River

Below Rockslide Rapid, a red-tailed hawk flew from one side of the river to the other and perched, unaware of both the political boundary it had crossed and the freedom it embodied.

It’s not unheard of for birds to be active in the nighttime. But most nocturnal birds are not songbirds. Then there’s the yellow-breasted chat.

Rivers and creeks all over the state have been running high with melted snow from the biggest snowpack ever recorded in Utah. 1983 was last time we had anything near this amount of snowmelt fueling our spring runoff. This year, with a historic snowpack, it seems like we should be experiencing more 100-year floods or even 500-year floods.

The leaves and branches decomposing in rivers play a key role in the global carbon cycle. New research at more than 1,000 sites around the world…