I struggle into the borrowed waders and awkwardly merge with the cold river water, suddenly struck with the image an outsider may have of me at that instant. What is she doing in the Red Cedar River?

The river, which runs through the middle of Michigan State University’s campus and a 40-mile swath of mid-Michigan, has a reputation that precedes it. The Dead Cedar. The Red Sewer.

Each year, the river is littered with the remains of frat house couches and rejected bicycles, empty beer cans and overturned trash barrels—all evidence of a lively campus culture that does not tread lightly.

But under its surface and along its banks, the Red Cedar holds evidence of a secret that would surprise most area residents. The Red Cedar is alive and kicking and determined to shed its bad reputation.

My guide for the day is the one person who could have possibly talked me into those swirling late-March waters. John Hesse, an adjunct fisheries and wildlife professor at MSU, has an enthusiasm for the Red Cedar that is unmatched and unavoidable. I follow his sure-footed lead with only a few lingering doubts as we brace against the strong current, beginning our search for life on the Red Cedar.

I’ve been told in advance what to expect for a catch. Hesse has been studying the Red Cedar for more than 40 years and can name at least 21 species of fish—including largemouth and smallmouth bass, northern pike, walleye, yellow perch and crappies—he has caught on the river. But when he suddenly hooks into a feisty smallmouth, I forget what I’ve already been told and watch with giddy excitement as Hesse fights to reel against the fish’s run.

After admiring the nice-sized fish, and noticing a growing band of onlookers gawking from the riverside path, Hesse carefully releases his prize and indicates it’s time to get serious. “Just imagine what they’d think if that were a big steelhead,” Hesse says as he grins at me and begins humming and singing the first line of MSU’s fight song: On the banks of the Red Cedar…

We continue up the river, pausing frequently to assure our walking sticks are solidly planted against the riverbed, slowly moving through the water to a place Hesse has scouted for signs of the spring salmon run. He says he has a feeling today will be his day, as he casts his homemade fluorescent orange and silver spinner into the ripples below a submerged tree branch and waits.

While we wait for a bite, Hesse begins to tell me about the river’s markedly worse condition only 40 years ago, when it was so covered in duckweed—fed by uncontrolled fertilizer runoff and industrial pollution—the surface resembled thick, green shag carpeting. But the abrupt whining of his fishing line interrupts him.

Hesse has hooked into a six-pound female steelhead. She’s hungry and tired from guarding her freshly dug spawning bed and it doesn’t take him long to land the silver and pink lunker—something I never expected to see emerging from the Red Cedar’s supposedly tainted waters.

This member of the Salmonidae family, which presumably traveled from Lake Michigan up the Grand River and into the Red Cedar, will only inhabit well-oxygenated, clean water and won’t tolerate acidic environments. Because it is so picky about where it spawns, the steelhead is a indicator species of a healthy, diverse ecosystem.
Pulling this fish from the Red Cedar, which flows through one of the nation’s largest public institutions, is a testament to the resilience of our urban landscapes. I snap a few quick photos before Hesse returns the female to her rightfully earned post and we make our way onto an exposed bank to rest, out of the current’s grasp.

The water rushing past our perch reflects the bright blue of the clear, spring sky and I notice white bunches of trillium emerging in the still brown stand of trees bordering the riverbank. Everything about the spot, including our relative solitude, would indicate a pristine trout stream up north. But we are sitting just below one of the busiest intersections on campus—home of the school’s bronzed Sparty statue—and next to a river whose bridges and footpaths are traveled by more that 40,000 students each year.

Hesse tells me that even if more people on campus knew the truth about the Red Cedar, they wouldn’t have the chance to experience it like we are today. The university has a long-standing no fishing policy prohibiting fishing from any campus property. (Hesse has a special fishing permit issued to researchers.) The policy, which grew from misunderstandings about the river’s health and a desire to keep the river free from poaching and overcrowding, is an example of the much-argued preservation vs. conservation philosophy.

Preservation of natural spaces, in theory, would protect these areas from overuse—allowing nature to take care of itself while we watch from beyond a boundary. Conservation allows for human involvement and management in natural spaces, recognizing that places like the Red Cedar will always be at the mercy of human behavior, with or without boundaries. This hands-on philosophy fosters a personal connection with nature—a connection naturalists like Aldo Leopold once pointed to as the basis for environmental stewardship.

The sun moves lower in the sky and a late-afternoon chill begins to seep through my heavy waders, indicating it’s time to end our river journey. But we linger just a few moments longer, watching cars, bicycles and feet hurry past this misunderstood river.
Just 20 miles upstream—outside the city in the kind of rural area we often flee to for recreation purposes—it is normal to see anglers and kayakers communing with the river and kids catching buckets of crayfish along its banks.

If the visual aspects of nature are responsible for framing our opinions about it, then Hesse, with his plea for fishing on campus and bringing people to these banks in the University’s own backyard, may be on to something. The void of human presence on the river’s last leg through campus, before it makes a quiet fork with the Grand River, seems strikingly unnatural.

As we fight our way back up the steep riverbank, Hesse bends down and stands back up with a newly hatched stonefly clinging to his hand. Stoneflies are a favorite steelhead snack and another indicator species Hesse watches for along the Red Cedar River. These are the lucrative pieces of evidence the river will need to escape its black-sheep reputation. But if a fishing trip with Hesse is the only chance to showcase the river’s revival, he is going to be a busy man.