Rain, and the creek remembers its route
Three days of rain, the first real storm of the winter. I went up the creek trail as soon as it eased, partly to see the water and partly because I'd been inside too long.
The creek that is a dry sandy gully for nine months of the year was running bank to bank, brown and loud. In two places it had jumped its usual channel and was cutting across an old meander, the route it must have taken before the trail was built. It's humbling how quickly a waterway goes back to what it used to be.
On the trail
Banana slugs everywhere on the shaded north bank, six in the first half kilometre, impossibly yellow against the wet leaf litter. Song sparrows singing from every willow, as if the rain had reset them. A towhee scratching under the coyote brush, using both feet at once in that backward hop.
Most surprising: a western fence lizard basking on a rock at noon, the minute the sun came through. February is early. It looked as sluggish as I felt.
A note on mud
The lower trail was closed with good reason; the bank had slumped in one spot and taken a section of path with it. Walking on saturated trails widens them and wrecks the edges. I turned around at the closure and came back the long way on the fire road.