Pockets of Nature

I’ve always enjoyed stumbling upon a natural setting that is surrounded by things that anything but natural. I remember my first surprise when I was very young was at a highway clover leaf. We would drive on this cloverleaf to get onto the highway and one day I noticed several ducks landing in the grassy area. I later rode my bike there and went down to explore. Not visible from the road, I found a small reedy pond in the center of this half acre sacrifice area with all sorts of life in it; frogs, turtles, fish and ducks.

I was surprised again when I checked out a tiny stream behind the library of a neighboring town. It was a small stream that one could easily jump over and probably wasn’t deeper than a foot in any of its pools, yet this stream had schools of native trout. These trout were stunted in size because their environment wouldn’t allow them to grow larger than what the stream could support.

I’ve seen these areas here as well. Next time you drive to Fred Meyer you will notice all sorts of wet land mitigation areas between Fred Meyer and the strip mall to the North East. There is also some ponds between Fred Meyer and Hwy 101. I will say that up close the waters in these ponds look totally disgusting, yet I’ve seen all sorts of water fowl there making their living.

It’s just nice seeing nature reclaiming some property after the devastation of surrounding construction.