My Walden – Willow Creek

 

As I have said, for the Covid quarantine I have been re-reading Walden.  Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 masterpiece manual of romantic transcendentalism and self-reliance.  Why not, what else is more appropriate now than sequestered nature-worship and introspection.  You are what you read. 

I had a similar Walden notion to remove myself from the hurly-burly of the real world and simplify my life.  I thought of escaping to a cabin in the woods, on a beach or on a lake in the mountains or in a cave in the desert or on a lonely and anonymous park bench in a big city where no one would bug me or know my name.  But that was too much effort and counter-intuitive to my desire to simplify.  So, I walked out my back door into the Snyderville meadow and sat on a shady, low bench besides bucolic Willow Creek and swore not to return to reality until I was good and ready.  Simple ain’t easy.

Willow Creek, flowing behind our house, supplies the canceling white noise and the music of our lives.  During long summers, when it sometimes dries up, we start to hear the noise of the neighborhood in our beds at nights; the barking dogs, the spraying sprinklers, the local highways.  But the stream is dynamic and changing and gives us something different to focus on, like the stars or an old time campfire or a radio show or TV in modern times.  Its not the Colorado River or the mighty Columbia, but it is here and it is ours.

It is our place and reason to pause, usually in the morning, before our to-do lists consume us and we run off with the chores of the day.  A place to sit and watch the sun come up, to chart its seasonal migrations and appreciate its warmth on cold winter mornings.  A place to sit and let the day come to you at its on pace.  A place where hummingbirds flutter backwards from the feeder and hover in front of your face quizzically before dashing away franticly to their next impetuous appointment.  A place where priorities automatically and effortlessly fall into place.  A place where the neighbors cat chases a vole, or an owl sits in a tree watching for mice, or a fox or coyote jogs pass obliviously.   A place to resist temptation to fix or adjust something or the constant desire to improve on things, our surroundings or accoutrements of our home.  A place where elk or deer, moose or cows, sheep or goats can visit infrequently but not unexpectedly.  A place to just be, for a minute, an hour, a day or a lifetime.

Willow creek used to meander lazily, diagonally across the Snyderville Meadow taking the direct path of least resistance to the northeast corner to join with Silver Creek, or Poison Creek from Park City.  It then headed naturally east towards Wanship and the Weber River, Echo Reservoir, Morgan, Ogden and the Great Salt Lake.  

Now it is plumbed to flow due north along the old PC railroad grade (and new sewer grade) where it could be diverted to flood-irrigate the hay meadows to the east.  It now flows unabated, in the absence of irrigation, due north towards East Canyon Creek and Reservoir before heading to its confluence with the mother Weber River at Morgan, circumventing 40 miles of the main river channel.  

Willow Creek now picks up additional underdrain flows from the resident subdivisions, draining the ancient wetlands and groundwater discharge areas, instead of recharging the huge organic sponge of the meadow that would drain slowly over the summer, keeping the meadow green and lush.  It is a gaining stream now instead of the historical loser.  This must be progress.

The Snyderville Meadow incised by Willow Creek is a tabletop, flat plane tilted to the northeast at three percent.  It is alluvial deposits dropped only 10,000 years ago at the end of the most recent ice-age when the glaciers in the upper mountains receded and washed out, dropping colluvial boulders up high, cobbles lower down and alluvial sandy gravels where the slopes flattened out at the bottom.  These free draining soils sit on top of the local sandstone and limestone bedrock and are capped with 5-10 feet of perfectly organic topsoil that is so rich it feels like peat moss.  

This is the fertile sponge that makes the meadow so verdant, where summer grasses grow as high as the belly of the Bison that used to roam here.  It became productive irrigated hayfields and pasture for the first settlers (Snyders) in support of the local mining communities.  Now it just sprouts subdivisions like they are going out of style.  

A few groves of Cottonwoods remain along the Section lines with only a quarter Section of alfalfa remaining that still send their roots deep, chasing the receding ground water.  Shallow rooted conifers still need a little help getting established in the developments but after a few years their roots dive deep and they are on their own.  These trees, along with the omniscient Aspen trees we landscape with, consume more unaccounted water than would ever run through our water meters for our billable domestic use.

So living here by Willow Creek, you do not need to go to the ends of the earth to entertain or remove yourself or give you things to do.  We spend all our time here in self stimulation, constantly entertaining and occupying ourselves.  Instead of us travelling the world, searching for someplace different but only being happy when we find a place just like home.    Wherever we go, there we are.  The constant is us. And Willow Creek.