Within One Watershed:

Essays From Hackleman Creek

Part 1

The Uplands

Witnessing A Reclamation

Rocks and ruts slow my progress as I drive up the twisting road. Going as far as I dare without high-centering the car, I pull over, come to a stop and continue on foot. I’m at 4,100 feet on the northern side of the Hackleman Valley. Feeble rays of sunlight manage to penetrate November clouds; the season’s first serious snow will arrive any day.

Built for hauling harvested timber, this primitive road has been free of log trucks for forty years. It cuts an ever-narrowing slice through a sea of green conifers. Abandoned by humans, the thin corridor gradually reverts to its feral ways as the forest reclaims its territory.

The road leads me uphill and then flattens out high above the valley. Looking up at a Douglas-fir tree, I see that a Common Raven has been silently monitoring my progress up the road. Peering down its aquiline beak, the large black bird fixes me in its dignified, intelligent gaze. With a gurgling quork it scolds me and flies away on fluid wingbeats. As I walk, the outstretched limbs of Douglas-firs brush my arms. A deep cushion of moss softens the road edge. Moss is the earth’s most primitive plant: lacking roots to take up moisture from the soil, it absorbs water directly through its leaves. A luxuriant mat of moss contains thousands of tiny plants, each one tightly packed against its neighbors. This crowded community holds rainwater like a sopping sponge.

Using a small stick, I pry a tiny patch of moss from the gravel. Despite a brief autumn dry spell that’s brought four rainless days, each miniscule plant clings to a drop of moisture. Every year as summer’s drought arrives, the microscopic leaves curl in on themselves and twist as they dry. When the rain finally returns, capillary action swells each leaf with water until the entire colony is rejuvenated.

Crushing the velvety green clump in my fingers, I notice a dark layer of soil on its underside. Moss binds precious soil together and provides a place for beneficial bacteria and fungi to decompose accumulating leaf litter, slowly deepening the humus. Eventually the soil receives wind-blown seeds and tiny herbaceous plants sprout. Their roots loosen the hard-packed earth and prepare the way for shrubs and trees to take hold and eventually erase the last vestiges of the old road.

Hiking on, I come to several fallen trees lying like enormous toothpicks scattered across the road. I crawl under one that has lost its bark and notice a perfect pyramid of powder-fine sawdust on the ground beneath it. Crouching beside the log, I run my finger over its rough surface just above the tailings until I find a tiny hole. Soon I find several more, each one directly above a neat pile of shavings. This work is the telltale sign of the ambrosia beetle, a tiny black bug no longer than a grain of rice. Ambrosia beetles bore into fallen trees, but they don’t eat the wood.  They eat ambrosia fungi instead, the spores of which they carry with them in tiny pocket-like structures called mycangia. As the beetle bores an intricate network of tunnels in the log, it pushes sawdust out small exit holes and deposits the fungal spores on tunnel walls, cultivating a ready food source for adults and larvae in the process. Females lay eggs in chambers excavated along the tunnels. When the young hatch and mature, they fill their mycangia with spores and travel to a newly fallen log to repeat the cycle.

Along with other beetle species as well as carpenter ants, termites, fungi and bacteria, ambrosia beetles do the vital work of decomposing fallen trees. Decomposition and growth are the yin and yang of nature. Without decomposition there would be no new plant or animal growth in a biological community. Nutrients locked up in dead organisms would be unavailable to sustain new generations of life, leading to the community’s ultimate collapse. These fallen trees will decompose and disintegrate, transforming an old roadbed into fertile forest soil.

Weaving my way around, over and under the logs, I find open ground again; the old road has narrowed to two sketchy tracks. I reach a tangle of young alder trees growing where trucks traveled years ago. As I thread my way through the thicket, my hands slide over unblemished gray bark as I grab slender trunks. Glancing down to the ground, I spot a mass of orange nodules pimpling an exposed root. As I brush away the duff and touch the small lumps, I am reminded that alders heal degraded land as they grow. They are one of the few tree species that can extract nitrogen from the atmosphere. Each alder slowly dispenses some of its stored nitrogen into the soil through root nodules like the ones I’ve found. Every autumn, alders let their leaves fall while they are still green. As they gradually decompose, these extra-nutritious leaves fortify the soil with another slow-release dose of nitrogen. Surrounding trees and plants grow stronger and more robust, giving animals food and shelter. Nature revitalizes itself.

Beyond the alders I follow a vague trace of the old road. Above me, a hardened volcanic mudflow, called a lahar, coats the slope like a thick layer of gray fondant icing on a wedding cake. Formed when an ancient volcano released hot ash and lava fragments that mixed with water, the slurry moved with the viscosity of wet cement before it solidified. Over the ensuing millennia, erosive rainwater and snowmelt shaped the formation into rounded columns and hummocks. Several columns reach down to a cliff edge, resembling giant toes hanging over a curb.

Studying the sculpted hillside, I spot a shallow cave partially obscured by a fallen tree. Scrambling up loose rubble, I find a space three feet wide between the opening and the splintered upright end of the log. A ribbon of water pours down a mossy groove above the cavern, spilling over a lip above the entrance and free-falling to the threshold before trickling to a miniature pool hidden under the log. I slip around the waterfall and duck into the hollow behind it. Sitting on the dry floor of my secret grotto, I lean back against its rock wall. The only audible sound is the soft splash of water in front of me; I watch the crystal spillage for several minutes. The water in this tiny stream will seep into the soil under the log and flow underground below the old road. Moistening and softening the soil under the compacted road scar, it will do its part to nurture fungi, microbes and green growth, before continuing its journey down to Hackleman Creek on the valley floor. One day all signs of the road will disappear. Nature reclaims its own.

Next time: In the Footprint of a Glacier

 

Within One Watershed:

Essays from Hackleman Creek

Part 1

The Uplands

Hilltopping on Browder Ridge

 

Hundreds of butterflies flit above me, heading upslope. They look like rising confetti against the brilliant blue sky. Standing shoulder deep in a tangle of lacy bracken ferns and orange tiger lilies, I crane my neck to watch this elevated migration. The butterflies and I share the same goal: the top of Browder Ridge.

In a behavior called hilltopping, many species of butterflies head to the highest point in their world to find mates. The high ground serves as a rendezvous point where potential mates mingle and pair off. Mated females then lay their eggs just downslope on specific host plants that will later provide food for their hatching young. Males continue to cruise the highland, pursuing additional partners.

I seek the ridgetop for an entirely different reason: to stand on the high divide separating the Hackleman watershed from its neighboring watershed to the south. I wish to walk the prominence that determines the directional fate of each drop of precipitation this upland receives.

My pace slows as I follow the trail’s unspooling thread in switchbacks up the steep south-facing slope. The gradient and the morning sun combine to soak my shirt with perspiration. After a mile, the trail tops out and contours eastward two hundred feet below the ridgecrest. I leave the trail, climbing toward the high divide. Butterflies by the dozen float on the breeze, spiraling around me. A warm updraft from the Hackleman side of the ridge brings countless more to swirl in a descending pool toward me. I notice the bright orange and dark brown on the upper sides of California tortoiseshells; one lands on a rock and raises its wings to the upright resting position, revealing its mottled brown-and-gray underside. Hoffman’s checkerspots, blue coppers and a handful of Lorquin’s admirals join the tortoiseshells. Each checkerspot is a mosaic of orange and black, while the coppers are silky silver-blue. The dark admirals flash their white wing bands. I step on a flat boulder and a startled mass of butterflies takes wing in a whirling kaleidoscope of color. I feel as if I’ve walked into an artist’s rendition of light, color and motion.

Arriving at the ridge’s crest, I turn in a slow circle to take in the panorama. To the north the meadowed slopes of Cone Peak, South Peak and Echo Mountain rise above the Hackleman Creek valley. South of me, a sea of green peaks stretches to the horizon under the commanding presence of the Three Sisters, each rising over 10,000 feet. Browder Ridge runs westward in a series of rocky steps that narrows to resemble the edge of an enormous serrated knife. To the east, the ridge broadens into a much wider tree-covered crest.

As I head west toward the jagged rocks, the ground below the outcrop feels gritty and rough underfoot, reminding me that soil-building begins right here. Freezing and thawing fractures this sharply angled bedrock, dropping small fragments that slowly disintegrate into rudimentary soil at the rock’s base.

Long horizontal rows of succulent plants line the barren ground like snow fences placed in a ski area to prevent avalanches. These are sedum plants, commonly found in this harsh habitat. Sedums reproduce by sending out runners whose tips sprout clones. The resulting bands of fleshy plants strung out above and below me could all be clones of parent plants that colonized this area up to a century ago. Each row is spaced about five feet from the next, creating a series of narrow terraces that form the first line of defense against erosion in the watershed.

And it’s a much-needed defense. Taken one at a time, raindrops seem soft and refreshing. Each dampens, cleanses and revitalizes the land. But collectively raindrops are a force. If left unchecked, rain washes soil downslope, eroding the mountainside and dumping loads of sediment into the watershed’s largest stream. The sedum terraces hold small amounts of soil—helping stabilize the ridge despite their tiny size. Retained soil promotes the growth of additional wildflowers necessary for the survival of butterflies and other mountain-dwelling insects. These tiny creatures spur more plant growth through pollination and the resulting seed production. An expanding latticework of roots retains even more soil, protecting the forest downslope with a slow release of water that eventually reaches Hackleman Creek 1,700 feet below.

I step carefully over a row of tiny green sedums and stop to examine one closely. Its waxy leaves are swollen with water, the perfect survival mechanism for life in an environment that provides little protection against desiccating sunlight and wind. Sedums also avoid drying by absorbing and releasing gases through tiny pores in their leaves, called stomata, that close up during the day to prevent water loss. At night, when the absence of sunlight keeps evaporation to a minimum, they open to collect carbon dioxide and release oxygen. I gently squeeze a fat leaf and cup the custard-colored flowers in my hand before moving on.

Reaching the outcrop, I begin to climb. Carefully watching each foot placement, I notice a tiny white pouch stuck in a small crevice. Looking closer, I realize it’s an inch-long butterfly chrysalis. It hangs from a small patch of silk, cemented to one wall of the cleft. Brown and black spots speckle the white casement; one orange band and one black band encircle its upper end. The pouch’s coloration helps me identify the butterfly species that made it: Edith’s checkerspot. I sit down on the warm bedrock to look even closer; the chrysalis remains motionless, its inhabitant not yet ready to emerge.

One year ago, this tiny creature hatched from a miniscule egg that was one of hundreds its mother laid somewhere on this slope. Traveling on orange wings with black, red and cream-colored checkerboard markings, the female searched for a proper place to deposit her eggs. For this checkerspot, the only suitable location is the underside of a leaf on one of a small number of plant species that the young will consume after hatching: a penstemon, owl’s clover or valerian. This female used chemical receptors on her feet to taste the leaves of one plant after another.  Finally finding the desired plant, she laid a mass of tiny green eggs.

Two weeks later my little friend hatched from its egg as a hairy black caterpillar with orange spots; it ate voraciously to prepare for the energy-draining process of metamorphosis. As the host plants died back in late summer, the caterpillar crawled upslope to this rocky outcrop and crept under a stone to enter a dormancy that lasted through the fall and winter. Waking up with the arrival of spring, it devoured freshly sprouted leaves nearby, then found this secret spot and swaddled itself in its protective chrysalis. Within two weeks it will emerge as a wet wrinkly adult butterfly. After hanging upside down from the split chrysalis to straighten and dry its wings, the checkerspot will fly away and find a mate, and the year-long cycle will begin again.

My mountain stairway steepens and I decide to skirt below the crags on the grassy southern slope. Regaining the ridge in a gravelly saddle, I find myself in a sea of purple larkspur flowers bending in the breeze. A swarm of California tortoiseshells mobs me, landing on my sweaty arms and legs. My sweat-seeking guests are most likely all males, who transfer large amounts of bodily salts to females when mating. This nutrient boost helps to ensure that the female’s eggs will be healthy. Feeling like a human salt lick, I stand still as each butterfly extends its proboscis to tickle my skin and drink its fill.

After ascending a six-foot-wide catwalk along the narrow crest, I reach the mile-high summit of Browder Ridge. Looking east along the ridgeline is like looking along a giant partition with each rocky point resembling a post in a fence. Left of the barrier is my watershed, the Hackleman. The butterflies, hardy plants and thin soil up here are each as integral to the watershed as the deep forest, lush valley floor and rushing creek far below. Everything flows together in a stream of connected being. Water unifies all.

Next time: Witnessing A Reclamation