Queer Creek Revisited

Earlier, in Queer Creek, I speculated that the real reason for the name was the way the creek headed west looking to head down a well-defined valley, and then it encountered Salt Creek going the opposite direction, and then Salt Creek suddenly headed south, as I described in What’s Wrong with Salt Creek?.

I had a chance to go take a look at the creeks and their paths yesterday, and I thought you folks might like to see what I saw.

When you drive down the Queer Creek Valley, about 3 miles downstream from Parrish Rocks, it is no longer a gorge, but a fairly wide valley. In fact, you may recall that this is the old bed of a glacial lake. Here’s the view:

Queer Creek Valley (heading west)

You can see how the valley (and the road) curves off to the right, broadening even further. But that’s not the Queer Creek Valley any more; that’s Salt Creek coming at you. From that point, if you look 80° to your left, this is what you see:

Salt Creek heading south

That notch is where Salt Creek suddenly turns south and cut its way through its own gorge. Queer Creek comes from the left and joins it there. Here’s what it looks like as you head down Salt Creek.

On Salt Creek; Queer Creek joins just ahead

Queer Creek comes in from the left just underneath that hill, and then Salt Creek curves off diagonally to the right. From Queer Creek itself, Salt Creek runs from the right to the left:

The Mouth of Queer Creek at Salt Creek

(Salt Creek is that over-exposed area.)

From that location, you can look up the Queer Creek valley (east):

Queer Creek valley looking upstream (east)

Notice just how flat that is below the hills. That’s the old lake bed, and you can see the layers of old silt making up the soil.

After looking all this over, I paddled back upstream (you did notice the canoe in an earlier picture, right?). This is where bare feet came in very handy (most people canoe barefooted, right?). Salt Creek is rather typical of streams in southeast Ohio. There is a slow pool backing up behind a relatively higher spot, then some riffles as the water goes over the high spot, and then another slow pool. What that means is that if you want to paddle back upstream, the riffles are way too fast and shallow to be able to do so (there is not way to get a purchase with a paddle). So the easy thing to do is to just step out of the canoe (barefooted!) and walk it upstream past the riffle.

This is undoubtedly what the Native Americans did. There is a description in a Jesuit Relation by Paul Le Jeune (in the Montreal area in 1635) describing how the missionaries had to go barefoot in the canoes:

iamais ie ne vy perſonnes plus ioyeuſes que ces bons Peres, on les fit mettre pieds nuds à l’entrée de leur nauire d’ſcorce, de peur de les gaſter, ils s’y mettent gayement, portans vn œil, & vn viſage tout ioyeux, dans les ſouffrances qu’ils vont rencontrer.

I never saw persons more joyful than were these good Fathers; they had to go barefooted into the bark ships, for fear of spoiling them, and they did this gayly, with glad eyes and faces, notwithstanding the sufferings they were about to encounter.

Damaging bark canoes is obviously a consideration, but having to get in and out had to be important; ruining a moccasin with by drenching it is also not a good idea.

There was also a bit of nice wildlife. I saw a bald eagle! (Actually, I may have seen two of them; I’m just not sure). The one I saw took off from tree right in front of me, and I was able to easily (and definitively) identify it. Unfortunately, my camera was not at the ready. All I got was this long-distance shot (and without my super zoom lens) of when it was circling high above:

Long-distance Bald Eagle at Salt Creek

I think you can make out the white head and tail.

Another interesting bird was the bank swallow. This is what the banks of Salt Creek looked like at one point:

The bank of Salt Creek

On my return trip, the place was crawling (flying?) with what I am pretty sure are bank swallows, Riparia riparia. Those holes are their nests; I saw them going in and out of them. Unfortunately, they were darting around so fast I was unable to get a good picture (what distance do you focus on?; and the auto-focus was worthless); here’s my best one:

Bank Swallow at Salt Creek

One final question: if the place was full of trees 200 years ago, how might the namer of Queer Creek seen all this? My guess (and I’m sticking with it) is that it only got that name after the place had been logged by all the homesteaders who were moving into the area. Who knows what name it had before then?