A Walk in Chicken Creek

Jackson came for lunch today and afterward we decided to visit his favorite kind of tree – the American sycamore. Several fine specimens grow along Chicken Creek, which winds its way through several hundred acres of contiguous woods. Four of those acres are our back yard, but we can walk freely throughout the woods and along the creek.

Today, because of the drought, we were able to walk in the dry, leaf-strewn creek bed to visit this venerable sycamore. Dennis measured its trunk at twelve arm-spans. Dennis and Jackson estimate that it was a sapling before Thomas Jefferson was born.

I was surprised to see an abundance of little green plants in the creek bed. Jackson said he knows this plant as Creeping Charlie. When we got home I learned that it is native to Europe and southwestern Asia, but, having being introduced to America by early settlers, it now grows everywhere in the contiguous United States except the Rocky Mountains. Known by a variety of names, Creeping Charlie has both medicinal and culinary uses. I wish I had gathered some for a salad or to cook with turnip greens this evening.

Kansas having been an inland sea for millennia, its principal rock is limestone. Chunks of limestone form the creek bed and great layers of it are just under the soil. This slab would serve well as a tabletop. Several feet long, it protrudes from the hillside, its protruding tip creating a shelter for small animals.

Limestone is not our only rock, however. Walking further along the creek bed we came upon a long cliff of shale that forms one bank of the creek at this point.

The shale is slowly eroding into the creek bed. Jackson picked up a chunk and showed us how easily the soft stone flakes after it has been exposed to weather. He easily pulled it apart.

Perched on the edge of the cliff is an oak tree that someday surely will slide down into the creek. Most of its roots are already dangling.

Now, looking back on our hike through the woods, the beauty of fallen sycamore leaves lingers in my mind’s eye.

Copyright 2012 by Shirley Domer.