Sand Creek Reflections

Sand Creek, along the bike path, was beautiful yesterday.  In my later life, I'm just getting acquainted with its east side.  

The west side of Sand Creek, a ways north of that railroad bridge in the distance, served as our childhood stomping grounds.  

Greenhorn Mountain, on the left, where hikers take to the Mickinnnick Trail, was our mountain. During those years we heard a lot more about Baldy Mountain (out of the photo to the left of Greenhorn) than we did about Schweitzer. 

In fact, I don't think we ever used the name Schweitzer when referring to that area north of Greenhorn and below that mountain with all those ski runs. 

To us it was the Sand Creek watershed, and that's where our dad Harold Tibbs worked. He knew the area well because he served as the Sandpoint city water filter operator for 33 years.  

One of his venues included the old filter plant, a white brick building filled with giant green tanks on what's now Woodland Drive.  I think we called it Filter Plant Road at the time. I can remember many nights sitting in the car outside the filter plant while Harold did his work inside.   

Our dad also drove up the Filter Plant Road to the city dam and reservoir where water from upper Sand Creek flowed and passed through on its way down to Lake Pend Oreille.  
He hunted for deer in the city watershed and knew most of the back trails just below what's now Schweitzer Mountain Resort. 

In those days---if my memory serves me correctly----Sand Creek was full of water the year around, not just during the summer months. 

Most of the year, city water users drank Sand Creek water, which was filtered, chlorinated and florinated at that filter plant. My dad always took credit for our relatively good teeth because of the florine that he added to the water mix. 

In the summer time, the water system turned toward Lake Pend Oreille.  That's when Harold drove the area north of the Sandpoint depot and tended the operation at the old pumphouse.  

Before Harold's retirement, city water filter operations upgraded and moved to a spot on the lower part of Schweitzer Road.  

I don't know all the particulars related to the science of clean water, but I do know that Harold and Bob McArthur and other filter operators took great pride in the quality of and the good tasting water we drank as Sandpoint residents.  

It would be interesting to know how much water the city uses from Sand Creek for drinking purposes these days. 

Besides supplying our water, Sand Creek served as our playground.  My older brothers and I rode our bikes or walked almost every summer day to what's now known as the Popsicle Stick Bridge and spent hours, standing along the bridge or nearby open shoreline, dangling lines and hooks loaded with big fat worms in the water, trying to catch a nice trout. 

When my line wasn't tangled up, I did manage to hook a few penos, now called pike minnows and a few perch.  I worked hard NOT to catch one of those giant suckers with ugly mouths swimming on the bottom. 

That area of the creek had a variety of fish to be caught in those days.  My brothers were a lot better at the angling than I was.  I was good at catching bushes or underwater snags and losing hooks but not so good with the fish---mainly because my gear was gone within minutes of our arrival at the bridge. 

We also did our share of fishing along either side of Sand Creek off North Boyer just past the fairground.  I didn't like that area so much because walks along the mucky, brushy shoreline areas could surely yield unwanted surprises in the form of dreaded garter snakes slithering along the ground.  

I always liked the frogs but hated and carefully avoided any spot where snakes had appeared on previous trips.  In my childhood mind, those snakes lived in those spots all the time, just like the trolls under bridges. Their whole purpose was to horrify squeamish, fraidy-cat humans who passed through.  

The only problem with avoiding the snake dens was coming upon them in other places. 

Another area of Sand Creek where we played required walking across the Best's field which was on the east side of North Boyer WHEN NORTH BOYER ran past our house.  An extension to the airport runway eventually changed all of that.

Speaking of our house, I drove through the old neighborhood earlier this week and discovered that another significant remnant of the North Boyer farm has lost virtually all traces of the beauty, character and intrigue that I knew as a child.

The northeast portion of our woods----the very area where I hid the neighbor's mail during my 5-year-old mail thief years---has been logged off. 

It's pretty ugly now, and, as I drove by in amazement, I couldn't help but wonder if the logging job yielded any clues to all that correspondence in the form of letters and packages that I hid under the pine needles back in 1952. 

Who knows!  I do know that sadly another visible vestige of a storied past has turned unrecognizable. 

Anyway, back to Sand Creek.  Mike, Kevin and I took several jaunts down the hillside on Best's dairy farm to the creek.  

Once there, we would explore, avoid cow pies,  fish or sometimes just sit alongside the creek to talk about family matters----the most significant being in 1959 when we learned we were going to have another sibling.  

That sibling would be our sister Barbara, followed a couple of years later by Laurie and followed by Jim, who celebrates his 52nd birthday this Sunday.

Sand Creek certainly served as an important accessory to many aspects of our growing up years.  Yesterday's walk in the beauty of an autumn day made me feel like I was enjoying another perspective of an old friend. 

Happy Friday.