Earth Day activities include many things like cleaning up trash from waterways, planting wildflowers that support pollinators, or just taking a walk to enjoy the beauty of nature. I planted some wildflower seeds today but didn’t get to the trash that ended up in the ditch yet. At least this creek didn’t have any cans or bottles floating in it.
Creek in Springtime
Although the winds were really gusting today, they were not so bad in the woods so it made a nice day to hike along a creek bed as it was being decorated by falling leaves.
Autumn Creek Walk
The strong winds have stripped a lot of leaves from the trees and today’s heavy rain was washing them away.
Washing Away Color
The snow melt slowed today as temperatures were cold overnight and didn’t get to freezing today but the prior two days melting has streams and rivers overflowing. Even the little creek at the farm, which you can hop across in the summer, looks more a river. Now if that refroze to a hard surface, it would be a fun place to go ice skating.
Creek Overflowing
I had some spots of slight rippling water on my cement today, although it wasn’t flowing water since it was frozen ice instead causing me do some unplanned sliding. I would rather wade through this little creek during a summer day than playing in the cold.
Gentle Flowing Creek
Tucked in an area near Baraboo, Wisconsin, Skillet Creek cut a 30 to 40 foot narrow canyon through the Cambrian sandstone, forming a series of potholes and waterfalls in an area called Pewits Nest. The name came from a mid-1800s eccentric mechanic who built his workshop into the cliffs using the creek to power a water wheel to turn lathes for repairing or manufacturing equipment. This dwelling resembled the nest of a phoebe (or peewit, an earlier name for this bird), hence dubbed by early settlers the ‘Peewit’s Nest.
On my visit to the ‘nest’ in the fall, the small flow of water wouldn’t turn a big water wheel as the average flow is .8 cubic feet per second (unlike Niagara Falls which is 85,000 cfs) but the gentle current caused fallen leaves to swirl around. There is no remaining evidence of the workshop and the state officially designated the natural area as Pewits Nest in 1985.
Pewits Nest
The last Friday in April in National Arbor Day (from the Latin arbor, meaning tree), a holiday in which individuals and groups are encouraged to plant and care for trees, although some states observe it on different dates to coincide with the local area’s best planting times. For instance, Hawaii celebrates it on the first Friday of November, and Alaskans celebrate it on the third Monday in May.
The first American Arbor Day was originated in Nebraska City, Nebraska by J. Sterling Morton who had moved from Michigan to 160 treeless acres in Nebraska felt the state’s landscape and economy would benefit from the wide-scale planting of trees. On April 10, 1872, an estimated one million trees were planted in Nebraska.
This poor old willow tree has seen better days and lost many big limbs last year, reducing the shade which the beef cattle love in the summertime, so planting some trees in this area probably be appreciated by the critters.
Old Willow Tree
With temperatures finally above freezing, I was able to create “rivers” in my driveway like I used to do as a kid to drain the puddles away. The predicted warm week just might melt the snow and have rivers running again but it is too early for the trees to leaf out yet.
Downstream from Lost Creek Falls
This weekend is Wisconsin’s Winter Free Fishing so you can fish anywhere in Wisconsin without a license or trout stamp. This includes all inland waters and Wisconsin’s side of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River. And this year, the weather will actually be fairly nice with temperatures around the freezing mark.
But I never been much of an ice fishing person as sitting around a hole on a hunk of ice waiting for a fish to swim by your line doesn’t overly thrill me. Half the fun of fishing is seeing if you can throw your line in the spot you want (without getting snagged in the tree behind you or the stump in the water), but I also like see other critters swimming about or spotting wildflowers along the path to the fishing spot and where I can sit on a warm sunny bank so I think I will wait until the free summer fishing weekend in June instead.
Fishing Weekend
In some churches, such as the Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic churches, today is the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. The pictures often show them standing in water during the baptism but it would be an extremely short service and a definitely a chilly one if it occurred in January in Wisconsin. And a baptism by immersion would definitely take your breath away, assuming you find a river with open water.
A Chilly January Stream
