Within One Watershed:

Essays from Hackleman Creek 

Part 3

The Lake

Winter

Wet snow sticks to our snowshoes like clumps of mashed potatoes as my friend and I make our way south toward Fish Lake, the final destination for the waters of Hackleman Creek. Three days of February rain have saturated the snow, slowing our pace to a determined plod. Every few minutes I stop and bang my ski poles against the sides of my snowshoes to release the clinging white lumps; the clanging sound reverberates through the dripping forest. If today’s clear skies hold overnight, the temperature will drop and the snow will re-freeze, creating what many Northwest snow-lovers call Cascade concrete. For now, though, the surface is soft and sticky underfoot.

These rain-on-snow events are common in the Cascade Mountains thanks to the Pacific Ocean. Maritime mountains like the Cascades owe their snowpack to storms rolling in off the ocean. But the precipitation sent by the sea can be a mixed blessing, alternately falling as snow and rain as ocean-moderated temperatures fluctuate frequently.

Slowly moving farther into the forest, we spot the familiar pattern of snowshoe hare tracks. Our noisy approach probably startled the hare as it foraged on conifer twigs and needles. The hare’s front feet left two small tracks, one slightly ahead of the other, while the hind feet left two larger tracks, side by side, in a position ahead of the front tracks. As a snowshoe hare bounds across the snow, its front feet land first and then lift off while the larger hind feet swing forward to land ahead of the spot where the front feet touched the snow; the result is the instantly recognizable triangular pattern. The tracks cross our route and disappear into a thicket of young trees.

A snowshoe hare can spread the toes on its hind feet up to four inches wide, making them like furry snowshoes that keep it atop the snow, much like our aluminum and plastic snowshoes keep us on the surface. While snowshoes allow winter recreation for humans, they can mean the difference between life and death for a hare. This adaptation enables it to flee pursuing predators like coyotes or bobcats, who sink into the snow. Once the hare finds cover, its snow-colored fur blends in with the surroundings, rendering it nearly invisible. Come summer, tannish-brown fur replaces its winter white coat.

Deeper in the forest, we stop to soak in the stillness. Thousands of water droplets sparkle on the trees. I focus on a single liquid pendant clinging to a Douglas-fir needle; it’s in no hurry to meet the ground. As I watch the drop finally give in to gravity and fall to the snow, I think about how it got here.

Its freefall from a mid-level cloud took no more than four minutes. Before that it may have spent years sloshing around in the sea. Maybe it passed through the gaping mouth of a basking shark or rinsed the salty rim of an orca’s blowhole. Solar heating lifted it into the atmosphere where it condensed into a cloud; warm ocean wind pushed the freighted cloud, along with others, a hundred miles east to the windward slope of the Cascades, turning raindrops loose to drench this forest. Tonight, it will likely become an ice crystal consolidated in the snowpack. Later, spring’s warmth will send it on a short trip to Fish Lake in snowmelt currents. There, it may trickle through porous volcanic soil to enter the neighboring Clear Lake basin via underground passage or evaporate from the lake in summer’s heat. This one raindrop is on an eternal journey in the endless cycle of all water on this wet planet.

Moving on, we hear a pair of honking Canada Geese flying above the trees, signaling our proximity to the lake, which drains annually to lie as a meadow for part of the year. Will it be a full lake now or a snow-covered clearing? In a few hundred yards, we have our answer.

Descending an easy slope, we pass through an opening in an old split-rail fence left over from cattle grazing days; ahead lies the lakebed covered neither with water nor snow. Instead, a slow stream winds silently through an expanse of brown grass and dried sedges. In spots, the water spills over the streambanks to form shallow ponds before returning to its narrow course. Foot-wide holes in the dry parts of the lakebed reveal the faint gurgle of water flowing underground. On the lake’s south side, slushy water stretches to meet the shore where a thin layer of snow covers the ground. Not cold enough to freeze solid or hold a deep mantle of snow, not warm enough to fill to full pool, the lakebed lies in an in-between state, waiting.

Tall cottonwoods stand in quiescence along the north shore; their branches point to the sky like naked fingers, having dropped their heart-shaped leaves last autumn to prevent damage from foliar frostbite. They, too, are waiting. Deep beneath their furrowed bark, a complex process moves water from inside living cells to the tiny spaces surrounding them. Concentrated sugars fill the cells to act as antifreeze during this time of dormancy. For this part-time lake and its bordering cottonwood trees, life has been put on hold for now. In a few short months, spring will return - and so will I. 

Within One Watershed:

Essays from Hackleman Creek

Part 2

The Valley

Knee-deep in Hackleman Creek

Despite its name, Tombstone Prairie pulses with life this morning. As my friends and I skirt this small meadow near the headwaters of Hackleman Creek, bees buzz from one flower to the next, grasshoppers leap across the path and an Evening Grosbeak forages for insects near the top of a tree, its bold yellow plumage standing in vivid contrast to the conifer’s deep green.

Named for the stone monument that marked the spot where a teenaged boy died in an accidental shooting in 1871, the clearing was a popular camp spot for European-American settlers traveling between the Willamette Valley and eastern Oregon. Prior to that the meadow was a traditional stopover for countless generations of Indigenous peoples on their seasonal rounds of hunting and gathering. Back then, this open area was much larger thanks to the Native American practice of regular burning to promote huckleberry growth and grazing areas for game animals. A century and a half of fire suppression has allowed many trees to encroach on the meadow. Some huddle in small groups among the bracken ferns and grasses; others stand alone, casting solitary shadows on the peach-colored Jacob’s ladder blossoms covering the ground.

Enticing as it is, Tombstone Prairie is not the object of our focus today. Wearing old tennis shoes and rubber boots, our trio is here to investigate the creek, knee-deep if necessary. We’re in search of tiny aquatic creatures that form the foundation of a stream’s food chain. They’re called macroinvertebrates: they lack backbones and are small, but not small enough to require a microscope for viewing. We hope to find mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly larvae, the species most sensitive to pollution; their presence in a stream indicates good water quality and a healthy aquatic ecosystem.

Reaching the midpoint along the northern margin of Tombstone Prairie, we meet the creek. At this point the spirited current carries water newly issued from the spot where it gurgles out of the mountainside, a few hundred yards upstream. Shallow and narrow enough to step across, the creek will gain depth and width as it receives the flow from several side streams along its course down the valley. Here, the newborn stream splashes over a four-foot waterfall, slides between tree roots and bounces gently over bagel-sized cobbles.

Resting my palms on the rocky creekbed, I let the chilly water wash over my hands; goosebumps rise on my arms. Looking into the creek, I notice small pebbly cylinders, no more than an inch long, speckling the submerged rocks; they are the protective coverings of case-maker caddisfly larvae. In its larval stage, a caddisfly is a caterpillar-like creature that scrapes algae from rocks in the stream. Each larva gathers tiny pebbles and sand grains from the bottom and glues them to its body with silk from glands near its mouth. It then crawls slowly over rocks to search for sustenance, safely cloaked in armor. The caddisfly spends up to two years in this larval form, then seals both ends of its case and pupates in an underwater cocoon. After two to three weeks, it emerges from its casement, rises to the surface and flies away as a moth-like adult.

In fact, caddisflies are closely related to butterflies and moths. I think of their butterfly cousins flitting 1,200 feet above us in search of mates and wildflower nectar atop Browder Ridge. I look down at a caddisfly case and think of the butterfly chrysalis I found not long ago hanging in a tiny cleft high on the ridgecrest. These larval creatures, one bound to the streambed and the other to the rocky heights, evolved from the same ancestor in the distant past. Each took a different route to their present ecological niche; their presence in the watershed is the sign of an untainted ecosystem.

Moving downstream, one of my companions finds another type of macroinvertebrate – a mayfly nymph. As she holds the rock upon which it squirms, I see a slim body separated into three parts: a flattened head, a dark thorax and a long, segmented abdomen. Three filamentous tails extend from its back end. Each of its six legs ends in a tiny hook for clinging to rocks in rushing water.

Seconds later, my other friend finds an adult mayfly resting on a boulder and gently guides it onto her thumb. Holding its fragile wings in an upright position above its slender body, it lifts its elongated abdomen and head like a winged ballerina performing a perfect arabesque. All six legs are the same length, indicating this delicate dancer is a female. Males have extremely long front legs for grasping females while mating.

As a nymph this female shed her skin dozens of times, emerging a little larger with each molt. She spent over a year crawling underwater in search of algae to eat, using her brush-like lower lip to scour it off of rocks. Eventually, she rose to the surface and molted again, this time emerging as a sexually immature subadult. Hours later, one last molt released the mature female mayfly. Her adult life will only last for 24 hours: she won’t even be able to eat, as she has no functional mouthparts; her sole purpose is to reproduce. Later today, as afternoon fades into evening, she will join a swarm of other adult mayflies for a communal courtship dance in the sky. After mating, she will lay hundreds of eggs and die, her mission accomplished. My friend carefully returns the little female to her boulder so she can carry out her short but intense adult life.

We head downstream to find a stretch where the water runs deeper. As my friends climb down below a footbridge, I wade up to my knees. A thin layer of biofilm covers each melon-sized rock like slippery mucus; this organic slime sustains hungry macroinvertebrates and makes each step a challenge for me. I carefully wedge each foot in a flat spot between rocks and lower my hands into the current. An American Dipper flies low over the water and lands on a midstream rock. The gray robin-sized bird bobs up and down as it eyes the flow. Suddenly it plunges in and walks upstream completely submerged, resurfacing with a beakful of mayfly nymphs. As the stream-dwelling songbird flies to the bank to enjoy its meal, an adult mayfly flutters above the surface, repeatedly dipping her abdomen into the water to release a small batch of eggs each time. Fortunate to have evaded predators, she gives the next mayfly generation its start.

Joining my friends below the bridge, I see they have two more discoveries to share: stonefly and dobsonfly larvae. The stonefly larva looks like a flattened cricket with a three-part body, widely separated eyes, long antennae, six sprawling legs and two thin tails. The finger-sized dobsonfly larva resembles an aquatic centipede. Thread-like gills line each side of its abdomen; its reddish head sports two strong pincers for capturing prey. Both these species are highly sensitive to pollution. Our discoveries today confirm that the Hackleman watershed, my watershed, flows clean and pure, supporting a robust assemblage of underwater inhabitants. May its purity continue to sustain this richly complex community for generations to come.

Next time: We leave the valley and explore Fish Lake.