It's just so rare in our windy country.

Moments without wind. And bodies of water that are not covered with never ending ripples and waves. Ponds and pools that are still and calm, smooth as glass.

Yeah, you read about such things in poems, but they're sort of like fairies and angels. You never actually expect to see one. Not the way major air masses keep moving back and forth across the Divide.

But last week we had not one, but two mornings like that. The only ripples on the dune pond came from the explosive take-offs of the few ducks that had been roosting there overnight.

And likewise for the small reservoir on Lost Soldier. That, and the perfect circlets of ripples from the fish rising to snatch some breakfast bug.

We had stopped by to check the creek flowing out of the reservoir. Normally, the reservoir was the end of the road for waters coming off the divide, a manmade stop to prevent the moisture from being spread out in the greasewood flats below. But for 10-15 years, the oil company has been injecting water into the formations below to squeeze out more petroleum. And surplus waters from their wells on the other side of the divide were shared between a new reservoir in the desert, and the headwaters of this stream.

But there has been less and less surplus water in the past couple years. Not enough for both the desert reservoir and the stream.

The creek that has seen a resurgence in the willows and meadows. With hopes of eventually getting the aspen back (you can still find their skeletons if you know where to look). We got beaver put back into the stream, who promptly started making dams.

The folks in control of the water discussed it with me, and I had to agree. The creek and its expanding riparian was more important than a fishing pond in the desert (which went dry last summer, but has a little runoff in it this spring).

So, anyway, we were here to check out the creek. Which now fills the fishing reservoir and flows on out the spillway, full time. The upper reaches by the dam are doing fine, although heavily grazed by cattle and the feral horses.

But just a couple hundred meters down, the increased flow has caused some problems.

Not a detriment to everything, however, as the bank swallows have been taking advantage of the new nesting substrate.

Which means more swallows along this creek, which means fewer mosquitoes, which means less transmission of the West Nile virus, which means fewer feral horses dying from said disease.

Yes, erosion is bad. Definitely.

Had fun with a couple games of hide and seek with the sisters along the creek, and then headed back. Spotting a small brook trout living in a pool much too small for its size. Couldn't get out the ripples at either end, but I couldn't get the camera ready fast enough for a photo of the bright green with flashes of black and white as it tried.

This stump, however, was plenty slow enough for a photograph or two.