Naming the Creeks

Up until now we have been referencing our position in the Tom Turkey management area by referring to one of the many creeks than run through it. We have crossed enough creeks now that you would have to refer to the previous reports to try to figure out which one we are at now. To more precisely identify them we will try numbering them as follows:

Creek#1: This is the first creek north of the path below the field station to the river and was roughly where the UM students worked cleared honeysuckle to in January.

Creek#2: This is the creek below which we cleaned out the rest of the honeysuckle on the August Ford workday and some of our first weekday workdays. It is almost directly below our second base camp.

Creek#3: In the area south of this creek we had two base camps, saw the rattlesnake, temporarily lost an applicator, and Russell cut down the big Common Buckthorn.

Creek#4: This creek is below the base camp where our seats are ash tree trunks. The area south of it had the huge four-trunked honeysuckle, the green Gray Tree Frog, and the bee hive in the tree trunk we sat next to for our first break on September 2 (we moved the break area after we noticed the bees). We built one brush pile in this creek to slow down erosion and because it is easier to throw branches down into the creek than up onto a pile and the branches should rot faster if the bottom ones are sitting in water. With no salmon runs, I don't think there will be any ecological damage.

These creeks do not run all the way from the the field to the river but start somewhere below the slope and get wider and deeper as they approach the river.

Russell will decide whether to delineate these creeks on the maps and whether to devise more interesting names. I suppose he could name them after volunteers, i.e. Katie's Creek, Karla's Creek, Bob's Brook, Sam's Stream, Russell's Rivulet. If you have a better name for any of them, make a comment.