Cosumnes River Preserve

This week My husband and I took one of our daughters to the Cosumnes River Preserve. It was a beautiful day with big puffy clouds, green grass and trees beginning to decorate themselves in spring green baby leaves. My affection for the preserve is equal to my affection for downtown Sacramento. If I can't have the somewhat busy city experience I opt for the complete nature experience. So, you may ask, what's so special about the Cosumnes River Preserve? Let me start with the river itself.

Cosumnes river works its way down from the Sierra Nevada, somewhere south of Lake Tahoe (Finding it's source on Google Earth proved a challenge). It flows approximately 80 miles and drains into the Mukolumne River before its water is dumped into the delta and either shipped to Southern California, returned to the Pacific Ocean or retrieved to provide for some local water need. The amazing thing about the Cosumnes River is that is has no dams or levees containing it. It may have some levees set way back, but it is not restricted from flooding its banks and acting as rivers were meant to act. Cosumnes Preserve is a great place to discover what rivers are supposed to do. Although I suspect that the preserve gets a little help with the process, normally rivers overflow their banks and drops sediments on its floodplain producing rich valley soils any farmer would be willing to pay high prices for.

The preserve is made up of meadows, riparian woodlands and expansive wetlands providing home for a myriad of birds and other wildlife. The trail, which begins with a tour of the visitor center, winds and loops through all three types of habitat. Apparently if you time your visit right, you can see the magnificent sandhill cranes, but I have yet to achieve that timing. However I did see egrets, Canada geese, rufous-sided towhee, the ever present red winged black birds, coots, and quite possibly a few ibis. There were also plenty of smaller birds such as warblers and sparrows. One little bird kept itself well hidden in the reeds but sang the boldest song to us as we walked along, only quieting when we were directly next to it, and then if we stood still long enough it would begin to sing again. I think all of the birds were rejoicing in the greenness of creation during this wonderfully wet spring.

It was especially nice to explore these trails with my eleven year old daughter. She delights in walking quietly along seeing and hearing whatever she can. Adding to that her imagination is beautiful and there were plenty of magical places and sights such as fairy woods and troll noses. She brings back for me the delightful memories of childhood, when woods were magical and it would be no surprise to see an elf or fairy moving through the lush grasses and between oak trees. Science is wonderful and everything I learn makes me love nature and its creator even more, but it is a lovely feeling to look at droplets of water and flower petals and think of how a fairy might use them to make a gown for a hidden ball. Emma seemed to truly enjoy exploring the preserve and even contributed her own bird songs as well as a few cases of the hiccups, which I expected might convince other visitors of a new creature in the area.

I highly recommend Sacramentans visit the Cosumnes Preserve. It's a short drive south of Elk Grove and worth the drive. And when your done you can drive straight up Franklin Boulevard and observe the changes from rural to urban land uses if you like.