift and bubbly and full of trout, enviable characteristics for any creek.

And it‘s is a lucky creek, too, because it has a name. Just like the Big Elk or the Octoraro or the Red Clay or the White Clay or the Crum or the Ridley or the Radley French Pickering Bucktoe or Marsh, you can talk about it like it‘s a person in the room.

The Orphan Creeks don‘t have that same luck, and I say it‘s time to correct that. I say the next time one of the candidates for county commissioner knocks on your door, you bring up the Orphan Creeks to them.

See what they say.