All tagged Crum Creek
A couple of Fridays ago, my daughter Charlie and I took a daring paddle on the terrifying and legendary Crum Creek — a harrowing 45-minute effort. We put in right above the Strath Haven Coulee Dam off Yale Avenue and fought the swift current back upstream. Multitudes of turtles guarded the banks, and shadowy fish darted fearlessly in the shallows. Past snags and sieves we maneuvered, watching each other’s six, conscious of many reports of the attack beaver waiting to ambush intruders.
I moved to Swarthmore in 1987 before the birth of my first child. I had a dream before moving that I was sailing a boat on a beautiful river. That boat became the Crum Woods of Swarthmore College.
Swarthmorean Robert Scott recently mentioned beaver sightings on Crum Creek, where the toothy furbearers abounded in the time of the Lenni Lenape, but were absent for decades and have only returned in the past few years. The lower trail is all but inaccessible due to tree fall, but walking downstream from the “Crumhenge” meadow near the SEPTA viaduct, Scott said, he had seen four beavers and their lodges during his evening walks along the trail.
