Read time: 4 min.

Yesterday was interesting. I drove my sister to a nearby Friends church for some photos, nearly got the car stuck in its snowy graveyard, and then detoured past the old Murphy’s Ford on the way home. I wanted to see what it looked like when everything was frozen, and I wasn’t disappointed! 

Before the ford, our day started at the Fall Creek Meeting House about three miles southeast of Pendleton on State Road 38. Portions of the building date to 1857! A long, narrow drive leads from the highway to the structure, and I trailed behind as Sally wandered the wintry grounds.

When it was time to leave, I figured the easiest exit was to loop through the cemetery. That was a mistake- one small corner of the path was unplowed and impassable! With literally nowhere to turn, I ended up backing the car a tenth of a mile all the way to the entrance- slowly, carefully, and half expecting to bury myself in the snow or find an errant tombstone wedged under my bumper. 

Fortunately, neither occurred, and we made our way back towards the highway. To reach Murphy’s Ford from Fall Creek Meeting, head southeast on State Road 38 until you get to the old Spring Valley schoolhouse at County Road 150-West. Turn right, zigzag through the countryside until the road ends at 950-South, then turn right. Soon, you’ll encounter a flip-down sign that tells you if the road’s open at the crossing. Proceed for about half a mile. 

Back in the pioneer days, fords -shallow, drive-through river crossings- were just part of everyday travel. Today, they’re rare in the Midwest, holdovers from another era. They’re still a cheap, practical alternative to a bridge on quiet country roads, though, at least until it rains. I learned that the hard way the first time I tried to cross Lick Creek: a heavy-duty metal gate appeared across the road and ended my grand adventure on the spot. 

Although I did make it back another time to ford Lick Creek like some good, old-fashioned pioneer, it wasn’t in the cards yesterday. Murphy Ford was closed again. Beyond the gate, the whole north side of the river lay buried under fresh snow, smooth and untouched except for a network of tracks- deer, raccoon, and what appeared to be octopus. 

Water slipped out from under the blanket of snow and burbled gently across the roadbed. I didn’t test the frigid current in my crocs, but it looked to be four or five inches deep. Just south of the ford, the current picked up speed, spilling down an incline, threading through a fence, and hurrying off toward Fall Creek and Geist Reservoir.

In the end, nothing about the day was especially dramatic. There weren’t any heroic creek crossings, no perfect photos, and no grand discoveries. Instead, there was a quiet old meeting house, a slow-motion reverse through a snowy cemetery, and stubborn old Lick Creek over Murphy’s ford, doing what creeks have always done- reminding travelers that water, not us, calls the shots.

Still, standing there at the gate, listening to the creek chatter under the ice and watching those animal tracks zigzag across the snow felt like stepping backwards in time. The road disappeared, the modern world fell away, and for a moment the place belonged to deer and raccoons, a mollusk perhaps, and whoever first decided a shallow stream was a good place to cross. Murphy, I guess.