Creek is Rising

8:30 a.m., 24 Feb 2018

Dry winter has given way to about three days of rain. On Thursday it rained enough to brim the creek, LaBarque Creek. Then it rained that night. The next day I didn't look at the creek; I lolled. This morning after it rained all night (and another bout of rain approaching, according to radar) I was curious, because if the creek rises enough, it could be we're about to be cut off from the rest of civilization. The LaBarque was out of its bed and moving swiftly. I will post updates.

LaBarque Creek Now, and Back Then

The photo with blue sky and snow was taken in January 2012, the other in March 2016. (It's the same leaning sycamore tree in both pictures.) The December 2015 flash flood here was like a flood of sand, creating new white sand "beaches" on the property, the result of gushing water, erosion and trees weakened and downed by invasive honeysuckle. Here's a brand-new "beach": Looks appealing, but where you see sand there once was water. I climbed a cliff to to get a bird's-eye view of just how far the flood carried sand over the creek banks and into the woods: When I first moved here in 1998 lavish white sand beaches lined the side of the creek where there aren't any now, and the water was deep enough to catch little sunfish. In 2001 and 2008 beavers built enormous dams just beyond the creek bend, and chewed down numerous nearby trees, destabilizing the creek bank on the near side; the flood of '08 destroyed the most magnificent beaver dam and greatest swimming hole I have ever seen. Beaver dam again in 2012. The current flood of sand means the creek is one foot deep. I never worry. Living here has taught me is that worry is all in the mind and utterly useless.

Peace I Ask of Thee

After the forceful Christmastime flood, LaBarque Creek has radically changed its course through the property, eroding its banks, and moving tons of rocks pulverized into dunes of pure white sand. I will need to visit at different times of day in order to obtain just the single photo image that'll show you just how striking are the huge new creekside "beaches" where there were none, new "islands" made of broken fossil rocks, and full-grown trees uprooted and fallen, creating new directions and chutes for the creek water, and also new depths, and therefore new colors--because for the last several years the LaBarque, as it passes through the property, has been shallow everywhere, lacking a swimming hole (last swum in 2008) or worthwhile fishing hole.

What you see here is a tree growing sidewise now, horizontally, a few feet above the water, out of a bank that has just about completely eroded beneath it, and the newly green creek water, deeper now than when it used to run gold. For some reason it looked like a Japanese print to me.

Early spring, right now, is the best time of the year, freshest (like a new book), full of light (with the trees yet leafless) and most heartening and promising.

Signs of Spring

The "secret pond" area below the cliffs, swampy at best, is LaBarque Creek floodplain, and the post-Christmas flood covered a great deal of it with sand, silt, and matted driftwood, and as I descended into my annual early-spring exploration of the area -- impassable because of mud in winter, and in summer and fall with the thorny shrubs, green and succulent, eager to rip your face off -- I didn't know whether to expect mud, water, drowned animals' bones, or what. I'd heard that the silt and sand might cover and suffocate this year's mushroom community. So I looked with hope for the Scarlet Cups (Sarcoscypha austriaca), always the first fungi of the year around here, at maximum about 5cm across. This is the only place on the property where this Sarcoscypha, with its white rickrack, grows. As usual the cups, although small, were hard to miss, fresh and vivid, growing on rotting fallen branches among last autumn's leaves. Spring is about a week early, but it couldn't come fast enough for us.

I had not spent a whole morning outside in months. I forgot what it was like to spend a  morning outside, and what a refreshment the air could be, and how pleasant the sun if I sat down and took it in, and the trees taller than I remembered. Hawks were calling; they're seeking mates right now. In the coming days I will get photos that will tell more of the post-flood story.

December Flood

To everyone's surprise, it rained all day, after a beautifully warm and sunny Christmas Day, and by 4 p.m. today we who live here were flooded in by our usually tame little creek; that means no traffic in our out of our area. You see the LaBarque all acting up, and then Doc Sargent Road firmly underwater; as I stood there taking photos the water gained an inch. Continual rain makes Internet satellite contact intermittent, so I'm posting quickly and only now. Reports from the city and the freeway also say roads and dwellings are underwater, and evacuations are taking place in the suburbs. More to come. At least it waited until the 26th, and at least it's not snow.