Get out!

Get out! That's the point of this blog - that, and my hope to finally fulfill my New Year's resolution to write on a regimented and regular basis. As you can see, with this being Feb. 8, I haven't been real strict with myself this year. 

It's also my attempt to ensure I will get out of my house and explore the world around me no matter how cold it is, how unpleasant it might be or how lazy I feel and to share what I hope will be increasingly cool pictures. It's not a grandiose goal, and I'm sure it will go down as the least read blog on the Internet today. That's OK.

So we begin ... 

Misty May (my trusty golden retriever and sidekick) and I went out to explore our what's beyond the pink survey flags that mark the edge of our backyard a little more thoroughly on Superbowl Sunday. It was one of those thawing days where you'll still need a coat but, given enough sunshine, ice in some places is being coaxed into melting into the soil, creating a nice clay mud mix here in Mid-Missouri. 

Behind our house is a large slope that leads up to a road that's currently seeing some of its first development. But that steep slope is the reason my husband and I bought this house - the topography essentially limits it from having neighbors behind us other than the deer, fox, squirrels, raccoons and other wild things that live there now.

So, with a leash clipped to Misty for safety and to slow her down, we began our venture into the great wild (seeing as trespassing is more of an idea than an actual offense, in my mind). Our house was built in a valley of hills and is actually located in a modified floodplain of the Hinkson Creek. Go down the small slope of what is no doubt fill dirt toward the small intermittent creek that runs behind our property and you'll see instantly that this land is nature's way of dealing with excess water. 

Tough, spindly trees jut out of ground that, in places, can be muddy clay soil that can swallow your shoes whole to sandy spots that you simply sink into. I try to avoid both.

There is a great spot I'm fond of where water pools along limestone cliffs that form that slope I spoke of earlier. Misty, bounding on the sandy shore, was a bit perplexed to see the water covered with ice — this is a place she'd usually bound right into and take a swim. I was surprised myself to see something moving in the water: a small school of fish glinting as they swam along under the ice. This pool is no more than 3 feet deep (see pic above) and is secluded from any other streams or outlets for this water. If it dries up, they're done for. But on this sunny morning, each 2-inch fish is swimming along, trying to escape our presence.

I snapped a few pictures, trying to capture the fish (unsuccessfully) and the beautiful pattern a leaf frozen into the water made (mission accomplished). 

Not seeing Misty around me, I then turned around to find her staring and sniffing at something. Knowing my dog's propensity for rolling in dead things, I quickly scampered up the bank to find her staring at the carcass of a deer — a doe.

Eyeing it warily, it explained the smell I had noticed when we walked up to the pool. It was fairly decayed at that point, which means it must have been dead for awhile given the sub-zero temperatures we had had for weeks. I took a picture, not sure why, and moved on.

Misty and I worked our way up now, tracing the path the water took to end up in the pool. Following the limestone formations, we started climbing up a mini-ravine that we quickly found was filled with feet of fluffy dried leaves. Scampering up the hill, I heard the characteristic snapping of branches that comes with a herd of deer running away. I looked up in time to see a half dozen white tails flash as they moved over the ridge. Then my eyes traced the hill before me for a white tail of my own - luckily, Misty had not seen the deer. I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to stow the images of her chasing them onto the road where a car driving by would no doubt hit her. 

With that image subsiding, I nonetheless grabbed her leash, just to be sure. We started traversing the top of the hill when I saw something that made me stop in my tracks: a small village of what looked like makeshift bunkers for some no doubt homeless residents. 

It's not uncommon in our area to have homeless people turn from shelters to their own methods of subsistence and survival. There's a large camp of them on a hill by a very busy thoroughfare into town that my friends and I have affectionately dubbed "the tarp people" because of the white and blue tarps that mark the shelter they've made for themselves. At night, you can see their little lights coming from below those tarps. Often I have thoughts of admiration for the toughness it takes to survive in such an existence, although I realize that's probably a glorification of their lifestyle. 

Eyeing the one structure, which was quite well made with a stacking of sticks into a uniform triangle and the other, which was mostly reinforced with our city's extremely sturdy and durable blue bags it distributes for recycling, I edged away from them immediately, not wanting to disturb any possible tenants. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture, but I didn't think it a wise move at that point, especially with my camera's obnoxiously loud shutter.

Instead, we worked our way part way down the hill, over an old barbed wire fence that had long rotted into a sagging pile of rusty wires. I found what looked like nature's version of a diamond necklace in the quartz deposits of a rock, and ahead was impressed with a limestone cliff covered in soft, green moss. 

Misty scampered down the hill, sliding down on leaves and then running full speed down the hill. I took things more slowly, actually thankful for the mud stuck to my shoes that gave me some grip on the piles of leaves moving under me. 

We got down to the valley floor, back into the marshy land that will be mushy and filled with water when spring comes. After stopping Misty from getting too personal with a dead turkey, we traveled to the edge of a small cliff overlooking the Hinkson Creek, which was a mere thread of what can be a raging river in high water. We hopped over downed logs that were covered in some sort of cool fungi growing out of them. On the edge of the creek, what we were standing on was a bank of earth that had been eroded away by the creek in high water, which means the 10 feet or so from us to the water is how much the creek rises when we get a lot of rainfall. The large peak flows are due to the storm runoff that comes from the massive amounts of pavement upstream, a problem that has caused the waterway to be added to the federal list of impaired waterways. It is nice to see the creek in its milder forms — it's a muddy, scary sight when it's at peak flow, but the kayakers love it.

With the sun becoming more obscured by clouds and the wind kicking up, the temperature began to convince me it was time to go inside and give Misty a bath.

On our way back, I was fiddling with my camera and Misty was zigzagging in and out of a dry creek bed when I saw what I thought was the largest squirrel ever. Taking a closer look at the large red tail that bobbed up and down as it ran away from me, I realized it was a red fox. Throwing on my large lens, I took off, running as fast as I could to keep up with the fox and maybe get to a point where I could steady myself enough to snap a few photos. All it took was the fox leaping over a few logs and I was outdone, clearly no match for a nimble creature of the woods. Looking around, I did find some other, more static things of beauty, however.
Cool green and red moss on a log, raccoon prints that I always think look eerily like children's hands and a feather of a wild turkey placed so nicely, you'd think it was posing. 

Alas, Misty and I's adventure was over, but the clay we dragged home with us on our feet is still lingering on our shoes and the patio.