The Rivanna Rambler

This show originally aired on February 7, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (241)

February 7, 2008

On a day in January when the snow is still on the ground in the higher elevations, Rose and I drive out Garth Road turning onto 810 at White Hall and head towards the Browns Gap Turnpike. With the landowner’s permission, we drive across pastures that slope uphill into the headwater basin of the Doyles River. Where the pastures stop, we enter a tunnel of briars, bush-hogged to clear an old farm track that leads further up the floodplain as it narrows in the mountain’s ascent. Just wide enough for the truck, it leads into the woods. This floodplain rubble is the story of the river in its headwaters, how gravity and the slope of the drainage combine to move whatever is in the way, including rocks. After 5 minutes of rocking and scraping, we agree that this would be a good place to stop. We can walk the rest of the way.

I’m thinking about adopting this site for StreamWatch– becoming the once-a-season water sampler here where the Doyles can provide a reference for other sites downstream, where the land use includes people, cows, cats, and shopping centers. Rose, who trains and coordinates those of us who volunteer, has told me that this is just about her favorite site to visit and I am about to see why.

We scramble up and through, where trees and briars have taken hold in the floodplain and the periodic floods have left lines of rubble in their wake. Briars snag my pants; I go slowly so as not to turn my ankle or immerse my boot in a pool of melting snow. A quarter of a mile later, we are at the bank of the Doyles, overlooking a gentle drop a few feet down to a spot between sycamore roots next to the water that looks right for setting up. The wind sings slightly through determined beech and oak leaves that will cling for another couple of months until new buds cast them to the ground. A pileated announces its territory as it glides down from higher elevations. The water in the stream is doing what water does, heading downhill, down river, down the watershed. We unpack, set up for sampling and get to work catching bugs and counting. And in this setting, time does what it does best: passes from one bright moment to the next. Three hours and 345 bugs later, we are on our way back to Charlottesville.

Later in the afternoon of the same day, I am now in the heart of the urban ring of Charlottesville – off Woodbrook Drive, where an unnamed tributary of Meadowcreek cuts along steep banks on its way to the Rivanna where it will join the water that has drained from the Doyles via the South Fork. Albemarle County is preparing to restore a section of this urban stream in the hopes that aquatic life will return and the water quality be improved. Some County employees are set up with their table and net by the banks of this creek, which are deeply incised, dropping six feet or more in overhang.

The group is somewhat in despair as they scrape the net with tweezers and examine each decayed leaf for a clinging caddisfly or something else alive– they’ve spent the better part of the last three hours straining bugs from the creek – and their total is only 75, and of those, most are bugs that only survive in heavily impacted streams. That there is little life is no surprise, this section of the stream drains down from Route 29, through shopping centers and neighborhoods and over a whole lot of asphalt, rooftops, and lawns.

I doubt that I would claim this as my favorite site, but paths through this area show that people and deer and probably raccoons and possum would be seen at other times. I am touched by a range of feelings: I am immensely grateful that I had time in the headwaters, but I am also sad that our urban streams are so degraded. Yet I am pleased that local government and funders are finding ways to restore even the most impacted of waterways. To restore a watershed, each stream, each tributary has its place and importance. Thankfully, we’re moving towards a living understanding of this.