Story: The Highly Unlikely Waterfall

If for some reason you were to find yourself bobbing along in the Gulf of Mexico in a rowboat and you started paddling north, up the mouth of the Mississippi river, past the moss and mold of New Orleans, you may, after rowing against the current for some 2,000 miles and taking a series of haphazard detours onto ever smaller tributaries, find yourself on Mill Creek, a seasonal trickle of water that flows from some mysterious source in northern Illinois, past the towns of Antioch, Wadsworth, Old Mill Creek and Gurnee before joining the flood prone Des Plaines. Perhaps, if any of my expeditions on Mill Creek had been more successful, I myself would have made this trip home back home.

I first discovered Mill Creek on bicycle, while passing through what was, at the time, a new housing development named Mill Creek Crossing. Some local ordinance on wetlands and drainage had saved this stretch of Mill Creek and a 1/8 mile wide corridor of forest and grasslands on either side of the banks from the surrounding construction. The developer had instead drawn a line behind the future home lots and back and forth across the creek. This line had been paved over and called a wildlife trail.

These trails were a wonderful way to pass through the woods and over the creek, but one could only go about halfway before reaching a lot where the resident had decided he didn't appreciate a public trail in his backyard and the traffic of twelve year olds that it brought. He had ripped up the trail, planted new sod, and ran a small barrier across the two ends of his property line. Then he stuck a few small plastic signs in the ground that said “Stop!” and “No Trespassing” and “Stay off the Grass!” and “Beware of the Dog!”

Late one summer, when Mill Creek Crossing was 70% completed and 10% in development or under contract, my mom made me read Tom Sawyer. I decided to build a raft of my own. I had an ample supply of wood from the surrounding construction sites and a father that never noticed a missing hammer, box of nails, or power drill. I set to building the raft on the banks of a bend of Mill Creek, well hidden in the woods. After a few days I had a little platform that floated nicely as long as I wasn’t standing on it. It rained heavily that night and when I returned the raft was gone, on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

A few years later on another hot summer day, I procured three inflatable rafts with my friends Taz, French, and Bones. We had decided to float down Mill Creek and quietly make our way onto Old Man Temple's land. Old Man Temple was the patrician tycoon behind the famous Temple Steel fortune. He had died early in the last century, but Temple Farms, his vast holdings of land in northern Illinois, continued to make his family, trust, corporation, or whatever is left of Temple Steel very wealthy as it was sold off piecemeal to housing developers eager to offer planned communities within commuting distance to Chicago. Having been chased off by dogs, surly men on four wheelers, and overactive imaginations, we knew the remaining land of Temple Farms was incredibly difficult to explore on foot. An expedition by water seemed like a promising route to the natural spring, clear blue lake, and highly unlikely waterfall that French swore that his Dad swore existed.

We inflated the boats in French's backyard and loaded our packs with warm soda and potato chips. We slipped our boats into the murky waters near the Grandwood Park sewage treatment plant and used our plastic paddles to push off the shore. This section of the creek had been widened into a retention pond, which gave us a nice space to practice our stroke technique. Moments later we were stopped by the first of many fallen trees, rusted barrels, and construction trash we would encounter. We ported our boats past this and the following ½ mile of unnavigable water, realizing that we had missed the winter snow melt by a few months and would have a more difficult voyage ahead of us than planned. Bones also pointed out that he was drinking the last soda.

After a few hours we reached the far end of Mill Creek Crossing, a voyage that on bicycle took ten minutes. We ducked down low and passed through the corrugated steel drainage tubes under Stearn School road, which carried us into Old Man Temple's land. The woods closed in around us along with the mosquitoes which had been waiting for the flesh of four plump boys since the last Ice Age. Bones pointed out that he was eating the last bag of potato chips and they were making him very thirsty.

We paddled across the dark waters and through the shafts of sunlight that broke the ceiling of leaves above. We heard but rarely saw the exotic fauna of northern Illinois all around us, creatures with strange names, like crow, toad, and worm. There seemed to be less garbage here than in upper Mill Creek. We came to a sharp bend and saw the corner of a plywood sheet jutting from the mud. I recognized my old raft by the nails that went in halfway before being bent into ninety degrees angles and other signs of shoddy construction. Either she'd never made it to Louisiana or she had and then someone had rowed her back north and finally given up here. In either case, she'd made it as far as us and she didn't have any legs, so I was impressed.

We continued into the growing darkness and encountered evermore obstacles in the water. We'd paddle as near to the half submerged tree, dam, or car and look for a path around it. If it wasn't possible to float past, we'd paddle to the nearest bank and portage our boats down river until we could put in and continue another thirty feet before repeating this again. This continued the entire day.

Hours and millions of mosquitoes later, we reached a stretch of water where a happy beaver had gone to work and left trees scattered across the creek and the banks. We carried our boats as far as we could until even the left bank was too difficult to walk over. We started over the nearest log bridging the river. Taz went on ahead and Bones followed until his foot fell through a hole in the rotten log and he nearly fell into the water below. As he was struggling to get out he began waving his arms and screaming. Taz followed suit.

“Beeeeeeesssss!”

French and I turned and ran. Taz continued to the other side and ran. Bones took the brute of the attack, forgot his raft, jumped into the knee deep creek and sloshed through the water to escape. By the time he reached us he was covered in hundreds of swelling red bumps. He felt faint and nauseous.

The situation was pretty hopeless. An enormous number of wasps had been woken up when Bone's foot crushed their nest in the log. The raft was completely deflated, covered in invisible holes inflicted by the wasps. It was beyond repair and we left it behind. We helped Bones to his feet and begin walking away from the river. We escaped the forest and passed into the fields of corn surrounding it. Thirty minutes later we were home. Bones took some aspirin. We found more sodas and watched some TV.

It wasn't the last time we searched for the natural spring, clear blue lake, and the highly unlikely waterfall, far from it. But to this day, Old Man Temple has kept his secrets hidden. He also must have moved them to another location as a housing development recently went up in that field and there was no sign of them when we drove through it. Still, if you're visiting northern Illinois, Mill Creek is worth exploring. A friend once told me he saw a naked couple in one of the clearings by the creek as he rode his bike down the trail. I never had any such luck but who knows; maybe they're still out there, doing it in the grass.