Checking on the river

 We went to see how the South River was doing and found it fast and red.

The rains have been relentless, and the current was carrying Georgia clay toward the Atlantic. The current was deadly fast. Large snags and a basketball went by.

On Alexander Lake, this year’s goslings were swimming with their parents. Some Canadian geese stay on the lake year-round. We saw two pairs of adults, each with four little ones. It looked like battleships herding destroyers.

We walked through woods where the rangers had burned the underbrush a couple of years ago. The forest floor, once brown with rotting leaves and pine needles, was as green as Ireland or Tennessee, whichever is greener. Native muscadine vines and invasive Japanese stilt grass were growing among the pines and hardwoods. The trees still bear scorch marks, some to an alarming height.

I remember an old forester in Texas, scoffing at the phrase “controlled burn.” In his mind, people who believed that such a concept was possible could not be reasoned with or talked to.