Within One Watershed:

Essays from Hackleman Creek

Part 2

The Valley 

Snowmelt

The gushing song of gathering snowmelt reverberates through the valley. Rushing streams surge down to swell Hackleman Creek as the snowpack gradually morphs from solid to liquid. Liberated from the weight of its winter burden, the forest floor releases the first growth of spring; fern fronds unfurl from tightly coiled fiddleheads and early wildflowers burst into bloom. My trail, softened by a cushion of conifer needles, leads me to a bridge over the creek. Mid-span I close my eyes and stand motionless, listening to moving water.

A dozen gleaming western trilliums greet me on the other side. These familiar three-leaved plants are slow bloomers, taking many years to produce flowers. The multi-stage process begins when a trillium seed germinates; the first summer it produces one tiny slender leaf-like growth that barely rises above the ground. The following spring an oval-shaped leaf no bigger than a thumbnail replaces its predecessor. After a year or two in the one-leaf stage, a whorl of three leaves emerges, but no flower develops. It remains flowerless through the next growing season until, finally, the plant is mature enough to produce a solitary flower above its leaves: a trio of white petals surrounds a cluster of six golden pollen-producing structures, called anthers. Two to three weeks later, the aging white petals turn deep rose, then drop to the ground.

Carefully stepping among the blossoms, I scan the forest floor for other wildflowers and find a treasure: the western fairy slipper, also known as Calypso orchid. Five slim magenta petals splay outward from atop a purple stem only two inches high. A white slipper-shaped pouch, speckled with pink dots, hangs below the petals. The interior of the slipper is dark red with thin white stripes. Tiny white hairs line the lip of the slipper’s opening.  

This little nymph never fails to take my breath away; on hands and knees I sniff the delicate scent of vanilla and study its intricate details. The small orchid is equipped with all the cues – bright colors, nectar guides, enticing scent – to attract insects to sample its sugary liquid, but it’s all an elaborate ruse to trick inexperienced pollinators. The fairy slipper actually has no nectar at all. When a naïve insect visits this orchid, it crawls all over the blossom searching for the sweet reward. Finding none, it will fly on to the next fairy slipper and search in vain for nectar. It might visit a third and fourth blossom before finally wising up to the deception, but by that time pollination has occurred and the fairy slippers have accomplished their mission.

Once the fairy slipper has produced seeds, it relies on another organism, a fungus, to help the seeds germinate and grow. Orchid seeds are the smallest of all flowering plants; each one is the size of a speck of dust. A seed this tiny has no room for stored food to sustain the developing plant. When an orchid seed hits the ground, it only has enough energy to send out a single miniscule root. If a compatible fungus exists in the soil, the fungus will connect its root-like filaments to the fairy slipper’s root to provide carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and water to the embryonic orchid. Later, when the fairy slipper has grown strong, it will return the favor to the patient fungus by giving it carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis in its single leaf.

Back on my feet, I climb a slight rise. Over the next half mile, I find several piles of dark coyote scat deliberately placed at regular intervals in the middle of the wide path. The droppings are scent markers proclaiming a boundary between territories. Coyotes, like all canines, have anal scent glands that release chemicals indicating the identity, status and physical condition of an individual. Apparently, I’m following a well-traveled coyote highway this morning.

Soon I encounter another territorial proclamation: the sweet pensive song of a male Hermit Thrush staking his nesting claim. A single piping note precedes a fluty warble. His melody tells other males to stay away while simultaneously announcing his availability to prospective mates. His ethereal song fades into the forest as I hike on.

Heart Creek drops in frothy whitewater steps to flow beneath another bridge. After crossing it, I pass the lacy cascades of a tiny unnamed stream and stop to dip my hand in its flow; my fingers tingle with cold. The trail continues uphill and brings me to un-melted snow. At first, it’s only a few inches thick but, as I continue, it deepens to almost two feet. I walk over its still-crusted top; later today it will soften with warmth. Fallen conifer needles curl in green crescents on the old snow, defining melt patterns on its surface.

Snowpack melts from the top down as the upper layer absorbs daytime heat. Snow crystals change to water drops, which flow over the surface and percolate down to underlying soil. Absorbing water like a sponge, the soil releases liquid in an underground flow. Freezing temperatures stop the melting each night, but water continues to flow beneath the ground. Warmer spring temperatures eventually cause constant melting, both day and night. The ground becomes completely saturated and surface flow begins. Spring rain adds more water to the runoff and streams rise to deliver the increased volume down the valley.

My boot plunges through a weak spot in the snow, and I post-hole nearly to my knee. Struggling to extricate my foot, I notice that the snow around me is pink. Called watermelon snow, it’s colored by algae that thrive at low temperatures. The red pigment absorbs heat, which provides the short-lived algae with a small amount of meltwater for growth. These strange one-celled plants form the foundation of a little-known snowpack food chain. Snowfleas, tiny cold-loving invertebrates that aren’t really fleas at all, come up through the snow layers looking for food; watermelon snow makes a perfect meal. The snow fleas are eaten by early spring insects, which are, in turn, eaten by migratory birds. I look all over for the speck-sized snowfleas, but have no luck.

When a clearing appears on my right, I walk to its center; bright sunshine has softened the top layer of snow so much that it’s like slogging through a milkshake. Looking to the north above the surrounding trees, I see the open slope of Echo Mountain, already melted out thanks to its south-facing exposure. A small group of elk crosses the steep meadow, looking like a herd of Jersey cows grazing in a vertical pasture. As I lift my binoculars to watch them lower their heads to feed on lush greenery, I think about the melting snow beneath my feet.

Snowpack is the savings account that holds precipitation in solid form and then gradually releases it each spring to hydrate everything downstream. When winter snowfall is light, water savings dwindle and the watershed operates in a deficit the following summer. Every living thing I’ve chanced upon today depends on a plentiful snowpack for survival. What does a future impacted by climate change hold for them? Will the gushing song of gathering snowmelt still reverberate through this valley? I fervently hope so.

 

 

Within One Watershed:

Essays from Hackleman Creek

Part 1

The Uplands

A Sense of Urgency

Fire fills my thoughts this morning. A watercolor wash of radiant blue paints the smokeless sky thanks to favorable winds, but the charcoaled smell of a burned forest fills my nostrils, an invisible reminder of a wildfire eighty miles away in the southern Oregon Cascades.

A long-forgotten two-track lane, barely discernable under the encroaching bushes, leads me toward the east end of Browder Ridge and another day of high-country rambling. I inhale unseen particles of Douglas-fir, huckleberry, vine maple, sword fern, brush rabbit, fawn lily, raven, moss, black bear, lichen: all that’s been incinerated in the blaze. My head understands that fire can be a beneficial part of a forest ecosystem; it clears the woods of built-up fuels, reducing the intensity of future fires. My heart feels something much different: fear at the very idea of flames burning even a small part of my watershed, a beloved landscape with which I identify strongly. I feel compelled to explore every corner of the Hackleman before a future fire brings great change.

Hiking west toward the base of the ridge, I startle a couple of black-tailed deer. The doe bounds up a hill to my right, dark tail held erect in the universal alarm signal. Her still-spotted fawn bolts out of the shrubs directly in front of me and follows its mother. The doe’s single offspring suggests that she is a first-time mother. Female black-tails typically give birth to one baby during their first pregnancy, then have twins with each succeeding birth. Nature gives the mother a break when she’s new to the business of raising young. Both doe and fawn stop to look back at me with limpid brown eyes, then slip away into the forest.

Vegetation grows completely across my faint route; I recognize the shiny oval leaves and white flower clusters of a species of “California Lilac,” or Ceanothus, native to this area. This shrub is the first to grow in an area disturbed by logging, road building or fire. Its seeds, covered by a hard coating, need to be cracked in order to germinate. Heavy equipment scraping the earth did the trick here several years ago, but the heat of a wildfire is the most effective way to open the seeds. When ripe, three-lobed capsules eject seeds into the surrounding soil where they can lie dormant for up to 200 years, waiting for flames to trigger germination. Once germinated, the plants grow rapidly in open sun, creating the first layer of post-fire life. Later, trees will overtop the Ceanothus, making too much shade for the shrubs; they gradually die out, having done their job of colonizing the singed landscape after a fire.

I struggle through the Ceanothus thicket and once again find traces of the narrow road. In a few steps the forest’s silence is shattered by an explosion of feathers and flapping at my feet. I’ve flushed a chicken-like Sooty Grouse from the undergrowth. I watch as the brown hen flies low between the trees and disappears. Two steps later her nearly-grown chick erupts out of the bushes beside me. The Sooty Grouse depends on camouflage for protection. It will freeze on the spot when danger approaches and rely on its cryptic plumage to blend into the surroundings. If a predator or an unsuspecting hiker comes too close, as I have, the grouse will explode into flight.

These birds may have been eating berries or swallowing grit from the ground to help with digestion. They will separate as the youngster becomes independent with the onset of cold weather. While other mountain creatures hibernate or migrate in winter, the Sooty Grouse toughs it out by roosting alone on snow-covered branches and eating conifer needles.

It’s time to climb. Leaving the relative flatness of the nearly-vanished road, I ascend an extremely steep tree-covered slope. Navigation is easy in this trail-free terrain: I keep a recently dried seasonal creek on my right and simply go up. The forest around me is a mixed stand of noble fir, western hemlock and Pacific silver fir. Stiff curved needles cover the blue-green nobles, growing upward from twigs and branches like the bristles on a hairbrush. The lower portions of the trees’ columnar trunks rise completely free of branches; near the treetops, cones stand erect like fat green candles. The hemlocks have delicate short needles and droopy branches; their olive-sized brown cones generously sprinkle the ground. Pacific silver fir needles shine dark green on top and silvery below; they grow horizontally from each side of the twig and point forward like ski jumpers along its top.

Struggling to catch my breath, I gaze at this diverse forest assemblage, my mind still preoccupied with fire. The variety of trees here tells the story of recovery after a burn. Sun-loving noble firs were the first to appear on this steep slope after the last fire, perhaps 100 years ago. They grew in tight masses, each limbed all the way to the ground. After a few years, the stand thinned itself, the tallest nobles outcompeting their shorter kin for sunlight. As the forest canopy closed, it shaded the lower limbs; they died out and dropped, creating tall branch-free boles. Decades passed as shade-loving western hemlocks and Pacific silver firs established themselves under the noble firs. Eventually most of the tallest nobles aged out and died, leaving only a few of their species towering above the canopy. As time goes on, the Pacific silver firs will outgrow the western hemlocks and replace them as the major component of this forest, perpetuating themselves in a state of relative stability. One tree species makes room for the next in a succession of growth stages until the next fire burns through the forest, resetting the entire process back to the beginning.

Pushing on, I climb over several old logs. A moth with a wingspan of at least four inches drops to the ground at my feet: it’s a pandora pinemoth. Not found in great numbers here in the old Cascades, it’s common on the east side of the mountains where it periodically defoliates large swaths of pine forest. Black and yellow bands stripe its thick furry body; brown-and-black forewings partially cover its gray-and-pink hind wings. The bright-yellow feathery antennae indicate that it’s a male. Females have small lightly-fuzzed antennae. The large size and feathering of the males’ scent-detecting headgear create a greater surface area for an increased number of smell receptors, enabling them to single out pheromones emitted by females miles away. Apparently, this moth located a female and mated, then fell to the ground in the throes of death, his mission accomplished. The female will die after she lays eggs. I move him to the base of a tree and climb on.

After gaining 1000 feet of elevation in a half mile, I break free from the forest and see the bare ridge above me. Climbing through a rock garden of purple larkspurs, white buckwheat and lavender phlox, I zigzag back and forth to avoid stepping on any of these plants, each of which has worked very hard to produce blossoms in this harsh environment.

Twenty yards of scrambling up a sun-warmed patch of gritty soil finally brings me to the top. Angular lava fragments welded together by an ancient volcano’s heat make up the bedrock along the narrow crest. Eroded remnants of volcanic vents point skyward like gnarled fingers, framing the velvety meadow-draped northern peaks across the Hackleman Valley. I sit on a knuckle of one of the fingers and wait for my heart rate to return to normal after my taxing climb. Immediately below me, forested slopes plunge to the valley floor. To the west, Iron Mountain pushes its enormous wedge shape above the horizon. A thin avalanche chute lacerates the face of Echo Mountain.

Side-hilling below the jagged crest, I head north along the short side of the L-shaped ridgetop and reach its end. This perch allows me to see the entire stretch of the long side of the L, which is the main part of Browder Ridge. Near the point where the sides meet, a glacial cirque cups Heart Lake in an elevated bowl. I see a thin crescent of the water’s dark surface; the rest of the lake is hidden by a jutting shoulder slope. This hanging valley is the only part of the Hackleman high country that I haven’t seen until now. My collection of upland explorations complete, my thoughts turn again to fire.

Closing my eyes, I imagine what this watershed would look like if it were burned. The grim monochromatic scene in my mind’s eye includes blackened snags, scorched earth, eroding hillsides and a sediment-choked Hackleman Creek. Whether it happens as a patchwork of smaller blazes or a huge conflagration escalated by climate change, fire will one day come here. But nature heals itself, and the forest will return over time. Recovery wouldn’t happen in my lifetime, though, so my desire to know the living landscape of this little watershed in its current state feels urgent and intense.  

Next time: We leave the uplands and explore the valley.