End of Winter Walk

Another winter is winding down. It feels a little weird because I saw a meme the other day that struck a chord with me - "you only get 18 summers until they are grown" and damn if that didn't get me a little emotional lol.

The little man is certainly growing up to be a fine little boy, and I'm proud of the little fella. I haven't been able to get out and take walks with him the way I would like because of work and being far busier than I want to be. Thankfully that is getting to a point where it's winding down and I have an end in sight. It didn't feel like we would get there that's for sure! We were heading home one day and I decided that we should stop by the river that we enjoy walking at, because we haven't been there for a while.

This winter wasn't one we could really complain too much about. I myself am complaining about it because we didn't really get a lot of snow or really cold weather. This meant that the lakes and ponds largely didn't freeze which is sad! I was looking forward to doing some ice skating or at least exploring the iced up areas with my son but we didn't get that chance. That's okay though, because there's always next year. We had also been quite sick for many weeks of it, so that also certainly didn't help the whole situation.

We got out for a walk and it looks like we aren't the only ones who are getting active again! The beavers are really getting ready to build up their dams and it's pretty cool to see. We have walked here quite a bit over the last year and a half but this is the first time that we happened to see beavers cutting down trees. It was pretty cool to see, because I didn't realize there were beavers in this area but being on a beautiful river like this, it makes sense the little critters would be around!

The water was crazy high too! I've never seen it this high, so it was really interesting to see how it was flowing and where it was going. We got to see the real limit of where the bank was before it would be considered flooded, and it was high! There were a few spots that we can walk on when it's the drier months and the river is down, but they were turned into a river themselves! I guess that also makes sense because the ground was often soft and on the verge of being muddy, so it's not a far stretch to see that it would be flooded and part of the river when it's high.

This also meant that the rapids were not really much to look at strangely enough. The rapids when the water is lower is a pretty good spot to fish, the predatory fish like trout enjoy waiting at the bottom of the rapids for the bait fish that get caught in the flow and they get a quick meal. Right now, the trout would be a little confused because the river is insanely high! It was almost like it was flowing over a little bump instead of a cascade down some rocks to a lower elevation.

This also meant that the other structures that people installed such as this bench were completely inaccessible haha. This is a good representation of where the water normally is! The bench here is fully accessible in the summertime, often with 8 or 12 inches between the bottom of the benches feet and the rivers edge. It is completely flooded here and even back a few feet into the bank! We were shocked, the little man and I used this bench last year to put our fishing bag on it when we went out. I laughed when I saw how high the water was on this thing!

One thing that we did get this past winter was a pretty sizable amount of tree damage! We got a pretty crazy rain deluge at one point and then we got heavy wet snow at another which created havoc for the trees. There were dozens of trees just while we were walking that were completely destroyed, it was incredible to see. That's how nature goes though, things grow and they get killed through the various forces at play. It's not uncommon to see these things but it's just how things go. Eventually beavers and other animals and bugs will consume the tree and its roots here and it will all be returned back from whence it came.

Have you taken any walks like this at the end of the winter season? Let me know in the comments!