Two Cheers for Conservation

I trekked down Highway FF to see what those earth-movers and heavy-equipment operators spent three weeks doing down by LaBarque Creek during the hotter weather. The conservation department or somebody demanded our landlord provide erosion control at this creek bend. Wait any longer and the LaBarque here, give or take a few flash floods, could undermine the road.

I could tell you why. More paving, especially a parking lot built in 2014 right next to the creek, makes runoff. This encourages the gentle LaBarque to rise and flood. During 2015's heavy rain this was no flash flood: the creek was torrential for a full day, eroding its own sandstone channel, filling its fishing and swimming holes with sand, changing  the creek's floor--it's now all shallow--and its shape, and dumping sand up and over the creek banks for 50 feet on either side, instantly altering the ecology of its entire riparian corridor. Back then I climbed a cliff to take a photo and show you the aftermath. Happened again in 2017. Flash floods now grow ever faster and taller, and when meeting this bend here they hammered a new channel through our other soil: clay.

Was I surprised to see rope for erosion control; 100 yards of woven rope to hold the creek bank all around its bend. Conservation people forced the landlord to uproot invasive cedars nearby and rope them into the creek bank's walls to try to mitigate the pounding this clay side of the creek will still take during flash flooding. Why? Because the other side is sand.

Rope doesn't solve the problem. The only real solution is to dredge or straighten the channel. The LaBarque did have its own very pretty and reasonable channel, but now it's clogged with sand.

Secretponding

A spring day so intoxicating it sent me bushwhacking, off the path, in search of--I didn't know what, until I realized I wanted to hunt and collect secret ponds: either tiny dots on maps, or unmapped. This one's at Glassberg Conservation Area. Hard to get to; all around, cedar trees, which grew thickly, have been deliberately cut in order to conserve and restore the native oak and hickory forest.

Spring Thaw on the LaBarque

Thaws and about three inches of rain raised the level of LaBarque Creek and made it swirl as it rounds the bend on our property. The spring peepers began singing six days ago. I am awaiting the emergence of mayapples as a sign that the soil is warming.

The Eighth Waterfall

No day is truly rich and full unless you've fallen into a creek that day. In February, especially along the LaBarque, the tangle of underbrush and poison ivy is leafless (although not thorn-less), and I bushwhacked my way into territory unseen, possibly because the creekbed is always changing thanks to floods, weather, beavers, and fallen trees, and discovered on the property's southwestern edge this Waterfall #8. Shortly after taking this photo I crossed the brightly running creek by sitting on a spongy-wet fallen log and inching sideways to the creek's shallowest point, about six inches deep, where the water glittered golden and cold, and dropped myself feet first into the water, trusting my hiking boots and wool socks to keep me warm and mobile until I got back home. Which I did one way or another. Welcome to Waterfall #8. I love waterfalls.

New Loop Trail at Glassberg Conservation Area

As I geared up in the Glassberg Conservation Area parking lot for my traditional Thanksgiving hike, a hiker returning to his car cleaned mud from his hiking poles. I said, "Is the trail muddy?" He said, "There's a new trail," more than once because I didn't understand. But I found out.

Glassberg's former Trail "A," a quarter-mile which ended disappointingly in an open field, and Trail "C," terminating at the Meramec River overlook, are now joined in a loop measuring about 2.25 miles, marked simply "Trail." It rates moderate ups and downs, and at its highest elevations, at the forest's edge, yesterday's snow had left the trail slick and muddy. Having no idea of the trail's length or where it ended up (I hadn't asked whether it was a loop) I pressed onward, hoping to be the first to report this new trail to you and map it. The pamphlets and map at the site don't as yet show this loop. The trail itself was well marked. I enjoyed the hike but because pie was waiting at home, my favorite trail marker today was "Parking Lot" with an arrow pointing the way.

Trail marker and downed trees

You'll find the Department of Conservation has done extensive cutting, mostly of cedars, in a bid to restore native Missouri oak and hickory forest to this former private property of 429 acres.

Happy Thanksgiving!