November 2023 • Nebraskaland 25
with each subsequent visit. In those
waters, I saw more minnows than I had
seen anywhere. In the deeper holes, I
found sunfi sh, largemouth bass and
schools of recently hatched bullheads.
Thousands of snails crawled through
the shallows. Where they were found
in masses, you could hear their shells
rattling against each other as they
moved. Frogs thrived in the water and
toads on the sand.
Thad Huenemann, rivers and
streams biologist with the Game and
Parks Commission, said aquatic life
often explodes following a fl ood. What
was left in the deeper pools when
the water receded thrived with the
nutrients carried by fl oodwaters.
Vegetation continued to spread
and fl ourish. Gerry Steinauer, a
Game and Parks botanist, joined me
on my next visit to Red Wing two
weeks later. What was happening,
he said, was classic river channel
succession that occurs naturally in
meandering rivers like the Elkhorn.
The river had deposited the seeds of
most of the plants sprouting from
the sand. Many were fl ashy annuals,
including lovegrasses, nutsedges and
wildfl owers, like beggarticks, that are
adapted to growing in these ephemeral
habitats. Some species preferred
higher, drier spots in the sand, and
others, moist soils closer to pools or
the groundwater fed stream. Wetland
plants, such as swamp smartweed and
cattails found a home in the pools.
Knee-high thickets of young plains
cottonwoods and peachleaf willows
were extensive. Given time, they
would mature, thin themselves and
become forests.
By my next visit in the fall,
vegetation had covered most of
the bare sand. Beaver ponds, now
numbering more than 20, stretched
from one dam to the next. Resident
