Sometimes you don’t know what
you’re looking for until you find it.
Those moments of serendipity can occur almost anywhere, and everyone has
stories they never forget about the great bargain they found at a sale or the
treasure in Grandma’s attic. I have
known folks who found their life partner when they least expected it. The one place I know a person can expect to
find the unexpected is out-of-doors.
Rarely do I go outside that I don’t find a treasure or take home a great
memory.
With the
creek dry, I spent several weekends wandering up and down its sandy bed
searching for an ancient bison skull. I know one is buried in that bleached
sand, waiting for me to find it. After all, bone pickers can’t possibly have
found every sun-whitened bone as they picked their way across the prairie.
Besides, I have known several people who have found old skulls on river
sandbars and in Big Creek. Once, years ago, I did find what I think is an old
bison tooth along the edges of the Saline.
My great find will happen one day.
I just have to keep looking.
The best
part about the search is that I always find other wonders to catch my attention
and remind me I am only a small part of the local ecology. I quickly found ample evidence that beaver
have made a comeback in our neighborhood.
Gnawed down trees, signaling these aquatic rodents’ presence dotted both
sides of the creek east and west. In one
place where water still remained, I spotted an area where the beady-eyed
mammals had chewed branches off and then slid them downhill back into the
water. The obvious tracks left by their
wide, flat tails caught my eye. If I hid
around the corner, I wondered if I would catch one slapping that tail to warn
other beaver of an intruder.
Beaver
aren’t the only rodents with growing populations living near the creek. Our area of the creek has flooded repeatedly
over the years, and as a result, trees and branches piled up like oddly
constructed statuary up and down the banks.
Packrats have had a hey day dragging twigs, leaves, and other packrat
treasure to stuff in the crevices until regular packrat high-rise apartments
regularly occupy the floodway. No wonder
we continually fight the packrat population.
There aren’t enough owls and hawks to eat everything those nests promise
to produce.
While I
found plenty of animal sign, some old deer bones, and several empty clam shells
left behind by some full-bellied raccoons, I didn’t find a single sign of the
hoped for bison skull in my dry creek bed.
Eventually, I decided to see what I could find along the banks of the
creek instead of in the creek bed. This
led to one of those moments when you find something you weren’t looking for.
Even
though I had covered this ground several times in the previous weeks, the
seasons had changed clearly from summer to autumn. Every crunchy step reminded me that
everything that had been green only a few weeks before had entered that stage
of dormancy heralding full-fledged fall.
As I crossed the bridge over Big Creek, I spotted a treasure I hadn’t been
looking for, a beautiful four-point white tail drop.
Ironically,
I had rambled miles, looking for drops in this same area last spring and never
spotted a thing. Then as I wandered the
dry creek bed, looking for ancient bison skulls, I found my dropped
antler. That tawny bone color stood out
against the other shades of sere grasses and forbs so I couldn’t miss it.
Life is
like that. You find a treasure when you
least expect it. I have found you do
need to be looking for something even if it isn't what you find, which makes me
wonder what I’ll be looking for when I finally find that bison skull.
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