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Atom FeedThanksgiving Day gave us perfect weather and wonderful guests who enjoyed the beauty of the land…but no pictures. The creek was too high to wade in regular shoes–beautifully clear, though, and today, with rain forecast to start tomorrow again, I thought perhaps I could make it across. What are wet feet, after all?
We need to put down more rock: that lovely clear water through which you can see every stone is too wide to jump and too deep for ordinary shoes. Still, I was determined to check on the pump at Owl Pavilion, and the state of the rock crossing at Westbrook, before the next rain.
Water in the west gully system pools is now perfectly clear, with a trickle running through them all. Although the bushy bluestem that had spread along the margins looked dead after the two years of drought, its roots still held the soil when the flooding rains came in September, and I saw a few green leaves sprouting at the crowns.
Flotsam from a flash flood reaches well beyond those two trees.
When I got into the west woods, I found that Westbrook had done some more “rearranging” of the rock crossing–we’ll have to repair that when we can get a cart across the main creek to help with the rocks.
In this view, from a little upstream of the rock crossing, the rock crossing has made a sinuous pond–so clear today that I immediately noticed a crayfish claw lying on the bottom.
I’m not expert enough to know if this was some raccoon’s leftovers, or if this is a molted exoskeleton from a crayfish who’s now larger. Either way, it’s proof of crayfish being back in Westbrook.
Upstream from this point is a lovely reach; the stream drains a neighbor’s land to the west.
EDIT: This was a draft post from Saturday–when I began to have trouble uploading the images I wanted. The next post was written Sunday, when I thought the Saturday post had been lost…and when some of the images in the Saturday post would not upload. Moreover, the Sunday post would not let me add tags initially (though I’m hoping to now, with an edit.)