In Cairns #66, I described an exhilarating time I had in the Warner Wetlands of Eastern Oregon. The wetland was filling in as I paddled around on three-inch deep water through fields of mustard and bunch grasses. This winter, 2016-17, was the wettest year on record for our region so I visited the wetlands again. This time they were much fuller.
Here are two photos for comparison. The left photo, from my first visit, was taken at the lower edge of the filling water. In the background, you can see a “gorge” through which the filling water is coming from. The right picture (from this year) is from a different angle but you can see the same “gorge” in the background.
The next image (from my first visit) was taken up on top of the left side of that gorge, looking back down over this “lake”. The red line shows how much of the valley bottom is now covered by lake which extends as a series of channels and other lakes a couple of miles further.
A lake’s surface is uniform, unlike the land it covers. So as the water rises, more of one’s view becomes generic, lacking in individual specificity. Also, the navigation becomes trickier. The first year, everything was flowing. Channels were narrow and currents were obvious and easily followable so I was navigating within a clearly-defined drainage system. This year, more of this low-lying land is under water so there are less landmarks. Most of the channels are broad with only subtle currents. There were several places where I really had to look all around me to memorize the look of a fork in the water before I set off along one of them. On the way back upstream, I often tested my route by paddling to the mouth of a possible route up and stopping there to see if the bubbles on the surface were all drifting towards me or remaining stationary. If they were stationary, that was not the way to go.
We say that water seeks its own level. But what does that really mean when that “level” stretches for miles around bends and divergences, across lakes and through gorges. In my last Cairns, I talked about “inflection points”, the highest points along the possible paths of water. They appear as low spots along a dividing ridge until the water level rises above them. Then they appear as a place where the water overflows into a new channel down the slopes beyond. And if the water level beyond backs up and rises over the inflection point, it submerges out of sight. Three faces of an inflection point.
The Warner Wetlands have hundreds of inflection points, many within a few inches of elevation from others. If the water is advancing along ten different fronts, what happens along one front will change the water level in a way that will radiate throughout all the advancing waters. Perhaps one way to show this is with three maps. I’ve used Google Earth as my template so the maps are fairly accurate. The final map covers approximately a square mile.
This third map is full of places where the initial four lakes have bulged out into various bays. The bulging happened at inflection points. Initially they defined the edge of a lake. As they overflowed, they marked a narrow channel accelerating an overflow into a new basin. And now they lie invisibly below the surface of the lake. The lake’s surface is level but its bottom is not.
The wetland is still filling. The dramatic filling is now happening several miles from my campsite but as the lakes downstream fill and back up, the rising water level will influence this area also. Currents will become more negligible. And yet, there might be still other inflection points and the lake map will complicate with yet more bulges.
I was fascinated by what felt like a biologically under-sized wetland. No swallows flying overhead. A few dragonflies and remarkably few mosquitoes. Lots of spadefoot toads calling at night. Large expanses of water all around me without any riparian vegetation between it and the desert sagebrush country at its edge. This is a wetland that is desert, dry eight or nine years out of ten. Riparian life can’t handle that. But now there is this, perhaps, one-year only opportunity.
These wetlands are not isolated. They are the lower part of a drainage from the Warner Mountains in the south. There is always some spring runoff that fills other lakes to the south. But only in very wet winters is there enough moisture to flow all the way north into these lakes. Which means that ten miles upstream, there is a permanent riparian habitat. So mosquitoes, dragonflies, and swallows are nearby and available to expand into this new wetland. How does that happen? Are there “inflection points” within this flow of life? For example, perhaps the few mosquitoes are fiercely laying their eggs in all these new moist places and two weeks from now mosquitoes will “overflow and bulge” into this habitat which will then allow the swallows to overflow an “inflection point” that is restricting them from this area.
Small groups of western and eared grebes were seen diving, presumably for fish that might be swimming down from those upstream lakes. Further downstream near the advancing front of the water, dabbling ducks were seen. On my first visit, gulls patrolled the advancing edge of the water. What are all the patterns by which life bulges into this new wetland – and then recedes as the water eventually recedes?
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