Past and Present Observations

Matthew C. Roberts is a writer who lives near Padden Creek on the south side of Bellingham. He’d like to thank WWU environmental literature professor Ning Yu for supporting this essay.

Part 2

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue…
 —William Wordsworth

The wildness of the 40-acre corridor near Chuckanut Creek (known as Arroyo Park) is somewhat surprising considering its closeness to housing developments and the ever reaching urban arm of Fairhaven. Arroyo is a Spanish word meaning a deep gully cut by an intermittent stream. And when you stand at creek level and look up at the scouring that’s occurred over time, you can see how it has earned this name. Even through all these epic events the creek endures. It has returned nicely to a state of second and third growth forest. And even though there are trails carved along Chuckanut Creek, often used by runners, equestrians and mountain bikers, the park holds a lush pristine character. You can sit on a bench before the footbridge that crosses the creek and look up into the hillside and see relics of old-growth—their stumps are eight to 10 feet across (my arms span about six and a half feet and there were at least two feet to either side) with ferns and new saplings sprouting from what were once giants.

I’m impressed with the forest that is there now. Some of the trees must reach nearly 200 feet, creating a dense canopy where very little light penetrates. But when it does, it enlivens a world of phosphorescence. The mosses shimmer like olivine in the infrequent sunlight that passes through holes in the coniferous and deciduous canopy.

I remember a day when I was hiking around the canyon and found a choker cable half-buried in layers of decomposed organic matter (the forest’s version of carpet), and held tightly to its rusted chords imagining the steam-winch that pulled logs from the canyon to be hauled away by the Fairhaven and Southern Railway. There was also at one time a bridge built in 1911 for trolleys that spanned the canyon posting down into the creek itself. You can still see the massive concrete footings from where the old stairway was on the Interurban (before crossing Old Samish Road) and others—they’re down in the gorge anchored near the creek’s edges and are now coated with various mosses and sword ferns, which remain the only evidence of this leftover relic. Sometimes in the evening, I like to stand above the canyon and recreate the old railroad bridge by sketching its invisible girders that spanned the Arroyo Canyon some 90 years ago.

The Arroyo Canyon corridor behaves like an incubator for all the species and plants living beneath its canopy of branches, especially for the multitude of mosses, lichens and fungi that are far from dormant this time of year. The maple trees that reach their arms over the water still hang ornaments of fall’s past, brown-dead leaves that shake slightly in the wind. The wind is peculiar here. You would think it would be void of turbulent air because of its subterranean features, and most of the time it is, but what happens is the gorge acts like a tunnel for surges of temperate air. There’s a rhythm to these intervals of Paleo winds and the ancient currents that are still telling their stories of old and new. When you sit here and breathe in the damp air, you also breathe in its history through denseness of evaporating water-molecules, and wonder how much it had changed.

It’s raining winter, and hard to get excited about diving my hands into 45 degree water in the hopes that tipping a rock or two—making sure I disturb as little as possible and return the stone to its exact location—will reveal the hidden lives of aquatic insect nymphs. I am by no means an expert on entomology but own a couple of books on the subject. I often refer to Ernest Shwiebert’s “Nymphs,” if for nothing else, to look at amazing full-page water-colored illustrations of stonefly, mayfly and caddis fly nymphs. I have to admit, though, I’ve studied the lives of aquatic insects to help me with my hobby of tying flies, in the hopes that I might accurately imitate the creatures trout consume. I’ve found once I began exploring bugs that it’s an endless and fascinating world to study. For the purposes of this essay, I wanted to see what food source sustains the resident cutthroat and rainbow trout in the Arroyo Park corridor of Chuckanut Creek.

My first attempt was successful; I found a few caddis fly larvae (order Trichoptera) clinging to the side of a half-submerged rock, at the edge of a swirling back eddy. I pulled the cream-colored larvae by its head from its bark case to take a closer examination of the insect. It had constructed the protective case to open at one end, referred to by entomologists as a purse-case, of the family Limnephildae. The caddis larvae are like carpenters who scavenge their surroundings for building materials in the form of bark and granules of sand. These insects have a dark head with claws used for crawling and picking at salmon carcasses; some caddis flies are strictly carnivores and others omnivores. They form their cases by gluing organic particles together with their self-produced bonding agent “chitin.” The case forms a hard protective cement-like mold that helps protect its soft grub body. Caddis fly larvae are usually found suctioned to the underside of a softball-sized rock (as in this case) or logs near moving current. An interesting fact I discovered was the caddis fly rebuilds its case with each molt like a crayfish or Dungeness crab.

Often times you can see remnants of these hollow, abandoned cases revealed in low-water conditions of summer; and imagine their oscillating flight, as they copulate on overhanging branches, or flutter in clouds, surviving only for weeks or even months as adults. After copulation, which usually lasts for a minute, the female will deposit her eggs by dapping or diving beneath the water from mid-flight. Then the process is completed, and like the Pacific salmon, caddis flies will die after procreation.

My other find, further downstream, was a small, gray mayfly nymph, about one centimeter in length, suctioned to the underside of a bowling ball-sized rock in moving current. It had small claws coming off its abdomen and three whiskered tails protruding from its rear. The mayfly crawled around the rock as I kept rotating it to keep up with the speed of the insect. Mayflies belong to the order Ephemeroptera, which means in Latin terms “short-lived wings.” They climb to the top of rocks to feed (some are herbivores, others detritivores) and then retreat back to their underwater dens. Some mayflies are burrowers and others are crawlers. All mayflies develop gills along their abdomens that pulsate to flush out water flowing through them, which also makes them an indicator species for water quality. The mayflies do not build cases like the caddis fly larvae do; they are considered “clingers” and scavengers as they hinge from one rock to another allowing the currents to guide them from stone to stone.

It is fascinating to watch mayflies when they mate. Their flight is unmistakable, because they mate in swarms, and unlike the flutter of the caddis, the mayflies yoyo vertically, up and down, up and down. A close up of a general adult mayfly will reveal an outline of upright venerated semi-translucent wings with a swooping half-moon body and tail protruding upwards when resting. They also have pencil-dot eyes connected to a set of legs with claws.

After copulation the female drops her eggs on the water’s surface and they sink to the bottom, where they may live from weeks to years depending on type of species. There is always that chance you might arrive at water’s edge during a warm afternoon and happen upon one of these fabled hatches, and if you do, you can watch them as they summit a rock, or any object near the creek’s shore that can be used as a launch pad. And if you wait long enough, you’ll see them shed their exoskeletons and dry their wings, to begin an ephemeral life among the air-breathing world.

I continued to casually scavenge the shores for insect life, oblivious to the rain by now, but only where it was accessible for me to reach the creek without wading or hacking through the temperate tangle of overhanging branches and plants. The aquatic insect life in the canyon section was sporadic at best. But considering the way I was going about it had its own implications. I wasn’t equipped for a day of fording the creek, meaning I had no hip-boots on, but I did manage to wear a Gore-Tex rain jacket, the lifeline for many Northwesterners who believe winter is still a time to be outdoors—but in a way maybe that’s also what made me stand back and focus on what was in front of me and not in the distance. Without being able to ford the creek in waders, I concentrated my insect finding efforts on the cobbled shoreline that is easily accessible from the Arroyo trail.

This day surprised me because I had not seen any birds yet. It seemed strange to me, and as I was getting up to leave, I couldn’t remember being on the stream without seeing my friend the dipper, also known as the water ouzel (Cinclus mexicanus). Then, as if I had manifested its appearance, one flew downstream and landed on a moss-covered boulder in front of me. I stood there minutes longer beneath the sheltering boughs of the cedar to watch the bird’s unmistakable behavior of bobbing up and down. It began to tread the sand shoreline, snorkeling a shallow eddy where it dove under only to reappear downstream with what looked like a white larvae within its small beak.

Throughout the many years I’ve spent on rivers and creeks, the dipper is the only bird I’ve come to understand. The bird is a solitary creature with feathers painted slate gray to merge with surrounding river rock. It’s a fearless creature when it comes to diving beneath the most violent rapids—rapids an experienced oarsman might choose to portage around—only to see the bird appear downstream then pop to the surface like a cork in a quiet eddy with a salmon fry pinched between its beak.

The dippers are known to build nests under bridges, behind waterfalls and in eroded cliff-sides. The nests are made of moss on the outside and dried grass lining inside. The dipper is always a cherished friend met with gratitude on those lonely days of hiking and fishing. Sometimes we will fish together mile after river mile, while respecting our acceptable distance. I admire the skills of such a loner bird, who calls the rivers and creeks its home day after day. The renowned naturalist Edwin Way Teale once wrote in “Autumn Across America,” about the song he heard sung by the great dipper of the west:

It progressed with trills and warbles, whistled notes, long cadences and flutelike phrases....Some notes were liquid like the gurgling of the stream, others were short and harsh like the grating together of stones.

A person who spends any amount of time near water would be hard pressed not to notice or hear the small gray diving bird. And if you are one of the fortunate few who hike the edges of creeks and rivers, you might be treated to its song (as Teale describes beautifully) that it carries year-round, reverberating off the dense canyon walls of the rainforests.

Creeks have become famous these days. Developers use the names of creeks to sell their condo projects, cities and counties name roads after them, even businesses are not exempt from this display of plagiarism. I think if you asked the creek if this would be acceptable behavior, you would get an answer that pertained to life and death. The subsequent reply would be, “who is benefiting from my name, and how is that benefiting me?”

The entities mentioned are kind enough to repay the creek by encroaching on the nominal riparian-buffer zone to give the condo-homeowner a scenic view. All the while the runoff from storm drains, newly built parking lots, and the scouring of hillsides all leach into the creek’s currents carrying with it elevated phosphate levels from fertilizers and pesticides, excessive amounts of silt and mud (which I don’t think you can buy enough rolls of visqueen held down by sandbags to mitigate the runoff). In addition, fecal-coliform and other pathogenic organisms enter the waterway from failed septic systems and domestic pet waste, harming aquatic creatures that depend on non-toxic creek water for its survival. Now is this gratitude or what? And if that’s not enough, we even give these polluters an enigmatic name called “non-point pollution.” This pollution in turn kills insects, resident trout, salmon fry, and animals and birds that use the creek’s waters as a sanctuary.

The proof of this abuse exists in Chuckanut Creek’s estuary, Mud Bay. All you have to do is glance upwards to the development on the hill to realize where this “non-point” pollution is coming from. Unfortunately, now you cannot harvest shellfish in Mud Bay due to toxic algae blooms related to paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). This is apparently caused by non-point pollution factors associated with careless human impact that inspires toxicity. Somehow to me this doesn’t seem like a “natural” phenomenon.

Chuckanut Creek ends where a new chain of life begins. The creek becomes slow in gradient as it winds its last bends through a saltwater marsh before it merges with the ebb and flood tides of Mud Bay near Chuckanut Village. There’s an old relic of a homestead that watches over this last section of creek, a tribute to the old pioneer days. Back then, loggers used Mud Bay as a soak pond and transport depot for big wood. There was profit to be made from the old-growth timber in and around Chuckanut Creek.

Through all of these factors Chuckanut Creek is holding on, somehow, with help from the people who contributed to this essay, and many others who believe in conserving the natural places that surround us. The future of the creek’s life is dependent upon the projected detrimental developments planned around Chuckanut Mountain. Much of this property is owned by private landowners who need to consider how their decisions will impact the local community and wild animals who call this corridor home. And there is always the hope that these private landowners, developers and homeowners will become stream stewards and help conserve this diverse ecosystem that also contributes to their own well-being beyond a monetary value. §