The Springs

Minnows.  The tiny plipping sounds I heard in the water last night were minnows.

This spring, according to my topo software, is Baker Spring.  Locomotive Spring is about half a mile to the northwest.  I got up, put on my jacket and looked out across the water.  By day it looks miraculous.  For miles around I see only scrub brush, desiccated grass, and dust.  But here lies the spring – a body of fresh water sixty yards wide, its surface dimpled by rising minnows, cheerily reflecting the blue sky and scattered clouds as if it were not an anomaly.  I tried to imagine how a pioneer would have seen this spring.  But I don’t think my imagination is good enough.

Baker Spring.

An old man had parked his truck on the other side of the spring and was fishing.  When he finished, I called out to him.  “Any luck?”

He cupped his hand to his ear.  “Did you catch anything?” I asked.

After a pause he shook his head.

“What were you fishing for?  Are there trout in here?”

I paused for a second, waiting to see if he had heard me.

“There are a bunch of big old carp in here,” he shouted back at last.  “But I was hoping to get a trout to rise.  I couldn’t catch anything.  There’s too much moss.”

“I heard a few last night,” I said.  “I got in here about 8:00, and I could hear a few trout hitting topwater.”

The old man looked at me, then nodded.

“What spring is this?” I called.

He cupped his hand to his ear again.

“Is this Baker Spring?” I asked.

He stood for a second, and I waited for a response.  This is an interesting way to have a conversation, I thought.  It’s more like text messages than talking.  But then the old man turned and walked back to his truck.  The messaging exchange was over.

I stood at the edge of the spring as he drove away.  The water was clear, but the spring was shallow all the way across.  Brown weeds – or moss, as the old man had called it – grew to within a few inches of the surface in most places, leaving only a couple deep pools.  And the spring was full of minnows.  With brown backs and silver sides, they stayed in schools until one minnow darted for the surface, his silver side gleaming in the morning sun.  With a barely-audible plip he broke the surface, sending tiny ringlets out from where he’d struck.  There were so many minnows that the surface was never still all the way across.  Toward the center of the pond was a sandy break in the weeds, and several big carp – two or three feet long – idled in it.  I wondered if they were any good to eat.  Closer to me, hiding in the weeds, I saw a solitary carp lying still.  If I could shoot the carp, I figured, it would probably float and I could get Duke to retrieve it.

I got my .22 snubnose revolver out of the truck and took a couple shots at the carp.  The second shot came close, but he swam away.  Duke started wagging his tail and hopping on his front feet, sniffing toward the water for something to retrieve.  “I missed,” I told him.  I put the revolver in my jacket pocket and stalked around the spring.  Duke followed eagerly.

It was shallow everywhere.  In one corner someone had tossed an old lawn chair, which had sunk into the bottom.  It stood buried up to mid-back in the weeds.  In places, green algae stretched between brown weeds like an aquatic spider web.  In other spots tufts of bright pink algae grew, as if the bottom of the spring were sprouting cotton candy.

On the opposite side of the spring from the truck I saw a carp swimming lazily by.  I tried to remember which way light refracted when you look at a fish – you’re supposed to aim low, I think – so I held below the fish and fired a few shots.  The bullets plunked the water authoritatively but the fish cruised into the center of the pond.  Out of range.  I wondered if the pioneers tried to shoot fish.  I bet they did.

According to Mr. Fuller, the trail specialist, pioneers passing to the north of the Great Salt Lake usually moved from spring to spring, which meant leaving Baker / Locomotive Springs and heading toward other springs at the bases of the Raft River, Grouse Creek, and then Pilot Ranges.  Several pioneers after the Walker Expedition took that northern route, and I think that’s the way Walker went.  Other historians – Rob Brammer of Hawaii, for instance, with whom I spoke yesterday – think Walker went around to the south.  That would involve a long waterless trek across the Bonneville Salt Flats, which later became known as the “Hastings Cutoff” to the California trail.  That’s the way the Donner Party went in 1846.  Brammer’s theory is plausible.  Really, Walker’s route is conjectural at this point.  But I’m the one paying for the diesel.

So today I will head northwest toward the base of the Raft Rivers, where I’ll find more springs.  Then I’ll go southwest toward the Grouse Creek and Pilot Ranges.  And sometime in all this territory, I’ll find some land I can cover by boot instead of by tire.

Above my index finger is Baker Spring.  The circle just above my little finger is Tenmile Spring, which lies at the base of the Raft River Range about seventeen miles away from Baker Spring.

POSTSCRIPT.  On my way out, I knelt by Locomotive Spring, cupped my hands, and swished some of the water around in my mouth.  Definitely freshwater.  It tasted better than tap water in some oceanside cities.  I spat most of the water back out.