Seasonal Tickland

Were it late May, we would not have walked where we did today. Two years ago we walked out at the Sloughs on a sunny afternoon, and after just a short time Dennis looked down at my legs (I was wearing the light yellow pants that Lynn Huddon finds a bit too neon) and asked, "What's that on your pants?"

Up to my knees, it was ticks. The same for Dennis, but they were less easy to see because his pants were dark. We ran back to the little parking area there by the two-lane highway and undressed and shook out our clothes and shoes and socks and brushed each other off closely and attentively and in the car on the way back we found a few more crawling on us and at home we left our shoes outside and undressed again in the basement at the washing machine. The next morning when I opened the top of the washing machine there were three ticks sitting on top of the agitator, their forearms raised, waiting.

But it's not yet been warm enough long enough for the ticks to be out, and so today we walked longer than that other time.

A sandhill crane sang its pterodactyl song from the old now-almost-underwater farm field -- angry that we were near? -- and flew heavily away. An osprey also flew over us, just after we saw our third set of muskrats. There were lots of ducks, and lots of some sort of fork-tailed swift that flashed a pale blue on its undersides and seemed even to glisten a darker blue above. Several pairs of Canada geese -- fairly large ones -- watched us. Flickers, and lots of little brown birds. Back in the woods, where the path leads to the Snake River, the moss was iridescent and thick.

It's hard not to wonder when we're back in there, though, what this area was like back before all the dikes and breeding ponds were built to stop the seasonal flooding that, according to people we know who've lived here a long time, used to cover the highway for weeks at a time.