Spring Rains

[ozark trout fisher]

A low pressure front was stalled over the Ozarks, and over the last few days we have been blessed with pounding, heavy, and glorious rains. This water is now making it into our rivers, and making some of them high and unfishable. Sounds like bad news, doesn't it?

In the short term, it is. The fishing will be tough in the main rivers for the next few weeks, as we have more rain in the forecast. But the positive effects could be drastic later on in the year. Up until this point, we have had an extraordinarily dry spring. Rivers that often run bank-full in April were low and clear. That's excellent for now, but a low clear river in April hints at a dire situation in August. But the spring rains have come;a bit late, yes, but they have come.

I'm like every other fisherman on the planet. That is, I hate spring rains while they last, but on occasional open-minded times, I can appreciate their effects. They are the life blood that keep springs flowing in the sparse times of August, and the saving grace of our small streams. The water seeps through the ground in our lush April, into the spring system, and some of that is stored until the times the stream and the creatures that rely on the stream really need it. It truly is a beautiful thought, one that can make you think for a moment that the world really does have some order.

And the fishing isn't always bad during the spring rains, unless you insist on fishing the big rivers. The headwater streams and spring branches remain very fishable through most of it-even now after the rains have made a torrent of everything else. In fact, the blue-green water of spring is something that I have come to relish on the wild trout streams. This is when you may find a glorious day when the little trout will hit your fly with abandon, at which point life will seem quite okay for a while.

[eric1978]

It truly is a beautiful thought, one that can make you think for a moment that the world really does have some order.

...but it doesn't. The rains are great, I just hope it doesn't screw up any spawns.

[Al Agnew]

Eric, sure the world has order. It's just backwards from what it seems. Natural weather systems, geology, latitude aren't put there for the streams and their denizens--the denizens evolved to fit their world. So when the rains come as they usually do, everything works. In the times when they don't, things don't work so well. Nothing magical about it...but surely something truly beautiful.

The Ozarks, with its karst topography, is a unique ecosystem that is best embodied by water. Ground water--springs--moderate amount of rain--streams. The streams carved the land into its present shape after tectonic forces uplifted what was once a flat plain. Its latitude and its position relative to past ice ages made the Ozarks a crossroads of species composition, with plains species, Mississippi delta species, more northern species, and some species unique to the region. I said there is nothing magical about the natural systems in the Ozarks, but what is magic? If there is a magical land, the Ozarks comes pretty close to qualifying.

[Chief Grey Bear]

The Ozarks, with its karst topography, is a unique ecosystem that is best embodied by water. Ground water--springs--moderate amount of rain--streams. The streams carved the land into its present shape after tectonic forces uplifted what was once a flat plain.

Another uniqueness that I find is that as you travel west from the tectonic uplifting that happened in the eastern Ozarks of Missouri, it is actually carved out of the plains in the western Ozarks. In other words I guess, the "moutains" of the eastern Ozarks turn into the "canyons" of the western Ozarks. Even though if you were taking a driving tour of the Ozarks, you wouldn't see the difference.

[eric1978]

Eric, sure the world has order. It's just backwards from what it seems. Natural weather systems, geology, latitude aren't put there for the streams and their denizens--the denizens evolved to fit their world. So when the rains come as they usually do, everything works. In the times when they don't, things don't work so well. Nothing magical about it...but surely something truly beautiful.

That's what I meant...basically. But I would still hesitate to call it order. Order implies some kind of other-worldly force that drives the patterns and rhythms that are naturally in place. Geological, hydrological and atmospheric systems are a result of gravitational forces, rotation and orbit, elemental composition of the earth, and our distance from the sun. The culmination of these factors coincidentally made for the perfect environment for the phenomena we call life, and the evolutionary path and current profile of every species we know of is nothing more than the random and accidental necessity to adapt to gradually and naturally changing environs. Calling that order, to me, makes the leap that there is some reason for any of this, which I am, as of yet, unwilling to make for lack of evidence.

Beautiful, breathtaking, astonishing, awe-inspiring...yes. Even magical to the extent that it's still not fully comprehensible in its complexity. Perhaps it's semantics and I'm splitting hairs, but I just have trouble with the word "order" when characterizing nature.

[Coldspring]

If there is a magical land, the Ozarks comes pretty close to qualifying.

Unless you're a backpacker. Mid May through September is out for me, too many ticks, chiggers, entire forests of poison ivy, noxious weeds, spider webs, snakes, unbearable humidity.

No really, I do look at all the brightsides, and I'm glad to call it home. The clear rivers are just swift enough to be interesting, yet allow me to be lazy. Even though most of them have sewer treatment ponds and towns up at their headwaters.

[Al Agnew]

Chief, you're right. In fact, other than the St. Francois Mountains, the geologic center of the Ozark uplift and the remnants of a much earlier landscape, ALL the Ozarks are not mountains or hills but valleys and canyons cut into what were once level plateaus. If you collect topographic maps as I have and know how to read them, it becomes obvious. Take the area around the Jacks Fork, for instance. On a topo map, you can even read it in the forest patterns. Much of the land on either side of the Jacks Fork is very gently rolling, open, and all on about the same level until you get close to the river, when it drops off sharply into the solidly wooded Jacks Fork's canyon. On some streams it isn't so obvious because the old plateau has been so extensively carved up by the streams, but you'll still see it when you find a high, open point to look out over the landscape--the horizon will look mostly level; all the ridge-tops are close to the same height, the level of the old plateau. Even when you go to the upper Buffalo River country and see those great "mountains" that are mostly to the south of the river, when you look at the landscape on the topo map, you'll see that those mountains are the eroded remnants of what was once a higher plateau, and you'll see evidence of that plateau in the many flat areas atop the ridges farther back into the Boston Mountains.

Too me, one of the most beautiful and interesting aspects of Ozark scenery is the river bluffs, and in a way they are evidence of those old plateaus as well. The streams are extremely winding, a legacy of when they meandered across the level plain. As uplift occurred it was gradual enough that they kept to their winding courses while cutting down into the rising plateau. The bluffs, usually curving and always on the outside of those ancient bends, are the result of that cutting action.

Eric, I understand what you mean and I feel the same way, but I don't think "order" is the wrong word. I don't think it implies a conscious, directed order, but an order that is simply the result of natural processes. I would call it "order" because it all makes sense, it all fits. Life could have evolved somewhat differently from what it has, but it is still constrained by the natural processes of evolution--there are only certain pathways down which it could have evolved.

Coldspring, I know what you're saying. Problem is that the Ozarks wasn't made to fit US!

No region or landscape is perfect for everybody and everything all the time. Hiking the Ozarks is wonderful from November to April, miserable the rest of the year. Hanging out on Ozark streams is wonderful just about all year, though.

The Ozarks, though, is what I'd call "friendly country". Compared to a lot of regions, it isn't easy to get yourself hurt or killed in the Ozarks. The weather is moderate except in the occasional tornado, not so dry you could die of thirst, not so cold you could easily freeze to death. The landscape is mostly fairly gentle, without a lot of high cliffs and loose rock slopes like really mountainous country. We don't have grizzlies or lions, we don't have a lot of highly poisonous critters. The margin for error is much greater in the Ozarks than in a lot of wild country.

[eric1978]

Eric, I understand what you mean and I feel the same way, but I don't think "order" is the wrong word. I don't think it implies a conscious, directed order, but an order that is simply the result of natural processes. I would call it "order" because it all makes sense, it all fits. Life could have evolved somewhat differently from what it has, but it is still constrained by the natural processes of evolution--there are only certain pathways down which it could have evolved.

I guess I just draw a distinction between perpetually occurring, natural processes and "order." I see the world in a constant state of flux, especially on a long-term scale, even though we continue to have 365 days in a year, 24 hours in a day, sunrise in the east, sunset in the west, tectonic activity that creates mountains, erosion that washes them away, evaporation, precipitation...et cetera. Those things may all be consistent, but they also cause random events like earthquakes, tornadoes, mudslides, typhoons, floods, volcanoes, and so on, and I wouldn't call them orderly.

Didn't mean to get off on a philosophical tangent. "Order" just strikes me as one of those slippery slope words that leads down the path to...you know...magical thinking. No matter, carry on.