Write about what I see I thought.
Reflect on it and ask yourself questions I thought.
Ha.
What shall I reflect on?
What shall I describe?
The mammals?
The wildflowers?
The trees?
The birds, bugs, bees?
All of it, I naively thought just mere hours ago.
That was before my walk.
On my walk I realized an entire book could be written about one's experiences with just one tree.
And then there's the issue of context.
How do I even describe my environment adequately?
Hanover, a small town of approximately 7000 people in rural Southwestern Ontario.
Home to the crossing place and intersection of several parts of the Saugeen river.
Oh and then there is my general ignorance about proper terminology.
Intersection-- that sounds like something for cars, not for rivers.
And the ignorance about terminology also means I don't actually understand all of what I'm seeing, the ways the water flows and feeds and interacts with the land and with the rivers.
Do I live near a marsh?
A bog?
A fen?
A bayou?
A stream?
A river?
How do I describe the places where springs come up out of the ground and puddle into the foundation of my Dads unfortunately placed barn?
And then if we dig a trench and the water drains into my garden how do I explain the place where the water spreads out and is covered by bullrushes and other reeds?
And what about how in some of those reeds a stream starts to snake through it and connect to other streams? What is happening there and why?
And eventually those streams connect to the river?
And I sing to the river and the streams every walk I go on...
Water you are sacred
Water thank you
Because Water is life
Because Nibi bimidiziwin
And how do I even begin to explain how I came to the place where I've started to say nibi bimidiziwin?
I'm so ignorant that I don't really know which aspects of my environment are only the way they are because of human intervention.
Would there be more or less standing water in my backyard without human intervention?
And as I was walking I was thinking "the land will teach you" and so of course part of this blog will be documenting my learning experience.
So let me ignorantly explain the context of what I see on my walk....
There seem to be multiple different sources of water which lead to the river.
I'll start with my literal backyard.
There is a spring which wells up from the ground and someone was once silly enough to build a barn on top of it, before my parents bought this place.
The barn used to be sitting in about a foot of standing water. By now the foundation has become cracked and there is a large hole from the bottom corner of the barn. My Dad decided to dig a trench and lead this water out of the barn and into our garden. Eventually he stopped digging, and so the water meanders throughout our garden, not coalescing into a stream nor creating a huge marsh. It's just wet.
On the (presumably less human intervened) property just next to us is a large field of reeds. I think k most of them are bullrushes. When it was earlier in spring and the reeds weren't growing yet it looked like a dry dead field of nothing much. But then swamp flowers started to grow
Now the reeds are shoulder height on me.
I see neither standing water or any streams in this field.
However, there is a path through this yard that I suspect may have been slightly built up (and therefore disrupts the way water flows through the lamdscape).
On the downslope (West side) of this path, it seems that streams are coalescing. There are both reeds and plenty of willow trees in this area.
I don't walk back in this area for fear of trampling on too many important species, not to mention, getting wet feet.
This whole area is classified as a flood plain.
I used to think it is the river that floods the plain.
But now I wonder if this entire area is a water table, slowly feeding the river rather than the other way around.
And of course the water levels change with the seasons so I have seen the river flood the plains and in this way feed the marsh with all the melted snow from the spring melt off.
The path I walk on out of my backyard may have been slightly built up. But outside of my backyard is a public path that has certainly been built up; it's an old railway path that the town has converted to walking trails. There are culverts placed at presumably thoughtful intervals to drain the aforementioned streams into the further downslope towards the river.
So there are two areas running parallel to the river which have been built up in a way which disrupts how the water would naturally flow.
I have noticed this creates multiple different kinds of water environments (ponds, puddles, streams) and I don't know how many of these environments would naturally be there.
Different plants grow in all of these different environments. Some of them may be natural but I also suspect that some of the flowering bushes beside the railway trail have been planted there for aesthetic value.
So many complex relationships to reflect on!
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