Winter on the Bayou

The Cycle of Life

 

Feb. 22, 2019

(Updated Feb. 24, 2019)

We were late taking our winter shot of that bend in the bayou. We’ve been photographing the bayou from the same high bank in Memorial Park every season for almost five years now. But photographer Jim Olive has been busy taking photos of Joshua trees and palms in the sunny desert out in California. The clear air there is cleaner, drier, and healthier for his lady counterpart, so Jim, a lifelong East Texan, has pulled up stakes, driving back and forth to Texas for occasional gigs and resuscitating his many friends here with emergency storytelling. It turns out that Jim is a unique and irreplaceable person: a talented and generous professional photographer, a naturalist, herpetologist, passionately and actively devoted to the environment. Among other things, he is the founder of the Christmas Bay Foundation and also, not kidding, an actual Wilderness Advanced First Aid Responder, though that certification does not require lively storytelling.

The weather wasn’t cooperating on the days he was here. But finally last week there was a break in the gloom. Just after sunrise we met in Memorial Park, walked across the grassy picnic area south of Memorial Drive, and headed into the woods and down the winding dirt (unofficial) path with Jim reciting the Latin names of trees and plants.

Walking along one of the many ravines that drain into the bayou, we passed a pile of broken remnants of concrete pipe left over from when the park was part of Camp Logan, a World War I military training camp and hospital, now a State Antiquities Landmark. We paused to see whether the giant Texas rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta lindheimeri) that we saw coiled up in there a few seasons back would appear. It did not. This was not far from where we’d seen the big, beautiful coral snake (Micrurus tener) slithering across the path last November.

Remnants of 100-year-old drainage pipes from the era of Camp Logan. Photo by SC, Feb. 14, 2019

 

Dead Trees Giving Life

We continued down the trail, easily stepping over the disintegrating remnants of what was once a large log, the trunk of a massive Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), possibly felled by the drought of 2010-2011. Dead trees are, in a sense, not really dead, as they continue to be a vital part of the ecosystem, both on the land, in the water, and along the bank. When we first started years ago, in order to pass over it, we had to step up on top of this fallen elder, with Jim cautioning always to give warning and be wary of the possible presence of a rattlesnake (Cortalus horridus) taking shelter under the log.

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