The Creek Journal: 03/01/2011

Morning

“wonderful to depart!

wonderful to be here!”

--from Whitman’s “Song at Sunset”

Great flesh and stone and chilled air

turning morning around me!

All the stuff of a new day is good, and

all that is fashioned of jostling, binding,

elusive atoms is better than we thought

in the night when we dreamed the horrible

nightmares: our souls scratched

frantically at the inside walls of our

bodies, desperate for escape from a

broken world they told us was cursed.

But, ah, this moment now—

greatest teacher ever—

speaks of late winter limbs (barren, yes),

silver limestone hills (eroding, yes),

vultures perched high with wings

outstretched drying heavy dew

(waiting for the necessary dew, yes),

and my own unsteady, weakened hand that

holds the paper (even us, yes).

What shall I do but wake to this

morning now, listen, see what I’m

allowed (and more!), and gather all

the scattered shards of strength and beauty

and shout hallelujahs to the wind

that gathers up now and the white sun

that melts the air around me and

the gently curved planet that’s pulling

us back and back and back until the

day we full return?

Great flesh and stone made of each other

and both one good thing.

Two days ago, the evening's visit to The Creek confirmed the depression one cannot help but suffer when faced with the totally ephemeral nature of springtime changes. Again, we approach The Creek to find the big cedar elm under The Oak already now in full leaf, each tender, translucent, and as naive-green as the mesquite leaves that glow across the hills.

But first, a minute of video featuring the lower small rapids. These are the falls when the pond is down six inches from when we first started measuring its surface level. Just click on the image below.

All things change. But we hope the level of the pond doesn't change too much more in the downward direction it is heading now. Half a foot drop since I sunk the water-meter stick in about five inches of water.

Raccoon tracks along a muddy pond-shore.

Snapped this photo just to show the fine green water willow plants rising up along the shallow edges of the creek.

How To Do Gratitude

   The obligations I feel towards this small property remain endless. Research: septic systems, plumbing for the Hog Shop, windows for the Hog Shop, everything renovation for the Hog Shop. Still-to-do: a burn pile of scrap lumber, trash to be collected and hauled off, mowing around the fruit trees and berries, completing the conduit for electricity to the pump, trenching a line for water to the Shop, juniper cutting on top of Whitman's Rough, preparing the family burial plot, smoothing the road, et cetera. All this is to say that one is never without obligations as long as there's an "owner" of the "property."
   But obviously this land is more than mere property to be "improved" upon. Our improvements may be named this so as to excuse ourselves from any higher obligations to nature. For if we regard nature as the backdrop for our business, its value depreciates and all our petty concerns for PVC pipe, Romex wire, invoices, tax appraisers, and passable roads become more than justified. Someone once said that the best way to offer thanks to a creator is to fully enjoy the creation. (Liken it to the baker's joy when he sees the bread-eater close his eyes, lay his head back, and smile with a mouthful of whole wheat dough.)
   Gratitude to Earth or God or Life consists mainly in our useless enjoyment of stone-gripping larvae, the downy surface of new sycamore leaf, a black bass darting into shadows, the iridescence of wasp wing, and the invisible thermals that lift vultures along a ridge line.
   So when I drove the truck to The Creek to water the orchard, I had to consciously lay aside tools and walk slowly through the Stonefield and alongside spring-born waters. Making ourselves do what we want to do--what is best for us--requires continual reminding, after all.

Clouds and stones imitating one another.

Courtesy Harlin's Version: "Photography when the best so far still takes you only so far . . ."

Spring Rush

It can be downright depressing just how quickly the details of springtime bud, blossom, and bust. Throughout winter we anticipated the flowering of mountain laurel, peach, vetch, yucca, or spider wort, and then one spring day we find the flowers already mature and some of them fading. Depressing, the rate of change across a limestone hillside or in the wet sands of a creekside.

A Mexican buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa Endl.) near the pond, though
many have been seen all the way up Whitman's Rough.

"Although not a true buckeye, it is so called because of the similar large capsules and seeds. This distinct plant, alone in its genus, commemorates Baron Ferdinand von Ungnad, Austrian ambassador at Constantinople, who introduced the Horsechestnut into western Europe in 1576." (Thanks to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for their amazing Native Plant Database for sufficient information to identify and learn about this plant. http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=unsp)

The cricket frogs will seek a landing on her feet

just as soon as they will take to a raft of algae or sunny a stone.

Pumped and hosed water for a fruit tree.

Blackberry.

Thanks to Ben and Emily for a beautiful visit, with plenty of wise advice and a swim in the pond.

Pond level down two inches.

Through the Eye of Another

Yesterday meant several really good things out at The Creek. First, David helped finish off the electric wiring and I finished off the plumbing so we could have water pumped up from The Pond to the orchard. I will miss hauling buckets of water, but it's a price one pays. Also, I was able to run the chain saw up high on Whitman's Rough where the juniper grow thick and tall. I brought down ten or so to begin their curing process in the event we want to use the larger trunks as part of the Hog Shop renovation project later this year. Additionally, I saw the first Texas mountain laurel bushes in bloom. Crazy good stuff, there. And then the eye of the horse. Sometimes it's a fine and necessary activity to try to see our world through the eyes of another. And then other times, it's a fine version of the fun-house mirror to see one's own self in the eye of another.

(Three Days Ago)

Trying to "flip" black bean quesadillas with the bent bean can lid.

Harlin and Selina bearing with my culinary frustrations

Caddis fly larva found on the underside of a creek stone

The Difference Between a Photograph and a PHOTOGRAPH

Yesterday Harlin and Richard joined me down at The Creek to explore the under-rock world of larvae, the earliest of spring flowers, a thin layer of Smithwick shale, and other perfections. When I bring a camera to The Creek, I take photographs. But when Harlin brings his setup, he creates photographs. That's about all I can say of that. See for yourself.

Crow Poison (Nothoscordum bivalve)

Mimulus-glabratus

Damsel fly larva

Blanchard's Cricket Frog (Acris-crepitans)

Right now these abundant frogs can be found sunning on bleached creek stones or snapping up insects atop rafts of algae.

Please click on the link below for the sound of male cricket frogs voicing their "advertisement." For females, obviously. During the darker hours, and in the warmer seasons, their chirping sounds like small stones being tapped together, at first rather slowly, and then picking up speed. And excitement.

http://www.californiaherps.com/sounds/acblanchardilong.mp3

Again, thank you, Harlin. We beg for more.

The level of The Pond showed to be two inches down from Day 1. Lowest level recorded yet.

No sign of the osprey. I cannot help but think that my last sight of him was that moment several days ago when he flew into the highest trees this end of The Pond.

All in the Details

I went to The Creek this morning to burn more leftovers from the demolition of last week, but our county dispatcher from the sheriff's office advised us this is a Red Flag day, meaning too dangerous for fires. So we gathered the old identification books, binoculars, field journal, and camera for a couple hours of exploration. I loaded the green backpack I've carried on longer walks and around Guatemala (thought of that when a worn paper bill worth about 5 Quetzales fell out). I probably didn't need a backpack full of so many books just to walk a couple hundred yards . . . .

Some nice algae. Not all of it is the classic green, you know. Much of this consists of gazillions of single-celled diatoms.

When I take a few drops of diatom-crowded creek water (often resembling a snotty white glob), the view looks like the image below.

I agree with this cricket frog. The camouflage works reasonably well. Only reasonably well, of course, because I DID see it long enough to grab an image of it.

Pennywort.

Pennyworts.

Looking south down to the lower pool.

Unflowering bluebonnet.

Dried remains of a buttonbush.

Sycamore working its way out into the springtime.

In Praise of the Unpraisworthy

No human activity rises above the simple act of praising that which is Good. Ironically, though, no oversight is so sad as the one which fails to praise what the herd regards as unpraisworthy. Like the hackberry tree. And the one today down at The Creek was full of humming honey bees. Hundreds and hundreds of grateful honey bees humming around the golden blossoms of the humble hackberry tree while I dug a trench for electric wire and water pipe from The Shop to the pressure tank under the lovely hackberry tree. How can one not praise the hackberry tree full of honey bees?

Stream

After another hard day at the far end of a certain county road gathering up and tossing scraps of wood into fires (and inhaling significant quantities of dust and smoke), we bathed limbs and faces in The Creek, and sunned on a flat rock with a couple cold beers.

Here within the Stonefield near The Creek is some early spring growth of Mullein (Verbascum thapsus):

And within the shallows of The Creek, this lovely plant (water willow?):

Oh, and here is our water-meter by which we gauge the up and down of The Pond (currently down one inch from its installation a couple weeks ago).

I am trying to learn simply the fish of this small piece of water. Are they Guadalupe Bass, state fish of Texas? Here's something written about the species from the Nature Conservancy's web site:

Both the Guadalupe Bass’s common and scientific names are misnomers. Like all “black bass,” including smallmouth, largemouth and spotted bass, the fish is not actually a bass at all; rather, a member of the sunfish family. The “micropterus” in its scientific name is Greek for “small fin,” referring to the misinterpreted damaged fin of an early specimen.

Generally green with black markings, the Guadalupe bass is smaller than other black bass, the largest individuals weighing only around 3.5 pounds. Found only in Texas, the fish are native to the Edwards Plateau, inhabiting streams in the Brazos, Colorado, Guadalupe and San Antonio River basins. The species generally prefers quick moving waters, and preys on insects, crustaceans and smaller fish.

Like the smallmouth and spotted bass, male Guadalupe bass build gravel nests, usually in shallow water. A female enticed to the nest lays between 400 to as many as 9,000 eggs before the male chases her off and begins guarding the spawn. After hatching, the young feed primarily on insects, adding other fish to their diet as they grow. They reach sexual maturity after a year.

[This small revision comes a month later or so when we've more closely identified this fish as our humble black bass. Error is still a possibility, but we've been told that distinguishing it from the Guadalupe bass requires taking the latter by the mouth and feeling its additional teeth on the bottom row. Is that true? Eds.]

And here's the sound we are listening for these days:

That would be the sound of a golden-cheeked warbler, our special endangered species that should be migrating into the area soon. If you are interested in this bird, try this link:
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_w7000_0013_golden_cheeked_warbler.pdf

Sounding the Pond

Sound: To measure the depth of (water), especially by means of a weighted line; fathom. [Middle English sounden, from Old French sonder, from sonde, sounding line, probably of Germanic origin; related to Old English sundgyrd sounding pole; (cf. O.E. sund "water, sea;")]

Tony and I took the kayak out on the pond for the first time today. A hundred or so sandhill cranes circled overhead from southeast to northwest, one belted kingfisher swooped back and forth from one side of the creek to the other, and unidentified fish sped past us through the amazingly clear waters. Along the way, we sounded the waters for the bottom, reaching a depth of 22 feet and 7 inches as the deepest point. The pond is down 1 inch today.

The weighted tape measure I am using to test the depths of the pond appears to have been originally designed for sounding the depths of the drilled hole in which dynamite is packed. I could only guess this because of a warning written on the handle of the tape-measure: "DANGER--TOOL MUST BE GROUNDED BEFORE AND AFTER USE TO AVOID POSSIBILITY OF EXPLOSION." We never feared the pond would blow up on us.

(According to the International Labour Organization, a shotfirer is "A worker who fires explosives to fragment or loosen solid formations such as rock and earth, or to demolish masonry, in mining, civil engineering, construction, well blasting, etc." This is a dangerous job, no doubt. But the International Labour Organization says in its Hazard Data Sheet concerning this job that "premature explosions caused by static electricity" represent one danger for sure, but it also gives this as a hazard: Sunburns when working under the sun" and "Psychological problems related to prolonged states of anxiety due to work with explosives.") I cut my left thumb when the weight on the weighted tape measure dropped down a deep hole in the pond's floor and I tried to slow the tape. The Data Sheet didn't warn me of this. http://www.ilo.org/legacy/english/protection/safework/cis/products/hdo/htm/shotfirer.htm

I saw the first rattlesnake of the season today. It was spreading its three feet of terror across the middle of CR 342-C and bleeding from the head from where a vehicle might have hit it. I stopped and watched it coil, uncoil, and skid off away from me.

Below is a recording of an osprey, sounding similar to the one we've been hearing.

http://www.naturesongs.com/osprey1.wav

Common Name	Osprey
Scientific Name	Pandion haliaetus
Kingdom	Animalia
Phylum	Craniata
Class	Aves
Order	Falconiformes
Family	Accipitridae
Genus	Pandion

Foggy Morning Start

FEBRUARY 28 and MARCH 1

A beautiful breath-whisp of silent vapor rises above the winter pond before a sun shone into the canyon and before crews arrived to demolish a piece-of-shit double-wide.

OK. Now for the not-so-pretty stuff. The local waste management company delivers a 40-yard dumpster. We thought we might need more than two (at about $700 a pop), but it turned out we got away with just one. But that meant we had to separate by hand metal to be salvaged, wood to be burned, wood to be re-used, and all that other stuff a family accumulates over a lifetime and then gets ruined in a June 2007 flood--to be hauled away in this one sky blue cannister.

Joanne and Thomas get started early, introducing pick-metal to wood and scaring the living hell out of the poor structure. (Joanne's smile and the projected path of her yellow-handled pick suggest a painful rendezvous with Thomas's right elbow, but nothing of the sort happened.)