If paddlers aren't alert and quick to react, their canoe is swept past the creek's narrow, vegetation-cloaked mouth before they even notice it. But if you're nimble and know where to look, you can dig hard with paddles and poke the canoe's nose through the screen of vines and overhanging limbs. It's worth the effort. Beyond its narrow mouth, the creek widens. But the canopy of trees grown thick with leaves through the summer creates a shadowy tunnel over the water.
Muted colors dominate that tunnel most of the time.
But for about two or three weeks each October, it comes alive with one of the most exquisite sights imaginable. On cool October mornings, limbs overhanging the creek are covered with thousands of monarch butterflies. Occasionally, one of the clusters will begin shaking and the air will fill with butterflies as the insects flutter like animated confetti. The monarchs are there to take advantage of the moist, cool, calm conditions as they rest on their annual autumn migration. Billions of the fragile insects, some from as far north as Canada, somehow make their way south aided by the season's first cool fronts.