Beaver Dam Creek

While Emma was learning how to drive back and forth from grandpa's place to work and learning the ropes at work, I got in a couple days of field work.  The first day I had was with Michael, the hydrologist of the Butte Falls Field Office.  While we talked about the RMP that I'm working on, he brought me to Beaver Dam Creek to show me an area he is proposing to be an Area of Critical Environmental Concern due to its freshwater mussel populations, beaver activity, and unique wetlands called "fens."

Very near to these sites, I asked to see an old commercial thinning which was harvested the summer I left Medford on my first appointment there.  At the time (2008), I had been tasked with surveying and buffering streams.  On my return, I wanted to see how the skid trails had recovered because one of my assumptions in the RMP is that contemporary groundbased timber harvest recovers to a point that it is no longer detrimental within a decade.  This particular site definitely fit that description.

At the end of the day, I took Michael up Bowen Creek, past Dickwad Corner, and down Salt Creek because he had never been on that road before, but it was one of my favorite drives!