Finally... Spring

After a long Monday of class, an interview, a mind-numbing 4 hours at my internship, and a meeting, it felt incredibly refreshing to take a walk down the creek and just let my mind wander away from deadlines and due dates and just seep in everything I could see, smell and hear. Not to mention the fact that I spent the majority of a beautiful day inside and in a room without any windows, it was reinvigorating to breathe fresh spring air through my lungs and feel the warm sun on my face.

As I walk upstream on the east side of the creek, I notice 2 guys I know off the right side of the path kneeling next to what appeared to be a standing pool of water. I stop and say “Hi,” and the closer I get to the water, the nastier it starts to look. The pool is about 20 feet by 10 feet, and I notice a gross film with an oily tint spread across the surface. There is some movement in the surface water, and to my excitement a frog jumped to the edge! After getting a closer look, it appears to be a bullfrog. I notice another frog a few minutes later, and this one is different—it was much more spotted than the bullfrog. One of the guys, Shawn, tells me he thinks it is a pickerel frog. After seeing the frogs in the stagnant, nasty water I can’t help to wonder how toxic it actually is. Is the water bad enough to kill the frogs? My eyes shift their focus away from the polluted pool, and my glance begins to wander up the hill away from the creek. Not 150 yards up the hill is the Deerfield Golf & Tennis Club, which is essentially more of a toxic waste dump than a nice piece of green, ecologically healthy land. Every time it rains, the water seeps through the fertilizers and pesticides, into the groundwater, flows down the hill into this stagnant nasty pool, and eventually the runoff dumps into the creek. The oily film on the surface of the pool is evidence of this toxic runoff. I actually start to look around the pool for signs of dead frogs—thankfully, albeit to my surprise, there were none.

I leave the stagnant pool a little depressed at the reality of pollution’s effect on the creek’s ecosystem and head toward my spot, hoping to see signs of healthy wildlife or growth. As I approach my special spot, to my dismay, I realize 8 fishermen have invaded! Thankfully none were standing within 30 yards of my spot, but 3 are standing across the stream in my direct sight, 3 are downstream past the dam, and 2 are on my side of the creek a bit upstream. I sit down on my rock and begin to watch the sole Canadian goose as it bobs around near the dam. It’s soothing, almost peaceful to be here, even right in the middle of these 8 fishermen. While sitting, I begin looking around for signs of change. About 10 feet to my left, I notice motionless water pooled in a small area trapped by rocks. The surface looks pretty nasty. Is it pollution? Possibly algae? Or even sediment that has come up from the creek’s bottom? Tiny (nasty) brown bubbles come up from the surface at the edge of the still water. Even as I basically stick my nose inches from the surface, it’s hard to tell why it is that way (not to mention I’m no scientist). Could it be a pooling of different nutrients and chemicals? It reminds me of eutrophication, or nutrient over-enrichment often caused by fertilizer runoff. Nutrient over-enrichment means too much oxygen, which leads to algal blooms. The algae suck up the oxygen and fish die. Was this eutrophication occurring—on a small scale—right in front of my eyes?

No wonder fish can’t survive in the creek here, I think. It now makes sense why the Delaware and Pennsylvania State Parks stock the creek with trout at different times throughout the fishing season.