Times of Falling Water

Television news reports I saw last week showed how fast the snow is melting in Tahoe and the high country. Where people are living in or near the snowbank we visited in December and January, the unusually deep snow is melting unusually quickly, causing runoff problems which are keeping the plumbers busy. All the miles of mountaintop where people don’t live are in a similar condition: water sluicing and collecting underground and above, building up and breaking through in places where it hasn’t for several years.

At our elevation, the American river has dropped a good four feet in depth since last weekend, which has changed things somewhat in our favorite kayaking area close to town. It’s a little more challenging to find a clean place to launch, since the recently-receded water has left an even layer of muck on everything. Sutter’s Landing was especially silty and wet in the newly-exposed zone, which didn’t, however, keep people from grilling burgers and having a few beers in drier spots with access to the water.

Dogs are willing to swim in the murk and current, and the water isn’t all that cold, but last year’s rope swings hang awkwardly over newly-landed obstacles or dangle too far from the shore to be of use, not that any but the most adventurous human swimmer would plunge into the swirling eddies and brackish drop-offs.

At the Howe Avenue access point, though, it was easy enough to use the still-flooded parking lot as a siltless entry point, after lugging the kayak in from the street just outside the county park gate, even though there is a pretty sharp little current running along the edge. By skirting this, we got into quiet water just upstream of the lot and headed toward the area we visited two weeks ago, and which at that time had been distinctly swampy and bayou-like a good distance back from the summer waterline.

There’s plenty of easy kayaking water adjoining the river itself, spilling into lagoons which now deadend in thickets of willow and cottonwood, but it is challenging to go upstream in areas where the current swings against the bank. With a little determination it’s possible to advance at least far enough to spend an hour or two on the water—someone who really wants to can easily pick a way along the shoreline for quite a distance, but we took it easy and turned back after clearing the first big bend above the parking lot.

The Cooper’s hawks that were near the south bank two weeks ago were there again, this time performing acrobatics in midair which appeared to be amorous in nature. This mood is affecting the ducks and geese as well—at least once we came along just in time to see a drake perform his biological duty on his mate, and there was also some pretty determined romance among the pigeons living near the skate park at Sutter’s Landing, where a thick-necked male was working on one of his mates with real enthusiasm and sense of mission.

With all the goslings and ducklings already floating around, it looks like the wildlife is taking full advantage of this year's drenched landscape to reproduce.

The number of lost shopping carts to be seen in the muck and mulch near the water, and where water was until recently, is neither surprising nor unlikely, considering how handy they are when people have to move food and housing materials around in the brush. To actually clean the area enough to make it presentable to my grandmother’s garden club, which had pretty high standards concerning litter and tidiness, would be a formidable job at this point. It will only become more formidable as things dry out.

The larger items like the tarp snagged in driftwood above the rail trestle would require large boats and committed effort to remove, while a person who chose to go among the trees and remove easily-plucked plastic bags, beer cans, water bottles and sandcastle building tools would have plenty to do.

The campsites destroyed last winter by the rising water have been reduced to patches of strewn clothing and tenting, caught in the closest branches. Meantime new camps have been put together and occupied not far away.

My estimate last week was that high water should last through May. Even after a substantial drop this past week, it seems like it will be some weeks yet before either the American or the Sacramento drop to summertime leve

#geese #ducklings #SuttersLanding #litter