Patterning

Patterning

February 14, 18, 19, 2019

February 14

February 18

I could continue to write about how water flow has changed over time and affected the dynamics of the Cottonwood Pond area. I can continually write about this because it is a continuous process and, indeed, has been fascinating to watch (especially when I reflect on how things looked several, or even a few, years ago). This winter, including recent times, there have been so many heavy rains - sometimes over frozen ground, which make the water flow faster over the surface. Add to that the melting from occasional snow and ice.

But I find that what fascinates me the most when I go down there are the patterns I see that constantly change, and the designs they create. Sometimes they illustrate past events, as when designs in the mud reflect a recent strong push of water. Sometimes they predict the future, as when a spot becomes dammed with debris, forcing water and erosion in different directions. Sometimes the pattern is within something animated at the moment, such as rippling water.

Patterns are created in the designs resulting from collected debris, and by objects of contrasting shapes that fall on, or are pushed onto, the debris.

They are in the leaves of the forest floor, smashed by water or animals, touched by crystals of snow, ice, or frost, fluffed by the wind, or sinking toward sameness as they gradually become soil.

They are in the shadows cast by trees on sharply sunny days, and the softened angles of tree trunks on cloudy days. They are in the reflections of the canopy on the water below.

They are in the textures of bark, varying according to tree species, but also by the degree of decay, and effects from what they have experienced in their lives.

They are in the changing patterns of rotting logs, the holes burrowed into them, the chips scraped from them, the mosses growing on them, and the fungi fruiting from the mycelia within them.

They appear through the tunneling, burrowing, scratching, and padding-about of animals.

They are in the patterns of birdsong, the tapping of woodpeckers, and the scraping sounds of squirrel teeth on black walnuts.

They are in the ever-changing view of Cottonwood Pond and its environs, a landscape constantly repainted and re-sculpted by water, wind, ice, growth, death, and the actions of others.

Cottonwood Pond and the water that flows into it

Weeds in the Seep smashed down, indicating the direction of recent flow

"Snow shadow" beneath the Cottonwood Trunk

Along the Creek

Creek - worm holes, worm trails 

Damming by fallen Cottonwood root segments (left) changing the pattern of sediment deposition in Cottonwood Pond

The Cottonwood's Root Ball Bottom and its resulting Mud Pile below (kind of looks like a giant owl emerging from the earth)

Black Walnut on the speckled mud, and the patterns of grass roots exposed by rushing water

Exploded Sycamore seed ball near the Creek and Cottonwood Pond

Moss on the rotting Barkless Log (over the Inlet to Cottonwood Pond) with pale specks of fresh wood scattered across (from a woodpecker creating a hole in the Broken Blue Beech above here)

Different actions/different patterns: ice fingers developed around an old stick in the water, topped with fresh sprinkles of wood from a woodpecker's work above - and the stark reflections of the canopy on the water of Cottonwood Pond