Temescal Creek

1. You can only walk stretches of this creek and if you attempt to connect the stretches you’ll be in somebody’s backyard and you’ll get shot.
2. Tomorrow is Earth Day and there will be work parties gathering both at Frog Park and at the park three blocks northeast by the dog park I don’t know what it’s called but if you bring your gloves we can have a lovely morning together doing Good Stuff because I’ll be there with other like minded people and so should you.
3. We could get coffee after.
4. The whole history and fate of urban waterways makes me sad. You can visit Temescal Creek where it makes its beaten last stretch to the tidal flat in the concrete culvert along the walkway in central Bay Street. Like a bird with clipped wings, like a man in chains, it slips quietly, creek eyes cast down, past shopping bags and 5-​inch Prada’s all not the wiser.
5. There’s a shrine to Temescal Creek made of concrete without a drop of water in sight along the wall of the post office on Shattuck between 49^th and 51^st. I used that as an address because it’s a shrine and all.
6. The trace of the creek from near Claremont to Frog Park, while entirely perverse, still makes me happy. It’s perverse because the creek flows in a constructed and lined faux channel, pumped from the culvert that’s its tomb and then flowing past the DMV in a natural-​looking setting to Frog Park near 51^st where it goes back to prison. We should bring files in cakes to Earth Day tomorrow to help it escape. When I was getting the 411 on the work day from the earnest volunteer standing next to the still dry bed she confirmed that this would be the day the creek was turned on.
7. The concept of turning a fake creek on makes me smile and cry a little simultaneously and at the same time.