Intro: Why the Big Creek Greenway?

It was either late 2024 or early 2025. I was making progress on getting over my storm phobia, but I wasn’t quite there yet. A storm was rolling in and, as I tended to do back then, I fled my duplex and weathered the storm at my parents’ house, where I wouldn’t have to be alone.

The storm dumped inches of rain on the area. Because Georgia’s red clay soil takes its sweet time absorbing rainwater, flooding was inevitable. I received an alert for a “River Flood Warning,” which intrigued me, so I clicked on it. The warning stated that Big Creek was flooding. This was my first time hearing the name Big Creek and I immediately became interested.

One of the ways I was helping myself get over my storm phobia was by trying to see the positives. For example: storms are an essential part of Georgia’s ecosystem. Without all that rain, we wouldn’t have such beautiful green trees. And after the rain, the creeks would be full (or, as I like to call them, “juicy.”) I made it a habit to go to parks with creeks after it rained just to see them in their most powerful state: swollen to the top of the bank with turgid rainwater.

“If Big Creek is flooding, it’s going to be juicy,” I thought to myself, intrigued at the prospect. I googled the name of the creek and found a couple of different places I could go to look at it: Big Creek Park and the Big Creek Greenway. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a whole ass journey.