Volunteering with Atlanta Creek League has been amazing and beyond my expectations this semester. Through this opportunity, I’ve explored my neighborhood and parts of it that I didn’t even know existed. About two weeks ago, Hannah(One of the founders of Atlanta Creek League) and I explored the neighborhood I live in to determine the water flow using the creek’s start and end point. During this process, we discovered that my neighborhood’s creek doesn’t have a name, so we plan to name it soon, and for the time being, we are calling it ‘Garden Hills Creek.’

So, we first started locating the water stream in different parks in the neighborhood, and we successfully figured out that the Creek water starts at ‘Frankie Allen Park’ and ends at ‘Peachtree Hills Park.’ We’ve found that the water comes through a pipe at ‘Frankie Allen Park,’ from there, it’s just a stream again flowing through a couple of pipes.

So the creek flows as such: ‘Frankie Allen Park’ —– ‘Sunny Brook Park’ —– ‘Alexander Park’ —– ‘Peachtree Hills Park’ —– ‘Peachtree Creek.’ There is another creek that flows from ‘Sidney Marcus Trail’ and then connects to the one from ‘Alexander Park’ and combines flow to ‘Peachtree Hills Park.’ The creek is rich with wildlife, and based on my observation, the water seemed clean and fresh. Also, Hannah taught me the difference between English Ivy and Poison Ivy. It was an experience I would never forget, and I still keep visiting these parks every weekend since I first visited them for sights of new observations and encounters.

So as this creek has no name to it for now, Hannah and I are thinking of giving it a name, and soon we’ll be planning to work on it. I never thought that I would be connected to an organization as I currently do with Atlanta Creek League. I personally love exploring the nature-rich parts around me, but I never thought that I’d have some very close to me, and being a part of this organization helped me with that. For my final project, my fellow volunteering partner Noor and I decided to share our experiences and discuss some basic information about creeks in general. We will combine our experiences and our creek’s information for better understanding.