Libby and Flike and Queequeg and I had taken an impromptu hike in the 60 degree February day when we were last at Roundrock, and as these things tend to go, we went farther than we had expected, which was not any kind of a problem and led to interesting observations along the way.

As we were making our way back to the cabin along the creek that runs through the Central Valley we passed sections with flowing water. The recent rains down that way, which had helped nearly fill the poor lake, were trickling down from the hillsides and collecting themselves in the creek bed. Yet the farther down the creek we walked, the less water we saw. It disappeared into the earth at some point, and the last few hundred feet to the lake itself involved crunching over dry gravel in the creek. As we’ve observed many times before, we really need a torrent of water coming down the Central Valley in order for it to reach the lake itself.

The fact that we did have such a torrent (likely several) in recent days was shown by two things. One was the fact that the lake was, once again, nearly full. Thus water did feed into it from the watershed (rather than merely the rain that would fall directly into it). The second bit of evidence was the collection of leaves we saw in the dry creek bed, as you see in the photo above.

Notice how they are lined up, side by side, almost as though the leaves are leaves in a book, pages with a story to tell? The moving water did this, leaving its sign that it was here, that it passed through here with business not too far ahead.

And so I was able to read these pages and understand the story that they told. And now I’ve told it to you.

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