200907 Creek Fossils

 Sept 7

   On Friday I took Robin and Indre to the creek for the first time in weeks.* In the summer it was often crowded with people biking and playing, so we avoided it. But Friday we had the place almost to ourselves. The kids waded and splashed, got soaking wet, and Fig was in heaven, running in and out of the water, sniffing all over. I haven't seen him so excited in years. We played pooh sticks on the bridge and then went east along the path to find a giant tree fallen into the water and a new island formed between two rushing narrows. We explored the island and stood in the rapids to feel the water tugging at our legs. Indre, Robin and Fig explored while I searched for interesting stones. I think they would have stayed all day if they could. Fig has congestive heart failure from a murmur as well as some arthritis and I have been gentle with him recently but he was like an escaped puppy and played and played. Indre likes to practice skipping stones and Robin likes to find rocks as big as he can carry and heave them into the water.

   The whole area is a gravel deposit from the glaciers that moved across what is now our province. There is granite, quartz and bits of jasper from the Canadian shield; and sedimentary rock with sea fossils in it and fragile shale from a more recent lake. The tiny fossils enchant me: 450 million years ago little creatures swam or crawled about in a great shallow ocean that filled this part of the world, while sea grasses waved in the currents.

   For a while we were alone in the universe: no sight or sound from the human world, just trees in the wind and the rushing of water. It was an hour of freedom from covid life and modern busyness. the children got muddy and clean again by turns, abandoned their flip-flops and crawled about in the creek like the primordial sea-life of long ago.

          

The stone on the left I call beach mash, riddled with tiny bits of long ago life. Not to be confused with road mash, at right, made by humans for cars to drive on.

           

     

   

   Thank you for visiting. Keep safe. Quebec tomorrow! The ancient Appalachians. K, Fig and I will be on the road at 6:30 am.

* The creek is Mimico. We were at Echo Valley Park but Mimico Creek wanders through Etobicoke from Hwy 409, past West Dean Park and Echo Valley, the Islington Golf Club, behind Etobicoke high school, with parks and paths accessible from dead-ends all along its banks, to the lake at Humber Bay Park.