Euclid Creek - Installment Two
The Lost Interval
It sounds like the title
of a bad science-fiction novel,
possibly some serial claptrap
written by Edgar Rice Burroughs,
but it describes a time,
from 290,000,000 years ago
until almost the present day,
when erosion held sway
The continents had congealed into one large land mass,
of course given a belatedly Greek name,
and the land around Euclid Creek had inched across the equator
to reside in the northern tropics
This was the perfect climate
for coal to be created,
and the chunks of carbon
and their fellow fossil fuels
left their mark around the world,
and in the area around Euclid Creek-
June 22, 1969
All hail John D. Rockefeller!
Glory to Goodrich and Goodyear and the rest
of the rubber barons!
Hosannas to George Hulett!
Thanks and praise to Samuel Mather!
Amen to Marcus Alonzo Hanna!
On this date Mother Earth revealed these men to be
not the gods of industrial greatness they were worshipped as,
but the generals of a raping and pillaging army,
and she sent a subtle sign of warning to the world,
a floe of fire floating on top of a river-
The continental collisions had caused uplift
in the area around Euclid Creek,
and one immutable law of the earth
says that what is pushed up
will eventually be ground back down,
and that happened here
during the Lost Interval
Whatever was unique
about the land
around Euclid Creek
was destroyed,
the volumes
of the library of rock
sacked by barbarous natural forces
seeking to prevent understanding
And so, understandably,
the quest for knowledge
has more questions
than answers
What were the changes
in climatic conditions
that caused reptiles to thrive
relative to amphibians?
What were the circumstances
that caused some reptiles
to become warm-blooded
and thus begin the long journey
to us?
What caused the first great mass extinction
about 250,000,000 years ago,
and why did it exterminate
non-fish sea creatures
primarily?
Why did the dinosaurs develop
to such a dominant size,
a size seen now only
in natural history museums
and some Spielberg movies?
Who were the dinosaur dynasties that ruled for so long?
Did they have wars of succession
and coups and countercoups
and revolutions
and palace intrigues
and hastily arranged
political marriages
between competing dynasties,
or are these more recent inventions?
Did they divide themselves
by race and class
and practice ethnic cleansing
against those groups
deemed inferior,
or are these too more recent inventions?
Were they benevolent rulers
or more like us?
Did the mammals
cower in fear of them
and hide until night,
as others today
do from us?
Why, in fact, and how
did mammals first develop?
How did the bacteria,
the dominant life form for almost
the entire life of the planet,
feel about the period being called,
retroactively,
The Age of Reptiles?
How did the insects,
the most numerous
diverse and
successful animal
for a period far longer
than the dinosaurs,
in fact, to the present day,
feel about the same thing?
Who were the dinosaurs' P.R. firm
that was able to get this idea
firmly implanted in the public's consciousness?
The continents continued their dance around the planet,
a waltz in very slow time,
and then the dance partners
gradually split apart,
sometimes amicably, sometimes not,
and the land around Euclid Creek
and the rest of North America
went its own way for many millions
of years
What caused the extinction
65,000,000 years ago,
the one that so captured
the public's imagination
and ended the dinosaur dynasty?
What was the weather like
June 20, 220,000,000 years ago,
or December 7, 77,000,000 years ago
or any of the myriad other
days without dates?
How did the dinosaurs forecast the weather,
and did they blame their demise
on faulty weather forecasts?
Why did some mammals
feel the need to return to the sea?
How many times
did the army of ice
attack the area
around Euclid Creek
that we don't know about?
What was the land and its life like
before each of the attacks we do know about,
attacks that erased all traces
of what went before?
In volumes of rock written in other areas
some, or many, or all, of the answers
may be found,
but
in the land around Euclid Creek
mystery rules!
VII
The Plant People
The trees and other plant people
here near the creek,
though having failed to produce a Darwin
to chronicle their development,
have an interesting history
of evolution,
a much longer history
than any animal
Primitive plant people predated
the birth of the land around Euclid Creek
by a couple of billion years,
give or take a few eons,
green machines
able to convert the abundant sun
into energy here on earth,
and
in the process exhaling oxygen
back into the atmosphere,
a subsequent symbiosis
with those who would breathe oxygen
Evolution was an extremely slow
process for the plant people,
and eons would elapse
before they were weaned
from the salt water in which they originated
From these first freshwater plants
it was a short 30,000,000 years
until the first brave plant ambled onto the land
And in another short 80,000,000 years,
about 340,000,000 years ago,
the plant people were able
to customize themselves
in each and every area
in which they lived
Primitive seeds and conifers first appeared
about 300,000,000 years ago,
and soon developed into the huge swamp forests
that created today's fossil fuels
The first flowering plants appeared
about 140,000,000 years ago,
and grasses first graced the stage
about 50,000,000 years ago
And in the last few minutes
before our own time,
the plant people were wiped out every time
by the advances of the army of ice,
all traces erased in a scorched-earth policy,
except for those able to migrate
beyond the army's farthest penetration
After the last invasion,
the refugee trees followed the retreating army
in reclaiming their abandoned homes,
the tundra-tolerant trees returning first
and being gradually followed
by the rest of the modern-day natives
to form the mixed forests of today
Today,
here in the area along the creek
as almost everywhere else,
the virgin forest is no more,
having been enthusiastically deflowered
by any and all groups
that came in contact with her
But
there are many second-growth trees here,
chestnut oak and red oak
and sycamore and box elder
and sugar maple and red maple,
trees
a hundred, a hundred-fifty years old,
soaring skyward in the search for sunlight,
trees much much taller
than anything allowed
to live outside the park
(Outside the park,
trees having a solid defense
of prior occupancy
are convicted of
obstructing human wishes,
condemned to death,
then swiftly executed)
Other trees here in the park
shoot
out
at strange
a
n
g
e l
s,
some of the ground
around the roots
eroded
a
w
a
y
,
though the roots hold tenaciously
onto the remaining ground,
not yet ready to concede defeat;
still other trees have bowed to the inevitable
and fallen;
one is perched all the way across the creek
a few feet above the water,
a thick wooden tightrope
offering opportunity
for daredevils to imagine
incredible feats of derring-do;
another tree
much farther along in the decay process
sits across the creek at the water level,
forming a very small waterfall,
the water flowing through the
decayed middle of the tree
flowing through a natural sluice
in the natural dam
The shade from the tall trees
and the moisture from the creek
produces moss on the north side of the rocks
The leaves are allowed to decay here
and return life to the soil
in their good old sweet time,
instead of being carted away as garbage,
or, even worse, burned,
as outside the park
Goldenrod and other plants
are lovingly called wildflowers
here in the park,
rather than slandered as weeds
as they are beyond the park’s boundaries,
though it's an eve-shrinking sanctuary to be sure
To be sure
...
VIII
The Creek Flows Home
The creek leaves its sanctuary in the park
and enter the realm of the purely human
which does its best to deny interconnectedness
On its real and mythic journey
it passes underneath its namesake avenue-
The namesake avenue was once so prosperous
that it was known as Millionaire's Row
But in the realm of the purely human
the business of America is business,
as an American president once said,
and, in a nicely ironic touch,
the purely human means
the most predatorily animalistic:
The avenue begins on Public Square where
pigeon droppings plop on statues of heroes and pseudo-heroes
and phallic monuments to the money gods
create concrete canyons confounding to sunshine,
yet conducive to the formation of wind tunnels;
where eagles nesting on the outside of Tower City
generate a spate of warm-hearted news stories
(though they will eventually be killed,
the eagles that is, not the stories)
while homeless people nestling on heating grates
generate no news stories at all;
where billionaires beg successfully
for handouts in the hundreds of millions
and simultaneously stiff us of taxes
while panhandlers pursuing coins and small bills
are subject to ridicule and contempt,
possible because of the smallness of the request;
where in the shadows of those subsidized skyscrapers
that have swiped stores and offices
from other unsubsidized buildings
the Council of Economic Opportunity office
is an ironic commentary on the vacant storefronts
and the fully employed birds scavenging the scraps of decay
that are its neighbors
And it continues past the restaurant
where the poet once worked,
a restaurant that has now been razed to rubble,
and where the last little bit of unbroken glass
has been carted safely away,
and where the dust of decay
provides a fine fertilizer for the weeds
that have now become the most thriving enterprise
in the area
And where,
marked by the tallest stone I the cemetery
and living better in death than far too many do in life,
John D
looks across what was the lake shore in prehistoric times
to the Free Clinic,
and nods approvingly
as he sees the people ruthless pruned
by his present-day disciples,
those heads of the Fortune 500 corporations,
one of whom has been bribed to move to the suburbs,
thus receiving corporate welfare
for doing what he was going to do anyway;
and another who looks out his window
at his new headquarters being built just down the street,
a gleaming glass palace also financed
with the reverse Robin Hood method,
while he can also see, out of the corner of his eye,
the social services center struggling
with increased needs and deceased means,
piously lamenting
such a state of affairs
And where the avenue goes over the creek
sits the abandoned auto plant,
where the traffic light is still there to regulate the flow
of the non-existent traffic through the plant's gate,
where the barbed wire is still atop the fences
to prevent trespassers from trampling the weeds
that have sprouted in the empty parking lot,
where the citizens of the city are forced
to cut back services because of the death of the plant,
where the ghosts of the laid-off workers are seemingly
the only ones unhappy at the plant's demise,
where Charley Wilson's conceit echoes
through GM's announcement of a record year-
The creek flows underneath the railroad track
where the steel veins through which once coursed
the lifeblood of the nations' commerce
now sit largely atherosclerotic with rust
because the same sordid story
of government giveaways
and copious corruption
is, with the help of historical amnesia,
repeated over and over and over again
for the latest technology putting itself forward
in the service of the great god Progress;
flows past the waste-water treatment plant
designed to rid its sister rivers
of human effluvia
so that humans may drink from it;
flows underneath industrial streets
with their scrap metal salvage yards
where the gray concrete of the roads and bridges
and the gray birds groveling on the gray sidewalks
and the gray gravel and gray piles of industrial detritus
and the gray factory smoke merging with the gray sky
make even the green grass on the creek's banks
seem gray;
flows past the red brick building being blasted
to rid it of its urban grime;
flows underneath the highway,
a metaphorical railroad track;
flows through an ethnic neighborhood
where the smells of sausages cooking
waft tantalizingly through the air
during the annual street fair;
flows past pricey housing satisfying
the primitive urge to live near the water;
and flows openly the last little bit
of its journey to the inland sea,
where on the beach scavengers human and animal
scour the sands for buried treasure,
where the Army Corps of Engineers
has safely secured the site
by building retaining walls
to stop the advance of the hated enemy
and provide flood control against the rampages
of the nearly dry creek,
and where Moses Cleaveland sailed past
on July 22,1796
on the way to his eventual destination
a few miles further west,
and so caused the history of this place to begin
End of Part One of the Journey
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michael ceraolo is a forty-something civil servant in mentor, ohio, struggling to overcome a middle class upbringing.
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