The creek behind my apartment

Behind my apartment there is a creek. It could also be considered a ditch since it serves the purposes of collecting runoff and swinging it down to the larger creek, and then to the river that runs through town. It is natural, or at least more natural than the ditches I grew up near - all concrete, uniform, and deep - named the Rough and Ready and the Oligarchy. I wonder if I could find the name for mine.

It's a lovely creek. There's about ten feet of grass, bushes, and trees on either side of it and the trees leaf out in the summer and keep our apartment cool. During the winter, I can look through their branches to the mountains and it gives the place a decent view.

Last night, rolling back to the apartment after a thrilling game of Mutants & Masterminds where we finished our story arc, Gen and I were startled by the noise of the creek. Normally, it's a dinky little crawdad-fishing kind of creek. Just a trickle of water. Last night, because of the rains, it had spread out into an 8-foot wide rush of runoff.

This morning, when I left for work, the creek was almost back to normal, but all of the grass around it was flattened and squashed into the mud as evidence.