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