Runing the Green Mill

By Mccabe Coolidge

"By midnight, the Tar River will reach flood stage and crest." My marine radio is keeping tabs this rainy spring for any river flooding along the coastal areas. I take a peek out my backdoor but don’t see the waters coursing up past the cypresses and river oaks into my backyard.

"A good day to give it a try." Finally, a decision. Since dawn, I’ve been arguing with myself. "Can’t go now, too much editing to do." "You don’t know what you’re getting into, better wait." "How will I know whether I’m getting sucked into the muddy, swollen Tar?" Around and around these excuses go and I’m tired of my "play it safe" mind. "A little trepidation is a good thing, keeps me alert. Seize the day."

"I’m putting the canoe in, Karen. Should take me about two hours. I’ve got a waterproof sack, I’ll take the cell phone and call you."

"You better be careful, let me help you pull the canoe out."

Karen and I pull and yank the green canoe over cypress knees, around floating logs, splashing through the dense underbrush of our backyard, which is a series of bogs leading out to the creek bank. I take off my knee-high black boots and put on some old sneakers, pull the canoe over the edge, grab a paddle, and jump as the canoe spurts off with the current, jamming the bank on the other side before I even get seated.

Green Mill Run angles southwest to northeast cutting right through the middle of town before emptying into the Tar, north of Hastings Ford. Where it gets dammed up, Lake Ellsworth, it becomes more than a ditch. But it’s no more than fifteen feet wide when it passes by my backyard. An old 1907 map names this Green’s Mill with the dam, maybe the south branch, up near the headwater at Frog Level. But that map shows marshes and wetlands everywhere. There’s been a lot of filling in and development since then. I’ll have to find an oldtimer who lives out that way and who will know the history of this watershed. Maybe I’ll become the historian for this stream; a story I tell myself to help justify the trip.

Drifting and banked logs are scattered everywhere. I pass by my neighbor George Hamilton’s house and immediately climb on top of a sewer pipe, pulling my canoe up and over and then jumping in. The next portage is the Arlington Street Bridge at morning rush hour, a combination of "clankitty clank" and rumbling sounds. But then, right then, as I come out on the other side of the bridge, I see the wide shadow of one of my favorite birds. It’s so dense in this place that I can only hear its wings as it curves around the trees, just before the Evans Street Bridge. And finally, I hear the "graack, graack" of the great blue heron. A good omen. I’ve watched this heron fly up and down Green Mill Run along with the red tail hawk. Both like to roost above the little pond upstream at Hooker Avenue Bridge.

Evans Street Bridge scares me. I paddle backwards, judging the overall height, and decide I can sneak through if I lay straight forward on the canoe’s thwarts. I do so, the paddle on the bottom of the canoe, the current taking me. I raise up for a look and clunk my head on the top of the bridge. I can hear whitewater ahead. Oh oh.

Just as I pass out onto the other side, the sun blares and I see a mighty beaver dam waterfall followed by another sewer pipe. I grab for my paddle, get two good plunges in, and then ride the "v" as it drops down and quickly back paddle into an eddy, avoiding a head-on crash with the three-foot wide pipe. This time the canoe fits under the pipe and all I have to do is straddle it and jump on as it passes underneath me.

After a series of turns, the creek opens up into a wide savannah-like marsh. Tall dead trees, a couple of ducks whirling overhead, turtles and frogs jumping. All this a quarter mile behind the U-Ren-Co Rentals on Evans Avenue. A quiet sanctuary. I drift by, wondering whether anyone else has tried to paddle the creek. Did they pause here, float easily, discovering the wild in the urban? This piece of wildness makes this little voyage worth it. I lean back and let the current swirl me through splotches of green and blue sky. A tiny piece of wilderness, a larger slice of gratitude.

More sewer pipes, bridges, and portages over fallen trees. A total of eighteen obstructions but the feel of this paddle is remarkably different than the one I get from biking or running over the bridges and along the creek in Green Springs Park. I recognize the backside of Daryl’s, a flooded-out restaurant (hit hard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999).

The University’s maintenance garage is built on the floodplain, inches away from the top of the bank. Eastern Carolina University is the powerful institution in town. They do what they want to do. In fact, where I am right now is not where the creek used to roam. It used to be across Tenth Avenue where the new science building is. They rerouted it and called it "channelization." And there is garbage drifting or grounded everywhere. Hot water heaters, plastic chairs, a number of basketballs, McDonald’s styrofoam cups. Especially on the outside curve of the creek. Already hatching in my mind is an idea of how to organize a "Clean Up the Green Mill Run Day."

As I pass under the Elm Street Bridge, the city has thrown in a ton of rock and my canoe catches on one and turns sideways. I frantically paddle forward so that I don’t go under the bridge sideways since I can hear whitewater on the other end. I head her straight down the roiling white current and enjoy a burst of speed as a group of kindergartners, walking along the pedestrian bridge, see me fly by. A moment of pride for this 60-year-old.

The creek deepens, I put my paddle straight down and don’t touch bottom. More than six feet deep. Until now the depth has ranged from two to five feet. When does a "run" graduate to a creek, then a stream and into a river? Depth and width, I’d say. Green Mill Run is now a stream.

Up ahead I hear a gaggle of kids yelling. This is the last day of school. Sounds like a long recess at 10:00a.m. As the noise recedes, so does the strength of the current. I’m beginning my entrance into Green Springs Park and it’s flooded. More and more cypress grow along the banks and a whole colony of cypress knees sprout up on my left side. I choose the far right side of the 5th Avenue Bridge. Soon, I hear the faraway "clug" of a bulldozer. I begin to grumble about noise and development but at that moment I hear a snort. I turn to my left and two deer grazing on the luscious spring grass raise their heads, stare at me, give off another snort, and run off. Next comes a Cooper hawk, sailing easily with the wind currents, circling, gazing down on me. I float by two mallards who don’t lift off. A little squabbling, then they swim into a waterlogged forest of oaks. On my left is the old city landfill, a wastewater plant, and a cemetery. Acres of quiet and my cranky mind, stuck, reflecting on bulldozers, is calmed.

Everything in front of me is flooded. I’m not sure of my path. I go straight ahead and it gets shallower and shallower and more reedy grass is passing under my hull. I wonder if I missed a turn. Finally, I hit bottom so I paddle backward and turn around and begin looking for another way out of this floodplain. Finally, I see a narrow path with no end in sight, straight east. I take it. Water depth is beyond my paddle and I begin to hear traffic, lots of it. Greenville Boulevard, I guess.

But now the bigger question. How am I going to get out of here before I join the stirring rush of the Tar? It’s at flood stage and I don’t want to be thrown into its current. Just where does Green Mill Run join the Tar in a time of flooding? There’s water everywhere. Even a topo chart wouldn’t help now with all landmarks under water. A warm bristling feeling of fear crawls up the back of my neck.

Twenty years ago I did something similar to this. I lived on the Rocky River in Piedmont, North Carolina, which joined the Deep and the Haw and became the Cape Fear. By the time I was paddling up to Lillington, I noticed the river was rising more, white caps were coming over my bow but it hadn’t rained in two days. My little river goes up and down fast after a rain, so after checking the Rocky, I took off before dawn only to discover that I was in way over my head on the Cape Fear and it was too late. The wind blew me sideways into a log and with the pressure of the current and the waves, I capsized. I couldn’t find the rope to the canoe and it sank and I was somersaulted along, hitting rocks, swallowing junk water. I thought that I’d had it until the river veered right and I was swept left. My feet hit bottom. I slowly climbed out, fighting hypothermia on that cold, windy December day. Luckily, I found an old path, winding uphill to the Lillington Water Station a mile away. I jogged all the way, swearing to myself, wiping the blood off my forehead. The next day I learned that four foolish Marines, in two canoes, had paddled the same river and capsized. Two found refuge on a little island, climbed a tree, and waited until morning when a helicopter came by to pick them up. The others weren’t so lucky. They drowned that afternoon.

So I decided to turn right and go under the four-lane bridge, since I knew the Tar was somewhere on my left. As I passed under the bridge, the water widened into a small pond and became shallower. A kingfisher joined me, dipping and diving and rat-a-tat-tating above my head. Up ahead on my right I spy a spit of land with a sandy beach. Perfect! I climbed out and walked up a long hill and saw the Best Western Motel straight ahead.

Dialing 252-756-6230. "Hello, Karen, it’s me!

"I know it’s you. Where are you?"

"A half mile north of the Best Western. Come pick me up. I’ll be in the parking lot."

"You bet."

Most Greenville residents haven’t heard of Green Mill Run. I’m sure some university students are aware of walking across a little stream on the way to classes. The Department of Transportation is concerned about the 14th Street Bridge since it’s beginning to show the signs of wear and tear. And my neighborhood, Lakewood Pines, is acutely aware of this small watershed since a developer is planning on clearcutting the pines, oaks, and cypresses and building a parking lot on the floodplain, providing housing for 500 students. Right in our backyard.

But is such a little stream, seven miles in length, worth the fight we are putting up? It’s going to cost us $20,000 for our lawyer and hundreds of volunteer hours trying to prove to the Superior Court and the City of Greenville that this urban creek is worth preserving and even bringing back to a more bountiful stage, cleared of garbage, instituting laws against building on her floodplain. I can foresee foot trails along her banks, birders with binoculars, kids watching for deer and fox, and me at the corner of the one of the busiest intersections in Greenville, Arlington, and Evans, sitting in my own green canoe, floating slowly downstream waiting to catch the upheaval of wings, the cranky call of the Great Blue Heron.