Long Creek may not offer pristine waters or peaceful quiet, but when my friend Mike and I paddled our kayaks from the Fore River up the creek to Clark’s Pond last week, we found it to provide a perfect opportunity for some pleasant urban kayaking. I got the idea for the trip while reporting on the beginning of a three-year project to develop a watershed management plan for Long Creek–a stream that has been severely contaminated by the vast development that has sprouted up all around it over the last fifty years. Long Creek originates in Westbrook and works its way to Clark’s Pond before flowing along I-295 and the Portland Jetport on its way into the Fore River.
    We started out in the late afternoon on the Portland side of the Fore River near where Mike lives. After paddling across the river, we passed under the small bridge carrying I-295 near the grounds of the Portland Jetport and entered into Long Creek, with an incoming tide giving us a push. On our left was the interstate, resonating with the constant hum of traffic, and on our right was a fence that borders the jetport. All along both sides of the creek was a thin strip of woods and marsh buffering the creek from development.
    Surprisingly, the area around the creek was quite active with wildlife. We saw more than one great blue heron take flight as we approached and cormorants, gulls and mallards dotted the surface of the water and the sky above.
    It was clear from a thin layer of what seemed to be gray scum coating the creek that the water was not healthy. The grasses that filled the marshy areas alongside the waterway were similarly coated in gray. I was careful not to dip my hands in the water or let water drip off my paddle onto my lap.
    After a few minutes the elegant brick buildings of what was formerly the Maine Youth Center came into view atop a hill on our right. The site is now home to an innovative smart growth-style residential development called Brickhill. Eventually, the developer, Richard Berman, wants to provide access to Long Creek for the residents living there in the form of a boat launch. He even imagines them commuting to Portland by kayak someday. 
    Continuing on, the creek narrowed and veered away from the interstate. Mike noted how removed from our surroundings he felt. Even though we had both driven on the interstate, or rode our bikes on the surrounding roads countless times, seeing it all from a kayak allows you to experience the environment in a wholly fresh way.
    It was easy to imagine what the creek was like fifty years ago, when it really was pristine and kids swam in the water and fished. Up on the interstate, peering out a windshield, its like you’re on another planet. The creek below, if you notice it, seems like a drainage ditch built to collect runoff from the road surface, and unfortunately, to some degree that’s what it has become.
    Mike and I have both spent much of our time in the last several years guiding sea kayaking trips in some of the most wild and remote places on the coast of Maine, but we both appreciate urban kayaking too. It allows you to explore all those places that everyone has forgotten about, the margins of a community that seem to be invisible.
    Two years ago Mike paddled his kayak from the Florida Keys to New Orleans, following the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans he navigated the canals into the interior of the city and spent a few weeks sleeping in a hammock on the side of a canal near downtown. You could probably do the same thing on Long Creek and no one would ever notice.
    We eventually reached a dead end in our journey up Long Creek at the dam below Gorham Road that separates Clark’s Pond from the creek. We sat in our boats and ate a few slices of cold pizza in a pool surrounded by tall spruce and pine. A plane roared overhead.
    I was hoping to find an easy way to carry our boats over the road and dam and into the pond, but it would have required a significant trek.
    We pulled onto an eroding bank and walked up the busy road to check it out. Drivers passing by stared at as with befuddlement as we stood in our lifejackets and spray skirts in the parking lot of what will soon be Wild Willy’s Burgers.
    Across the street we could see Clark’s Pond but there didn’t seem to be any easy way to get to it. Hopefully that will change soon, when the South Portland Land Trust builds two miles of public trails tracing the circumference of the pond. Tom Blake, president of the land trust, told me the trails are already flagged and ready to be cleared. On Oct. 13 and 14 the work will begin and the land trust will be asking for lots of volunteers to help out.
    We returned to our boats and started our way back down the creek just as the tide turned in our favor. A father and son emerged from the trees to wave as we cruised by.
     It was still early when we reached the Fore River again and we decided to head underneath I-295 and Route One and into the harbor.  As we passed tankers lined up at the Sprague terminal on our right our boats sliced through a slick of oil and a tugboat worked at turning around a barge on our left. I felt like a tiny bug skimming across the water as a paddled a few feet from a docked oil tanker with it’s engines humming.
    We eventually wound up at the Knightville Landing where we took a short break. The landing, which will soon have floating docks specially designed for canoes and kayaks, is a perfect place to begin a trip up Long Creek or the Fore River.  Several fishermen were casting their lines as the sun began to set.
    Paddling back to my car along the Portland shoreline, we watched the sky turn orange, putting the industrial jungle of the South Portland shoreline in silhouette. To finish the trip off, a seal poked its head up for a puff of breath as darkness settled over the city.