USF’s new Creekshed collection explores the human and natural stories that drain into the Gulf

In between Hurricane Helene’s gusting rain bands, my wife Julie and I snuck outside to gawk. We met our alley-neighbor Rebecca, and watched bay waters crest the curb at Lassing Park, cross Beach Drive, and lap towards low-lying homes. We swapped tales with strangers near Salt Creek, which flooded (as it does with every big rain), transforming the city’s future Innovation District into a polluted marsh. We are drawn to storm damage like rubber-necking motorists. Only when the power transformers started to pop, sparking like roman candles on giant popsicle sticks, did Julie and head back inside—but not before reaching a major decision. Time to sell our home.

The decision to sell hit us hard. Still does. Julie and I lived in our 100-year old bungalow for 23 years. We bought when St. Pete real estate was still cheap and fixed the property up ourselves; we raised our son here; wrote books; and have built deep family, community, even religious ties.

Right now we are rootless, settled into a short-term AirBnB on St. Pete Beach. Our rental sits on the third floor of a condo overlooking Boca Ciega Bay. Most mornings, I get up to write and watch sunrise over finger islands and concrete seawalls, carved by developers in the mid-20th century from a mangrove-lined estuary. Most residents try to forget this ecological past, although Nature will not be ignored.

In our condo parking lot, storage pods mark the space of residents who still have not returned. The building’s first floor sits empty, gutted by flooding. Stacks of sheetrock await installation.

I am lucky. Julie and I suffered a tiny fraction of the $78 billion leveled by Helene. But I’m also haunted by the refusal to accept climate change. Erasures unsettle me. A gift shop down the street sells t-shirts, “Gulf of America—Founded 2025.” Our AirBnB, tastefully decorated beach in resort style, is designed to eliminate worry. On the bookcase in our living room, three decorative volumes declare the apartment’s message on the spine: “HAPPINESS / is not BY CHANCE / but by CHOICE.” But the pages are empty.

This special Earth Day issue of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay makes an attempt to fill the empty books. Along with Eckerd College Professor Amanda Hagood, our editor Ray Roa, and a team of USF librarians, we have asked 10 writers from around the Tampa Bay area and state to reflect on water and memory. We’re calling this project #Creekshed, asking “what are the human and natural stories that drain into the Gulf?”

Following that prompt, writers reflect upon any one item in the vast special collections at USF’s libraries. The responses are ekphrastic (an old poetic form in which the author speaks to a work of art) and located on a story map.

This coming Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22 at 4 p.m., we’ll launch the website with a celebratory reading at Nelson Poynter Memorial Library on USF’s St. Pete campus. The event is free and open to the public. Please come.

We hope this #Creekshed project will continue, using artifacts from the past to chart a more sensible present and future. The waters of Tampa Bay will find us; it behooves us to learn the story of our rivers, streams, paved-over estuaries and sea-walled shorelines.

Change is tough. Changes hurt. Changes challenge us, especially in perspective.

When Julie and I sold our home, we both felt tremendous loss. We were fortunate. I have friends who were forced to rebuild, colleagues who still do not have a home. A few years back, the academic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan coined a term, “topophilia”—love of place. Topophilia does not mean blind patriotism, or simply enjoying a bay view (while sheetrock is stacked in the parking lot). The concept asks us to dig deeper. We must sift through the good alongside the bad of our history, the joy alongside grief.

In assembling our #Creekshed team, we sought writers who provide diverse perspectives. We have gathered together poets (Sheree L. Greer, Tyler Gillespie, Gloria Muñoz), historians (Jack E. Davis, Gary R. Mormino), literary critics (Julie Armstrong, Amanda Hagood, myself), songwriters (Rita Youngman), and journalists (Diane Roberts).

Now is the time for conversation and reflection.

Like a molting crab, without shell or home, my base instinct is to find a rock and hide. The writers for this project instead encourage us to embrace topophilia, our love of place—what the Kiowa novelist N. Scott Momaday courageously called “the remembered earth.” In the lull before our fast-approaching hurricane season let’s look for the community alongside the isolation, the memory against loss—the wisdom and folly that comes with living where water meets land.

Our rivers and bays and creeks are open books, begging to be read. We erase these stories from our pages at our peril.

As the prophet David writes, “turn and face the strange.”

Come. Let’s read—and change—together.

Lake Rogers Sheree L. Greer seeks out beautiful Black nature and the legacies of segregation.

Ybor Channel Pedro el Poeta recovers Tampa’s Latino foundations.

Gandy Beach Julie Buckner Armstrong crosses the bay with a civil rights legend.

Booker Creek Gary Mormino reflects upon shell middens and Florida foodways.

John’s Pass Thomas Hallock mourns an untimely death on Treasure Island.

Lake Maggiore Historian Jack E. Davis water skis a polluted lake.

Frenchman’s Creek Amanda Hagood reflects on hidden landscapes and aging.

Egmont Key Singer-songwriter Rita Youngman chronicles Tampa Bay’s overlooked Seminole past.

Terra Ceia Bay Diane Roberts mourns the destruction of Native architecture.

Corkscrew Swamp Poet Tyler Gillespie road trips with a Swamp Monster (and peeks at Ellis Hughes’ diary).

Clewiston Poet Gloria Muñoz reminds us that water and flowers are what we hold onto.

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This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2025.