Decades ago I had a workshop that I took to UU meetings that was about knowing “where you are.” I thought it was a religious issue in a geo-sense and I used the questionnaire below. I got a little discouraged when some people insisted that under their house was “nothing,” because they lived in a subdivision. The mental image was too futuristic for me: floating in a vacuum.
The following exercise in watershed awareness was hatched 30 years ago by Peter Warshall, naturalist extraordinaire."
1) Point north.
Easy to do here. It’s on the side of the house with no windows because that’s where the really cold weather comes from.
2) What time is sunset today?
Had to cheat on this one. It's changing fast. GF Tribune says Sunset at 5:24pm. Sunrise today was 7:51am. Extras: Moonrise: 4:07am and Moonset 11:55am. I was up for moonrise, asleep again for sunrise; will be up for both moonset and sunset.
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.
It falls in the Rockies, east slope, filters through much glacial debris as well as the remnants of an ancient seabed. Shows up in a gravel aquifer about a hundred feet under the surface which we access through wells and pipe around to our houses. Some houses flood underneath. The connection to the irrigation system -- mountain impoundment, canals and rivers, second impoundment next to town (Lake Francis) and then ditch dispersal and pivot sprinklers -- has a controversal and unresearched relationship to our city water supply.
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?
Down my unreliable sewer connection which was luckily new enough that it didn’t have to be replaced when the new liner was put into the main town sewer that runs in front of my house and on out to the sewage lagoon where the water and solids gradually separate. I suppose the liquid soaks into the ground. Where do the solids go? Hmmm.
5) How many feet above sea level are you?
About 3500. One can grow tomatoes and corn, but only barely.
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?
“Crocus” or pasqueflowers, also called lambs ears or kitten ears because the pale lavender flowers are fuzzy. They are capable of melting the snow next to them and are poisonous to eat. When they show up on the town librarian’s counter in a bouquet, that means it’s time to buy an Easter bonnet.
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?
It might be eighty miles over the Rockies to the West side drainage. Maybe a little less to cross the Hudson's Bay divide that runs along the 49th parallel, where the water drains northeast. Over here Birch Creek drains into the Marias River which empties into the Missouri which joins the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Blackfeet want to claim water rights to the whole shootin’ match! As for the map, how much detail do you need?
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?
Gumbo AKA caleche. Miserable stuff. Originally aeolian sediments from the PNW volcanoes. There are gravel moraines buried under it.
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
Hey, they did better than we do! Bison people living on meat and as much tuberous and rooty stuff as the women could dig.
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
Wheat is not native, I guess. So -- biscuit root, camas (all year round but best in spring), sarvisberry, chokecherry (late June), and daylily buds, though I don’t see much about Indians eating them. They’d be in June.
11) From what direction do storms generally come?
Depends on the kind of storm. If it’s wet, it comes at least in part over the Rockies. If it’s cold it comes from the north. Most often they mix to some degree.
12) Where does your garbage go?
The “roll off” on the edge of town, then to a landfill where highway 44 joins I-15.
13) How many people live in your watershed?
Zillions. And they all want water.
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
I’m stumped here. One gets the impression that the wind uses it to festoon any barbed wire it comes across.
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?
This far north it’s shocking how much the sun moves its arc across the sky. In midsummer the sun is over my neighbor’s house on the north side, but in the winter it’s very low in the south sky and comes through the house raked almost flat.
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
We’re told there is a HUGE earthquake fault, plate tectonic division, right along the east side of the Rockies. It last moved about 3500 years ago and is scheduled to move again pretty soon. When it does, the results will be massive.
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water? Hundred feet.
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
The whole thing, but esp. mountains like the Rockies or the Sweetgrass volcanic extrusions, streams and their floodplains.
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)? The problem is that it varies so much, but usually the last frost is in June and the first again is in September, but we have the potential for hard frost right through summer.
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?
Migratory: robins, doves, flicker, meadowlark. Stay put: hawks, sparrows.
21) What was the total rainfall here last year?
Too depressingly low to keep track of. We’ve had drought for a long time now.
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?
Farm chemicals. Dust. It leaves as quickly as it comes if it's airborne.
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today? Not there.
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?
Plate tectonics, major glaciers, sedimentation, erosion, Very little volcanic.
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.
Not many people here making lists five hundred years ago. We’re drowning in exotic species. Dunno which is most recent.
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable? Oil and coal. Some gold.
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated? Mostly coming from dams down by Great Falls.
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?
Into the ground right here. Not much run-off.
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it?
Thirty miles to the west. Last summer it burned again. It burns a lot these days.
30) How many days till the moon is full?
New Moon in four days, so full moon in fifteen days? Or twenty?
The Bigger Here Bonus Questions:
31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?
Most famously, dinosaurs. (Bison are not extinct.)
32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude? (I cheated!) Paris, France! Stuttgart, Germany! Also, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China.
33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago? Grass. The prairie evolved with grass and grass evolved as the prairie appeared.
34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.
Asia, especially in the Siberian parts which were once connected to Montana and not just via the Bering Straits -- the supercontinent was torn in half. Once you get far east of the Rockies, it’s not unlike Russia. Is that the same continent?
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