By Dorothy Sussman
For most of my life, I have lived near water. Growing up, it was the Hudson River in Northern New York, but for nearly five decades, I’ve lived not far from the South Fork of Peachtree Creek. For many of those years, though, I hardly knew it existed. When I did notice it, I did so from a state highway bridge because the Creek was nearly impossible to access.
I remember my amazement when I first walked on the Confluence Trail as it broadened to a meadow near the point where the South and the North Forks joined. So this was the Creek! Who knew? We worked with a Boy Scout troop to whack and pull up choking invasives. Another time, people joined to plant chestnuts and another to pick up trash in a swale and another to mow the trail or help with native tree plantings. Hard, gratifying work and lots of it.
Today, I walk the trail with relative ease. I get on at Armand Park in my neighborhood and fairly soon reach a rain garden right on the trail. It’s a glorious and thoughtfully constructed assembly of honey-colored boulders and native plants that slows storm-water runoff coming from a nearby culvert, preventing erosion and pollution of the creek. Right now, the plants are dormant (they need a rest, too), and the boulders even more prominent. Together, they hold the soil as if to say, “We’re staying put.”
Farther on, dun-colored river oats hug the banks as I walk through a cathedral of trees. Here the trail offers a fuller view of the creek itself as it meanders along before approaching the I-85 overpass. A snapping turtle suns itself on a log that juts into the water. Birds keep watch from water oaks and pines. Ahead, native trees and plants, such as yellowwood and sumac, installed a few years ago with the help of Trees Atlanta volunteers, dot the landscape. When they leaf out in spring, these natives and many others will help mute nearby highway traffic.
And then, across the meadow, rises the magnificent 175-foot-long Confluence Bridge that now spans the junction of the North and South Forks. It glows copper in the sun, beckoning people like you and me to pause for a bird’s eye-view of the creek and then to walk the trail. When it opens, the bridge will also sport a ramp replete with viewing platforms, that we can take to enter the Confluence Trail going south or to head north and connect to other parts of the trail system. I can’t wait!
During this pandemic year, the Confluence Trail has been a gift to many people, offering us a way to be in the natural world—in all seasons. I hope you will make time in your lives to walk the trail whenever you can and take in its rugged yet fragile beauty. You might even decide you’d like to get involved in protecting the creek and its trails, and that would be all right with me. Perfect, in fact.
