After the Rain, Come Upon Two Animals

July 10, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:   Last night when I was driving home from work it was storming on the Golden Strip.  There were puddles in the lane when I reached home; a gentle rain was falling around the house.  Moi wakes me this morning to tell me that she’s going to work and that she threw stick with Mway in the back yard and fed her.  I’m curious to find out how the rain has affected the fields and creek, so, since Moi had not turned on my computer, I press the switch on it, put on my walking clothes, and take Mway out for a walk about 8:15.

State of the Path:  The dirt on the path is dark brown.  The stick doesn’t ping when I tap it against it.  A sumac tree has fallen off the barn wall and crashed into the burn pile.  The colors and textures of the plants haven’t changed – leaves are still withered and wilted, stems still brown at the base, the grass lies brown against the soil, ragweed flowers are dry and brown – but the plants are dripping with rainwater and fallen inward into the path.  My pants and boots immediately start getting wet.  I don’t bother taking the side path along the old orchard.   Beneath the maples, where water may have coursed over the ground last night, the ground is dark brown, but I don’t see any water.  At bug land, the red grass is bent over every which way.  I can no longer see where the path is.  As I flounder around trying to find it, something furry stirs about ten feet away from me.  I vaguely see a body containing white spots, hear it thrashing through the grass and shrubs, then it seems to suddenly disappear into thin air.  Mway hears the deer too, but it is gone before she can sniff the air.  As I turn right to follow the path along the creek, a turtle – probably a box turtle – sits in the middle of a brown patch of grass beneath a shrub.  Mway starts to follow her nose toward it, but I yell out to warn her, “Mway, that’s a turtle.”  She quickly shirks away from it.  Along the creek, I try to look to see how the jewelweed has been affected by the rain.  Various plants are bent over and criss-crossing each other -- it’s hard to make out anything.  Though I see some jewelweed along the creek bank, I can’t really tell how it’s doing.  I take a quick look at the feed channel:  there’s no water in it,  the sweetflag is as brown and flopped over as it was yesterday.  I plow through the red willows.  On the other side of the ridge, I can’t see the path until I come to the anthill.  There I comfortably place a foot.  My pants are completely soaked, my workshirt wet.  I continue on to the clearing as quickly as possible.

State of the Creek:   At the tree stand, there’s again a puddle of water nestling against the trunk of the big tree on the far bank.  At the log jam, there’s a splash of water that sits a couple feet from the main puddle.  The puddle has reappeared beneath the black walnut tree, as has the second puddle beyond the big trees.  Between the puddles, there’s still no water flowing, but the rocks are black with moisture.

The Fetch:  On her second fetch, Mway stops and looks at me with the “pro-quality” stick in her mouth, as if to say, “Come on, now.  I’ve just fetched the stick a lot with Moi.  Do I have to go through this again?”   I think to myself, “Of course not,” and I tell her, “Let’s go.”  She dashes off to get to the path along the sumacs before me, and disappears from my sight as we head back to the house.