Along The Winter Creek

Sunday afternoon Jo and I and the dogs decided not to walk our normal route and walk along the winter creek that runs through our place instead. (The dogs certainly didn't object. Rusty and Bucket are always ready to go and don't really care where.) Walking the creek is more like exploring. You cannot manage anything close to a walking pace because of the steep sides and all the rocks and boulders strewn about.





The creek should be flowing this time of year, but we haven't received enough rain this year. There were just a few pools of water scattered along the way. There were also "pools" of loose, dry leaves where the water should have been. These leaf pools made walking even more treacherous. A few of the larger ones were waist deep. A pool of water you can see, but when you step off into a pool of leaves, you think you're stepping onto firm ground, but step off into nothingness instead. Both Jo and I fell several time. Fortunately, there were no hidden rocks where we fell and the leaves provided a soft landing. We completely lost sight of Rusty when he unknowingly jumped off into one of the deeper leaf pools. He quickly dog paddled to the surface and swam onto firm ground.