November 8, 2007
There is something not altogether right about this day. Here it is, November 1st, and we should be bundled in fleece and wearing high rubber boots to venture out on the water. Instead, we’re wearing light rubber wading shoes that sink into the mud as we shove the canoe from the launch into the Rivanna at Hells Bend Farm, striving for a patch of water that will be deep enough to float the boat. Though the water is a cool 56 degrees, the air temperature is climbing past 65 as the sun arcs into the autumn afternoon. I’m not sure what doesn’t feel right: is it the air temperature? or the water level? which is still near historic lows in spite of patches of rain we’ve had.
Headed downriver to sample for aquatic bugs for the StreamWatch volunteer program, we quickly learn that the shoals in the center extend almost entirely across the river. We snuggle up against the left bank, a vertical wall of dying asters and poison ivy, where a channel twice the width of the canoe is just deep enough to get a decent stroke. Rounding Hell’s Bend, we stick to the outside, but in the long straightaway below we have to shove our way to the other side, seeking a route through the shallows of coarse sand deposited as the water slowed and dropped its load after the last storm. The bottom is now being sculpted by the gentle flow into underwater ripples and bluffs much like the sharp relief of the winter beach is built by the tides and wind. The channels along the banks are a Piedmont version of aquamarine. The summer’s weed is gone, and everywhere, the water is clear enough to see to the bottom, where sunken leaves tumble and pile up against underwater tree limbs and rock outcroppings.
Once at the sampling site below the Mill, we get to work, scraping bugs from a shallow cobbled riffle into the mesh net and pouring over the contents with our middle aged eyes. We enter the world of macro – where everything of interest is small – one-eighth to as much as an inch long, like the fat, ribbed crane fly larvae that are in abundance today. We’ve also captured small pebbles, twigs, and leaves in various stages of decomposition – and from this tumble of browns and yellows, we must pick out the larvae of mayflies, water pennies, and caddisflies – as well as the tiny clams and snails and worms that inhabit the stream. Having sampled for a couple of years, we know that you look until you can’t find any more bugs, and then you look again, switch sides of the table and look some more, flip the net over and keep on looking, before you can have confidence that you’ve collected all the bugs in the net, which is necessary to assure quality data. While we pour over the net, the river tumbles over the stone from the old dam, the sound making it seem like a fuller river than it is.
By four o’clock, we’re winding down, just as the sky turns an ominous gray and the late afternoon sun catches clouds in curving lines stretched out in the wake the tropical depression, Noel. After pulling the canoe back up through the rapids to head home, I trip trying to step in the canoe and am suddenly on my butt in two feet of water that now feels plenty cool. The paddle back upstream is welcome and warming work. At the far end of the long straight channel, the late afternoon sky is dense with clouds descending their dark on tawny yellow sycamores that flank the river. After straining to find the small bugs, it feels good to stretch my eyes into the distance.
This is a good time of year to stay flexible and acknowledge what is. Though the Virginia autumn has been fickle with little water and overly-warm temperatures, what is just right is the slant of light -- unmistakably autumn -- soft but crisp, forcing one’s concentration on the essentials of life: food, shelter, and companionship. It is a good time to gather up, pick over, collect what is meaningful or needed, being sure not to waste or overlook anything important, while at the same time keeping the long view -- which stretches out past the shorter days that are upon us – with a vision of another season to come.
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