Thursday, July 30, 2009

Got an early start today (okay, 7:30, but I was going to a boxstore, and the anticipation woke me early) and went to Lost Bridge at Salamonie Reservoir. There's a marshland area on Lost Bridge West Road I wanted to photograph. The lighting wasn't the best, so I put it off. Also, I forgot my camera.
Did get to report a water leak at the shelter at Lost Bridge East. Ever the public servant.
The marsh isn't really, but it is out of the ordinary. Hoping it will make a real photograph, and will post it (them), if, you know, I figure out how, and remember my camera.
The three major rivers in North Central Indiana (the Wabash, Salamonie, and Mississinewa, all Miami Indian names) flow northwest into the reservoirs, then turn to the southwest, generally along US 24. This displays that Bedrock Rules, despite the geomorphological manifestations of 4 periods of glaciation. The rivers are steered by the Cincinnati Arch, a feature trending from Cincinnati to Chicago, low on the ends and high in the middle. Petroleum migrates to the highest area of a (subsurface, or bedrock) formation, hence the Texas oilman's axiom, "Always drill updip".
The Cincinnati Arch is why there is a Wells County, in Indiana, and a Gas City, and a Petroleum, and a Wellsburg.
And there are thousands of capped oil and, mostly, natural gas wells in the Northeast and Central Indiana area. The Arch trends northwest, defined by US 24, and most (but not all) wells tend to be south. There are wells to the north, which have much less sulphur, and are still in production. The Tethys River canyon is also a manifestation of the arch, and a prehistorical, huge, river. The glacial till has been scoured from the Tethys at Wabash, leaving massive sculpted river features the Wabash River could never have produced.
The result is you drive west, but mostly south from the tailwaters of one reservoir to the next's headwaters.
I went from the Salamonie State Forest (no, Cooper's hawk magic wasn't working) to the east edge of Mississinewa with nothing of note, except, you know, how far south it was. In the farmlands of my Indiana, everything is a grid, lining out the land-grant sections. Any diagonal, like the reservoirs, is mystical, unfathomable.
I get to the Grant Creek bridge, hoping to catch a glimpse of the kingfisher, known to return to familiar spots. Instead, there is a Great Egret, standing stock still, hip-deep in the ponded water. And with the words of some newly arrived fishermen, I move enough to find three more egrets in a dead tree, and a Great Blue Heron, probably taking fishing lessons.
I am not worthy...