Today’s walk was a relatively short (11 km or so) loop around the Nicholle Flats Marsh in Buffalo Pound Provincial Park. The walk covered two trails. One runs along the south side of the marsh, between the old stone farm house at Nicholle Flats and the dam on the Qu’Appelle River that forms Buffalo Pound Lake, the reservoir for the city’s drinking water. The other trail runs on the north side of the marsh, along a dike separating the marsh from the Qu’Appelle River, between the dam and the farm house. Together, the two trails form a loop around the marsh.
There was a lot to see as we walked. On the south side of the marsh, the trail dips into wooded coulees and then rises into native grassland (a little weedy and in need of grazing or fire for rejuvenation). The water level in the marsh is higher than I’ve ever seen, and some of the coulees were flooded. Aren’t Gore-Tex boots great? We also saw a lot of waterfowl: pelicans, mallards, coots, cormorants, and a ruddy duck, something I’ve never seen before although I’m sure it’s not uncommon. The dike trail was less interesting. We did see a couple of kayakers on the Qu’Appelle, and I noted the point where the Moose Jaw River runs into the Qu’Appelle River, but for the most part it was a slog along a path overgrown with weeds (thistle and quack grass among them). That’s not surprising; weeds reliably follow bulldozers and ploughs wherever they go.
I found myself wondering what the valley had looked like before the dams and dikes had been built. Had the marsh been there? Did the two rivers come together at the same spot? What had the occupants of that stone farm house been able to see when they looked out their windows? I can’t complain about all the hydrological work that was done in the 1950s and 1960s–after all, before the city’s drinking water was piped in from Buffalo Pound, it was supposedly undrinkable, so like everyone else who lives here, I’m a beneficiary of all these changes–but still I wonder how things used to be. That’s one of the reasons I got interested in the flora of the Canadian grasslands; I knew that the land hadn’t originally been covered in huge fields of wheat and canola and flax and I was curious about what it looked like before ploughs and tractors changed it forever.
If I recall my earlier studies, the dam was also built as part of the flood control program for the basin. Not sure if it was required this year with all the rain you’ve experienced, but that was the plan:-) Nice flowers…I like those when I walk.