While walking along the rippling waters of Bradford Creek, I, like so many others, am sending out thoughts and prayers to those affected by the LA fires. Although I was born in LA, I have lived in beautiful Lake County since the 1970s. Almost all of us here in Lake County have experienced the ravages of fire and the terrible toll it takes on property, landscape and peace of mind.
So far this season, we have experienced over thirty inches of blessed rain in South Lake County with more in the forecast. What a boon it is for streams, lakes and land alike. Banana slugs and newts are thriving in the damp under story alongside the gurgling creek, while the waterscape shows off reflective colors of bay trees’ greens and yellows that bend in the breeze above the water.
Within the dappled impressionist scenery on the mirror of the creek is an eddy. This circular current of water flows around a boulder forming a physical separation within the creek’s main current. The pocket of water is mesmerizing with its glassy good looks. According to NASA’s Visit to an Ocean Planet website, an eddy is a loop of current that is cut off from the main current, or a small, spinning current. NASA has views of ocean eddies from space!
My creek walk forms a circle as I veer away from swords of light that infiltrate the creek’s waters, taking me over to the oaks along the drive. Here is where more circles in nature are situated. Acorn cups litter the land where squirrels and woodpeckers have feasted on the nuts from the oaks. The woody base of the acorn, or cupule, may be small, but as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” The acorn cup looks like a tiny hat lying there. While some species of oaks produce acorn cups that are smooth, some are coarse and prickly, and others still have scales. It’s fun to learn that in some cultures it is believed that carrying an acorn brings good luck!
There’s an old oak that had been dropping limbs, becoming a hazard to health and home, and sadly, it had to come down. Its tree rings tell a story. Another circle in nature. Light and dark concentric rings on the stump can tell me what the weather was doing across the life of the tree, as well as its age. As the tree grew in spring and summer, rings that are light in color appear, while the rings that are dark portray wood that the tree grew in late summer and fall. So, I can count one light and one dark ring as one year’s growth of the tree. NASA’s Global Climate Change website explains that trees can give scientists information on climate conditions such as temperature and rainfall. If the rings are wider, that usually means it was a wet year, while thinner rings tell of dry and cold conditions.
The indigenous people of Lake County, such as the Pomo Indians, often utilized circles in their culture. Through the beauty of the circle in their amazing and varied baskets, they could cook, store, and perform myriad tasks. Cupules or indented circles in rocks, or petroglyphs, propose the idea of meaningful rituals. Pitted boulder sites found across Pomo lands may have been used by shamans or childless women who fasted before visiting these ‘baby rocks.’ The basic circle was regularly created to benefit their community as the ethnographic record shared by archaeologists and elders contends.
Circles, spheres and other little messengers from nature can open us up to the world. Tree rings, acorn caps, baskets and eddies are only a few of nature’s circles. Some say that circles are nature’s way of reminding us of infinity and eternity of life and that the unremitting loop brings to mind life cycles in nature. Another symbolic meaning embodied in a circle is held in the ring on your finger that can promise love without end. The interconnected network found all around us invites us to interpret the language of the land.
