A New Reservoir becomes Wildlife Habitat

Published in The Christian Science Monitor

            Fall and early winter, machines operated by men with a plan roared, growled, and dug a half-acre hole down by the creek, lined the hole with impermeably fine clay, covered the clay with topsoil, and rode away on trailers behind noisy trucks.

            Two weekends in early spring, we postponed planting the reservoir because the ground froze, and then snow covered the frozen ground, but one sunny Saturday, Girl Scouts and leaders drove up the mountain, planted wetland plants, ate lunch, hiked, then returned to the city.

            I slowed the creek with sandbags that caused the water to rise until some flowed into the reservoir. To satisfy state laws regulating water use, the Girl Scouts, owners of this ranch I take care of will run water from this reservoir into the creek during low water of summer to pay back to natural water the water they used through the year.

            Snow melted, and the stream rose. The sandbags I had put into the creek had to come out. Water rising too high could tear out the expensive head works that enticed water into the reservoir.

            I walked toward the reservoir across snow a foot deep, crusted on top, but usually not enough to bear my weight.

I broke through the crust nearly every step and stopped to rest often.

            The sun shone into the warming day. Here, a hundred yards into my journey, an owl swooped silently down just after midnight and took a vole or a mouse. The owl’s wings marked the snow, that stopped falling about midnight and froze too hard to receive impressions by two or three in the morning.

            Bluebirds have returned from southern vacations and court on rapid wings in sunshine above the snow. Downy woodpeckers run up and down pine trees.

            The creek doesn’t run higher than my rubber boots. A walk in the water might be easier than walking on constantly giving way snow. Willow bush claims the creek, but I duck down, lift limbs out of my way, walk up the flowing current around four bends in the creek and lift sandbags out of the icy water.

            In the following days, the water rises and flows faster. When it’s time to run more water into the reservoir, sandbags won’t stay but flow downstream with the powerful current. I span the banks with a long pole, place posts from it down to the front of the concrete apron set into the stream, span the posts with boards, and the water rises and flows into the reservoir again.

            When the reservoir is full, the dam has to come out. I’ve taken out irrigation dams before, but never when the water is rising. I work carefully. Every board becomes a potentially deadly force, with fast current and hundreds of pounds of water pushing it. I pry boards clear of the water with a steel bar and throw the boards up on the bank.

            Spring rain pours down parts of several days and washes the last snow into the creek. I walk the streamside bank of the reservoir to see what effect high water in a terrific rush downstream has. The rip-rapped bank holds well.

            Two great blue herons fly up from the creek, downstream from me. I’ve thought there were two, probably nested somewhere close, but this is the first time I’ve seen them together. They land in the tops of two pine trees. How can such small limbs as separate the trees from the world of sky support such large birds?

            As if the two birds also ask, their long necks curve into living questions marks silhouetted pale blue against the grey, cloudy sky. I walk down behind willows bushes spreading lush green leaves into spring, and when I walk to where I can see the two pine trees again, the great blue herons have flown.

            Two Wilson’s snipes fly close above the water, over the reservoir’s bank, down into wet, concealing grass. A killdeer runs along the bank, just above the water. The wetlands plants the scouts dug into the earth grow enthusiastically toward the sky.

            The animals, the plants have long ago forgiven the loud, ripping machinery and accepted the new banks, the carefully placed earth, the water.

            So have I. The memory of noise and disruption fades. Herons stay. Snipes and killdeers stay. Green grass sprouts from the new banks. Two mallards fly above the creek, turn, brake with their wings and settle onto the reservoir’s surface. Ripples spread in concentric circles toward the shores. Water running, wind blowing across grass, through trees, birds calling, make the only sounds in our small mountain valley.