Minnehaha Creek Drainage and the Mississippi River Gorge
Minnehaha Creek
Who knew that in March 2020, I’d have a self-refreshing browser window open and docked twenty-four hours a day, with seven online store tabs all spring loaded with alerts, dings, prompts and hand signals telling me that either our top three favorite brands of toilet paper, disinfectant wipes, disinfectant cleaners, hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol might be available for order and delivery. There have never been any dings, or hand signals. Everything I looked for online is out of stock and its whereabouts is unknown. No one’s even sure if these products are made anymore. I’m not completely certain what day it is.
We usually make a once a week journey, maybe twice, to a grocery store, a big-box store, a hardware store, or a farmer’s market, to get the things we need to keep things going; milk, eggs, rice, flour, meat, vegetables, ginger ale, mouse traps, and cleaning products when they’re available. My goal is to get what I need and escape as stealthily as possible to avoid any potential stampeding, or trampling. No matter where and what we’re shopping for, we always check the paper products aisle, the cleaners and personal care aisles to make absolutely sure that the shelves are still empty, like during the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.
A few Saturday’s ago, my morning started out just fine and by early afternoon I’d morphed into a tightly wound stressed ball of stress; worn down by virus concerns, the never-ending, dangerous, orange clown stick show, more horrific police brutality and white-supremacy crimes, and a simmering fear about our daughter who’s sheltered with six college roommates in Brooklyn — the center of the biggest pandemic crisis in the country. It was scaring me and it came out sideways. I wasn’t doing fine. I was melting down and I started to project all my melting anger and uncertainty on to my wife.
So, I took our dog for a long walk into the Minnehaha Creek gorge located below Minnehaha Falls not far from our house. It’s heavily wooded, has dense ground cover in some areas, meandering trails and a park service road on one side. I mistakenly walked the service road for too long and was shocked at the amount of people I encountered, without masks. I understood that it was a beautiful day and we’d all been sheltering for over two weeks, but I was spoiled. My wife and I had continued to recreate a few times a week since the whole thing began, and it had been mostly empty in the parks, but not that Saturday. So, I crossed the creek on one of the beautiful WPA built stone bridges, and onto a closed trail that hugged the steep bluffs on the opposite side. It was closed because there was significant winter erosion and parts of the trail had slid into the creek — even on that trail there were people — even with filtered green light, a deep blue sky and the soothing sound of the creek rapids, I wasn’t calmed. I still felt vulnerable, claustrophobic and annoyed.
After fifteen minutes, I sat down on a tree stump and considered the options. We could turn around and quickly leave the way we came in, back through people and go somewhere less busy; pull up my mask and continue, through even more people, to the river; or find a different way out, with no people. Our dog was fine, but I had to escape. I looked up and scanned the bluffs for a simple route. Eventually, I found a path I thought would work and we started to climb. I kept him on a short lead just in case something happened, if something slid and gave way. We did kick some rocks and debris loose and I noticed that there were downed trees shifting in the soft ground around us. We climbed quickly like we were being chased and exited out of the top of the gorge and into a different part of the park, into the light, without people.
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“Any more of this and the hull will start to buckle!” :: Starbuck – Battle Star Galactica
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Song :: Another Day in America by Laurie Anderson
© C. Davidson