Slug

On May 22, 2018May 22, 2018 By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Nature, Wildlife3 Comments

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I’d never seen such a collection before. Driven by the rising floodwaters to the tallest, tippiest blades of grass, the slugs clung together for life. As the water they hovered over was above my waders, there wasn’t much I could do for them. It’s possible they kept their gluey bodies out of the river, but as it only kept rising for hours after I left them, I rather doubt it.

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I know little about slugs, but a bit of research suggests that these might be examples of arion subfuscus. They’re certainly plentiful and by far the slug I most commonly find along the Monocacy. I have a feeling that these recent floods won’t keep their numbers down for long.

Another group of animals displaced by the water are the white-tailed deer, who have been forced from the woods into the meadows just outside of the floodplain. I would say that they’re inconvenienced except that they hardly seem to care when a human walks by, even when holding on to an overzealous dog at the end of a leash.

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“Do we have to move?” they seem to ask. “Really?”

At any rate, they’re better off than the slugs. The waters have receded for the most part, even though yesterday’s miraculous sun disappeared behind rain clouds again today. If this post seems dull, it’s because I am as well after all of these gray days. If I were inclined to make horrible puns, I might even say I’m a bit sluggish. (But even writing that felt wrong).

Rivers from the Sky

On May 16, 2018May 16, 2018 By trashonthemonocacyIn Frederick, Maryland, Monocacy River, Reflections2 Comments

Clearly I wrote about flooding too soon this year. Last night, my sons called me to the driveway to look up at the sky. It was awash in clouds; high cirrus behind monstrous — but still white — cumulonimbus, their rapid swelling and blossoming revealed and backlit by the setting sun. To the north, a slit of clear sky was still visible against the horizon. Wisps of cloud, mere suggestions of tornados, reached toward the earth. The day had been stifling, the air choked with humidity and heat, and we could still feel that latent energy as a small breeze began to stir. It was beautiful, but not frightening.

An hour later, the street had turned into a large creek, and hail the size of dimes and playing marbles lined the driveway. A constant stream of ice and rain fell from the clouds, which continued to settle and grow over us. My raised garden filled with muddy water, and the peonies bowed their heads against the onslaught. Since our house is built on the high ground in the neighborhood, the boys and I could watch the churning storm in relative safety, our only danger the slippery floors created by the hail and rain driven through open doors, but the streets of Frederick city overflowed, roads closed, and buildings flooded. Our phones constantly sounded with alarms and warnings. My oldest, who has always loved extreme weather (in kindergarten, he told his teacher he wanted to be a storm chaser, and all he wanted for Christmas were books and videos and posters of tornadoes), begged to be allowed to ride his bike to the river. Our faces must have spoken volumes, because he gave up the argument much more quickly than usual.

This morning, he woke up early to check out the river, and I followed behind him shortly after. The sidewalks were scattered with leaves and frail limbs and branches, and the paved paths along the river required rubber boots and waders in spots. The informal dirt paths had turned into small streams in some places and disappeared entirely into the river in others.

Worms writhed in the puddles, and tadpoles found temporary sidewalk homes in the overflowing waters of the vernal ponds. I hope that they’ll find their way home on their own, but the forecast suggests they may not need to for some time. Rain, rain, and more thunder and rain is expected for the rest of the week.

But I wait. And wonder. Always wonder.

When It Rains

On April 20, 2018April 20, 2018 By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Nature3 Comments

When the Monocacy overflows its banks, my oldest son pulls on his waders, mounts his bike, and speeds to the river, frantic lest he miss a moment of the spectacle, but, as he apparently needs someone with whom to share the wonder (and, amazingly, his active Instagram account doesn’t seem to count), he even more frantically insists that I come along. Secretly grateful to be wanted for something other than a ride to the airport, I follow along, prodded by the intermittent “hurry up!”s made necessary by my bikeless status. Someone, after all, needs to hold the dog’s leash and stash her poop bags, not to mention stop to clean up once in a while.

I haven’t looked at any flood charts, but my son and I reckon that this week the river was the highest it’s been since a stretch of rainy days in March 2014. While the “island” wasn’t completely underwater, as we have seen in the past, it was shrunken by the swollen waters. The bluebells had become aquatic flowers, and flotillas of logs, branches, leaf debris and trash (I could make out plastic bottles, the distinctive red of a coke can, and the occasional flash of artificial color) drifted by at a frantic pace. A pair of darting swallows and the voice of a nearby kingfisher made me wonder about the other animals, not lucky enough to have wings, whose holes and homes were now underwater.

Err,um, could you like, maybe, give us a lift?

And I do mean to include those animals with more than two or four feet, like this rather unfortunate spider and possibly doomed caterpillar. Honestly, it’s been a rough spring for the insects and arachnids, in pupal form or otherwise, what with the snow and lingering cold. And now this? Bother.

Not far into our explorations, we encountered a very large snapping turtle that certainly didn’t mind the extra water. My son poked it with a stick (of course), which provoked it into an aggressive hiss, which, in turn, provoked our Rosie-pup into lunging after it in our defense. Knowing that she would lose that battle, I held tight to the leash and suffered her whimpering frustration as the beast disappeared into the muddy depths.

The snapping turtle is here somewhere: trust me.

Next week: cleaning it all up.

Cars and Time’s Tricks

On September 5, 2017September 5, 2017 By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Parenthood, Reflections5 Comments

One of the landmarks on my regular walks along the river is an old car frame, belly-up and tires attached, half-submerged at the bottom of a steep bank. Over a year ago, when the brown turf of winter was beginning to green, I took a photo of the wreck.

Today, stepping carefully into a flowering of touch-me-nots, I took another, wondering whether I would note any change.

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Despite the several minor floods that have occurred between then and now, it appears the only real changes are the cosmetic sorts that seasons bring: grass where there was mud, a darker, clearer hue of water, and the dappled light of a leafy canopy. As a former archaeologist, I keep hoping to witness its gradual burial, until it is entirely consumed by the earth, a curious artifact rather than a niggling eyesore.

But time works at its own pace on the earth, building and eroding in thousands and hundreds of years rather than months or days. Or, at least, it has in the past. It seems, lately, that we may not be able to rely always on what we have known or taken for granted when it comes to the shape and speed of time’s passage as it plays out in currents, storms, and the creeping of tides. For now, though, that old car is suspended in time and mud, exposed and broken, watching the seasons wash over its carcass. Slowly, to my eyes, but quickly, to others.

I find time treacherous and slippery. Some days I wish away before they’re over, but others I want to magic alongside me forever. Sending my boys to school today reminds me of this. One is in high school now, the other only two years behind, and they are changing, growing up, less willing to be part of my ramblings. They measure time in minutes and hours — it stretches out before them — and they have little patience when I stop for a moment just to look.

Especially at a rusty, abandoned old car.

Addiction on the Monocacy

On May 4, 2017May 5, 2017 By trashonthemonocacyIn Current Events and Issues, Monocacy River, Reflections9 Comments

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I climbed through the pile of debris, a great mass of limbless logs, sticks, mud, and leaves driven together in a recent flood, in order to grab the Frappuccino bottle for my trash bag. It was only at the last moment, as I replaced my phone in the back pocket of my jeans, that I noticed the snake. It was still, watching me closely, apparently convinced (and rightly so) that it hadn’t yet been seen. Not wanting to startle it, I made a show of noisily stepping back and around to pick up the bottle from the other side, and it took the opportunity to slither under a branch, deeper into the jumbled mound.

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As I continued picking my way around the river, I stepped a little more carefully, as much to avoid falling through camouflaged holes as to avoid stepping on an unassuming reptile, and I encountered more trash than I had in many weeks. This isn’t altogether uncommon after a stretch of rainy weather, which both prevents me from my work and drives more trash into the rising waters of the Monocacy as it rushes downstream. I was actually grateful to find an empty cement bucket to carry the excess garbage from my three overfilled plastic bags.

Later, as I shifted the bucket and bags to my left hand to reach for a cigarette wrapper caught in the upper branch of a fallen tree, my thoughts rambled in their disjointed way from beer cans to plants, soda bottles, and snakes, and I realized that my trash-collection was yielding a veritable garden of vices. But, as I thought of these vices — drinking, smoking, gambling — I decided, no, I won’t call these vices — that term expresses a degree of moral judgment that I don’t feel — but addictions. They’re there, these addictions, all of them, their evidence littering the river, whether chemical (beer cans, cigar wrappers, and soda bottles/alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine) or habitual (lotto cards, styrofoam, and plastic bags/gambling, technology, and food).

Nationally and locally, addiction is a major topic of concern. Abuse of opioids, and fentanyl in particular, has become an epidemic, reaching crisis levels in Frederick County, where, according to the Frederick News-Post, “despite the increasing prevalence of overdose-reversal drugs, opioid overdoses and deaths both nearly tripled in 2016 compared to 2015” and “another 43 overdoses — four of them fatal — were reported by the end of the first two months of 2017” (April 27, 2017). In February, a pedestrian not far from “my” island on the Monocacy found a body washed up along one of its banks. An April 13, 2017 article in the Frederick-News-Post reported that, while the young man, Matthew Thomas Delash, died from drowning and hyopthermia, “intoxication from fentanyl and N-ethylpentylone were also complicating factors.” His family wrote an honest, heartfelt obituary for him, expressing the pain and power of addiction as they sought to acknowledge the true person, a generous son and a friend, behind it. When I first heard about this man’s death, I wasn’t sure whether to include it in this, my loose account of life on the Monocacy River. He and his life were not trash, and it is a hard thing that he was lost in the waters of such a beautifully ugly place as this urban river can be. But to ignore his death is even more of an impossibility. He, like the rest of us who live along its winding banks, is a part of the river and its story.

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Revelation and Rambling

On March 22, 2017March 22, 2017 By trashonthemonocacyIn Environment, Monocacy River, Wildlife7 Comments

This week has been a revelation. The melting snow has pushed the Monocacy just a little over its usual borders. It flowed from streams, trickled from sunny banks, and washed in from streets and drains. As the swelling river turned a muddy brown, the land returned to a green slightly brighter than when we’d last seen it, before the snow fell.

For most of the week, I was exiled from “the island” by the river’s rising waters, left to gaze longingly at the carpet of green, where I knew early spring flowers were blooming. It’s the most wondrous time of year for the place, when it seems most clean and bright and promising (I’ve been known to call it “Fairyland”). But my side of the river isn’t without its own curiosities.

Again and again this winter, I’ve meant to write about the Canada Geese that travel over us in noisy flocks at dusk. It’s a particularly wintry phenomenon that I associate with clear skies and bracing cold. It seemed only fitting, then, that on winter’s last day, I watched about a hundred of them take off from the soccer field at Riverside Park.

As they flew over the Monocacy Boulevard bridge, I noticed a Red-shouldered Hawk perched on a taller tree in the forest retention area (which got some much-needed attention only last December).

It’s just a smudge in the distance in the picture that I took of it, and the geese merely specks, but with my naked eye it cut a regal silhouette, and I got a glimpse of its burnished chest when it glided from its perch, crossed low over the path in front of me, and headed into a stand of trees on “the island,” well out of my reach. Despite knowing that it was unlikely that I’d spot the hawk again, I hurried to the edge of the river and searched in the direction I thought it had gone. As expected, I didn’t find the bird, but I did see a tall, white American sycamore, which reminded me that I was supposed to take a picture of my favorite sycamore (because, yes, I have one) for the Maryland Biodiversity Project’s American Sycamore Facebook Blitz (because, yes, they had one). I was too late for the blitz, but I set off down the path the next day to photograph “my” tree anyway.

Isn’t it beautiful? It’s branches like gnarled, work-weary hands, reaching for the sky?

It even makes trash look good:

(Needless to say, among the things revealed by the melting snow was quite a bit of trash, and I couldn’t help but think that the juxtaposition of these two things meant that someone had a pretty wild night followed by a pretty rough morning:

Or maybe it was just a few ill-conceived hours.)

Rodents of Unusual Skill

On March 8, 2017March 8, 2017 By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Photography, Wildlife12 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I diverged from my regular rounds along the Monocacy and came upon a young tree trunk that looked as if it had been hewn by a wood-carver.

I took note and walked a little farther along to find another tree that had been similarly cut. Now strongly suspicious, I stepped a little closer to the steep riverbank, scanned the waters, and found what I expected: a dam.

Such logjams are not uncommon. They occur naturally after flood waters push down and collect fallen trees, branches, leaves and other debris (i.e. trash) against obstructions in the river, such as boulders, bridges, or small islands. I had a feeling that in this case I was seeing the work of another river dweller, one of earth’s largest rodents, the North American Beaver (Castor canadensis). Just to be sure, I revisited the area yesterday and found that even more trees had been felled.

While I would very much like to meet the beavers, I’ve a feeling that they’d prefer to avoid me (I live in Maryland, after all, not Narnia), so I had to make due with knowing that they were nearby and looking about their home. Unfortunately, the light was horrible, flat and almost numbing, so I had to play a little with the paltry light meter on my phone when I tried to photograph these industrious beavers’ environment. None of the results are accurate.

Besides frustrating myself with my limited camera, I managed to gather an overflowing bagful of trash, some of it unusual (the foam from a bike seat!). I don’t usually get noticed, but today a man observed me and remarked that I had an impossible job. “Just a little bit every day,” I answered. He just kept walking.

Washed Away

On May 4, 2016May 4, 2016 By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy RiverLeave a comment

“I guess you haven’t gotten to the river lately,” my son’s doctor said to me this morning. My younger son, doing his best impression of a weary adult, sighed, rolled his eyes, and replied, “No, we’ve been there every day.” I smiled ands shrugged. “Yep,” I said, “Every day.”

Although I claimed yesterday as a day off, in the end, it wasn’t. When the boys got home from school, my older son was eager to see how high the water had risen, and, despite some complaining from his younger brother about how we wouldn’t really be able to do anything, we set out with our bikes and bags. We found that the Monocacy had risen high enough to fill even its secondary streams up to their highest banks. Passage to the island was impossible, our usual dam and bridges submerged 6 feet under rushing, brown water. Newly fallen trees, too, blocked our passage, gathering in their dark limbs the leaves, seeds and small sticks that will become the little mouse boats my son gathers once the water recedes and the sun dries the mud.

Every flood reshapes the river. I can see why my oldest is so eager to see it after the rain. The “hideout” will be the same in general outline, but so different in particulars. The force of the high waters will undo what he has done, what he has built, and so will offer the chance to do something new. He sees opportunity, a world wiped clean. His brother, on the other hand, sees the destruction of his efforts, misses what was, and feels discouraged about having to start over again. This conflict of ideas is as constant as the rain lately.

For me, the flood waters will leave behind, on the shores I have so diligently cleaned, trash from miles upstream. There are two ways to look at this: I can be frustrated that I have to start all over again, or I can be pleased that I have new work. Today I choose to be pleased.

The Process

On March 10, 2016April 10, 2016 By trashonthemonocacyIn Environment, Monocacy River, Trash1 Comment

The Setting

The Problem

The Conclusion

Our stretch of warmth has continued, and the evenings are lengthening, which has meant that my walks aren’t so solitary anymore. I should be glad that we’ve reached the magical 65-degree mark that pulls everyone from their homes, but I’m enough of an introvert (and self-suspected misanthropist) that I’m actually more anxious and annoyed. So, back to the trash.

Yesterday, my very first pick-up was large enough to fill my entire trash bag and force me into early retirement. It’s just as well, because, as you can see in the first photo, the sun was setting by the time I finally wrangled the boys out the door. There was only time enough to visit what the boys call “the hideout,”which isn’t really very hidden at all. It’s just off a public trail, but so far below it that it can feel secluded. The climb down to it becomes more treacherous after each flood, as the water erodes away the soft earth held together only by the roots of imperiled trees. It is these roots that we must use to reach the hideout, and they make such uneven steps that I daily expect someone to twist an ankle. At the bottom is a stream, separated from the main river by a small “island” of trees. The stream remains connected to the main river unless there is a drought, but the water flow is never tremendous. Unless there is a flood, I can wade across it in my green rubber boots, which is what I needed to do last night to retrieve my one large piece of garbage.

Under the roots of a decaying tree, half-submerged in the water, was a tangle of sticks, leaves and something else, white and, from what I could tell, plastic. (See the second photo, above). As I approached, I noticed tiny minnows shifting beneath the water, illuminated by the slanting light of the setting sun. My green boots sank in the mud and my movements, stirring up the muck of winter, quickly obscured them. To avoid falling into the slightly deeper water near the white plastic thingy, I used a stick to dislodge it from its nest of leaves and twigs. It was heavier than I imagined, but I managed to toss it onto the rocky peninsula that extended from the riverbank, where I shook it out to reveal what we see in the third photo, a big old bag of Purina horse feed, weighed down by the gallons of mud it acquired on its trip down the Monocacy River.

After draining it as much as I could, I stuffed it in my trash bag, where it sat drying while I engaged in a few light-saber duels with my youngest. His stick was less rotten than mine, so he won. I tried to persuade him that he should cheer me up by carrying the trash bag home, but he wasn’t buying that argument. My arm still hurts.

Boats for Mice

On March 9, 2016April 3, 2016 By trashonthemonocacyIn Family, Monocacy River1 Comment

It’s been warm and clear the past 2 days, which has allowed the recent floodwaters to recede and the debris left behind to dry in the sun. As this happens, lots of bundles – leaves, grass and, often, trash, tightly bound by dried mud – appear on the tips of tree branches, like mittens. One boy I know likes to slide the bundles off and let them go down the river. He imagines them as tiny boats for even tinier mice.

TRASH ON THE MONOCACY

Tag: Flooding