Mom came home at just after 11 AM on Saturday and told me that she wanted me to finish what I was doing and go down into Crossfire Canyon. She explained that the creek had stopped flowing, leaving some fish stranded in a puddle, at the mercy of garter snakes.

I was working at the time and it took half an hour to finish what I was doing, devour some watermelon and put together a my gear: a butterfly net, a metal bucket, a notebook and some water. At last, I rolled my bike out of the garage and took off.

I rode up the paved road until it ended and turned onto the former ATV trail that led down into the canyon. In the absence of ATVs, the path has become overgrown with grasses and Russian thistles, but it posed no problem for a mountain bike. Hundreds of grasshoppers flew up around me as I rode through the field , a former prairie dog town, finally coming out of the grass and entering the light juniper wood.

I passed a blooming pinyon pine and started my descent. Now that I was riding rather than walking, the path seemed steeper than it had when I had last hiked down. It might well have been steeper, for it had eroded into almost step-like stones in places. It was steep enough that I had to dismount and walk my bike until I reached the bottom.

From there I mostly coasted down the path and along the river, finally arriving near the beaver dam that my mom had indicated. There were tall plants between the creek bed and me, so I couldn’t see exactly where the puddle with the fish in it was. When I sighted some water, I left my bike, backpack and gear on the edge of the path and went down into the dry creek.

It wasn’t the puddle with the fish in it. This puddle held only snails floating on the surface, making popping noises, and a few water boatmen rowing underneath. I walked further upstream toward the next beaver dam to check out another puddle and see if that dam was full. The puddle was also not the one with the fish in it, but the dam was full. With that question answered, I walked back downstream until I came to the lowest dam in the area.

There was the puddle, roiling with fish and garter snakes. The snakes dived underwater. I’m not sure whether they were hiding or simply continuing to fish. A particularly large water boatman was rowing around the water. I returned to my bike and unclipped my bucket, trotting up to the full dam to fill it. I grabbed my gear and took it down near the puddle, extracting the net from the straps and cords of my backpack. Setting my bucket of water next to the puddle, I ran my net through the water.

This is the puddle where the fish were stranded. This is what it looked like as I began work.

The puddle was only a few inches deep, and my net scraped bottom as I passed it through the water, scooping up a mixture of fish, a snake and mud. I dipped the net and everything in it into my bucket to give the fish something to breathe. I then removed the snake and turned the net over, dumping the mud and fish inside the bucket.

When I scooped stuff up from the puddle, this is what I got.

My mom had instructed me not to dump all the fish into one pond. These fish are territorial, and we didn’t want to upset the population balance too much in any one pond. So I walked about seventy paces back up to the full dam, dumped in some fish, then walked another thirty paces up to the next dam up and dumped the rest. I returned to the puddle, wondering if the remaining snakes had taken the opportunity to flee while I was gone.

They had not. As I scooped two more nets full from the puddle, I got two more snakes. I evicted them and went to empty the next bucket of fish, distributing them as before. Then I went back for another bucket full. Dump. Repeat, this time venturing through thick, swampy foliage to reach a third dam a hundred and fifty paces away.

I made around five trips. On the last, I discovered that my bucket held the giant water scavenger beetle that my mom had noticed earlier. I paused, wondering whether to throw this clearly carnivorous insect in with the very fishes I had just rescued. I decided that I didn’t know enough to make a wise decision, so I made my best guess: I dumped the beetle in, counting on the fact that up until the dry-out, the fish had probably had more than one of these beetles in their pond all the time.

This is the giant water scavanger beetle that I found in my bucket. It was around two inches long.

It was 12:15 as I returned to the pond, now empty of large fish and snakes. Only small fry and water insects remained. What was I going to do with them? I couldn’t leave them because the puddle will either dry up or run out of oxygen, but they were too small to net.

At first I tried to take the whole puddle—fish, bugs, water, mud and all. I quickly abandoned that method as completely impractical and decided on the opposite: I’d fill the puddle.

The reason that the only water left in the lower dam had pooled in this spot was because this hole was the deepest and had the steepest sides. A deep puddle that isn’t wide keeps its temperature better than a wide, shallow hole with the same amount of water. So if I filled the hole with water, it would regain some of its ability to hold temperature. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it was good enough for now.

Back I went to the full dam. I filled my bucket full of water and returned to the puddle. I poured my bucket into the puddle, with no discernible effect. This was going to take a while…

I spent the next two hours hauling water and wishing I had a second bucket. I paused once to toss water over the dam, filling the two upper puddles, and once to play with two of the garter snakes that kept trying to sneak back into the puddle when I wasn’t looking.

This is one of the garter snakes that snuck back into the pond when it thought I wasn't looking.

It took about thirty trips before I was satisfied with the puddle, which had now overflowed into two adjacent depressions. No longer round, it looked like an old cartoon rocketship. I poured four more buckets onto the ground around the hole, hoping to cool the ambient temperature and slow evaporation even further, and took a break to rest, write notes and measure the distance between the puddle and various dams.

This is what the puddle looked like after filling it with more than thirty buckets of water! It looks like an old cartoon rocketship.

Finally, I started home, very tired and hungry. The steep path out of the canyon slowed my progress, allowing me to notice ants. They were especially thick around the last steep hill that I had to climb before coming up out of the canyon.

These were not the red and black ants that attack me when I pick spinach or that swarm our hummingbird feeders. They were very tiny black ants, and they were much less common than the larger ones.

They were everywhere on this part of the trail, with nests in the rocks of the path. But they weren’t running helter-skelter the way the larger ants did—they were running full-tilt along well-defined ant highways, only one or two ants wide. There was a very clear network running from one nest to another, and I was especially interested by the three-way intersections where there were no nests or even any visible landmarks. They were just in the road in the middle of a rock. These highways were quite busy, and I had to pick up my bike and carry it to get past without squishing the busy commuters.

As I got closer to the top, it became clear that a storm was coming. Dark clouds were gathering to the south, but the canyon blocked my view and I couldn’t tell how close the storm was. I could hear thunder, and was considering stashing my aluminum bike somewhere once I reached the top, so I wouldn’t be toting a wheeled lightning rod.

When I reached the top of the trail, I discovered that the weather was worse than I had guessed. But it was a long way off and though I could still see lighting, I couldn’t hear the thunder and so I decided to cross the open field with my bike and not leave it behind.

As I neared the paved road, I saw Mom coming toward me, fully arrayed with backpack, hiking boots and her special twenty-year old walking stick. She’d been unable to raise me on the radio, and come to warn me of the incoming weather and help me find shelter if necessary.

“So,” she asked. “Were you able to rescue all the fish?” I answered no, and explained how I hadn’t been able to catch the really small fish, and explained how I had filled the puddle.

She asked, “Did you have fun?”

“Yes.”

I made this path going back and forth between the beaver dam and the pond. This is the nearest of the three dams.

July 11, 2009.  As I take Coyote Way into Crossfire, I find its coyote gate keep reduced to little more than a fur doormat.  The carcass’s light bones seem to be floating away downhill.  Many are missing.  So that took, what?  A little over three months?  Three months for decomposition to the point of fur and bleached bone. 

We’ve had a run of hot weather, so I’m curious about how the beaver ponds in Crossfire are faring, especially the last one located along my route.  Around this time last year, that pond dried up completely.  Dozens of small fish locked in between its dams died in the mud as its last pocket of creek water turned inside out, summer’s heat having emptied it of its currency.

As I approach the dam, I can see the creek bed below it has run dry.  That means there’s no flow out of the dam.  That probably means … yes, the pond is empty. 

But walking to the bank and visually following the curve of the muddy pond bottom to its lowest point, I discover a puddle, three feet long and two feet wide, sunk in a crease.  Its murky, greenish-brown surface roils.  Desperate fish, I think, trapped in the last shreds of water heating up fast in the rising morning temperatures, losing oxygen, losing volume. 

I have to get a closer look.  I walk into the creek bed examining the mud not just for a passable route to the puddle but also to read something about who else has been here and what they did.  Raccoon tracks down to the water’s edge—can guess what that animal was doing here; deer—one, a fawn, tiny smiling hoof prints leading to the puddle; turkeys, large and small.  As I approach the puddle the scene stops me short.  Yes, there are fish.  Their backs show right at the water’s surface or just below it.  But there is something else in the puddle, too—something driving the fish into a frenzy of fear. 

Snakes.  Garter snakes.  The water seethes with them and with fish squirming, writhing, trying to get away but having no place to run.  Three snakes spot me.  Two abandon their fishing spots to wriggle through the mud into the tall bank grasses. These are wandering garter snakes, very common around waterways in Utah.  The third snake, the largest of the bunch, a beautiful animal over a foot long, remains half in, half out of the pool, watching me warily.  It refuses to abandon the bounty. 

My eye travels back and forth between the garter snake half out of the pool and the frenetic activity in the water.  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement in the mud to my right.  I look down to see a giant water scavenger beetle, approximately one-and-one-half to two inches long, rowing itself along the muck to the puddle’s rim.  It pauses there a moment then plops in.  It’s a fearsome-looking creature with a pair of large, jointed black forearms that have evolved to grasp, hold, probe, and tear.  This species of beetle feeds on the decaying remains of aquatic animals and when the opportunity arises will also catch live frogs and small fish.

Looks like the opportunity has arrived, and the beetle knows it.

The mud is very deep here, so to avoid sliding down into the puddle I step up carefully to its edge and sink my feet down into the ooze.  The drama in the pool transfixes me.  Small fish wriggle frantically through the murky water, the long, sea serpent-like backs of garter snakes gliding, twisting through the water all around them.  For the fish, it’s a nightmare.  The sight unsettles me, too.  I’ve never seen anything like this. 

With my walking stick, I pick up the big garter snake on the opposite side of the puddle, just to see what it does. It hangs in the air for a moment, then slides off the stick and falls in the mud with a thunk.  Then it glides away.

I want to know what kind of fish are meeting their end under such pitiable circumstances.  That necessitates reaching into the turbulent puddle, and who knows what else abides in the clouds of agitated mud.  Keeping an eye on the giant water scavenger beetle, whose carapace remains visible to my right just below the water’s surface, I swirl the water tentatively with my hand.  Mistakenly, I suppose that there are so many fish trapped in the pool that if I just reach in randomly I’ll catch one.  No.  The snakes having already stirred them to terror they flit away at the slightest touch.  I focus on the visible backs, pick one out, and plunge in my hand.  I come up with a bluegill or perhaps a bluegill hybrid, its broad silvery sides marked with stripes.  It’s about four inches long, wearing electric blue war paint on its cheeks, and sporting a black tab on each gill. 

I’ve held many bluegills in my hands. They’re lively when just out of the water, hard to hold.  Any healthy live fish will flop and writhe vigorously in a piscine version of the reptilian death roll as it tries to escape and flop back to the water.  Not this fish.  Exhausted from its nearly useless efforts to escape the inevitable, it lies weakly in my hand, gaping for breath but otherwise barely moving.  I put it back in the puddle, sample again.  Another bluegill.

These fishes’ prospects are about the grimmest I’ve ever witnessed.  Hot weather is predicted for the entire week; probably, the puddle won’t last through tomorrow.  Even if it does, its oxygen supply is being rapidly depleted.  The garter snakes are on top of the matter, taking every advantage.  When the sun goes down, fortunate raccoons and other predators will arrive for their share.

Pulling my feet out of the sucking mud, I pick my way back to the bank.  It turns out that the turkeys that left the tracks here in the mud haven’t gone far.  They break from the weeds on the opposite bank and take to the air— dirty-yellow fledgling chicks, scattering everywhere, their mother hen clucking nervously as she keeps low to the ground.  Images of the snake, fish, scavenger beetle flash in wild sequences as I regain access to the trail and head south.

In something of a daze at this unexpected encounter with nature’s rough side, I’m really not very interested in the rest of the trail.  As soon as possible, I loop back by the pool.  Three snakes lie out on the bank now.  Two of them are fat with a single fish each.  One fat snake and one yet lean and hungry snake flee, but the third makes only a short dash, its full load making it less inclined to spend much energy.  Its body is already deeply involved in the process of moving the fish down its digestive tract.  It stops and turns an eye toward me.  I return its look then allow my eye to slide down the snake’s body to stop at the bulge.  Muscles visibly contract around the fish, squeezing it slowly down, down, down.  After a couple minutes of us gawking at each other, I leave the snake to the business of converting the fish’s energy into its own, a process that will take several hours.  After this heavy, protein-rich dinner, the snake won’t need to eat again for a couple or three weeks. 

Now I want to see what the upper dams are like, including and especially the one just above this one.  Are similar assaults on stranded fish populations unfolding all along Crossfire Creek?  Walking around the full-bellied snake, who still does not move though it’s fully aware of my presence, I follow the drying creek bed north toward the next dam, soon hitting spongy ground.  Eventually I come to what’s left of the stream’s flow, a sluggish, brackish trickle containing a milky sediment, and clogged with small black snails making a clicking noise.  As I reach the next dam I’m faced with the question of how to get up the creek bank.  The only apparent trail requires I walk through water grasses two feet tall.  I haven’t seen any rattlesnakes in Crossfire any of the four years I’ve hiked here; still, one shouldn’t assume, especially when it comes to venomous snakes.  I feel uneasy over the prospect of walking through grass that hides the ground.

But wait!  This is one of the reasons I carry my willow walking stick. I beat the grasses then part them with the stick, making it with no trouble to a cattle trail leading up out of the creek bed.

All the dams above this point—or at least between this point and where the springs empty into the creek—are in fair to good condition, though algae has blossomed in bright green clouds in the summer-warmed waters and the water level at the dams shows the pools’ surfaces have dropped about eight to ten inches.  Still, fish are romping comfortably in the ponds, dipping at bugs trapped in its surface tension, chasing each other in the shadows.  Lucky, lucky fish.

A couple hundred feet downstream, life looks bleak for their comrades.  Great for the snakes, raccoons, and giant water scavenger beetles, but ineluctably unfortunate for the bluegills.

“Nature’s way,” I say, quoting a dozen or more people who speak of the privations, misfirings, and seemingly insensate conditions that nature gives rise to.  Saying it, I remember a runt puppy from my husky’s only litter who stopped nursing and crawled off into a corner, howling piteously.  “It’s nature’s way,” the vet said.  “But if you feel like you have to do something, get yourself an eyedropper and feed the puppy Gatorade.”

When I reach home and walk through the front door, I find my son. “Hurry and do your morning chores and eat your breakfast,” I tell him.  “There’s something I want you to do down in the canyon.”