I was chatting with an out-of-state hiker a few days ago and casually mentioned that three out of five of our trails are prey to annual floods, which render them temporarily impassible in spots (I speak about this briefly in Nature's Housekeeper). The tourist being what we in the lower-lying regions playfully refer to as a "highlander," he had difficulty fathoming what all is involved when a forest pathway becomes inundated. "Can't you just ford it?" he innocently asked. Pictured above is a before-and-after of our lowest lying trail, which rests 300 feet above sea level. This is not the byproduct of regional run-off but the Mighty Mississippi swelling due to northern ice melts and spring rains. (Where I'm located along Old Man River, the waterway has already traversed 600 American miles. At a flow rate of roughly 1.2 mph, this is the reason it can be early summer in the Midwest yet Minnesota's melted snow is just now getting to us: It takes two weeks for the current to make it to the halfway point on its Gulf-bound voyage.) Long story short, once the river stage breaks 32 feet (see pic at right), it's a done deal. Here's why. Aside from the cottonmouth and alligator snapping turtle-infested water being anywhere from waist- to shoulder-deep along the trail in stretches that can span several hundred murky, silty yards, the Mississippi is far from being a clear, clean mountain stream: By the time it reaches my park, the river has absorbed tons of industrial, urban, and agricultural runoff. (Where do you city slickers think your oil, gasoline, and antifreeze-saturated water ultimately winds up after it gets sucked down a street grate?) To step foot into Picture 2 would mean willfully submerging yourself in a Petri pond of pesticides, bacteria, a dizzying amount of nitrates (if you don't know what this is a scientific euphemism for, I beg you, look it up) alongside God knows what else. The literally nitty-gritty details can be found in the National Park Service's "State of the River" report. For anyone who doesn't have time to browse 48 pages, National Geographic did a story on this not long ago. |
THE OFFICIAL
BLOG OF BESTSELLING AUTHOR MICHAEL GURNOW Check out Michael's new smash hit,
Nature's Housekeeper, the #1 Hot New Release in Nature Writing and Ecotourism on Amazon Introduction by the Aldo Leopold Foundation with an Afterword by Lawton Grinter, author of I Hike "Nature's Housekeeper
is a laugh-out-loud, page-turning memoir" Jennifer Pharr Davis
National Geographic's 2012 Adventurer of the Year "I was laughing my
survival a## off while reading Nature's Housekeeper" Les Stroud
Discovery Channel's Survivorman "Nature's Housekeeper
is a wild and hilarious masterpiece" Daniel Quinn
Author of Ishmael and The Story of B "Nature's Housekeeper is
intellectually profound yet outrageously funny" British Mountaineering
Council Ambassador Chris Townsend Archives
March 2017
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