By Rob Bettaso

What’s the expression?: when in Rome, do as the Romans. In the White Mountains, I will modify that and suggest: when in the monsoon season, do as the ducks do and stay on the water. Assuming, of course, there are absolutely no signs of lightning.

This has been a reasonably wet monsoon in the high country and while initially I was able to do a fair amount of hiking, eventually the trails became quite muddy so I shifted gears and spent more time cycling the gravel roads. By early August, I decided to augment my less frequent hikes and near-daily biking with more paddling; mostly in nearby Rainbow Lake where I like to tool about in a light-weight, hard-shelled, cockpit-style kayak (on long-term loan to me from my good friends of 30 years: Mike and Pat).

I have had an inflatable kayak (IK) since the early 1990s and over the years I have used it for white-water river trips (including the Rogue and Owyhee in Oregon plus numerous runs down the upper Salt River here in Arizona). I also routinely use my IK for 1-5 day forays down other, less technical, waterways (including sections of the Verde, Tonto, Gila, San Juan, Gallatin, Missouri, and the Colorado). Given my advancing geezer-hood, I seldom risk serious white-water anymore although I still take trips down less treacherous rivers or those rivers where I can portage or line the Class IV and V rapids. I also have, and still use, an old canoe and it is best suited for flat-water trips during cooler weather adventures since the IK is a “self-bailer,” which means water comes in and drains out through the kayak’s inflatable floor which makes for a wet ride.

While I feel somewhat spoiled to now have a third boat available to use, it has become my go-to vessel for quick runs down to nearby Rainbow, where I can have it launched and be halfway across the lake before the sun breaches the eastern horizon. Such a plan usually helps ensure that I won’t get rained on (let alone zapped by the proverbial “bolt from the blue”) although, in recent years, it seems like our rains can kick up any time of day or night; compared to the monsoons of the “olden days,” when the storms typically happened in the late afternoons.

Most mornings, my jaunts on Rainbow are solitary. However, the other day Mike invited me to join him for a 6 AM departure to Rainbow so that we could conduct his annual “aquatic plant survey” – a continuous data set that Mike began collecting over a decade ago, back when we both worked for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. The goal of the annual survey is to monitor plant changes (both the species types and their distribution within the lake) due to weed control actions.

Over the years, various weed control strategies have been used in Rainbow because the lake (actually an irrigation reservoir that measures 116 surface acres, when full to capacity) is relatively shallow and often quite nutrient-rich, which means that it can produce a tremendous amount of aquatic plants. What is so objectionable about aquatic plants? Well, when they become overly abundant they can impede boats, entangle fishing tackle, and can cause quite an odor when the plants (and sometimes various fish species) experience die-offs. And, to be perfectly clear, when you have an aquatic die-off and plants and fish are rotting in the shallow waters near a shoreline that is studded with everything from rustic summer cabins to palatial mansions, well, the home-owners can justifiably become a tad restless. So, among the methods used to control excessive aquatic plant growth have been herbicide applications, mechanical weed harvesting, and, more recently (and, much more successfully) the introduction and periodic stocking of sterile Grass Carp.

Mike and I were on the water by 6:30 AM and spent the entire morning paddling to 100 different sampling points, from one end of the lake to the other, checking the plant growth. The sampling techniques are straightforward, albeit somewhat tedious. Based on my many years doing field biology, much of science can be “tedious,” but, the scientific method is, by design, meant to be repetitious so that outlier and fluke data points can be revealed and understood when large data sets are statistically analyzed. The upshot of our work that day was that the Grass Carp continue to do their job of keeping aquatic plants from taking over the lake. For those of us who enjoy all of the many wonderful aspects of having a body of water such as Rainbow Lake in this area, we owe not only the Grass Carp a big thank you, but also the guy who orchestrated stocking them there -- thanks, Mike!

The second half of this article is about another local water: Scott’s Reservoir. Typically, I go to Scott’s to bird watch and/or hike the trails that run through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest surrounding Scott’s. But, due to the aforementioned wet monsoon and muddy trails, I’ve recently been kayaking the reservoir. For those of you who have been to the fully charged Scott’s Reservoir in late August and early September, you might be surprised to learn that as recently as late July Scott’s was nearly dry. At its lowest level, Scott’s only retained a small, muddy pool that persisted in the deep end of the reservoir. Furthermore, said pool was chock-full of dead and dying carp (not Grass Carp, but another type, the Common Carp – a much less welcomed nonnative species).

Since many of our local reservoirs are maintained and regulated by irrigation districts, to some extent warm-season water levels can be manipulated (for agriculture, flood control, and municipal needs). Sometimes this bodes well for wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts as well. Once the water levels at Scott’s reached such critically low levels that fish were dying and the stench was quite noticeable, a combination of significant rains and water management choices resulted in the rapid filling of Scott’s. In fact, it filled so fast and with so much water charging down the drainage that soon Scott’s Reservoir was cresting over the top of the old concrete dam on its southwestern side.

It was during this time that I took two consecutive morning trips out to Scott’s to paddle the entirety of its perimeter. The first excursion was with my friend Anne and we put our kayaks on the water just after an early morning, late August drizzle. Perhaps because of the rain, we had the lake to ourselves and quickly set off toward the deep end of the reservoir to investigate the sound of rushing water. Part of the flow was going through Scott’s human-made plumbing system and down to, and through, Porter Creek. But most of the water’s noise was coming from where the reservoir was flowing over, and even through, the narrow concrete wall further to the south. There was no danger posed to us by the ominous-sounding cascades and, instead, we could paddle right up to the edge of the eroding concrete structure and watch as the surplus water inundated normally dry oaks, junipers, and pines.

At one point during our down-lake explorations, we got out of our boats and surveyed the area on foot. It was impressive how many paths the high waters were taking to conform to gravity’s dictates. There were many shallow, braided streams of water flowing through both dense forest and open meadow habitats; sometimes as mere rills and rivulets and in other places as torrents of erosive and newly created channels. I am always impressed to see Nature when she decides to flex her considerable muscles; it is kind of like watching a lithe cat lazily extend into a serious full-body stretch, head low and tail high, culminating when she shakes, in turn, each of her hind paws just as she comes up and out of her awesome display of power and grace.

The next morning I was back at Scott’s Reservoir, but this time guiding a few participants on one of the Audubon Chapter’s monthly “birding” field trips. I recently added a second monthly birding outing into the mix of things that people can do with our Chapter and have called this new opportunity “Fitness Birding.” My original field trips of the past 8 years have been mellow, somewhat methodical bird-watching tours of selected, local wildlands that support diverse and rich bird life. The new outings will be slightly more strenuous and will not only include hiking tours, but also birding by bicycle, kayak, and cross-country skis (no, I won’t be adding a “birding by pogo stick” option).

On both visits to Scott’s, all of us were simply dazzled by so much water and so much greenery. Where things were not submerged by the brimming lake, there must have been a thousand different shades of green. And where things weren’t green, it was because they were of myriad other colors including an astounding array of hues adorning countless fruits, flowers, mushrooms, insects, tree bark, bird feathers, reptile scales and, well, do yourself a favor and get out there and see for yourself! Hurry, our monsoons won’t last much longer and every minute has its own miracles.