Non-Fiction
Terraforming / L. Lu
Image by the author.
ter·ra·form
/ˈterəˌfôrm/
(especially in science fiction) transform (a planet) so as to resemble the earth, especially so that it can support human life.
Tricklings
Cobbs Creek is fifteen minutes from my home, but in over a decade I only visited once. My hyperactive Labrador puppy tugged at her leash as I walked her to Mt. Moriah Cemetery, which borders the creek. Whether it was sunny or overcast, a warm or cool day, is all hazy. But I do recall scanning left and right at the speeding cars on Cobbs Creek Parkway as I gripped the leash to restrain my dog. Eventually, we dashed across the street. We hiked up to a plateau to view the hillside dotted with mausoleums, gravestones, cedars, and oaks. Obscured by tall trees before disappearing into a culvert, the creek was barely noticeable.
Then I returned to my busy routine, rushing by Cobbs Creek on my way to the airport for a business trip or a backpacking trip to satiate my craving to be in nature, away from the noise and pollution of Philadelphia. The creek was an unremarkable stream by an urban roadway, and felt too ordinary to deserve another deliberate visit, as though water only merited my attention in picturesque waterfronts or Instagram-worthy National Parks. The creek’s course flowed in the opposite direction of my typical life, which was oriented towards the steel and glass skyscrapers of Center City.
My home in Southwest Philadelphia occupies the in-between zone between wealthier neighborhoods near Center City and the University of Pennsylvania and Black working class neighborhoods near Cobbs Creek. Our street mosaics socioeconomic statuses: single family residences subdivided into apartments, subsidised housing, luxury condos, half-finished rehab jobs, and owner-occupied rowhomes with carefully tended yards. “Will buy house for cash” signs are nailed onto light poles. I worry whether my neighbors, who have lived in their home for over 50 years and have cared for a beautiful rosebush in their front yard, might one day sell their house, cash out and leave.
While I sometimes chatted with neighbors on their porches, my life traveled at the pace of the professional upper middle class. It wasn’t uncommon for me to leave the house before dawn to catch a train or a plane. Life transported me through what seemed like a series of holographic projections: windowless conference rooms, hotel rooms in muted neutral tones, and breathtaking landscapes in places officially designated as beautiful. Even though family, friends, and work anchored me to Philadelphia, when I stumbled back home, I felt untethered. Maybe my casual neglect of Cobbs Creek was both a symptom and a cause.
Brook
It’s not until the pandemic that I return to the creek out of desperation to escape my claustrophobic existence. I first frequent the bike path, and it grows familiar—young maples grace the open field by picnic tables, and aging black oaks gift shade. I brace myself for the rumble of sweetgum fruit beneath my tires. The creek emanates calm as it slips under bridge arches and meanders along its curves. On sunny days, the stream glistens across pebble runs, exhaling trails of bubbles.
Cobbs Creek remains one of the few uncovered waterways in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs. The streams in this area once wandered unencumbered, carving valleys wherever the ground resisted the least. Old maps on the internet show jagged lines carpeting the region. The Lenape names for this area evoke a rugged, rolling landscape: Conshohocken (Gueno-sheiki-hacking), “pleasant valley”; Passyunk (Paschsegink), “a place between hills”; Wissahickon (Wisameckham), “catfish stream”; Pennypack (Penepekw), “deep water”. Multiple tributaries flow into Cobbs Creek, carrying rainwater draining out of suburban lawns. Eventually, the creek’s water joins the Atlantic Ocean via the tidal Delaware River. Located at the junction of this major shipping river and the fertile Piedmont Plateau, Philadelphia was a strategic location to force the Lenape out of their land, establish a colony that would grow into a burgeoning city and, as some would have it, give birth to American democracy.
By the turn of the twentieth century, people demanded more land for houses, while the water grew sick with human and industrial waste. Burying the streams would solve both problems, so people dumped dirt into stream valleys and built brick enclosures to channel the water underground. I knew this about Philadelphia for quite some time, but it never registered; it got relegated to the part of my mind that disbelieves what I know is true. Strolling along blocks of cozy rowhomes and elegant Victorian twins, I have a hard time fathoming the buried streams beneath my feet. Sometimes this land-altering foundation for our city fails. Sinkholes open in the middle of roads, threatening to swallow a car. I wonder if the water is seeking revenge for its exile. It has claimed victims in the past—whole houses, cars, people—in local black holes. Our terraforming efforts often make this world less habitable.
Cobbs Creek still struggles, a vein of bright red, marked as impaired on an online water quality map. The stream’s flow once powered multiple mills. Today, it’s hard to imagine the creek’s lower volume pushing a massive wooden wheel. Like so much of modern-day capitalism, the creek fluctuates between scarcity and excess. During rainstorms, the creek floods from our sidewalk runoff and guzzles the contents of our household drains from our combined sewers. I can smell the lingering sulfurous odor after a rainy day and see trees leaning precariously with roots exposed on sections of the banks that have partially washed away. And then there is everything I cannot see or smell hidden in the water— microplastics from our athleisure discards, pharmaceuticals flushed down toilets, and the toxic groundwater seep of a nearby EPA superfund site.
But the creek escaped burial and still flows, an unexpected green ribbon interrupting the street grid. I delight at the bouncing tufts of white fur from a family of startled deer. A blue-grey heron, with its curved neck and dangling feet, traces the water’s course from above the tree canopy. Canada geese glide into the water before waddling ashore to the asphalt path to pluck leftovers from takeout containers. Karakung, the original name for Cobbs Creek, meaning “a place of wild geese”, remains a fitting descriptor, even though the wild is now entangled with the detritus of our civilization.
After a winter storm, a protective layer of snow hides the litter. Bare branches paint the blue sky with fractal threads of brown-gray, and groomed cedars in the cemetery shelter eroded tombstones. The water cradles a rubber tire stuck in gravel. I bring my dog for contemplative walks, interrupted only by her lunges to sniff damp leaf piles and urine stains in the snow. More color emerges in the spring: a robin’s breast flashes brick red; clustered crimson buds sprout from a red maple; and yellow and blue flowers clothe the ground.
Our cities are a symptom, cause, and possible solution to environmental degradation. Eight billion people cannot all move to the country, nor take periodic respite in backcountry wilderness, without destroying those very places. Sustainable ecology is inevitably urban, and worthy of our attention and appreciation.
Current
The paved path is not crowded, but I usually see a few people: a Black family riding bikes; two women strolling in bright jogger outfits; a man in white socks and rubber slides walking his dog; an occasional white person out for a bike ride. Parks are concentrated near the white and wealthy, but Cobbs Creek is the exception. When I wave and smile at others, I fantasize that I inhabit a multi-racial utopia where a Black man can go for a run without worrying about becoming the next Ahmaud Arbery, where I can bike without harassment.
Other times, I wonder if I am an invasive species, ruining this space for others. Most people respond kindly to my waves, but sometimes someone shoots a wary glance at me. Perhaps I am perceived as foreign, Asian, neither Black nor white, the repository for fears of everything alien. I could be the accomplice of spotted lantern flies, Japanese knotweed, and the China virus. It is more likely, though, that I am perceived as an upper-middle class, white-adjacent gentrifier. Does this beautifully paved trail and my presence foreshadow that market forces may drive out the working class to distant suburbs?
My belonging is in constant negotiation. On a warm June weekday, a bearded white man in a pickup truck motioned to me in the cemetery and I tensed up, expecting an unpleasant encounter. Instead, he enthusiastically asked me if I had seen the fox hiding among the tombstones. A few Black walkers on the path waved and said hello. That same day, as I biked home, a white driver in a van yelled at me at a traffic intersection: “This is all your fault.”
But then I wonder if anyone deserves to belong? Do I deserve to belong on stolen land, purchased under a racist and exploitative capitalist system that is destroying the natural world?
Estuary
When my husband and I moved into our home twelve years ago, the bike trail at Cobbs Creek was not yet built. During nighttime, people dumped trash and dead bodies in the nearby cemetery. Shrubs and wildflowers enveloped the limestone and granite. My friend brought her children to the creek and complained of used needles and crack baggies. Community activism, philanthropic support, and local governments contributed to Cobbs Creek’s revival. My online excavation surfaced hundred-page PDFs documenting the city’s Master Plan for restoration. A decade ago, William Penn Foundation, a major philanthropic institution in this area, elevated Watershed Protection to one of its three funding priorities. The Friends of Mt. Moriah Cemetery formed in 2011 to steward the abandoned cemetery. My friend recently texted me about a new meadow restoration project for the park.
The cleanup volunteers got started a few years ago. I saw them equipped with five-gallon plastic bins for picking up the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups, plastic straws, and waxed pretzel wrappers scattered like confetti on the ground. A printed sign advertised: 1st and 3rd Saturday Cleanup 9:30am–11:30am with a name, email, and phone number. The organizer responded to my inquiry with a Google presentation documenting the treasures of their 2020 trash collection efforts: ATM machines, 32 tires, rugs drenched in water, 195 bags of trash and 594 pounds of recycling.
Several community leaders now each caretake a section of the 3.7-mile-long trail. When I show up on a Saturday morning, we engage in awkward small talk behind masks, and I begin to sort between the human litter and the leaf litter. Sometimes the task is easy—Styrofoam containers and metallic wrappers quickly fill my bucket. Yet flecks of plastic are impossible to remove without grabbing a handful of decomposed leaves. Lime green fungal threads have expanded into the bottom of a broken glass bottle, and a plant has sprouted out of the soil trapped in a plastic bag. It is not so easy to separate what belongs from what does not belong. But I do find a measure of hope in caring for my home alongside others.
Cobbs Creek’s water still nourishes Darby Creek which flows into Tinicum Marsh at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. Tree leaves form a dense verdant canopy where summer’s humidity comforts rather than oppresses. Duckweed coats the freshwater surface like pale green paint splatters. Turtles sunbathe on rocks. Egrets stand poised, scanning for fish, and red-winged blackbirds dart through cattails. Entering this refuge feels like encountering a fissure in the space-time continuum, a wormhole opening up in asphalt and brick, connecting the past to the present to the future.
It’s springtime. My husband and I walk back from Cobbs Creek and spot a bird, with white head and brown wings, soaring high in the sky. A bald eagle, symbol of ecological resilience, unburdened with my human quandaries, rides on warm air currents wafting from rubber roofs and cement pavement.