May 2001
Adventures With Uncle Wally - 9 Mile Creek
by Uncle Wally
Some ideas are just naturally better than others. There’s no doubt about it. Trouble is, you can’t always tell the good ideas from the bad ones ‘til afterwards, by which time it is often too late.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Don’t they all? And there was, after all, adequate precedent for it. I mean, there’s all kinds of pleasant, urban paddling hereabouts for people to enjoy; Chain of Lakes, Minnehaha Creek, Rice Creek. So why shouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t we try canoeing Nine Mile Creek?
Well, there may have been a darned good reason not to. After all, I’d never heard of anyone else runnin’ it. But I kept noticin’ it every time business or pleasure took me to Bloomington. It looked like a nice, little creek, especially in its lower reaches where it chattered enticingly through parkland on its way to the Minnesota River. It looked do-able. I checked out the map. I road scouted it from every bridge crossing in the city. I got myself committed to the idea. Then I talked Charlie into goin’ along with me.
Now, there was no knowin’ the best water level for runnin’ Nine Mile Creek, what with there bein’ no river gauge as well as no one else’s prior experience to wisely lean on. But it’d been a pretty wet summer that year and we’d had 5" of rain just in the past week. So we figured it ought to be good enough, especially for two guys who weren’t all that particular to begin with. It looked pretty full and lively to us. And that was the best assessment we were gonna get.
We had to go after work, so we knew we’d have a kinda late launch. But it was a real short stretch of creek we’d be runnin’, so we weren’t worried about that. Besides, it was one of the longest days of the year, so we’d have that lingering, summer twilight as a buffer. Heck, we’d done Minnehaha Creek on a tighter time budget. It’d be OK.
Of course, we didn’t get started quite as early as we might have. That’s ‘cause Charlie locked his keys in his truck at work and it took quite a bit of maneuvering to reunite keys and driver on the same side of the door. What with the delay for Charlie to break into his own vehicle, it was goin’ on 7PM before we actually got the boat on the water. We put in on the downstream side of 98th Street where a utility company presence offered some illusion of public right of way. Then we were off on what may have been, for all we knew, a first descent of Nine Mile Creek.
OK. So chances are pretty good that sometime in the history of the universe, someone else had been down that particular piece of water before us, possibly quite recently. But we didn’t know anything about it so let a couple of middle-aged guys have their own, harmless, little fantasy, will ya?
Anyway, the idea of a first descent sorta loses a lot of its cachet when the waterway in question goes snakin’ through suburban backyards like this one does. We startled one industrious landowner who was out clearin’ brush from the back of his lot. A canoe cruisin’ past his property was clearly an unexpected novelty to him. But he was generous enough to wish us luck as we sped past, even if it was with the same tone of bemused resignation he might use when seein’ his four-year-old out to the driveway to fall off his bike again.
After that, we didn’t have much opportunity for admirin’ the scenery or fraternizin’ with the locals ‘cause the creek, like a willful toddler, demanded our undivided attention. It twisted and writhed like a snake in a hawk’s talons. And some of those hairpin turns were just a tad too tight to negotiate in a 161/2-foot, tandem canoe. I was beginnin’ to wish my old Explorer had one of those accordion bends in the middle like those big, city buses.
But, it didn’t. And at one particularly tight turn when Charlie and I were both pullin’ mightily at prodigious draw strokes in a manful effort to coerce the canoe around the bend, my paddle unexpectedly struck an underwater rock. Bein’ suddenly caught between opposing forces like that proved to be too much of a strain for the paddle. The blade snapped right offa the shaft and I about fell outta the boat. Then I flat-out amazed myself with how fast I managed to grab the spare paddle. Charlie, up in the bow, didn’t even know what it was I was cussin’ about. After that, we approached bends with a little less speed and a lot more caution, seein’ as how we were fresh outta spare paddles.
But the creek ran out of tight bends shortly after that anyway, so we were safe in the paddle department. Soon it straightened up and flew right through Moir Park. There we viscerally startled a couple of young children who were probably up past their bedtime to begin with. They pointed and yelled and ran to get their equally startled daddy. All three of ‘em acted like they’d never before in their lives seen a canoe, at least not in Moir Park. They stared at us like they were watchin’ a UFO hoverin’ over the Metrodome or something.
Astonished spectators were scarce after we cleared the picnic area. Then the creek bent south and plunged gaily through a steep, straight valley. It was real pretty and promised to be nothin’ but a fast, uncomplicated run. But just as we were easin’ back to enjoy the ride, this inconvenient footbridge loomed into view. It was slung so low over the water, we figured the only way a canoe would make it under there would be to rid itself of its human accomplices. Bein’ taken out by the underside of a bridge didn’t appeal to either of us. So we had to land and lift the boat over the footpath.
At the end of the valley, the creek emptied itself into the bottomlands of the Minnesota River. This is where things started to get interesting. Here the creek lost itself in myriad, braided channels among the trees, bottomland scrub, and backwater wetlands. We kept tryin’ to follow the main flow. But it wasn’t always easy to figure out which one that was. And somewhere in the tangle we musta somehow missed the main event. ‘Cause as the setting sun lit up the distant clouds, its light shatterin’ into a nice rainbow that I had to kinda look back over my shoulder to see, I got this uneasy feelin’ that we were goin’ in entirely the wrong direction.
At least we were still goin’ downstream. So we figured if we just kept goin’, we’d eventually hafta come out somewhere on the river. Trouble was, we were runnin’ outta light. The summer twilight doesn’t linger nearly as long under the canopy of bottomland forest as it does, say, on your neighborhood softball field. All around us we could see shadowy deer headin’ out for their nightly raids on the gardens of the good citizens of Bloomington. It was gettin’ late.
And there we were, stuck at the arduous task of repeatedly stopping to lift over fallen trees or drag the boat across shallow spillways of exposed roots and downed branches. And as quickly as the creek got too shallow on us like that, it was bound to average things out by droppin’ into a deep pool just on the downstream side of things. I made that discovery by plungin’ waist deep into a hole just fractions of a second before recallin’ that I’d forgotten to take my wallet outta my pants pocket and put it in the dry bag.
Well, we floundered our way on downstream through the deepening dusk until we eventually came out into Coleman Lake. This wasn’t exactly where we’d wanted to wind up, takin’ us back up the Minnesota instead of down. The map had shown the creek branching to the left and downstream along the river. But we musta somehow missed that left hand stream branch. Either that or it was just some cartographer’s little joke. I’ve never been back that way to find out.
But, circumstances bein’ what they were, we figured it’d hafta do. We were, after all, just a stone’s throw from the Minnesota. Through the trees, we could even see the pilothouses of passing tugboats. We were tantalizingly close to our objective. And we still couldn’t get there. We paddled from one end of that lake to the other without ever findin’ the outlet. This was just too much for me and Charlie. By silent assent we landed on the south shore of the lake and portaged over the narrow shoulder of land separatin’ us from the river.
There was a little ambient light left over the bigger body of water when we finally got there. We dodged across the shipping lanes and hugged the right bank of the river tryin’ to stay outta the way of those strings of barges, allowin’ them the respectful distance due to watercraft of substantially superior mass.
At long last, we ducked under the I35W bridge and landed at the outlet to Black Dog Lake where the car was parked. We were not alone. There was a whole pack of adolescent males hangin’ out under the bridge and engaging in questionable activities. I kinda figured if they’d been around when Charlie’d locked his keys in the truck, we might not have had to start so late. But then, we probably looked as suspect to them as they looked to us.
Anyway, that was the end of our first and only descent of Nine Mile Creek. In retrospect, I’d hafta say it wasn’t one of my better ideas. But heck! I’ve had way worse!
Well, ‘til next time, keep your paddle wet. And keep in touch. Drop me a line c/o Rich Furman and Morgan MacBain, 901 East Geranium Avenue, St. Paul MN 55106 or editor@canoe-kayak.org. Let me know if any of your great paddling ideas haven’t turned out quite as expected. Remember, Uncle Wally promises to 1) tell the truth so no one would ever believe it anyway and 2) never reveal your true identity to anyone, not even your orienteering club.
