Trekking Candler Park’s Quiet Creek
By John Fleming. Photos and videos by Philip Ehrenberg.
If you walk up Ferguson Street from McLendon about a block, you will come to a rise just shy of Iverson. It’s a slight hill really, that goes pretty much unnoticed, unless you are looking for it.
Just below that rise, between Ferguson and Oakdale is a grate nestled into the soft ground of David Fulmer’s backyard. If you listen closely, even on a dry day, you will likely hear water passing underneath.
For our purposes here, we will call this spot the beginning of the story, and this stream that threads its way for about a mile, all the way from one end of Candler Park to the other, much of it unseen in a 54-inch storm pipe. You might say this waterway is a gem, a lengthy linear park, but it’s one many in the neighborhood either ignore, or don’t know about. And that’s a shame, because not knowing it and not knowing about it, means we miss out on the joy and the challenges of it. Some of it is absolutely pristine. Parts of it are in need of some looking after.
On a recent Sunday, a couple of Messenger staff walked the length of this unnamed stream, looking and listening for what it has to offer the neighborhood.
From that grate, in the bucolic backyard of long-time resident David Fulmer, the stream continues its unseen course in the pipe near his magnificent Japanese maple and all of Ferguson Street’s azaleas, nandinas and camellias. It is then fed by the catch basins on McLendon. But part of the stream emerges behind a house on Mclendon and daylights into the woods at the back of the open lot on the north side of McLendon. Here it continues until finally disappearing into the grate at the end of Miller.
On this perfect Spring day, there was birdsong and blossoms. Beautiful native plants are everywhere, but there are also the invasives, including privet and a sinister weed called Houttuynia cordata, that smells of fish (also known as fish mint, fish leaf, or chameleon plant).
The cool set in, beneath the big sweet gums and other trees along the creek on this part of the course. Thick bamboo (which Roger Bakeman tells us he perhaps unadvisedly planted in 1978) soon gives way to the open again at the foot of Miller — there’s a grate here too where you can hear gurgling below — as the stream continues its unseen course, snug in its 54 -inch pipe.
At the bottom of Hooper, Cameron Collins was fixing up his mailbox. He lives only a few yards from the stream. There is another grate here, one that catches the water coming down the hill, funneling it into the stream a little farther to the west.
Collins takes a minute with a couple of visitors to explain how wonderful his street is, with the green space nearby, his friendly neighbors and the quiet of the place. It’s a Sunday afternoon, he’s getting primed for The Masters, so he excuses himself so he can finish up the mailbox project.
From here the stream continues its trek north, going under Euclid Avenue, before emerging into the daylight again along Goldsboro Park and the tennis courts. Here the stream runs through an open concrete culvert as high as your head. Tennis balls (of course) begin to show up here, along with graffiti, colorful and mostly innocuous.
Many tennis games, singles and doubles, are going on this pretty day, with a lot of people out for exercise, shouting encouragement and critique, and some asking why visitors are climbing through the culvert.
At the far end of Goldsboro, the creek goes into a tunnel that might not be quite big enough to drive a truck through, but is certainly big enough for a Mini Cooper. For the first 100 feet or so, it’s easy, if not a little spooky, to explore. When the tunnel doglegs to the east, darkness folds in and some Stephen King characters start emerging from the shadows. When the water gets too deep, and a clown starts to linger in your imagination, or nearby, it’s time to go.
The stream sees daylight again as it hits another culvert a few hundred feet on, then it turns due east, running behind the homes facing North Avenue. From there it runs along the Path and then under it, and finally the stream finds the north end of the golf course at Candler Park. Here it flows under the footbridge on the Path.
Right here, where a tennis ball bobs in the water, the stream continues north, flowing under Ponce de Leon Avenue, through the Lullwater Conservation Garden, until, at the north end of the Druid Hills Golf Course, it joins up with Lullwater Creek—which flows into Peavine Creek, which flows into the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, which flows into Peachtree Creek, which flows into the Chattahoochee, which flows, eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico.