Eco-biography

Eco-biography

In 1960, the United States Army Corps of Engineers had embarked on a project to build a dam on the Des Moines River in Marion County approximately 35 miles from Des Moines to control flooding in southeast Iowa and on the Mississippi River. The project, Red Rock Dam, was completed in 1969 and the resulting reservoir was christened Lake Red Rock. Red Rock dam and lake were architectural marvels, creating the largest flood control structure and largest lake in Iowa respectively. The project cost approximately 88 million dollars but expenses were quickly recuperated from the prevention of destruction cause by seasonal flooding annually. In 1993, torrential flooding tore through central and southern Iowa causing almost $15 billion in damages and claiming 30 lives. Some 200,000 residents in Des Moines and the surrounding area were without drinkable water for almost a month. It was also the year my parents filed for divorce.

I was barely four years old at the time and couldn’t remember the gritty details of the divorce or the proceeding settlement or the ongoing custody battle thankfully. What I do remember is the times spent visiting Lake Red Rock with my dad and brother during this period of separation. We would jump into dad’s sports car, grab a few drinks at the local soda fountain, and make the thirty minute trip out to the lake, sometimes three times a week just to see the impact of the rain on the reservoir and the massive deluge of water coming out of the spillways massive flood gates. This powerful image of the floods, and the swollen rivers filled with debris awakened an interest in my head that’s stuck with me since the days of riding in dad’s sports-car. Even now, some 17 years later, when Iowa has a few weeks of hard rain showers, I find myself drawn to Lake Red Rock and Iowa’s other flood control reservoir, Saylorville Lake, with the drive to satisfy that innate fascination with flooding and to perhaps relive some of my early childhood experiences.

In 1995 my father got remarried and thus began the first step of, what I felt, was growing up. I spent most of my childhood in the middle-class town of Indianola, just 15 minutes south of Des Moines. We lived in a blue collar environment in a decent sized ranch home. It was comfortable in an affordable sense. Our vehicles were domestic and well maintained; only Fords in our driveway. My dad, and newly christened step-mother and worked nine to five; my dad was an electrician and my step-mom a beautician. My brother and I would be home alone for a couple hours after school. We usually minded our own business playing with neighborhood kids but never the same ones. We had our own groups. Dad would get home about five thirty and dinner was always done by six thirty. A cup of coffee followed dinner. Life was simple.

            The weekends were spent differently. Dad was off weekends and my step-mother worked weekends, except Sunday, which meant it was guy time on Saturday. Dad was quite the outdoorsman. Almost every Saturday during the spring and early fall, my dad, my brother and I would pack up his American made SUV and head out to the wilderness of Lake Ahquabi to fish or look for morel mushrooms. We would leave at the crack of dawn to beat the frequent rush of other would-be fisherman possibly having guy-time of their own. The highway through Indianola goes directly to the lake, but it was dad's habit to take the back roads all the way there. I enjoyed the gravel more than the paved highway. Despite Iowa being characterized as flat, the state starts to get pretty hilly south of Des Moines and I think that’s what part of the allure of taking the gravel roads was. A series of houses followed by a string of hills that would make anyone’s stomach drop if sped over fast enough led to the turnoff where the abandoned waterworks now sits empty. I loved to look at the thick oak trees that lined each side of the road as we ascended and descended every hill. We would pass agriculture fields and an old, iron-framed bridge covered in graffiti before finally arriving at the lake. The lot of us would get out of the car, grab our plastic grocery sacks or fishing poles and head down the, usually muddy, dirt path from the parking lot to our frequently scoured part of the lake. The path was at the bottom of a hill so all the water runoff would inevitably settle there. We marched down the wooded trail and I would inevitably begin to look around as I gave in to the boredom of the hike. I saw tall reaching trees, pudgy green scaled trees, trees with pointed leaves, and trees with round leaves, grasses with purple flowers, and yellow flowers, sometimes with no flowers at all. We would pass them by without ever noticing their significance. Our feet coated with clay, we set off into the forest with our plastic Wal-Mart and Fareway sacks looking for morel mushrooms.  Passing tree, after tree, stump after stump, fallen limb after fallen limb, we scoured the vast forest for the succulent fungus. I looked around briefly and saw only timber; a vista of wood and plant life unidentifiable and unappreciated by myself at the time.

            My dad always had sound advice on how to find morels, “Stop where you are and look around. When you find one, you usually find a bunch. Look for the umbrella plants too. They like to grow under them. Find a good walking stick so you can just brush the umbrella plants aside to look under them.” Actually, most of my family on my father’s side has always had a good grasp on forestry. My dad used to go raccoon hunting with his father, and his grandfather. My older brother got the spirit of the hunt in him. I went a few times but wasn’t a fan of watching a dead animal being skinned. I do, however, credit the three generations of raccoon hunters as a contributing factor for becoming in environmentalism. I experienced the forest in a similar way the Native Americans did; as a source of livelihood. The natives looked to the forest for sustenance and shelter; the three generations of raccoon hunters before me looked to it for the same purposes albeit in the form of raccoon pelts to sell as part of their own livelihood. Granted, the Native Americans didn’t have spotlights and 22 caliber rifles, but nonetheless I garnered a significant appreciation for the woods.

I recall my first “eco-teacher” that taught a course in Midwestern ecology at Des Moines Area Community College which I attended before transferring to Central. I had needed a science credit and thought the class seemed interesting enough. This was before the sleeping environmentalist had awakened within me, “Can anyone identify any of the trees in this area?” My professor loved rhetorical questions. It was my second year at DMACC and like the hundreds of students that came before me, my professor knew almost no one would answer her; the silence was deafening except for the frequent bird chirps and rustling of the nearby eastern cottonwood tree. “You can always tell an eastern cottonwood by the sound the leaves make in the wind; sounds like clapping yes? Silver maples are commonly found accompanying eastern cottonwoods in areas called Riparian-Floodplain forest. Commonly found in residential areas as well. Silver maples get their name from the silvery color pattern on the underside of their leaves. Both are native species to Iowa and play an important role in this particular ecosystem.” Little did I know that the rest of my college career would be spent studying the very subject matter I was required to learn at that time. A short year later I had the pleasure of taking a similar course here at Central with the incomparable Dr. Russell Benedict, “There are no evergreen trees native to Iowa except the red cedar juniper.” I remember being surprised by that given there are pine trees everywhere in my home neighborhood. “Red cedars are easily identified by their scaled needles, and obvious berries which are used in making gin.” Being of drinking age, that makes perfect sense now. Their scent is almost identical. My interest in the environment began to sprout like a morel in the early spring sunlight. “Shagbark hickory, red oak and white oaks are commonly found in what is appropriately referred to as Oak-Hickory forest. Shagbark hickories are easily identified by their bark, as you can guess, looks shaggy. Species of red oak have the distinctive pointed leaves as members of the white oak family have rounded leaves. Oak-hickory forest is fairly abundant around Iowa and provides habitat for many species of birds and small mammals such as the fox and gray squirrels.” Professor Paul Weihe was my next master under whom I would be apprenticing under. It was his class that solidified my career path in the natural sciences.

Now a senior in college, and my brother living on his own, we don’t get to search the forests for morels as often anymore. We don’t visit our spot in the forest on the hill by the lake as much. We don’t look under every log, every fallen limb, and flip umbrella plants looking for the elusive mushrooms like Dad, my brother and I used to. The infrequent times we get to go out to the lake and search for morels or cast out a line are a much more significant experience to me. I used to see a forest dotted with shrubs and grasses. It is only after many years of questing through the thickets and briars with dad and my brother, and becoming instilled with the knowledge invested in me by academia that I can appreciate that which is around me; the subtle roar of the clapping of Eastern Cottonwood leaves, the silver underside of the thin Silver Maple leaf, the scaled needles and gin scented berries of the Red Cedar Junipers, the pointed leaves of the Red Oak and the round leaves of the White. My outdoor endeavors with my dad and my brother influenced the path I took in the college world. It was the people, the professors, and teachers, that I encountered on that path that would continue to push me to excel and become more involved with the natural sciences then the young community college student ever would have imagined.