The gouge in the foreground used to be the Granite Creek Trail. Jon and I had our suspicions as we worked our way up from the bottom. There was an awful lot of daylight ahead where we were accustomed to seeing trees. As I approached the creek crossing, I could see that a big bite had been taken out of the hillside. The trail just ended where the creek had rerouted its channel. Looking up the narrow gorge, big piles of rock had been deposited, with logs and trees partially buried. We were able to cross more or less dry-footed, and continued our exploration upstream. The trail is completely wiped out for about 600 feet. Gone, erased by the action of water. Several posts back, I made an illustrated page about a rainy day. That’s when this happened. Over three inches of rain fell in a 48 hour period, on top of melting snow and ground that was already saturated. The water had to go somewhere.

In the larger scheme of things, this is no big deal. The trail is closed until we figure out where to relocate it and do the work. And that is on hold until the Granite Creek Road is repaired, since the creek completely blew out an 18 inch culvert. It’s not driveable–we went as far as we could and walked the rest of the way. Jon and I were like little kids: “Oh boy, let’s go out and see what nature did!” Both of us lit up in anticipation of discovery. Then we started scouting the ground for the best place to move the trail. We love the problem-solving.

In a world that is increasingly manipulated and run over by humans, it’s a refreshing change of perspective to see what weather and gravity does. Mother Nature rocks. She rules, and too bad for those who forget.