Tag Archives: check dam

Signs of spring at Sebby Falls

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March, it seems, is the new April. After a mild winter, signs of spring are everywhere: Canada Geese honk and flap northward; Mallard ducks float and paddle on Minden Lake, the old Appaloosa horse next door has shed his winter blanket…

At the point where Kinross Creek drops down a steep granite ridge, a tiny waterfalls is starting to trickle with the spring run-off. Let’s call it Sebby Falls, after our grandson.

My plan was to visit Kinross Creek each month for a year, to learn more about the lifecycle of this little watershed in the forest north of Minden, Ontario.

Today is the 12th month of this journey. Most of the snowpack has melted early. But because the temperature dropped to minus 5C last night, the ground is firm and easy to walk on. With my hiking stick, I navigate up the hill, stopping a few times to catch my breath and admire the muted colours of winter’s end — a carpet of reddish-brown leaves on the forest floor, frost glistening on old blackberry canes, the grey-green of lichen-covered stone.

With the last of the snow melting, Kinross Creek is running fast — probably approaching its peak flow. Ali’s pond is full, its water gushing through a central dip in the stone check dam. Some water has snuck around the west side, so I make a mental note to shore that up when the creek dries in summer.

Downriver, Colleen’s pond is filling and sending a strong current downriver. Typically the creek peters out past Colleen’s pond, but today it runs maybe 50 yards further, right to the edge of a granite shelf and into the valley below.

It’s not exactly Niagara Falls, but Sebby Falls is magical in its own way. The fresh, running water spills over a rock ledge, down moss-covered stone and into a tiny pond before it carries off down the hill. And eventually into Minden Lake.

Sebby (short for Sebastien) lives in Seattle, Washington with his parents, our younger daughter Colleen and her husband Tim. Sebby turns 2 in June. He’s a happy little dynamo. We grandfolk — Nadine and I in Canada, and Mathilde and Nicolas in France, are blessed.

I walk back upstream and snap a few pics of Ali and Colleen’s ponds. Next to the hydro tower, I take off my gloves and pause to snack on a granola bar. As I admire the scenery down the hill to the pastures below, the battery in my hearing device starts beeping. Nothing like a little reality check — and some humility — to interrupt a peaceful moment. And of course there is the reality check that our warmer winters, weather swings, and wildfire smoke are consequences of climate change. March may be the new April, but in many ways I wish it was just the old March.

With the tree canopy still months away, you spot different things in the forest. Some bizarre fungi are sprouting on a dead poplar. My boot hits a rock and I look down to see a striking, white quartz stone. I spot more quartz near the trail — a secret quarry? In the farm field near the road, the old Appaloosa has made it through the winter. Soon the songbirds will return from their migration.

Back at the cottage, we receive a zoom call from Sebby. He is eating porridge and reciting the first seven letters of his ABCs. He wants to show us his little wood train set and tracks. In the neighborhood enroute to Sebby’s favourite park, daffodils are swelling. To the east, the splendid Cherry trees at the University of Washington will soon be covered in pink blossoms — more signs of spring.

Riverbed restoration at Kinross Creek

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The first fall colours in Minden Hills are subtle — the purples and whites of wild asters blooming in September on the roadside, yellow goldenrod, the browns and beiges of forest fungi, green milkweed pods ripening. Not quite the splendor of traditional fall colours — of maple and other hardwoods we will see in October — but just as rich and diverse in their own way.

Kinross Creek is bone dry downriver of the two “check” dams built this spring. As the nights get longer with heavier dew, the creek should flow again soon, spilling into Ali’s pond with its stone semicircle smile. The creek is in the woods near the hydro corridor, about a 40-minute hike from our cottage.

I use the opportunity to wander along the dry creek bed, downriver to the edge of the valley, the spot where Kinross Creek transforms to a cascading waterfall when the snow melts each spring.

There are hundreds of stones of diverse shapes and sizes revealed in the dry creek bed today. For someone who likes working with stone, this is mecca.

A site for the next check dam presents itself. The top of a huge dead tree has fallen across the creek. When the water ran here earlier this year, the deadfall created a natural pond. But it also diverted the flow of the creek to the side, away from its original course. The remaining vertical tree stump is a sentinel, about 8-feet high, marking the spot.

So I start to pull away the fallen part of the trunk and limbs from the creek bed, to replace them with the next stone check dam. This stone feature will restore the original creek course and feed into Colleen’s pond just downriver.

The woods are still and cool — no bird song but for the occasional screech of a Blue Jay and coarse cry of a crow. The mosquitoes and blackflies that pestered me over the past few visits have vanished.

I mine maybe 25 stones from the dry creek bed and arrange them into the start of a one-rock-high check dam, following the contours of the original creek bed. After a few minutes, I realize my heart is thumping pretty fast — my stonework excitement seems to be giving me a cardio workout.

With the tree cleared and first stones in place, I start to head out, but stumble upon another small stone-pile in the forest. It’s not quite the motherlode, but will add 20 stones to this effort.

In the woods around here, even though I keep my eyes peeled for stones, it is often my feet that find them. When one sticks out of the forest floor to catch my foot, it is typically the tip of an iceberg of many stones — likely piled up by farmers who worked this area before the farm was abandoned.

Likewise, it is often my feet that find remaining relics of barbed wire fences strung perhaps 75 to 100 years ago. When a jagged piece of wire threatens to snare a human rambler, I bend it back out of harm’s way.

The cool weather and subtle colours of early fall make for a nice walk back, after the heat of mid-summer. I come upon a strange and splendid drooping fungi, hanging from the end of a log. Milkweed pods swell and will release their feathered seeds to fly away later this fall.

I’ll be back in October to check the creek flow and start work on the next pond.

Smile! — you’re at Kinross Creek

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Late July, and the little creek is almost dry.

The stream had started to run in April with the melting snowpack, and was still gurgling nicely in late June. But despite some rain lately, this summer’s heat has slowed the creek to a trickle.

On my walk along Horseshoe Lake Road, an old draft horse looks up briefly from his grazing to greet me. Next time, I gotta bring an apple for him. Alongside an inlet of Minden Lake, a Great Blue Heron startles and takes flight with slow flaps of his long wings.

I cut off the road into the forest, and climb the hill under the hydro line. It’s maybe a 40-minute walk to get to this peaceful spot in the woods.

A feast for the Grackles

Chokecherries are ripening. My father-in-law once recalled making choke-cherry jelly, using liberal amounts of sugar to balance the bitterness of the berries. The birds in Minden Hills certainly like the tiny, red berries. The black Grackles have started to mass in bigger flocks now, and perform gymnastics on the berry bushes to obtain their treats.

The blackberry canes are also putting up this year’s crop — the long, spikey canes in the open area under the hydro line can easily rip your blue jeans, so I keep to the woods nearby, where the shade keeps the blackberries at bay.

Enlarging the pond

Today’s mission is to enlarge a little pond on the creek, using some stone I collected earlier in the season. A few dozen larger stones are placed to create a big smile — a semicircle dam.

In the middle of the dam, a couple of smaller rocks create a drain to direct the pond’s flow downriver over a splash pad of thin stones. Once the creek starts flowing fast again, I will be able to adjust the height of the pond by changing up the stones around the splashpad.

In the new dam, mossy-green pond stones mix and match with others collected from the edge of an abandoned farm field nearby.

I’ve mucked about with stone quite a bit, but these techniques are not my inventions; they come straight from some cool YouTube videos focusing on permaculture. In arid areas such as India and the southern US, check dams help retain water before it flows away quickly. Minden Hills is not lacking for water — at least so far — but I wanted to experiment to enlarge some existing ponds on the creek. Maybe the deer who crisscross this area will appreciate a new watering hole.

Upriver from today’s stonework, a smaller “one-rock-deep” dam checks the flow of the creek coming into the new pond site. It will be neat to see how both stone features built this year respond once the water flows faster, perhaps in late fall.

Some stepping stones would be nice too in future, to make it easier to cross the creek at this spot.

A drizzle begins to fall through the thick summer canopy of mature hardwood trees. Luckily, the walking stick I used to get up the hill this morning is also an umbrella — rain protection for the trip home.