The ice has cleared on the river, and it is unbelievable how low the river is. We have never seen the river this low in the spring for eleven years. The grass was very dry and exploded with quick and complete burns. Typically, the islands have some flooding over a winter melt cycle, but this year nothing. The extremes keep setting records. Eight record floods in eleven years and now very strange spring thaw....very strange.
Once the grass has burned, the bobcat will collect previous flood logs and clear areas, do road repairs by spreading thin layers of gravel. The pup is running free again with the snow melted. The joy of her running permeates her spirit. She thinks she is a bad asz as she chases geese and squirrels.
A Pottawatomie camp was on the west shore two hundred years ago as the river systems served as native american interstates. Lincoln twenty years later was chasing Chief Blackhawk with Illinois militia, and native Americans were gathered under the Indian removal act. In the 1840s European settlers began to settle the once Indian lands.
As I walk in this natural beauty rich with history of man's interaction with the river system, I realize how man has so screwed the pooch. We collect the litter and the garbage thrown in this beautiful river and restore the praire hoping that this beauty can be preserved for future generations. Nature has the ability to renew, and we so easily forget the damage to the same and the people who lived here before us, but in the end the beauty of the same is mesmerizing and an answer in and of itself.
Once the grass has burned, the bobcat will collect previous flood logs and clear areas, do road repairs by spreading thin layers of gravel. The pup is running free again with the snow melted. The joy of her running permeates her spirit. She thinks she is a bad asz as she chases geese and squirrels.
A Pottawatomie camp was on the west shore two hundred years ago as the river systems served as native american interstates. Lincoln twenty years later was chasing Chief Blackhawk with Illinois militia, and native Americans were gathered under the Indian removal act. In the 1840s European settlers began to settle the once Indian lands.
As I walk in this natural beauty rich with history of man's interaction with the river system, I realize how man has so screwed the pooch. We collect the litter and the garbage thrown in this beautiful river and restore the praire hoping that this beauty can be preserved for future generations. Nature has the ability to renew, and we so easily forget the damage to the same and the people who lived here before us, but in the end the beauty of the same is mesmerizing and an answer in and of itself.