A watershed post

My son's been learning about the water cycle in school this past week, which is as good an occasion as any to shed a little light on the name of this occasional blog.

When it rains on our front steps, the water runs down to our street, falls into a drain, and flows into a stream buried underground for about a mile and a half, finally coming into daylight near the site of the first paper mill in British North America. It then runs for about half a mile more before emptying into Wissahickon Creek, as that creek's dramatic gorge veers southwest.

Along the mouth of our stream, in 1777, came a column of Continental soldiers trying to surprise and surround British troops housed at Germantown and eventually drive them out of Philadelphia. General John Armstrong had his troops pull a cannon along, but the rough terrain defeated them, and he had to abandon it in the gorge. (It was a harbinger of what was to be a disastrous day, as the various Revolutionary columns in the over-complicated battle plan got stalled, delayed, disoriented in the fog, and even fired upon by their comrades.) Looking up from the stream's mouth, you can see high cliffs on the opposite bank that for centuries have been subjects of "lover's leap" legends. Just a bit beyond that lies a cave where three centuries ago a band of German mystics awaited the end of the world.

We're just about at the upper edge of that stream's watershed. Turn left from our doorstep, go to the corner, turn right and cross Allens Lane and the railroad bridge, and in less than 100 yards straight-line distance you've reached the head of a trail leading down into another watershed, Cresheim Creek, named after the German village from which the area's first European settlers came in the 17th century. That stream flows freely through the woods of Fairmount Park before joining the Wissahickon miles above our stream.

Or you can turn right from our doorstep, walk a block up the hill, and cross over into a completely separate watershed, one which eventually feeds Tacony Creek, flowing eastward directly into the Delaware.

The stream whose headwaters flow off our front steps and those of our near neighbors drains most of west Mount Airy and southwest Germantown. The water is pure when it lands on our street. By the time it emerges from its tunnels and flows to the Wissahickon, it's often picked up frightening amounts of pollutants. No one's sure exactly where they're coming from, but it's widely suspected that sewage from century-old lines running alongside the buried stream leaks into it. Various tactics have been proposed and tried to mitigate this effect, so far without success. Tearing up the streets above it, and uncovering and rerouting the lines would probably work, but that's evidently much too expensive to seriously consider.

The name of the stream, as you've undoubtedly surmised by now, is Monoshone. I hope that we give it a good beginning, and help make its end a beneficial (even if imperfect) contribution to the lands and waters downstream.