My Thoughts

My memories of the Nine Mile Creek Corridor extend back to the early 1960s. As a child, I fished and played along the creek with my friends several times a week. We would begin our summer days by 09:00 and we’d leave the Corridor just in time to make it home for dinner. I usually arrived wet and muddy. Often, I smelled of fish, stagnant water, and garter snake musk. In the winter, we routinely followed the creek home afterschool. Walking on the ice was irresistible, especially when it was thin, and my pants were commonly frozen from the knees down when I got home. Fortunately, my mother believed in the educational value of mud, water, and wildlife. She washed my clothes without complaint, after pulling loose the beggar ticks and stick-tights I had collected. I was still in grade school when I developed my first hypothesis regarding human nature. Boys in a creek will always find water deep enough to over-top their boots by at least 0.5 inches.

Almost every trip into the Nine Mile Creek Corridor led to something interesting. My friends and I watched flightless ducklings jump from a nest hole thirty feet over our heads. They bounced when they hit the ground, and somehow scrambled away uninjured. We saw fish that could sit almost motionless in fast running water, insects that could skate across the water’s surface, herons that stood in icy water without seeming to get cold, and “bees” that didn’t sting. The Corridor made us ask how and why more times than I can possibly recall. It made us think and it primed our interest in the natural sciences. Of course, when curious minds are fed they expand, and the hunger for knowledge grows accordingly. Mud, water, and wildlife pushed me and my friends into classrooms and books. My enthusiasm for learning might have waned in the sterility of lecture halls and libraries, but I carried those questions from the Corridor with me. Physics lectures held my interest because I learned about terminal velocity, fluid dynamics, and surface tension, and these concepts explained the fate of falling ducklings, the appearance of stationary fish, and the mystery of water striders. I found my physiology textbook fascinating in no small part because counter-current circulation and rete mirabiles described within explained the heron’s tolerance of freezing cold water. I threw myself into the study of evolution because, in addition to so much else, it explained those non-stinging bees. They were not bees at all. They were Batesian mimics. I cannot say what makes a good student, scientist, physician, or engineer, but I know places like the Nine Mile Creek Corridor are important. They breed intellectual curiosity.

I still regularly visit the Nine Mile Creek Corridor. I’ve noticed that I have more questions than ever before. Many relate to the sciences, but I’m spending more time pondering philosophy. What, I’ve asked myself, are the limits of moral standing? Do all species have a right to live and blossom, as the deep ecologists contend, or is sentience the locus of moral relevancy? The Nine Mile Creek Corridor is, I think, the perfect place to entertain such questions. I can walk peacefully along the Corridor with my mind in the clouds, and when I reach an intellectual impasse, I can stop to watch the rushing water, listen to the birds, and let nature cleanse my cognitive palate.

There are very few places in the Twin Cities that are as peaceful, beautiful, and biologically-rich as the Nine Mile Creek Corridor. It remains a quiet place where curious children can explore and adults can lose their minds in thought. This will all change if bicycle trails are constructed within its narrow walls. They’ll erode the beauty and diversity of the Corridor, eliminate wildlife, and put those distracted by their thoughts at risk.