The Rivanna Rambler

August 21, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in August 21, 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

On a still, hot morning, I head out of town to visit some friends who are transforming their own corner of heaven in northern Albemarle County. Vickie and Mark Gottlob live in a house they finished building four years along the North Fork of the Rivanna.  It sits on a wooded slope of Buffalo Ridge, named for the mammals that once roamed these parts.  The Gottlobs are working with Louise Finger of the Virginia Department of Inland Game and Fisheries to help restore habitat in the river for another species rarely seen here: the Jamesriver Spineymussel.

This is my third visit to the site. Before Louise and her team of heavy equipment operators arrived earlier this week, I had come up to visit the river “before” so I could better appreciate the changes “after”.  I had donned appropriate river wading gear and dropped down into one of the deeper holes.  With cooling water up to my waist, I could see the bank slumping steeply into the stream and showing the signs of instability even an untrained eye could see.  The Gottlob’s small floodplain pasture was being eaten away by storm flows and gravity, and all this dirt was settling in the river and clogging the very life out of it.  But there were solid gravel bars, mounded here and there with piles of small cobble left by chub and other nest-building species.  It had the potential to be good habitat for the spineymussel if it could be stabilized.

The Jamesriver Spineymussel is a rarely seen mollusk in our parts – but its influence has been felt for years

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August 14, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in August 14, 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

You know something is not right when you walk up to the edge of MeadowCreek behind Kmart off Hydraulic Road. The bank drops down vertically to the stream bottom where a small flow trickles over the rocks. You are not sure how close you can get because looking upstream, you can see places where high water flow from storms has tunneled into the bank leaving just a flap of grass, hinged and drooping over the edge like the unruly bangs of a boy overdue for a haircut.

And you’ve seen this kinds of washed-out bank everywhere in the watershed, and especially as you walk along the Rivanna Trails encircling Charlottesville. For years, you may have said to yourself, this can’t be right, all this dirt eroding away, headed downstream in a brown muddy mess.

But how do you ever go about fixing something like this? And can it even BE fixed?

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August 7, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in August 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

There are markings on the pavement in front of my house on Oxford Road. Day glow green circles, yellow dots and dashes like a Morse-code message from the underground. Red and green marks, too. Up the dense periwinkle that hugs the slope between the curb and our lawn are bright blue lines sprayed 2 inches wide ending at the round cast iron water-meter. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was some new kids’ game made permanent with the upgrade from chalk to spray paint.

But I do know better, because for last couple of months the street in front of my house has been busy

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July 24, 2008

 This show originally aired in July 19, 2007 and then again on July 24, 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

 

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It is 8 am and the temperature is 78 degrees. With the mercury set to climb towards 100 and the relative humidity chasing after it, I have decided that I, too, will climb, escaping to the hills and a change of climate.  My friend Alyson and I set a course towards the western mountains, the Alleghany highlands in that corner hump of Virginia where it shares its boundary with West Virginia.  We’re headed to that block of the Virginia Gazetteer, where Maps 64 and 65 spread open across the page reveal the topographic marvel of the ridge and valley contours of this region.

We take Route 250 out of Staunton towards Whites Store follwing Jennings Branch, tributary of the Middle River which bisects the Valley as it heads towards its confluence with the South Fork of the Shenandoah and on to the Potomac River.   Though it is imperceptible to my eye, something does shift here.  Somewhere between Chestnut Oak Knob to the north and Crawford Mountain to the south of 250, we descend ever so slightly into the valley of the Calfpasture River crossing it in the hamlet of West Augusta.  Starting here,

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July 17, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in July 17, 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

As I sat at our kitchen table yesterday evening, casually peering into the loose thicket of privet that divides our lot from our neighbors, I was startled to see the tawny brown of what could only be a deer moving slowly across the lawn towards his house.

Head down, browsing on the choice green grass, the deer was unconcerned, casually munching as if it had been there before. Now, for many in our watershed, this would not be an unusual sight, but not only do we live in the city, we live uphill, across the street, and several houses away from the green corridor that flanks the unnamed stream that flows downhill from the ridge of Rugby Road.

So why did the deer choose to cross the road, after all?

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