Part of the game

[duckboy]

After being buried in a research paper for the past several weeks, I decided that, rain be damned, I was going to get the dogs out for a stomp along the creek. Not just 15 minutes, but a full hour… needed to “blow out the carbon”, and refresh my spirit.

We loaded up and the winds howled,

The dogs were excited to get out and I was too.

I was really curious to see just how high the little creek would go with this big rain storm we’ve had.

We got out of the truck and made our way out into the storm. Had my green rubber “Gortan’s fisherman” slicker on, and still got wet somehow, guess in a real storm, its “part of the game”.

Here is Salmon creek in the spot that is usually the only place a guy can take a dunking during the heat of the summer….

We sat there in the truck and listened to the roar and it seemed hard to believe that me and the dogs took a moonlight swim here back in the summer a few years back… I remember being on my back in the water at about midnight, looking up at the summer sky, seeing shooting stars, crickets sang their songs..

Felt good to cool off.


Ginger and Alex slept on the gravel bar…. I think it is gone now. … All of the brush that used to be between the road and the stream blew out too…. I guess my days of skinny dipping here are over….










We made our way up onto the area that a nearby tributary meets the main creek.


I kept hearing the sound of limbs and the roar of what I thought was wind through the trees.

Upon further investigation, we found that the roar was not so much the sound of the wind in the trees, but the sound of the creek that had turned into a raging torrent.



Seems hard to believe that this is a stream that I can literally step across in 1 step during September…. Heck in the deep spots, Ol’ Alex and Ging don’t even get their bellies wet.

Well, today the creek was as out of control as a “rip roaring drunken sailor”


There is another Gauge below the one in this photo. The creek usually runs at about 1 ft here,

Back in April of 1996 (before the gauge) the area I was standing in to take the photo was under water!





Here is the bridge that crosses our little creek, (you can see a light orange vertical line in the center of the bridge).
In September, it is ankle deep, and if I was standing in the middle of the stream, my shoulders would be just about equal height with the bridge beams.








The weather got worse while we were out (if that was possible) and something kind of funny happened.

See, I am not technically within the rules of the campus when I let my hounds off the leash here. Since I have been running them before the area was a campus, I figure, if I get caught and fined, I’ll pay up.

I keep em on leads until I get to specific areas where I can tell we are all alone and then I let em run.

So there is this guy that has been trying to catch me with my dogs off leash for about 10 years, but I always get away. I guess he and I have a world record of cat and mouse, and we both enjoy our respective roles as being “part of the game”.

He is comfortable, and doesn’t like to get out of his car, and I am able to slip away into the woods. I know every trail, and every shortcut (in the day and late into the moonlight).
So our paths have only crossed on the main road (and the hounds are always on leads there), so he just waves and cruises along.



He’s really let some of the folks out there have it, fines and tickets for running dogs off lead, but it seems that these folks do it out in the areas that joggers like to use, and along the main trails where everyone goes.

I always stick to the forest and rarely get out on the big trail.

Anyway, he plows on by in the cruiser and me and the dogs are in his sight… he slows down and I slip into the trees, he raises his hand out of the window of the cruiser and gives me the “I’m going to get you” finger… but apparently, the rain was too much for him….
He drove away..

I suppose if the guy really wanted to nail me, he would, but perhaps there is enjoyment for him in the “hunt” maybe he wants to get me “red handed” and not have to get soaking wet in the process.

Heck. My truck was parked right where he drove by, he knows it is mine, and I bet he may secretly appreciate my ability to disappear, He could have waited for me to return… I’d be a “sitting duck”.

This guy must be all about the chase. I can understand that, I appreciate that, and so our chase continues for another day..



Good thing too, because we’d of been hard pressed to jump across the creek here if he’d come after us.

(usually we can) it is generally a left foot or right foot gets wet kind of deal, rather than a full immersion.






We came home and had our cookie,

I wrung myself out,

Then I set about drying off my camera….

Poor old thing, I had it in a dry bag, but it still got wet….


Guess that is just “part of the game”.