Country life at 7,000 feet
The cottonwoods beside the stream are leafing out in an unearthly shade of spring green.
They’re almost fluorescent.
There has been an orderly melt this spring, with plenty of cold nights. Runoff is supposed to peak this month, and the water is running clear now.
Six weeks ago at the same spot (March 22) the water was higher and siltier, and there wasn’t any green.
Love that green.
Meltdown has begun! The streamflow is starting to increase, and the water is brown with silt.
Two weeks ago the creek was still bridged with ice, but now it is running free and starting to rise.
Doesn’t the word redux make you wonder?
re·dux –adjective
| brought back; resurgent: the Victorian era redux. |
[Origin: 1650–60; < L: returning (as from war or exile), n. deriv. (with pass. sense) of redūcere to bring back; see reduce
]
| Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. |
We’ve had steady warm wind for a few days, and the snow is disappearing. Yesterday, the stream opened up. Those tracks are from a dog or coyote that’s walking on top of the snow; the deer still can’t get through here.
A week ago, it looked like this:
and I was floundering around to my waist in snow; this week the snow is no more than knee high and it feels as though Spring might be dreaming of waking up.
How many times have you been walking along a stream when you came upon a car dump right next to it?
Chances are that streamside piles of chassis aren’t strays: they’re the solution to a real estate problem. Streams and rivers are often used as plot boundaries, which makes sense until you consider that streams and rivers move. The water velocity is higher at the outer edge than the inner edge of a curve, so the bends of a river are always pushed out and downstream. Over time, that stream or river writhes like a snake.
When people own land bordered by a stream or river, the landowner on one side of the stream owns a larger lot, over time, and the landowner on the other side of the bend loses ground year by year. Across rural America, landowners tried to stop streams or rivers from moving their beds. For most of a century, the cheapest solution was to cable together old chassis and secure them to the side of the stream.
This isn’t a dump; it’s riprap.
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