I walked back to the wall and was disappointed to see that the city had "improved" their drainage ditch.  What had once been a veritable wilderness had now been leveled and graded and bore the scars of heavy machinery.  The many marshes and reeds were now mere stubble. 

As I slowly turned to leave, a movement in the corner of my eye made me take a second look.  A duck!  To my delight, I quickly located three more, all happily bobbing for lunch.  In a state of child-like fascination, I watched as they slowly and methodically harvested the bottom, the sun gleaming off their feathers. 

Suddenly the realization came.  In a mere trickle of water on this scarred piece of earth, they had found sanctuary.  They had come despite the city's "face-lift".  And in my heart, I knew that as surely as spring itself would return, so would the marsh grasses, the reeds, the flotillas of tadpoles... Nature would triumph!  The ducks had proven it in the middle of the desert on a winter day.