Preparing for storms

[lhexa]

Two weeks ago I visited my shrine after a long absence. It is a small area of a storm creek, located a quarter-mile from my house, next to a park. While in high school I would explore miles of the various Dallas creeks, but I never discovered a section more interesting than this one, or more suited to contemplation. That I should periodically neglect it is suited to my personality, but this once I took away from it a bag full of trash, and left with it a hope that what flows through shall continue to shape it for the better. The place is worth describing.

Its two parts are a five-sectioned underpass and a sloped area downstream, mostly concrete, but the bare expanses of most storm conduits are rare. Instead huge slabs have been ripped up and set aside, forming a gravel pool by the underpass and some islands downstream, while the various other slabs are fragmented and rough. Water flows both underground and above, from the pool where colored fish swim to the short waterfalls by the islands. The stream is generally weak, a few inches deep at most and dry in many places, but during storms it breaks all lesser trees and forces the few that remain to grow horizontally.

On this second-most-recent visit I broke apart several piles of brush so that the mass would wash downstream, witnessing several things in the process. The set of root stalactites had progressed further, and I was able to discern how it had formed. A tree somewhere above had cracked open a water pipe, creating a constant leak from the tunnel ceiling. Some roots from the tree had descended along this trickle, slowly gathering sediment. Eventually the individual roots get too heavy and break away, taking with them a chunk from the ceiling and further increasing the leak. The longest strand I've seen was around eight feet long, but on this last visit only shorter roots remained. I reached that tunnel at an opportune time, when the mud had started drying and formed a pattern reminiscent of a melting honeycomb, bordered by tiles of cracked sediment. I felt that footprints would have marred it, although the pawprints did not. In another tunnel I espied a marble-sized spider, then another, and so on until I realized that a continuous network of their webs descended from the ceiling. When I returned today I discovered that a strong wind had destroyed this work of hundreds.

I've met a number of odd people at my shrine, for the path leading down there is hard to miss. There was the fellow who talked with me about gigging, at least one dealer, and a number of people served by his kin. Their transient art does not escape the trend of this place, and in the long run neither will the shrine itself. The wind and rain have their analogues.