Sifting through the impassioned and sometimes hilarious outrage on Twitter, it was clear that die-hard Creek devotees – Creekers?
The Gianinetti ranch was a curious mash-up of bucolic and urban, a broad patch of meadows threaded with two miles of spring-fed creeks, hard by the Roaring Fork River and busy Highway 82.
Years ago they drew little notice, the pond that never freezes, the rainbow of colors glinting off the surface of a creek, the hard-to-pronounce chemicals sprayed, painted and, yes, sometimes spilled around the mile-long stretch of factories on the south side of town.
In a hidden creek in the hard-knocks capital, Kinshasa, the river hears the screams of an unwanted girl.
This week, driving through flood-ravaged McDowell County, past the twisted remains of mobile homes, overturned cars and houses devoured by rampaging creeks, it was hard not to be angry.
Think hard about what goes down the creek and if you are lucky enough to get to the reef, cherish every moment, show your children, share the wonder.
As the main road, Sir Francis Drake Blvd, crosses a short bridge connecting the mainland and the peninsula, it's hard to imagine that the little creek beneath sits atop such a massive rift zone.
They are hard to detect because there are so many creeks, you can't block all of them and these guys are native to the area - they know all the creeks," said Mpaka Jack, who is in charge of surveillance of the Shell pipelines.
"They're getting harder to find," he said, methodically scanning the creek bed for a sign of the creatures that once numbered in the thousands".
"When it rains hard, it roars," Buller said of the usually modest creek.
Winter's approach will make life only harder for people who are now lugging buckets of creek water to flush their toilets.
