Location Taken: Columbia, MD
Time Taken: August 2010
I went for a walk around Lake Elkhorn one day in August with my mother. And a Great Blue Heron decided to take a walk the very same day, across the surface of the lake.
The heron’s not walking on the water, mind, nor even on any shallow water hidden underneath the algae that was covering the top half of this lake. There’s a tube floating just below the water, hidden by the algae that the heron’s using as a bridge.
They were doing some dredging that year in this man-made lake, you see. And the algae is a side effect of the reason they were dredging – the sediment was building up and slowly filling in the lake, creating a perfect environment for this algae to grow. Here’s an article from the very same month I took this photo, talking about the dredging and the algae problem.
Dredging is necessary any time you build a lake. Since man-made lakes are, well, man-made, they don’t naturally fit in to the watershed patterns of the area. This means that the outflow of sediment will not match the inflow. If there hadn’t been a dam built, this would just be a stream, but streams move faster than lakes, and wash the sediment away faster. So every so often, for proper lake maintenance, it’s necessary to hire someone to come and dig the excess sediment out of the bottom of your lake. Even if it is loud, ugly, and involves tubes criss-crossing the lake. The dredging wasn’t active the day we went for a walk, at least. We got to see the rather lovely lake with no more noise than that inherent in a busy park. We got passed by lots of walkers and bikers that day.
It was getting dark by the time we got to the end of the path looping around the park, so I couldn’t get a decent photo of the dam at that end of the lake. It is actually a pretty dam. It has a strong slope, with tiers, and has a waterfall running down the center of it. Here’s a photo of it, since I don’t have one to share.
And here’s a video of the lake, if a rather wet one. That was taken during the flooding last fall, so while you can see the dam in it, it’s a wee bit covered in water. You can compare the pictures of the dam in the video with those in that photo in the last paragraph to see just how wet it had gotten last September.
It was a combination of storms that lead to the flooding, really. First, Hurricane Irene hit the last weekend of August, thoroughly saturating the soil. Then, a little over a week later, the remains of Tropical Storm Lee hit the area, dumping even more rain on top of the already wet soil. The water couldn’t soak into the soil, so it started flowing downhill and accumulating in low spots, causing flooding across the area.
Last fall was quite rainy, really. It wasn’t the best for business (the rain tended to hit on weekends, and I was working outside on the weekends that fall), but I loved it. I wilt whenever it’s sunny and bloom in the rain. I actually miss the rain last fall, since the following winter and spring have been irritatingly low-precipitation, so I’ve been in a general wilting pattern. I need to move to someplace with more rain. And don’t say Seattle, they don’t get strong enough rain for me. I’m thinking more Vancouver, in the Temperate Rainforest there, or say Newfoundland, which gets lots of rain and even more snow. I like snow, too.
…Apparently, I’m a closet Canadian. Not too surprising given how many of the photos I’ve posted have been from Canada, but still…
