Cibolo Trail Signs by Jan Wrede

Water - even nine inches in a day - is a blessing

I set out this morning to write about erosion, but a nine inch rainfall is too much of a blessing to focus on the negative. I love the sight and sound of running water.

Today the little marsh stream ripples and winks at me as it approaches the Cibolo. I listen with eager ears to hear its quaint stories unfold as water snakes through green vegetation. Tales told this morning speak to a grander level than my mundane questions: Where are you going, little stream? How long will you stay?

Here and along the silted Cibolo, water has moved many stray pieces of nature down stream and then aimlessly dropped them where they caught on bigger, less movable objects. Leaves, grass, twigs, and logs lie folded around fence posts and trees. These leavings tell their own story of the Monday morning rain storm.

Now the Cibolo Creek is back in its common channel, but clumps of grass hanging high overhead on cypress and sycamore tree branches speak of a wider and deeper river. I estimate the height of the debris to be about 10 feet above the current stream level!

This sunny morning, the ground is waterlogged but the air under the cypress trees is mild and a long thin line of monarch butterflies drift by on their silent journey south. They lighten the air like fluttering bits of tissue paper adorning this heavy and wet place. Driven down to earth by the south wind, thousands of monarchs miraculously survived last Monday's rain storm hidden in secret havens under leaves and twigs.

Above our section of the Cibolo Creek is a 25-acre expanse of tall grass prairie, dominated by sturdy clumps of switch grass. The deep prairie grass acts as an enormous sponge, dry for months and then absorbing heavy torrents of water.

Here there is little sign of change since before the rain. A few sparrows and endless grasshoppers burst ahead of me as I walk up the prairie trail.

The tall grasses make little snapping sounds as they dry in the warm sun and rustle softly in a light breeze, telling typical autumn stories. The biggest change I see here are black fire ant beds that have grown up in irregular threatening mounds. These are the ants' way of escaping death by drowning in water-soaked soil.

Suddenly, if anything about a turtle can be sudden, I see a big dark turtle struggling on its humble journey back to the marsh pond that has been dry for many months. Over a year ago, I saw another similar turtle marching across the prairie away from the diminishing marsh pond toward the water of the Cibolo Creek.

After a prolonged dry period, fresh water in the marsh stimulates a new generation of life. Now the pond is overflowing and and many colorful blue-green dragonflies and bright blue damselflies circulate and mate among marsh plants. Soon, dragonfly and damselfly larvae will be lurking among the pond weed, waiting to pounce on other aquatic critters, which fed on microorganisms that decompose the dead plants drowned by flood water.

hotel sheraton Sovata Thus, in the midst of autumn when goldenrod blooms and cypress trees drop their leaves in preparation for winter, a smaller quicker chain of new life unfolds. This one is ready to make the most of an October opportunity.