Wild Water

It has been a slow week here. The weather has been yucky to say the least, rain one day and below zero the next. We did get out for a little exploring earlier this week. Here in Wisconsin we have lots of county owned forest. We buy a permit most years that allows us to harvest dead, down trees for fire wood. Of course, so do a lot of other folks so we are always on the look out for some area others might not have checked lately. We had this area in mind for a while but have never got around to looking it over until this week.

While we did find a few trees that are close enough to the road to get them out, this free flowing wild spring was the high light of our day. We often drive 10-11 miles to a spring in the national forest here for drinking water. This spring is only a few miles away and less than 300 yards from the road. I plan on going back and getting a sample to have tested. Considering the fact that we are in drought conditions here, this spring had a good flow even during below zero temperatures.
 On a different note, the top pic is me holding a Eastern Leatherwood , Dirca palustris. As it's name indicates it is very flexible and leathery. It is a good shrub to learn to recognize is you do any wilderness camping or hiking. It can be used for cordage as is or it's bark used as cordage fresh or dry. Very handy if you need to build shelter in a emergency type situation.