River watcher: The last puddle

By July 21, the Guppy Creek ditch had not been replenished by water, and the last puddle sank out of sight.

The tiny green heron wader was there checking on what had been its bonanza for mosquito fish, but the remaining damp rocks no longer supported aquatic life. For those fish and other organisms, the diminishing puddle was a hopeless dilemma, rather like a cave running out of air, or a space station losing its oxygen source. Water, to a fish, is rather like atmosphere to a mammal, and it is suffocating to be without the supporting atmospheric factor in all habitats.

Puddles are a curious condition, made possible by a depression in the ground. After the rain and the overflow, stranded segments of water are separated from the Mother Body to dwindle away in the heat-o-the-sun.

Puddles are irresistible to a little boy plodding down the path; in fact, it is said a boy becomes a man when he goes around a puddle instead of through it! But I have seen adult joggers go through.

Dried puddles become cracked mud and finally dust, another phenomena peculiar to the charging child-explorer. Why is it that dust attracts not only little kid dust devils, but birds seemingly love to flutter in the powdery soil, considering it a dust bath, maybe repulsive to lurking parasites.

In the wake of a rain shower, dust will revert to slippery soil, becoming a track-book that shows the passage of raccoon, possums, and a host of other animals. Adventurous earthworms often leave their long straight marks behind.

To an artist, puddles are a prime part of some path paintings, presenting a spot of reflection uniting the upper and lower portions of the piece. There is a technique in rendering a good puddle, especially in adding the dark edge where soil and water meet indicating the effects of osmosis soaking its way into dry dust. Less convincing is to paint a puddle without the "bathtub ring" and edge-sparkles.

Tree frogs and toads often lay their eggs in puddles, but when the water wicks away in the scorch of the sun, the tadpoles are in danger of losing their lives unless the transformation to an adult is completed in time. They can actually speed the process of losing the tail, growing legs, and converting to an air-breathing system! The guppy fish have no such way of a quickened metamorphic process in order to escape entrapment, nor even any transformation ability except for growth into an adult fish, having gills forever.

When I was a boy, a large puddle formed in a field's runoff ditch when the rains stopped. I would gather shingles and sticks and tromp through the meadow to probe that puddle, build gallant boats, and drift away into the dreamy realms of imagination. I even tried stocking my private pool with bluegill, but alas, their time was short. While there was water they had a happy life catching grasshoppers from the surrounding stems. They didn't seem to have any anxiety about the end of life, perhaps because they didn't know or think of such things. "Today well-lived ..."

Some of the most amazing puddles or pools are the vernal pools that you can find on the Vina Plains north of Chico, or even on Oroville's Table Mountain during the spring. Those are long-lived giant puddles sitting on a hardpan that delays drainage time, and in the waters are some wonderful organisms such as fairy shrimp. Some creatures can revert to an egg capsule and survive until another rainy season, just as plants take refuge in seeds, or other life forms endure through estivation or hibernation! "Life goes on."

"Every path has a few puddles. You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step in it. What do you do when you come up on a puddle? One option is to try and jump over it, or you can just walk right through it. Either way you are bound to get wet. The next time you encounter a puddle (challenge in life) determine how you want to go through, but like a boy, have as much fun as possible."

— Tyler