I wish I could pretend that this is an example of my underwater photography, but who would be fooled by that? Still, this should be underwater. This is the underside of the largest boulder in the lakebed. It's the one with my initials carved into it.
This is a perfect bit of catfish hiding place not too far from the shore. With a full lake, this spot would be more than ten feet underwater, and I think that might be a little too deep for fish habitat, but given the lake's current inability to maintain any depth, it might serve as good habitat for a while (once the lake fills some, that is).
This cavity is actually big enuf for Pablo to crawl in and curl up for a snug little nap. But who wants to nap on the mud, with spiders crawling around above? The space is actually bigger now than a year ago. You can see that there is a back door, but that wasn't there when the rock was originally heaved into place. The dirt behind the rock filled this, but in the ensuing rain and rise/fall of the lake, this mud has washed down to fill in the hapless lakebed. (I'm hoping that this will help seal the leaks, but it may be doing no more than shrinking my lake depth.) I'll leave this hidey hole to the fish to have someday and whatever critter happens to use it in its dry state.
You can tell that in some ancient age water flowed past this stone and carved those interesting shapes in it. This might have been an underground stream, a cleft in the bedrock that allowed water to flow through it. And so maybe this is an example of a similar sort of arrangement currently beneath Lake Marguerite that allows it to drain away. Who knows? Not Pablo.
Missouri calendar:
- The calendar fails me today. There is no entry. So in place of what might have been there I'll say "Take an autumn walk in the woods."
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October 27th, 2006 at 4:29 am
Perhaps this extended season of dryness is akin to a slow-kiln, baking and modifying the structure of the lake bed so that it will hold water when rains return.
Nice little microenvironment there!
October 27th, 2006 at 7:47 am
We have lots of limestone around here. It makes for nice rocks, and caves and natural wells. Berry College, right next to where we live, used to have a nice-sized lake. I remember bicycling around it when I was just a kid. It seemed a permanent part of the landscape. Then a sinkhole opened under it and the entire lake went away. The college spent some time filling the sinkhole, but it was futile. What was the lake is now dry land. I hope your lake doesn’t suffer the same fate.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Thought about fencing some pigs or cows around your lakebed? That’s what the old-timers used to do for leaky ponds. The animals trampling the soil and the manure used to help seal the ponds up.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Are those fossils in the upper left rock face?
October 27th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Wayne – I don’t plan to explore this microenvironment too closely. Maybe if I were shorter . . .
Mark – Nice to see you stopping by again. There are lots of sinkholes in Missouri, and not too far from my woods. I hope it doesn’t happen too.
Rabbit – I’ve heard about this, but I’ve also heard that you can’t swim in a lake after this because of the parasites. I’m hoping to do a lot of swimming in my lake.
FC – Yes, those are fossils of that plant-like animal whose name I can never recall.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Mark has wonderful geological thingies in his neck of the northwestern Georgia forests. Fossils and everything.
We get covered by mud.