Sailing 'Round a Wetland Sea

The Upper Basin Chronicles

Chapter 25

Sailing 'Round a Wetland Sea

Rose Murphy and Mai Vang pushed the big inner tube up into Alexander's pickup box. Rose opened the pickup door.

"Hey, kids, ready to go?" asked Alexander Murphy.

"Yep, Dad; we're ready!" said Rose. Mai, Rose's best friend, was visiting for the day. Mai's parents, Hmong vegetable farmers, usually kept her busy watching younger siblings while they worked in the fields. Yet, today, because Rose had begged Alexander to invite Mai to play at the Murphy place, when he called, they had allowed her to come.

"Got water? Sunscreen? Tennies on?" he asked.

"Right-o, Daddy-o! Let's boogie!" replied a gleeful Rose. Alexander turned his head to keep from guffawing aloud at his daughter's talk. He got such a kick out of the precocious eight year-old. Rose reached across Mai to help her friend slam the pickup door. The girls wore old swimming suits, just the right attire for an hour or so afloat on the little wetland pond while Alexander repaired fence.

"OK, here's the deal," said Alexander as the pickup rolled along the field road between tall corn and bean rows. "You two can float around while I hike the line fence between our place and Harold's. Don't be mucking up the water wading in the mud, at least not too much. We got all kinds of critters trying to make a decent living in that pond, and there's enough sediment in the water as it is. OK?"

"OK, Dad." "OK, Mr. Murphy," the girls said. Alexander shut off the truck, climbed out, and unloaded the 20x9 wagon tire tube. The tube held the heat of the day, and plenty of air.

"Happy sailing! See you in a bit. Holler if you see any pirates," he said as he pocketed his fencing pliers and picked up the old bucket of staples. This was the same gallon paint can he had carried as a boy as soon as he was old enough to handle barbed wire. Some of that wire was still around, hanging on in dual strands over hog fencing on osage orange posts.

Alexander turned to watch as the two girls plowed toward the water through a six foot-high stand of big bluestem. There seemed to be more inner tube than children moving through the tall grass. The waving stem tops gleamed nearly deep purple and turkey-footed with the seed heads filling out. Led by Rose, the pair burrowed on toward the boggy edge of the restored pothole. What a joy that these kids could explore this place, he thought. The early afternoon, barely hot for mid-August, offered little breeze to rustle corn and tall grass, so Alexander could hear bits of what the girls were saying.

"My shoe!" yelped Mai, "The mud got my shoe!" Giggling and splashing and the swishing of bulrushes followed while Mai recovered her footwear. More splashing and swishing, then the metallic whang as an overstuffed inner tube landed flat on the water. That sound, not little girls chattering, caused the unmistakable quacking, explosive launching, and fast-flying wing creaking of a family of mallards, an adult pair and four juveniles. Wow!

"Bye, ducks, come back soon," Rose's voice floated up from behind the tall sedges. Further splashing and giggling ensued as the girls boarded their round vessel.

Alexander admired the restored palustrine wetland, just five feet deep at best, now home to more wetland flora than he would have thought possible in just one year. Some of it they had planted, and some had come with the birds or the winds. Who knows all the ways plants travel short distances? They often waste little time; weeds certainly did not. Their narrow-leaved cattail (Typha angustifolia), Olney's bulrush (Scirpus americanus), blunt spikerush (Eleocharis obtusa), and slough sedge (Carex atherodes) were doing well. But where had the blue flag iris (Iris versicolor) come from? What about the common arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), American pondweed (Potamogeton nodosus), coontail (Ceratophyllum demersum), and water smartweed (Polygonum amphibium)? How did they get here? Some by birds and ducks, but which ones? He realized again how much he did not know about wetlands. Had some species already been here from the old days, and the seeds were resurrected by the restoration bulldozer blade? Could be.

Alexander turned his attention to the orchardgrass waterway that ran up grade toward his line fence and Harold Mundt's land. He walked along its edge, brushing against the tall corn at each row's end. Halfway up, he turned to look down the corn corridor to see the two friends side-by-side afloat in the big inner tube, lying back looking at the cloud shapes floating in an Iowa blue sky. Life was good.

Then, approaching the line fence, Alexander found something that disturbed him. Here his waterway carried not grass, but a sheet of topsoil and clay. A small gully cut the waterway. Just across the line fence, Harold's low terrace had been breached by runoff. The last big rain dumped more water than the terrace could hold. Two years prior, Alexander had declined to allow Harold's tiling contractor to put a standpipe inlet behind the terrace. Harold wanted to run a tile line down to the pothole remnant. Harold had not been happy, even when Alexander explained what he was trying to accomplish.

"That's treehugger crap, Murphy! Wetland, you bet! You need to farm all the land you've got!" Harold had said as he stormed back to his truck.

Now he was going to have to call Harold to get him to hire someone to come in here and repair the storm damage. Harold would start in all over again. As Alexander stood staring at the wash cut through the terrace, he recalled his daydream about Harold and the manure spreader. Oh, yeah... What else was coming off Harold's upland field, he wondered.

A playful voice floated up from the water, "This is Captain Rose speaking. Do you see those pirates off yonder? I think they're after us, Lieutenant Mai!"

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Next week... " A Bellyful of Slough Water," Chapter 26.

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 25 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Resources:
Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (USGS) Midwestern Wetland Flora, Field Office Guide to Plant Species

Comments? Email feedback to The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 25.

The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.