Spring is near in Texas and the weather is beginning to warm up; so we think. The weather has been more bipolar than usual. One day the weather is eighty degrees and everyone is swarming Barton Springs and Zilker Park, and the next day everyone is bundling up in long sleeve shirts and jackets. Nevertheless, the weather is beginning to warm up and people are becoming more active outdoors. This is especially apparent at Blunn Creek amongst the brush and slowly moving creek. Trash invades this area, soda bottles, beer bottles, chip bags, etc. People are just leaving trash around like this preserved area is a dump. This reminds me when Aldo Leopold said, “we have no land ethic yet” (Pg. 211).
Still, the water slowly moves down the creek. The water level is low due to the lack of rain we have in Texas. In some parts of the creek moss just invades the creek. You can’t see anything beyond green. While in other parts of the creek you see rocks, pebbles, and leaves. These two different environments are very close to one another. There is no question that the very still and slow moving areas are mossy and a reason for this could be a huge rock blocking the pathway for the water. In this mossy, still area, mosquitoes are prevalent. Unlike last time, I saw some aquatic organisms. I can’t specify exactly what they are but the first thing that comes to my mind is guppies. They are roughly an inch long, brownish-gray colored, and a centimeter thick. At first I only saw like two, but as I looked closer I began to see a good handful of them. They were trying to swim upstream but the moving areas of the creek where the water was flowing more, they got pushed back down. These tiny fish can live in an area like this because they are so small. The shallow water isn’t hard for them to live in.
The land next to the water is becoming really overgrown. Tresses are beginning to hang over the creek and the sides of the creek are inhabited with a lot of brush. It’s harder to make my way down to the sides of the creek to look more closely at the water. Perhaps this is because of the season changing from winter to spring so the plant life is beginning to grow back. It’s sad to say that a lot of the plan life looks dead, or like it is about to be. There is a big tree that looks like it has been uprooted and fallen over due to the lack of water or maybe it died in the cold weather we have been having.
“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed out wilderness” (Pg. 148). It’s a sad reality, hopefully one we can fix to make life better for ourselves and our environment.
