Campbell’s Run Was More Than Just Fun
Growing up, this little stream was my outdoor learning lab!
Today many youth spend hours glued to computers or devices that stream their favorite video games or Netflix movies. Others spend hours on Instagram or the latest social media platform, while countless others find themselves tightly entrenched in the drug scene or intimately engaged in dangerous gang activities.
Growing up in the 60s my experience was much different. Times were certainly different and admittedly much simpler. I was so lucky to grow up in a small rural setting that included a small stream that meandered through the countryside just north of my house. For me Campbell’s Run offered a wealth of authentic outdoor learning activities much richer than any school classroom could provide.
I could hop out my backdoor and be wading in this little brook in less than ten minutes. Most of it was too shallow for a small boat or canoe but some of its pools were deep enough to go over my head. Yet, it was that mile and a half of water where I learned valuable lessons about plants, animals, and life in general.
Some of my friends smoked their first cigarette or took their first chew of tobacco along the creek’s secluded banks. Others built campfires and spent cool nights there gazing up at the stars.
For me it was much more. I literally learned how to fish and cut bait, how to skip rocks, build dams and forts and how to survive the call of nature when it called unexpectedly.
Do not always take your friends’ advice.
My older friends assured me that drinking the stream’s water was safe. They said as water runs over rocks it causes ripples, which help filter the water and add oxygen to it. Even though I noticed the water ran over green moss covered rocks I still accepted the older boys’ explanation. My friends surely knew what was safe. Didn’t they?
The National Park Service would have advised me otherwise.
“Never drink water from a natural source that you haven’t purified, even if the water looks clean. Water in a stream, river or lake may look clean, but it can still be filled with bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can result in waterborne diseases, such as cryptosporidiosis or giardiasis.”
Fortunately, I cannot remember any of us ever becoming sick from slurping a cook drink from the stream.
The right leaves make great toilet paper.
Spending too many hours at Campbell’s Run presented a few not so interesting issues when nature called. Being a young boy simply unzipping my pants and watering the nearest tree was a no brainer, but pooping was a little more challenging. I learned to sit across a fallen tree or simply take a squat in a secluded spot, but wiping required some forethought. Out of necessity, I learned to recognize Sycamore, Silver Maple, Catalpa and Magnolia trees, whose leaves were all great for wiping.
In his book, Trees among Us, Matt Ritter explains why some leaves worked better than others did. “Sycamore Trees which have broad leaves provide ample coverage and are thick enough not to tear through easily. The finely textured fuzz will leave you feeling soft and clean.
Silver Maple is a broadleaf with a fuzzy underside,” Ritter added. “The hairless topside will grip better against your hand while the soft, silver underside wipes without slippage. Catalpas have beautiful, heart-shaped leaves that turn golden in the fall can create a lush, almost tropical feel. Southern Magnolia has leaves that are thick, very resistant to tearing, has a large surface area, and an underside with a fine rust-colored, felt,” Ritter said.
Ritter warned against using any type of evergreen leaves though. “Pine trees can leave you smelling fresh, but the needles don’t have the flat surface area necessary to avoid making a total mess of your hands,” he said. But, he stressed the importance of also avoiding poison ivy, poison oak, elms and hackberry trees because their leaves and feel like sandpaper.
You may find all of this advice very helpful the next time there is a Pandemic, hurricane or blizzard when eager beavers rid all the stores shelves of toilet paper. Fortunately, for me, Campbell’s Run seemed to have a never-ending supply of suitable leaves at my disposal.
The little stream had many interesting inhabitants.
Campbell’s Run was home to a variety of fish including sunfish, bluegill, rock bass, bass, catfish, suckers, carp, and chubs. In addition, frogs and toads hopped in about the water, several types of snakes slithered around, leeches lay awaiting some unsuspecting flesh, and insects of all types made some days less pleasurable.
Wading or splashing around were always refreshing on hot summer days as long as leeches or snakes stayed away, but I spend most of my time perfecting the art of fishing.
Find the right place, right time, and the right bait.
Location, Location, Location. Fish are usually hiding in deeper pools, in the shaded area of a tree, and around a tree limb or brush in the water. Changes in air pressure during an approaching storm or the calm just before dark are the best times. Generally, hot humid day meant fewer fish would bite, but a hard rain that raised the stream’s water level and made its water muddy meant that catfish were more likely to bite.
What bait to use. We always used natural bait. Our trial and error approach revealed to us that red worms or earthworms worked best to catch most of the fish. However, night crawlers were good for catfish, while minnows and small frogs worked best for bass.
Where’s the bait? Sinking a shovel in a pile of manure around a barn just south of the creek was stinky business but usually yielded plenty of red worms. We found plenty of earthworms by digging in dark or wet areas around the house and yard or under boards laying around a shed or chicken coop.
Nevertheless, finding night crawlers was a little harder and a lot more fun. Using the garden hose or a bucket of water, we would wet the yard around dusk. A few minutes later, we would sneak carefully through the grass with a flashlight. Sometimes we found the crawlers lying on top of the ground but usually they would only be partly visible. We would pounce on them with our hand and squeeze them gently with our fingers. Generally, they would surrender and reluctantly come the rest of the way to the surface.
Catching minnows was a little more difficult. We started by looking around our neighbor’s barn near the stream. Usually, we could find empty abandoned feed sacks, which had contained animal feed for livestock. We learned how to rip open the sacks and use them to catch the minnows from shallow pools in the stream.
Frogs were the most difficult to find and much harder to catch, but as bait they were key to catching a big lunker (bass). The hunt would start by listening carefully for their chirping sound. Once a frog is spotted, you carefully sneak up behind it. Then you slowly crouch down toward the frog and then make one final lunge toward it. Sometimes the effort is successful, but more often, I would laugh as one of my friends tumbled to the ground or into the water empty handed.
A neighbor caught us skinny-dipping.
On those hot summer days when fishing was slow, we practiced our skill of skipping rocks, building forts, building dams, or skinny-dipping. One of those days much farther downstream from the site of most of our adventures, we decided to cool off in the stream’s refreshing waters. Several of us had played baseball for what seemed like hours in the boiling sun. One of the older boys suggested we take a break and it was off to the races. Bike after bike headed up State Road 75 to the nearest bridge. We threw our bikes down along the ditch, quickly headed down to the water and stripped off our sweaty stinky clothes and made our way into the stream.
We were relaxing, laughing and having a great time until our nosy neighbor, Marge, came calling. She had become suspicious since her son and I had been gone so long so she came in search of us. Out of nowhere I heard that alarming cry, “Mike and Jerry are you down there?” Our friends snickered and quickly hid while Mike and I had to get out of the water and saunter nakedly up to our clothes on the bank above. Later, when Marge told the story she said, “I never saw so many bare butts move so quickly!”
When I got home, my mother made me get a switch from a tree by our driveway. She gave me a switching that day with some simple words of wisdom. “If someone told you to jump off a building would you do it? Of course not! Do what YOU know is right; don’t just follow others all your life!”
Teachable moments can happen anywhere, but the lessons I learned in and around that little stream and at the end of my mother’s switch will be with me the rest of my life.
