Looking south along the central axis of the Azar property in late September of this year
It’s been less than a year since Washington County bought the Azar residence on Sylvan Creek and converted it into a proper wetlands. The purchase and restoration brought to a close more than a decade of angst for its former owner. Marlene Azar moved into the place in the early 1990’s. It was a dream home for the nature lover and for a few years living virtually right on top of the creek was everything she had imagined it would be. The area was already teeming with life and when she put up bird boxes and feeders much of it moved into her yard. Squirrels, raccoons, and opossums regularly visited different feeders and occasionally a coyote or two would serenade her at sunset. In the spring the mallards would bring their ducklings right up on the back porch and feed at her feet.
The first sign that something might be “not quite right” came when a large fir tree near the property suddenly died without apparent cause. Shortly after that the creek briefly left its banks a couple times and the ground seemed to take longer to dry out than might ordinarily be expected. Then in 1996 major flooding occurred on the site. Trouble had arrived once and for all in Marlene’s paradise. From that point on virtually every time heavy rains came to the West Slope, Sylvan Creek would leave its banks and head for her house. The creek was “flashy” to begin with, meaning that the severity of the flooding was driven almost entirely by the length and volume of the rain. However, the area had filled with so much silt over the years since Marlene’s house was built that a tipping point had been reached.
Each time the creek left its banks it would carry a substantial load of fresh sediment with it. As it poured over the rim of the channel the heavier sediments would begin dropping out almost instantly. As the flood continued to flow across the area successively finer diameter silts would collect across the land. In many places this process actually produced a slight rise along the shoulders of each bank, in effect creating a small dike along the length of the creek. Once the rains stopped, the major portion of the flood waters would quickly recede. But in many places the shoulders of the channel were now high enough above the flood plain impound the water and keep it from returning to the creek. As a result Marlene’s house was suddenly standing for long periods of time in a shallow puddle of wet mud. “Mud, mold, mildew and an invasion of spiders the size of field mice” ultimately rendered the house uninhabitable. In late fall, 2008, after ten years of desperate struggle with both nature and bureaucracy, Marlene locked the door of her dream home for the last time.
The Azar house shortly after Marlene left it for the last time
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Marlene’s house was built in 1968, a period when sensitive wetlands areas all over the watershed were being converted to residential or commercial use as rapidly as possible. Building codes, particularly those in Washington County, were far less restrictive than they are today. This is not to say that coding was lax, only that perspectives towards the environment in the 60’s were different than they are today. This was well before the first Earth Day in 1970, and the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. So, a nice little house was built on a sweet little creek, right on the edge of a small woods, right at the bottom of a steep hill. The house was doomed even before the first moving van arrived. Marlene’s old place lay at the bottom of a long and well supplied chute that delivered and spread several dump-truck sized loads of silt over her property every year.
The highpoint in the Sylvan Creek drainage system is the peak of Sylvan Hill and lies two miles north (by stream channel) of Marlene’s old place. In spite of traveling through a great deal of broken land, the stream’s elevation drops at a relatively steady fashion, so the creek behaves much as if it were simply flowing down a long and steep inclined plain. Throughout its two mile run the creek travels through land that is covered to great depth with a fine clay material known as loess. The total drop in elevation from the antenna farm on Sylvan Hill to the culvert that carries the creek under Raleighwood Drive and onto Marlene’s former property is right at 750 feet. However, from the culvert on Raleighwood to the stream’s confluence with Fanno Creek at Hillsdale Highway half a mile away the land levels out to such an extent that there is less than a twenty five foot drop in elevation over the distance. During its charge off the top of Sylvan Hill the creek is confined to a relatively straight and narrow path by the walls of the ravines it has carved in the west and south flanks of the mountain. But the terrain begins to open up abruptly as the creek passes under Raleighwood Drive, allowing the creek to finally slow down, spread out, and take a great load of sediment off its back.
The TOPO map I use as a resource from time to time was developed during the same period in which the house was built. It shows three small ponds strung out along the length of the creek from Raleighwood Drive south to abut the middle of the park area as it is today. The first of these ponds was man-made and lay almost directly adjacent to the south side of the road. Only a few traces of this little pond remain visible in the area today. The dam itself was torn out long ago and the entire area is now anywhere from three to four feet deep in silts accumulated since the early 1990’s. The origins and fates of the other ponds on this portion of Sylvan Creek remain a bit of a mystery, but my guess is that they were silted in and overgrown years ago.
I first visited the site in June of 2007. I took a few pictures, but in those days I didn’t fully understand the value of a well documented site. I also didn’t recognize what I was walking into as I made my way into the bushes and finally managed to find and photograph the creek. I was unimpressed with the site and in my notes from the day characterized it as “…a bit of dump. No clear cut trails and no evidence of maintenance of any kind. So overgrown with brush as to be impenetrable.” A couple months later I attended a meeting of the Fans of Fanno Creek and at one point noted that I had been in Raleighwood Park and wondered why it was so badly maintained. What I didn’t know at the time was that Joe Blowers, one of the co-presidents of the Fans was also president of the THPRD Board. He looked at me with alarm. “Gosh, Eric. Did you see a lot of trash in there?” I described the place as best as I could remember and stressed that it was so badly overgrown that I could hardly walk two feet in any direction. I was surprised to see that everyone at the table was smiling at me in an odd sort of way – the kind of smile you might use when dealing with a five year old that had just said some clearly outrageous thing or another. Joe laughed out loud. “Eric,” he said, “that park is one of THPRD’s natural areas. We’ve invested years of volunteer labor and no small sum of money to get it to look just like that.” Everyone had a good laugh. Sue Bielke, one of the board members patted me on the arm. “Welcome to the watershed.” she said.
Marlene Azar and the Maple tree that once stood right outside her back door
Since the Azar property was returned to Nature a wide assortment of wetlands vegetation has rapidly covered the land. Growth has been so rapid and robust that it is almost impossible to reconcile new photos with ones taken less than a year ago. I returned just a couple weeks ago and were it not for a remnant Japanese maple would not have been able to fully orient myself to the lay of the land. I brought Marlene along with me, bless her heart, and asked her to stand next to the last clear vestige of her times along Sylvan Creek while I snapped a quick picture. She had about her the composure of someone who has managed to reconcile herself to the loss of a loved one – steady, dry-eyed, erect, and somewhat at peace, but not at all free of a steely bitterness at the edges of her voice. We walked the property and I asked her how she felt about the situation now that there had been a settlement and life had moved on? She didn’t answer immediately, but when she did there was flinty quality to her tone. “Who says I’ve moved on? I’ll always love this place and I will always miss it. It’s pretty now, but it was pretty when I lived here. I was a part of this place, just like it was a part of me.”
After she left I walked the area again, this time venturing a little more deeply into the brush along the stream bank. There was something odd about the stream but I was having a hard time teasing it away from all the other events of the morning. Then the sight of a freshly gnawed willow stump and it’s severed stem floating in the creek a few yards away brought a flood of comprehension. On my previous trips to this area the stream always gurgled past, and even when it at its lowest level it still chugged along with a lot of noise. But that day the stream was unnaturally deep – almost overflowing its banks – and the small leaves floating on the surface were almost stationary. I moved forward to take a better look at the stream and in the process flushed a beaver from under the bank just to my left. I spun around and raised my camera to take a shot, but he was well under water and yards downstream by the time I was able to bring the camera to the ready.
Fresh beaver sign at south boundary of Azar property 9/26/2009
On previous trips to the area I had seen a large beaver pond on the creek, but that had been at the far south end of the stretch, just a few yards north of where the creek flows into a large culvert and passes under Hillsdale Highway. That was a good half mile from where I was standing and I could think of only two reasons why the creek would be so deep and still at this spot: either the previously impounded waters had risen to a new all-time height, or the beavers had set up shop further upstream, probably not more than a couple hundred feet south of the Azar property. In either event this could be of considerable consequence to at least three of the closest neighbors. I decided to return the next day and investigate. (to be continued)
