Riverside Walks: The Arroyo Behind the Ordinary

Riverside Walks is a monthly column about exploring ordinary neighborhoods on foot. Not Mount Rubidoux. Not Main Street. No bucket list landmarks…just the urban and suburban streets, parks, alleys, and slices of our natural environment many of us experience on a typical day.

The goal is simple: slow down, pay attention, and appreciate the walkability and beauty woven into the dozens of neighborhoods that comprise our ever growing city. They're everyday routes that reveal how Riverside's culture shapes our housing, infrastructure, and open space. Walking helps me notice that balance. Writing helps me share it.

I circle once before finding a shady spot for my car at Castle View Park (not the similarly named Castle Park, which costs money to get in). It's a cool, sunny day; the kind of sunshine that makes me grateful for mature street trees. The trees tell me something about this place. Someone planted them decades ago believing future residents would need shade.

I check the time. I have over an hour to walk before I join the after-school pickup crush at Castle View Elementary. My wife handles drop off, and I'm in charge of pick up. It must be challenging at times to live here and watch hundreds of people converge on a single block at the same time for thirty minutes every weekday. I bet we look and sound like a murder of crows when they come to roost or forage!

As I head down Westview Dr. towards Century Ave., a Cooper's hawk flies overhead, looking for an afternoon meal. I've played around with my Merlin Bird ID app enough to recognize the rapid series kek-kek-kek call they use to define their territory. I'll soon discover this part of Canyon Crest is a veritable smorgasbord for flying predators.

I turn to climb the steep part of Century leading to my chosen entrance into the Castle View Arroyo today. The first landmark sighted was delightfully absurd. People who live nearby know all about the "stairs to nowhere," a short concrete staircase rising confidently from the sidewalk and ending at a permanently locked gate. I guess they'd be a cool place to reenact that famous scene from "Rocky" where he climbs the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I didn't have time to do a fist pumping victory climb, perhaps on a future visit.

Century rises quickly past Castleview Elementary. The uphill stretch makes you aware of your pace. The sidewalk is solid and smooth. As I reach Shaker Dr., where Castle View Elementary meets Castle View Arroyo, the pavement gives way to crumbling blacktop, dirt, and loose gravel. This is a good spot to pay close attention, so I remove my earbuds and focus on the cars and people. The rest of the steep uphill climb is a wide gravel path bordering white PVC ranch fencing, mostly intact. I'm still just a few feet from fast moving cars so I stay alert. Still within earshot of kids at recess. But the neighborhood already feels more open with single family homes on one side, the open arroyo on the other.

I continued to the intersection of Claridge and Century, where I entered the arroyo proper. I'm glad I took out the earbuds because I'm welcomed by a wide range of bird calls – sparrows, warblers, flycatchers, hummingbirds, and a few crows. Near the entrance, I spot another species native to this area: a Riverside Public Utilities employee! The white hard hat makes them easy to spot, no phone apps required. From my vantage point, he could be enjoying the afternoon like me, but his steady, evaluative pace suggested inspection. It's a good reminder: even our natural spaces here are threaded with vital infrastructure.

I hear Sycamore Creek before I see it. Not a rushing mountain sound or Hawaiian waterfall. More of a steady, contained gurgle. Persistent enough this time of year to create a kind of refuge from the passing cars and playground noise. The water pools in shallow bends. Sandbars and large rocks provide plenty of places to set a spell. It's remarkable how completely the natural cut banks of Sycamore Creek conceal the suburban neighborhood humming with activity just a few steps away.

A cottontail rabbit freezes at my approach, then darts into some underbrush, invisible once more. Dragonflies hover. Painted lady butterflies jitter through the tree lined banks, a wild mix of sycamore, cottonwood, willows, oak, and the delightfully named Mule Fat shrubs. Taking a quiet moment at the water's edge, I observe water striders skimming in straight lines, whirligig beetles tracing frantic circles, and what I'm going to say are tadpoles. Also, several easily spooked, backwards swimming crayfish. I hear several squirrels foraging for acorns, or just playing tag, amongst the oak trees.

As I walk up into the open fields, the houses along Century Ave. reveal their secret architectural design. What appears as modest single-story homes from the street are actually two and three level designs that make the most of the natural landscape. Entry porches and multicar garages at the top level. Balconies and patios facing the creek. Architecture contoured into the arroyo. If I lived here, I'd spend a lot of my free time in my backyard.

I take my time on the narrow footpath forged by others between deep green stretches of mustard plants. They are waist high and I walk with arms outstretched to touch the bright yellow flowers. By the end of Spring, they will be over my head. And by mid-summer they will be brown and dry, transforming themselves into potentially dangerous fuel.

Up ahead I see three people at the Shaker Dr. entrance – an older man, a younger woman, and a toddler; three generations of Riverside. They pause, scanning the arroyo the way I do when deciding if something is worth the time. They peer down the dirt path, study the flora crowded around the creek, then turn back toward the simpler geometry of the neighborhood. A reconnaissance mission? Some places you commit to on the first visit. Others you mark and return to later.

Castle View Arroyo isn't dramatic. It doesn't even try to compete with the much more famous Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Park about a ten-minute walk east of here. What this little suburban arroyo offers is alignment. Dirt paths and curbed sidewalks. Utility pipes and natural water runoff. School bells mixed with the trills of frogs and the buzzing of insects.

In Riverside, that mixtape of sights, sounds, and smells is what makes it a wonderful place to walk. Our culture expresses itself best through compromise and adaptation – not as surrender, but as recognition and acceptance. Urban and natural aren't forced into an either-or. They sit side by side. Adjusting. Making room.

The mature trees lining Westview. The shifting sidewalk on Century. The creek threading behind three-story homes. None of it is wild in the untouched sense. But it works.

In the last part of the loop heading towards Castle View Park, I cross the creek once again. There's more debris here than other spots, likely due to its proximity to the park itself. There's one final uphill climb as I leave the creek bed.

The trees and shrubs here show recent evidence of being cut back, but the dirt path leading to them is steep and easy to slip on. I don't fall, but I'm mindful that I'm wearing tennis shoes and not hiking boots. I check the time again as I reached the park. Pickup hour is still a few blissful minutes away. The hawk's not around, though I assume it's somewhere above, keeping tabs on what it cares about as I do the same.

I finish my walk sitting at one of the cement picnic tables on the grassy sloping hillside of Castle View Park, which is possibly even more slippery than the dirt path I just navigated. Perched here I can see several other paths into the arroyo. I can hear kids on swings and climbing the castle-themed play structures. I smell the citrus blossoms from neighborhood trees mixed with the stronger scent of dozens of plants in bloom and competing for attention from a wide range of pollinators. It feels good to share space with so many other residents of Riverside's Canyon Crest community.