You Wouldn't Be the First to Drown Here

Small wedge-shaped park on the Big River now called Rockford Beach, where I had a secret spot for fishing, has a short run of rapids, and despite all the warning signs they have now, people keep drowning in it. Today although I saw no people in the grass the parking lot was full. It so happened that a whole line of like 25 men waist-deep on river's opposite shore were rescue-service workers being trained.

There's barely any "beach," and the wardens say not to eat fish out of the Big, but on hot days families wade there, splash around, and swim across although it's forbidden, aiming to climb the rocks into that eye-socket hollow in the photo -- that's private land -- and they get caught in the current. When I moved here (19 years ago, as of tomorrow) just above the rapids was the remnants of a grain mill. After the floods of '08 -- and the Big River is the first to flood and close the roads here -- the park land was gated and locked for years, I thought forever.

But one day it opened, with all traces of the mill erased. A sandbar "island" in the middle that had attracted too much attention has been replaced by riprap. But it still has, like, the smallest and mildest-looking rip-snorting rapids, for professionals to practice with.

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.

Along the LaBarque Hills Trail

Just another waterfall photo taken on another intoxicating hike yesterday. I  haven't been able to hike all six miles of the LaBarque Hills Trail at the Young Conservation Area yet; after two and a quarter hours of walking I was about one mile short. So there's more to discover. But today it rained, and the trail isn't good if it's muddy, so I'll return there in four or five days.