prairie point

Our neighbor has his deckboat running again and one cool morning last week he called and asked if we wanted to go up the river. Of course. We had never been up the little creek that flows into the lake we live on. We had heard it was an interesting little trip. It’s way on the other side of the lake from us where the water gets very shallow in places. Even though the lake is full to the top of the spillway now you have to watch out for submerged rocks and stumps there.

As you head toward the far shore it is not easy to know where the mouth of the creek is.

Thank goodness for the depth finders which enable you to stay in the channel. There are sandbars near the mouth with willows growing on them. And a grey heron looking for his dinner.

We follow another bird up the river. People who grew up here tell me that they used to waterski on this creek before the water was impounded to make the lake. I can see how that would work now although it would have been lower then, because the dam keeps the water high in the creek too. In some places it was as deep as 30 feet. Almost seems like a river. On old maps it is sometimes labeled as a river.

We saw three fisherman in a boat near the mouth of the creek and then just birds and a couple of cows watching warily from under a cottonwood tree. Some huge cottonwoods, oaks and pecans. You would think you were in a forest, but sad to say along most of the way there are only trees in a narrow corridor along the banks and then rangeland.

What a lazy way to spend a morning.

I bet it would be fun in the moonlight too.