Buddy and I took advantage of a break in the weather to visit the creek today. The temperature was in the upper forties, until we entered the woods. Brrrr. I'm not sure where the weather will take us this year. November was too dry; December rains came too late; January rainfall pushed the record books; February...well, it may end up a pretty dry month. That sense of organic impatience characteristic of the pre-spring woods is simmering just below the surface of things. The Indian plums are putting on leaves, and the big leaf maples are festooned with pollen hangers...but only the toughest early bloomers are up and moving so far.
The mosses are hard at work; but they never rest. 24/7/366. What prodigious little wonders.
Nothing moving in the water but beams of light today. I'll start turning rocks over to see what's clinging to the bottoms of them in a week or two. I wonder what kind of hit the ecosystem takes - the bugs, birds, and other critters - by way of availability of nutrients, when a salmon run doesn't happen? This time last year the carcasses were all gone, but you could still find remnants of the die-off: skeletons, shreds of skin, jaw bones, that kind of thing. Not a single chum made it up Beatty in November...