The wet, fern-hung seeps along the canyon walls — where rainwater filtered through the plateau trickles back out, feeding the whole canyon.
Look at the shaded canyon walls right along here, wherever the rock is wet and dripping. See the delicate ferns and the bright green moss clinging on, hanging in little gardens off the stone? Those wet places are seeps — spots where rain that soaked into the high plateau months ago has worked its way down through the limestone and finally trickles back out the canyon wall, cool and clean and filtered.
And where the water seeps, life crowds in: maidenhair fern on its fine black stems, columbine, moss, all packed onto the damp rock. These little seeps and springs are the hidden plumbing of the entire canyon — they're why the river keeps running even in a dry spell, and why this cool, moist pocket of maples can exist at all in the hot, thirsty Hill Country. Every drop you see weeping out of that stone is holding the maples' world together. Watch your step, though — wet rock is slick. On up the canyon.
Photo: Vengolis · CC BY-SA 4.0
