Nomads, days 9 and 10 (9/12/2023}

Wow, we have been on the road since August 31, as of this writing that has been 11 days. In other words, I am a few days behind, so I better keep going. Today I felt really content and had the feeling I could keep going for years. My wife Donna had a weaker moment and admitted she missed living in a house. I think our dog Jasper agrees with her; Radar misses puppy time and playing but could probably join me with my travels. Naturally, this was only a weak moment from Donna, and we shall continue our journey. We have some catching up to do, and more about what we did today (day 11) in a later post.

Day 9 was spent quietly, and we eventually drove from Lewistown to Great Falls, which was only a 2 hour drive, or about 100 miles.

Day 10 was spent in and around Great Falls. I had scheduled a break in our travels, for what I was thinking laundry and just relaxing.

We woke up in Lewistown to rain, and it kept raining. Now it is no fun eating breakfast in the van, even with the seat turned around. Neither is it fun to sit outside on a picnic bench in the rain eating your breakfast. In other words, we decided to go out for breakfast. The day before, in a weak moment, we had breakfast at McDonalds, and we did not wish to repeat that dining experience. Really the food at Mickydee is OK, and it kept us satisfied till noon; it is just something we do not frequently do. The manager at the McDonald stop in Miles City was friendly and in the brief 20 minutes we were there, we learned more about her personal life (hiking), and her fear for AI, than we had ever hoped. She also profusely apologized for the motivation of the cashier at the restaurant. But then, I would probably also have a lousy attitude if that was my job.

In other words, we needed something else. Since we had the time, we put on a laundry at the RV place and went to the coffee shop downtown for breakfast. The place was jam-packed and after some waiting, these two couples invited us to join them at their table. We had a fun conversation, and all went well. The couple next to us were married the same year as us (they in May and we in June). It seems that Lewistown has a great festival on the first Saturday after Labor Day, and this was a kind of homecoming for the couple. The husband had gone to high school in town, but they now live in Illinois. However, we decided not to stay for the festival.

After waiting for the dryer to finish it was off to Great Falls. That afternoon we visited the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (which was great) and we went downtown to visit the fiber (wool) shop that Donna had been looking forward to. When we arrived at the “Farmer’s Daughters” or the fiber shop, they were about to close (prematurely). The owners had just been diagnosed with COVID. What to do? A microbrewery next door perhaps? They allowed us to sit outside on the terrace with the dogs. And then it rained; poured. Thank goodness they allowed us to finish our beer and early dinner inside even with our dogs.

The next day we headed back downtown, the store was sterilized, and Donna could finally shop for wool. We had initially considered a day trip to Glacier National Park, but instead we decided to visit the Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge, maybe 20 miles north of town. Benton Lake was nice, it felt a bit like an African safari we had done 45 or so years ago; however, these was little wildlife, but some decent birdwatching around the lake.

At the end of the day, we just relaxed at the KOA campground we stayed at. KOA is not our style, but this one was decent with a dog park and a nature trail. My only major complaint was the roads on the KOA were full of mud and water. One interesting event happened. The wife of the folks next to us poured something on their campfire that created a blaze. In hindsight, I figured that it was some oil or started fluid. Subsequently she threw water on the flames, and as we all learn, water and oil don’t mix. The fire spread on top of the water and set their tent on fire. She was screaming and got more water when we walked by. I yelled at her not to pour more water and ran over to stomp out the flames with my feet. This was successful, but the entire corner of the tent burned out and eventually they ended up packing up and leaving the park. Oh well. A relaxing two slow days before continuing our travels.

After the rain in Great Falls that chased us into the brewery, there is a rainbow

The first evening we walked the nature trail at the KOA

A little out of order, but the beer and service at Mo was great!

At least one safari picture.  We saw two antelopes in the far distance

Inside shot of the wool shop

Nomads, day 5 and 6 (9/8/2023)

Days 5 and 6 of our Lewis and Clark adventure was really when it felt that the rubber hit the road. Here is a quick summary of our trek these two days:

Day 5: North Sioux City, ND – Vermillion – Spirit Mound – Yankton – Chamberlain (Dignity of Earth and Sky) – Gettysburg

Day 6: Gettysburg – Bismark, ND – Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (in Washburn, ND) – Fort Mandan – East Totton Train Campground (on Lake Audubon near Coleharbor, ND)

What were the significant events on these two legs of our journey? Day 5 was eventful from a Lewis and Clark viewpoint. We initially wanted to stay in Vermillion; however, the heat-dome prevented this. Camping at 105 degrees in a van without air conditioning (when you are parked), with two dogs seemed unwise. The logic result was that we stayed in North Sioux City. We did want to visit Vermillion, a small college town in the middle of nowhere. Vermillion is a charming town, but we had an ulterior motive, our reason was: Spirit Mound.

Lewis and Clark learned of Spirit Mound from the Indians within a large radius of the Vermillion area. They had been warned to avoid it, because of spirits that supposedly lived on or near it. They were shorter, according to the native American legends, with big heads and had sharp spears with which they would hurt or even kill anyone approaching the mound. The hill was 12 miles north of the river from what now is Vermillion; and the explorers decided to go look for themselves. They climbed the hill and never found the angry spirits. Spirit Mound is now an historic landmark, that also includes a native Minnesota prairie. This was enough for us to also explore the mound. Since it was 95 degrees, we did not hike up the Mound, but we did spend a short time there walking through the prairie. To tell you the truth we were enchanted by what we saw; however, it was too hot to spend a lot of time there with our dogs.

Subsequently we drove to Yankton and had a good look at the Missouri. After that we took off for Chamberlain. The welcome center there has a great statue entitled Dignity of Earth and Sky. Altogether a fun trip through central South Dakota. Mostly a land with corn and soybean fields. However, there were patches of grasslands and to our surprise fields of sunflowers. The sunflowers had finished flowering and we were imagining how beautiful this could look when the flowers were in full bloom.

We arrived in Gettysburg around 5 pm. Our plan was to stay at the city park, where the community had established a number of camp sites. They had electricity and even showers. The camping is free, but a donation was appreciated. We were the only campers that night; it was all very acceptable; the showers were clean. In the middle of the night we were hit by a major thunderstorm which heralded the change of weather; from heat to more agreeable temperatures.

After breakfast at the local coffee shop in Gettysburg it was time to move further north. South Dakota (and parts of North Dakota) has numbered two roads along the river Route 1804 and Route 1806. Lewis and Clark moved upriver in 1804 and returned in 1806. You can therefore imagine that the route on the east side of the river is 1804 and on the west side is 1806. We decided to take 1804 and ended up on these dirt country roads during a steady cold drizzle with very strong winds. It was now 55 degrees and with a 40 or so mph wind, it was darn cold. Once in Bismark I was finally able to sample a beer at a local brewery for lunch. Unbeknownst to us, Bismark had its worst and actually, the country’s worst air quality, courtesy of the Canadian wildfires.

After a visit to Fort Mandan, we went to our campsite at Lake Audubon. The fort and visiting center were the first real thing we did since the start of our trip. While impressive, the fort was disappointing to me as well, since it was not re-build at the exact location or at least near the location of the old fort. The original site was 20 miles further north. However, the original site was most likely flooded caused by the damming of the river. Another item was that the walls were constructed by logs that were placed vertically. It seems that this might not be historically correct, and the logs might have been stacked horizontally, although there are no details in the historical accounts.

The campsite was great, it was on a lake and just a wonderful site. At night we were able to see the milky way and we witnessed a coyote chorus. The temperature dipped to 42 at night and we finally had to use our small space heater. In all an interesting two days of contrast, extreme heat followed by a chill that heralds the beginning of autumn.

Spirit Mound as viewed through a group on sunflowers on the native prairie in South Dakota.

The Missouri seen from the bridge in Yankton, SD

Dignity of Earth and Sky

Camping in Gettysburg

Need I say more?

Driving the back roads in cold, rainy South Dakota

Fort Mandan.  The party overwintered their first year near the Mandan tribe in what is now near Washburn, North Dakota.  William Clark reported in his journal that in the first few days of January they were invited to what was a huge three-day party, something like a pow-wow, to launch a buffalo hunt.  He described how young warriors would lead their nude wives to the old men of the tribe for their pleasure, in the hope that the knowledge, wisdom and hunting skills of these older men would be transferred the younger husbands.  The older men would lead the young (married) women to the side and have intimate relations with them.  Boy, that is what you can call rubbing off.

According to Clark the enlisted men that were part of the expedition were also in high demand for this type of knowledge transfer.  Clark mentions that one private was particularly lucky and had sex with four different young ladies during the three-day fest.  According to accounts, sexually transmitted diseases were endemic in the native population, in particular syphilis.  In the book by Ambrose there is a discussion on whether syphilis and gonorrhea were endemic to the North American population or not, very unlike small pocks which was definitely spread by the European colonizers to the New World population.  I am not sure if there was a native cure for the ailment; however, treatment of the STDs among Europeans wasn’t pleasant.  It consisted of ingesting mercury as in mercurial chloride, known to cause mad hatter disease.

As all you readers know, I am older. I have white hair and also claim to be somewhat wiser (a little arrogance is good for the soul, I guess). In other words when we visited the Fort Mandan and the Mandan area, I was full of hope that I might be asked for some knowledge infusion. Although the thought of catching STDs did not make the thought very appealing.

Camping on Lake Audubon near Coleharbor, SD.  The temperatures dipped into the low 40s at night and we had to bring out the space heater.

My New Sermon (7/11/2022)

This past Sunday I gave a new sermon at our UU church.  It was almost impromptu, I was asked three weeks ago if I could do one based on rain.  Since I teach about stormwater, I though "what the heck."   I am not sure who ordered it, but it rained almost the entire weekend and we had stormwater galore.  

Without further ado, here follows the sermon.  I ad-libbed a bit, but kept to the outline (note the English, and grammar, etc. might not be the best).

----------------------------

I have a question for everybody.

Do you sing in the shower?

or,

Do you talk to yourself in the shower out loud, have conversations with yourself?

No, don’t worry, I will not ask your partner, or your pet if you actually do that and if you sing, if you can hold a tune.

There was a time in our life that when we took a shower, we had the keep our mouths closed; our lips tightly closely together, so that the shower water could not accidentally enter our mouth. We brushed our teeth with either bottled water or water that was boiled, filtered and then treated with iodine. Our vegetables were soaked for 20 minutes in water loaded with iodine and despite all that my wife Donna got amoebic dysentery twice. “One more time” she was told, “and you will be permanently sent home to the U.S.”

Where the heck was this? Where were we?

Well, it was in Nepal, 40 years ago. Because of the overall sanitary situation at the time all waterways, streams, creeks, wells, and even springs were severely contaminated with all kinds of diseases. Water was unsafe.

We always learn that beer making was an essential part of living in the Middle Ages in Europe. Water was not safe to drink back then and the process of making, what was in those days low alcohol beer, was a way of sterilizing water and making it a safe every day or all day beverage.

Looking from space we are reminded of one of my favorite UU hymens: “Our Blue Boat Home.” The earth looks like a blue marble, showing that it is covered by oceans. Actually, the blue we can is only about 5.8% of all the water available on this earth. 94% is locked up in rock and unavailable to us, while the remaining 6% is theoretically available to us. The problem is that 5.8% is salt water and essentially undrinkable because of the salinity. There is 1.5% freshwater which is locked up in the atmosphere, soil, groundwater, glaciers, wetlands, plants, animals, rivers, lakes and streams. It is estimated that a grand total of 0.0014% of the water on earth is potentially available for human consumption. Let that sink in a bit. And that is where I come in.

Currently, I work for the State of Virginia in the Stormwater Program as a trainer in adult education. I train folks to play nice with their stormwater. One of the main issues is that once rainwater becomes runoff and enters the streams and rivers, it can easily enter saltwater and in essence become useless to us land dwellers, at least to us living here in the Tidewater. Oh, I am not saying that the animals and plants that live in the tidal areas of the Chesapeake don’t benefit from some of the runoff, but what we are seeing is that the runoff often takes a lot of stuff with it. As I tell my students the runoff is usually cloudy with sediment and sediment does not travel alone. With it you get nutrients, animal and human wastes, cigarette butts, plastics, pesticides, motor oil, dirty diapers, used tires, and all kinds of other contaminants. According to the Bible, humans were given dominion over the earth, so is this what it means? Think about that. I prefer our 7th principle that tells me that I am an equal part of the interdependent web of existence. We need to take care of the earth and that is what I try to teach.

Now the problem is that the runoff from our land is increasing. For one, our storms are getting larger as a result of global warming. Secondly, we are building more homes, mini-malls, roads, parking lots, sidewalks, you name it. All these areas are impervious to rainwater and when it rains the water needs to go somewhere, it becomes runoff. Over time we have created more runoff. Finally, forests, areas with trees and shrubs, or wildflower areas are infiltration champions. On the other hand, lawns are not. They create even more runoff. In addition, people put more fertilizer and pesticides on lawns. In other words, you can guess what the result has been over the past 70 years, more runoff and more contaminated runoff, less infiltration into the soil and a lowering of the water table. Water needed for trees, shrubs, ephemeral ponds, and shallow irrigation wells.

With the exception of James City County, Williamsburg, Smithfield and Isle of White, most of us rely on water that has been pumped to or collected in reservoirs around us. The counties that I just mentioned have to pump their drinking water out of the ground. Their water comes from a very deep layer or aquifer that is difficult to replenish. Water has to flow underground all the way from Richmond area and that may take centuries. I am sure you can imagine that reducing the infiltration in that area does not help. But we have an additional problem on top of that. Our water table or aquifer is broken, busted, kaput. This was caused by a meteor many moons ago that was big enough to create the Hampton Roads, the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, but not large enough to create mass extinctions. As a result, salty sea water can flow back up the aquifer if it is not replenished upstream, and herein lies an additional problem. It is not because of all the pumping and decreased infiltration I just spoke about! All those folks that depend on groundwater in our area are in trouble.

What can be done about this? For one, the Hampton Roads Sewer District is starting to pump treated sewer water back into the ground to replenish what we pump out and thus slow down what is called saltwater intrusion. Don’t worry. They claim it is safe, the treated sewage is sterile.

As part of my job I am working with designers, builders, locality officials, and home owners in handling stormwater where it is generated, on the property. Letting in infiltrate instead of sticking it in a roadside ditch or a pipe and sending it to a creek. This means less lawns, more rain gardens, bio-retention, permeable pavement, grass swales, you name it; infiltration is the name of the game.

Once runoff hits the creek, we lack the ability to clean up the water just like we cannot turn water into wine or into beer. We are no miracle workers. We need to start at the source, where it originates. We teach folks that they have to keep pollutants out of the water, in particular mud or what we call sediment. That is why I tell folks: Sediment does not travel alone, and we require things like those orange sediment fences and other measures around building sites, state-wide. I teach that and pollution prevention on a job site. All in an effort to keep runoff clean and infiltrate as much water as possible.

So what can you do?

Let’s think and talk about it.

1. In your yard

2. With the water that falls on your roof

3. With your vehicles

4. Your dog

5. When you play

A construction site down the street from my home.  Another Dairy Queen!  These are the guys that I teach or the guys that are inspected by folks I teach.

20 to 7-year storms (7/30/2021)

There was a report in one of the professional publications that I read that predicts that what we call in our profession 20-year storms are shifting and becoming 7-year storms. Now that is an interesting concept that I teach in my classes on stormwater, in particular in the class entitled “Where the Water Goes.” The class has a subtitle Hydrology for ESC and SW Inspectors. ESC stands for Erosion and Sediment Control and SW for Stormwater.

So, what does a x-year (24-hour) storm means and what do these values mean? I tell my students that those famous 100-year storms do not occur only once every 100 year. I remember well that in 2003 we had two 100-year storms in one week, followed the next week by hurricane Isabel, which dumped another 100-year storm in our area. As you can imagine that September the ephemeral ponds behind our home were full to the brim, a thing that usually only occurs in February. They are usually dry in the month of September. Those two 100-year storms in a row actually created a major issue during Isabel; the soil was saturated, and the trees were extremely unstable because of this. Trees were falling all over the place during the hurricane. I lost 13 trees in my back yard that day.

In a simple explanation, I tell my students that the concept of so many year storms is based on statistics. For example, a 100-year storm tells us that the storm has a likelihood of 1% (or 100%/100) of occurring any day of the year. A 20-year storm has a chance of occurring 5% (100%/20) any day of the year, and so on. Somehow, NOAA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, could not find a better name for this phenomenon than calling it a so-many-year storm. In particular, since if it occurred today, it has the same probability of occurring again tomorrow. So, although rare what happened in 2003 having three 100 year storms in two weeks, it was statistically explainable.

So, I looked at the data for my home. A 20-year 24-hour storm at my home dumps around 6.5 inches of rain or 165 mm in those 24 hours, according to NOAA. In the good old days, a 7-year storm drops 5 inches or 127 mm in the same 24 hours. In other words, as a result of climate change the 7-year storm at my home would increase 1.5 inches or almost 40 mm of rain. Surprise, this is something we are all experiencing, thunderstorms are increasingly getting stronger and more severe.

I realize this is only an example for one place, but in the past weeks we have seen similar examples in Germany, Belgium, Arizona, and China just to name a few where we are seeing that storms are getting increasingly severe and dumping more water. Naturally this is not helped by all the development around us and the imperviousness that we are creating in our watersheds. It all means more runoff and flooding. The problem on top of this is the imperviousness that we appear to have created and are increasingly creating in neighborhoods of disadvantaged racial minority groups.

Some of these things going on with our climate and our earth are most likely very difficult to reverse. We will have to learn to live with them and adapt to them. That is part of the job I do professionally. I am part of a group that teaches stormwater management. We teach designers, developers, and regulators that it is best to try to infiltrate all that stormwater, by minimizing the impervious areas such as parking lots and roads. We also tell them that they need to preserve the soil, not compact it, so that water can infiltrate. Plant trees and shrubs, minimize lawns. Trees and shrubs intercept rain in their canopies and often only 40% of the rain makes it down to the ground. Are my students listening? Some, few are. But we keep working on them. But we don’t get discouraged, it is the right thing to do.

This is a picture I took a few years ago of a rain garden/bioretention area in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We teach students that the placement of ponds like these help with the infiltration and cleanup of stormwater and hopefully reduce the flooding danger.

Plant a tree and fight global warming (7/17/2019)

I wish it was so easy!

Boy, it is getting warmer on this blue marble floating in space. During the women’s soccer (or football) championships in France, they were complaining about record temperatures in Europe, and by this weekend, our temperatures are going to reach close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37.8 Celsius. As I write this (July 17, 2019), there was a news flash that Miami recorded the warmest low temperature early in the morning (84 Fahrenheit or 28.9 C). 

Thank goodness, nature is still able to cope with these extremes in our area. Where we live we have had approximately 6 inches (150 mm) more rain than average by this time of the year. At least there should be enough water in the deeper layers of the soil for at least the trees and other deeper rooting plants, but I may have to supplement the shallow rooted plants. 

Our ferns underneath the dogwood in our yard.  These ferns were dug up (saved) by my wife at a construction site she was permitting.  These ferns would have been destroyed if she had not dug them up. Now they are protected by our gargoyle and thanking us for our effort.  This is an example of plants that need supplemental watering because they don't root very deeply.

One way plants deal with the excessive heat is through evaporative cooling. Plants sweat, just as we do. Except with plants, we call it evapotranspiration. With us, sweating is an active thing, or at least with me it is. I actually get really wet when it is hot outside, and that is a great way of cooling, albeit somewhat embarrassing in public at times. Plants do not get wet, but they open their stomata (small mouth like openings) on their leaves and water evaporates though it, thus cooling the warming leaves. Most plant leaves are also very thin and small, which keeps them close to the air temperature prevents them from heating up in the direct sun light (like your car) and burning up. Pine needles are very good at this, which is why they grow throughout the southeast US. However, different plants have different ways of doing this. Some of you may have heard of quaking aspen; leaves from these trees start to shake (or quake) when the get too hot and they cool down that way. Cacti in the desert have a lot of water in their flesh that helps them in heating up very slowly. Moreover, the spines of cacti serve as suntan lotion and absorb radiation. The saguaro cacti also have fins that serve as cooling fins on the sides that are not hit by the sun. 

These are what we biologists call some of the different strategies that plants use to deal with heat stress. However, plants can only adapt or strategize that much! Eventually it gets too hot! In the tropics, some plants have adapted to that as well. They drop their leaves and go dormant, just like our trees do in winter when it gets too cold. However, there has to be enough water in the soil and they have to have stored enough energy to grow back when the temperatures get more hospitable, otherwise, they die. They usually grow back in the rainy season. Finally, here we have not even talked about how increased temperatures may also cause an increase in pests and diseases. You get the message. 

So, what is going to happen to the natural world or plants in our times of climate change? Alternatively, am I allowed to call it global warming, which is what it is? I frame this question this way, remembering that every time I mentioned global warming 10 or even 5 years ago in my workshops, I had students either rolling their eyes writing terrible reviews of my classes. There were at least one or two students that complained how I was “pushing my liberal agenda.” So I changed my tune and called it climate change and the complaints lessened over time. Guess what? Nowadays, I can talk about global warming again! 

For someone like me, who grows bonsai, life becomes more challenging. We use a much more porous growth medium that does not hold water. This means that we may need to water two times per day. Then those small pots can warm up very quickly and cook the roots, or at least give a leg up to mold and diseases. As you can see, it can be a challenge. 

For nature, it is another thing. I am only briefly going to write about plants and forest today and actually, we are not completely sure, but we can make a very solid educated guess. Plants in the northern hemisphere that live on the southern margins are going to have a challenge. What I mean is that they are already being challenged by the heat and cannot handle it much hotter. They will eventually disappear from the heat. This could be because they can no longer produce any viable seed, or because they simply die from heat stress. Somehow, nature will need to replace them and the problem is that native plants cannot move north fast enough to fill in the spots that have been opened up. These spots are often filled by invasive alien species. It is expected that invasive alien species will be able to take over larger tracks of land. The problem is these plants are often not very nutritious for local wildlife and insects. 

So what can we do about global warming, that is in addition to being political active and voting? The New York Times published an article not so long ago where they estimated that the planet has room for about 2.5 billion acres of forest that can be planted. While this will help in removing some carbon and reducing global warming somewhat, it is not enough. Can you imagine planting a forest of this size? So what can we do? Well, we can plant trees around our homes. If you are a loyal reader, you know I have been on a crusade against folks who cut trees around their home as soon as they move into our neighborhood. Trees are so much more efficient in fixing carbon than lawn. In addition, they modify the climate around your home. There is another interesting article about all this in a recent New York Times. So yes, in addition to growing my miniature trees, I also grow large trees in my small yard, although this makes it often difficult for me to find it difficult to find a sunny spot for my miniature trees.

Meditation and frogs (9/16/2018)

Living next to a nature preserve, a natural area, woods, or whatever you want to call it, has its positive points and negatives. For one, we will never have any development behind our home. Secondly, I have a place to practice my forest bathing; if not just by standing in our yard and meditatively stare into the woods, I can just disappear into it. I also have a lot of material for my classes; especially the wetland class I teach. In addition, I take a lot of pictures in those woods and my Instagram page is replete with them. Finally, they are a rich source for some of my blog posts.

Here it sounds that I am using the woods for selfish reasons; but that is far from the truth. While I am still debating whether to allow advertising on my blog, for right now I don't make a penny by writing it. My objective was and still is educational and sharing some of my photographs, my thoughts, life experience, philosophy and love for the natural world. Isn’t that what the internet was intended to be, a free exchange of ideas? But then, who could not use some extra money.

But I digress. To me there is almost nothing better than to step out of our back door on a Saturday morning after my morning coffee and reading the newspaper, to walk to the edge of our very small plot of land and just stand there for maybe five minutes and take it all in; to absorb it all. I may even walk 30 or 50 steps into the woods to this small hill, most likely a remnant of a redoubt that was constructed by Washington’s troops during the Revolutionary War. It is at this point where everything I experienced the past week starts making sense. I look up at the top of the trees and watch the warblers hunting among the leaves in the top of the canopies. I listen to the calls of the blue jays which sometimes sound like a hawk; the calls from cat birds which, you guessed it, sounds like the meowing of a cat; the towhees that invite me to “drink your tea”; red-bellied woodpeckers; and chickadees.

“Oh”, you might say, “isn't that a selfish reason, dumping all the weeks thoughts, worries and troubles in the woods and on to those poor birds?” I promise you they can handle it. Nature is much more resilient than us human beings. They are not faced by me standing there and taking it all in. Actually, the chickadees sometimes get pretty annoyed with my presence and they are the first ones to let me know that, in particular when I bring my dog Jake with me to just take it all in. They’ll come to a branch close to us and sound their nasal alarm, as in “we see you; now go away.” Jake knows the weekend routine. He gets up and walks to the back door the second I am done reading the newspaper and get up; it is time “to walk the grounds” or “explore the out-back” as I call it.

This past Sunday the “out-back” was amazing. But I must take a step back. In a previous post, I mentioned that the weather Gods have it out for me. Well, they must have known that we were at a concert in Williamsburg on Saturday night and that I was driving back. The skies opened up on the way home. I could not see a thing while driving. The way I drove was from dashed line on the highway to dashed line, saying out loud: “there is the next line” and keeping those lines under my left tire. A neighbor with a rain gauge told me later that we got 5 inches of rain that evening. All that rain must have fallen in maybe an hour or so; our neighborhood was partially flooded. 

This is what the woods looked like in the morning.  Part of the yard were flooded.  In the far left you can see the bee-hive we have in our yard

We walk our dogs in the evening before going to bed. We could already hear what was going on. Frogs had come out of hibernation immediately! It was amazingly loud. Later, even with the windows closed you could hear them inside our home. The next morning, we saw why. Our back yard was still under water. The noise was amazing (I made a recording and will try to imbed it <here>). This was one of the few times that it was so loud in the 18 years we have lived in our home. The interesting part is that the next day it was quiet again behind our home. The frogs had either gone back to bed or done their thing and were exhausted after a night and morning of debauchery. They are so opportunistic.

Nature is wonderful, the wetlands or Grafton ponds behind our home are a unique ecosystem. This is why the area was designated as a nature preserve. It protects the endangered Mabee salamander and a sedge. Obviously, the frogs do not mind this arrangement. At night we have them on our windows and sliding door, waiting for unsuspecting insects to fly by, attracted to the bright interior.

But let me also come full circle and get back to the start of this post. As I mentioned there are positives and negatives of living next to these woods. The possible negatives of living where we live include deer, ticks and mosquitoes. At times we have enough of them, but for right now the positives still outweigh the negatives, especially those evenings and mornings when there is a cacophony of frogs, or when I can go and explore the out-back.

The Weather Gods are angry (8/21/2018)

At one point in my my life I must have angered the weather Gods. I am not sure when I did this, but from what it looks like, it must have been some time ago. They have been on my case for some time!  Of late, the weather Gods seems to try to sabotage whatever (family) plans I (or we) have. Take for instance this past weekend.

Our daughter is in town and so were friends. What better opportunity to go for a bike ride on the Capital Trail in Jamestown and end this at the Billsburg Microbrewery, followed by a dinner. Oh well, ominous clouds gathered and halfway driving to the starting point of our bike ride we were surprised by a downpour. When we arrived at the designated starting spot to meet our friends Val and Dave, thunder was cracking and rain was starting again. We decided to go to the microbrewery instead and wait out the rain. We got a little wet running in from the parking lot to the taproom, but so be it. In the microbrewery we sampled some delicious beers, experienced some great company, watched a magnificent lightning show, and a tropical downpour. From the looks on the radar, it was not going to stop so eventually we decided to go out to dinner. Suffice it to say, the weather Gods prevented us from exercise and our biking a thing we usually enjoy very much. Although we did try to make the best of it. But then, we beat the crowd to the restaurant; maybe the weather gods were actually looking out for us.

It always seems to go like this though. This summer, it seems to have rain on the weekends and and it is nice during the week. I have not been out sailing yet this year! I can blame the weather Gods for that, or maybe the (hurt) knee Gods, the college graduation Gods and all kinds of other scapegoat Gods. 

Take for instance the other evening, I was peacefully waking the dog (we do that every evening) and the clouds break open literally when we reach the furthest point removed from our home. I did not carry an umbrella or raincoat and the only thing I could do was walk home through what felt like a tropical downpour. The only thing missing was a good electrical storm; I guess I have not yet angered the Gods that much. By the time Jake the dog and I arrive home, 10 minutes later, nothing on my body was dry. We usually dry the dogs off before we let them in the house; this time I was also handed a towel to dry myself off outside, so I would not get the inside of our home wet. My wife took a rain check that evening and let me go walk alone. Her knee hurt she said. Funny how people’s joints can predict the weather. I now know what it means when people take rain checks. 

Earlier this week, I took a day off to enjoy some time with the family. Maybe some outing, beach time? Well, by two o’clock that afternoon we almost had 3 inches (7.5 cm) of rain that fell in about two to three hours time. On top of that we lost electricity. But it was a nice family bonding experience sitting in our gazebo watching the yard getting flooded.

This photo was taken during the height of the storm this past Monday.  The path in our back yard that leads to the woods behind our home was literally a flowing creek.

At points that day the water in our yard was ankle deep.  I was really wondering when the snakes were going to float by.

Weather has always played a large part in our lives. Two of my posts deal with some of the weather we experienced while living in Nepal. We went through one monsoon season and it was so bad, the one night we got almost swept away by floods. Two days later, we were crossing a stream and the wife of the same friends lost her footing and was swept away by a raging stream towards an even larger raging stream. If she would have entered that one it would have been the end of her. Somehow I was able to run after her and put my walking stick out which she was able to grab a hold of and I was able to pull her out of the stream. I really hate to think what would have happened if I (or she) would not have been able to do that. We crossed that stream all the time, it was less than 3 feet wide with stepping stones, but during the monsoon it had turned into this wild torrent of at least 30 feet wide and more than knee deep. It swept her off her feet. During that same monsoon we witnessed whole mountain sides collapsing around us and landslides everywhere. So we decided that the next monsoon we were going on vacation. But then I also wrote about getting dehydrated in a snowstorm in the mountains of Nepal. Those weather Gods are amazing!

Living in coastal Virginia for the past 18 years I have seen my share of tropical storms and other weather phenomena. I am just so concerned that with global warming or what some euphemistically call "climate change," things will get even more extreme. I think we are seeing that already; many old timers in my classes mention this, but as soon as I mention those words “Global warming”, they try to take it back and “oh no, the storms are really not getting more severe, they are just outliers.” The weather Gods are not getting angrier in their eyes; while we all know that they actually are, and that it is the result of all the stuff we do, the stuff we emit but try to deny and ignore!

Richmond (10/5/2015)

It's been an interesting weekend, and we in Virginia had it easy compared to the Carolina's.  Let me explain:

When I took the first picture on Wednesday September 30, the clouds were building and the weather outlook was for a lot of rain and a possible hurricane over the weekend.  Predictions were at the time that hurricane Joaquin was going to come right up (what we call) the main stem of the Chesapeake Bay as a category 1 or maybe even a 2 storm, and for us who lived through hurricane Isabel, we feared the worst.  I took this photo, in anticipation that it would look very different a week later.

A picture of the James River in Downtown Richmond from Brown's Island Park taken on 9/30/2015.

There was this European model out there that was sowing doubt in our mind.  In the past the European hurricane model had been the most reliable, so were were all somewhat skeptical about the initial dire predictions of the other models, and we did not really make many hurricane preparations.  From the look of it some people did, because when the I visited our local Lowe's on Friday after we were sure that the storm was going to pass us by, the return line with people returning unused generators (still in the box) was very long!

The next photograph I took on the 5th of October after the mountain region of Virginia received a lot of rain and you can see that the water is much muddier and that it has risen a lot.  There was a sandbar in front of one of the bridge pilings and that is now underwater; moreover the first section of the piling is almost completely submerged.  What a little rain in the watershed will do!  Actually the week before September 30, the mountainous region of Virginia received close to 8 inches of rain in 2 days (for my non-American readers that is 200 mm) and during the "hurricane weekend" or the weekend before the 5th we got another 2 to 3 inches (50 to 75 mm).  After a little lag time as they call it in hydrology (it takes a few days for all that water to flow down hill), we saw the water levels rise.

The James River on October 5, 2015.

As of the writing of this blog (10/8/2015) the water level in the river is back to the level of the first picture.  Again, this is nothing compared to what the people in South Carolina are going through.  My hearth goes out to them.  The climatological extremes seem to be getting more frequent, fires out west, floods in the east.  As predicted, global warming is slowly expressing itself isn't it?

Hightown (7/12/2015)

Yes, Hightown.  Located in Highland County, smack in the middle of the Blue Grass Valley along route 250.  It consists of a farm building a few supporting buildings and what looks like a general store.  This is the place where we turn right when we visit our friends who live in the valley.  It was also the place that was a rest stop when we biked the "Mountain Mama."

Hightown has another distinction, it is the divide between the James River watershed and the Potomac River watershed.   Actually the roof of the barn in the middle of the photograph is the divide.   Rain that falls on the left side becomes the James (or the Jackson River one of the two main tributaries that make the James) and the rain that that falls on the right side of the roof becomes the South Branch of the Potomac.  It is fun to see such a significant place: the source of two (historically and environmentally) major rivers.  And it all starts with a roof!  Naturally, the Jackson and Potomac will gather more and more water when the flow down hill, but they have to start somewhere.  That the story of our life, plant a seed to grow a plant, start with the first drop have a major river, etc.  Fun!

Bluegrass valley is gorgeous, but from what I hear, a darn cold place in the winter, but it is nice and cool in the summer; no air-conditioner needed.  We have biked it in the summer and hiked on our friend's property.  Unlike some other places I've been in the world (like Scotland), we value private property in the US and I would not dare walk through someone else's fields, and I know of no public hiking trails in Bluegrass Valley with the exception of the public roads.  (During previous visits we have hiked along the Jackson River as I described here.  That was in a county park.)  Still it is a great place to relax.

Yorktown (12/23/2014)

It is really nice to be outside in the woods early in the morning after a day of rain or when it is foggy.  Today it was both.  All the trees were still damp, which makes the bark turn really dark and makes the lichen and moss stand out.

Lichen are very interesting organisms.  They actually are a symbiotic relationship ship (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours) of algae, bacteria and fungi.  Somehow by living together they are able to create these wonderfully colored structures that live on rock, and in our woods on the trunks of trees.  This symbiotic relationship makes them strong and able to live under very harsh conditions.  Typically they live on the northern sides of trees and rocks, where they are not baked by the sun.

Here is a picture I took today during my walk this morning.  It was great to be out in the woods again.  Life is still dry, the ponds have no or very little water in them; but regardless it is so enjoyable walking in the woods.  Foggy day walks are my favorite.

Stormwater Management (12/21/2014)

What, no location on this post?  My back yard, Yorktown or even Newport News Park would be a decent heading as well, but this post is more than that.  It speaks more to one of the things I like to do (landscaping, architecture, building, paving) and things I teach (stormwater management).

Over the past two weekends we decided that a strip of grass between two paved areas in our back yard was more of a bother than an asset.  The few things it was good for was that it had some clover (good for bees) that sometimes did reasonably well early on in the year, and that it is the area that receives the overflow from one of our rain barrels and thus serves as an infiltration area for water coming of our roof.

That water infiltrates into the soil is a very important thing to me.  I give impassioned talks about this subject in the classes that I teach and talks that I give throughout the state, in particular since we are definitively seeing a drastic drop in groundwater tables in areas that are developed.  Areas that are turned into subdivisions and shopping areas become less pervious to rainwater than the forested area or agriculture land they were before development.  Rain falls onto impervious surfaces (roofs, roads, parking lots, etc) after which it enters some form of stormwater management system and is piped into the nearest stream or river.  As a result, rainwater that used in infiltrate and recharge our groundwater tables now runs down ditches into a river and out to the sea, or in our case the Chesapeake Bay.  All this added water in the streams also causes flooding downstream and more erosion in the streams during rainstorms while in dry periods the streams are drier than they used to be.  In essence, building subdivisions is not the best for our natural environment; although it is a necessary thing to do; we need to live too.  But I believe in sensible development and less urban sprawl (search my blog for the label urban sprawl and you'll see what I mean).

What I teach is also known as Low Impact Development.  Yes, we need homes and subdivisions, but we can build them sensibly, with respect for our natural environment and for the ground water resources.  When we do that we alse take care of the water quality and quantity in our creeks, rivers and streams.  Instead of piping the water away, we need to help it infiltrate with things like rain gardens, bioretention permeable pavement and other measures.  That was what I was looking at when doing my paving job. 

In this job, I used all kinds of recycled materials.  When we lived in Cincinnati my wife and I would even clean up the Ohio River and pick up old brick that were dumped along the river.  In this job, the tiles were from a walk way we took out and the brick are all recycled from old building projects (my wife and I spent long hours chipping away the cement that clung to some of these brick). 

Giving the brick and tile a bit of a grout line will help with some water infiltration; but we had to deal with the overflow from our rain barrel.  Luckily we had what I call holy brick, or brick that is uses as veneer to a home.  These brick all seem to have three holes in them (hence the holy in holy brick).  So we constructed a slightly depressed channel of these holy brick between the tiles.  We routed the water from our rain barrel through this channel in the hope (expectation) that any overflow will infiltrate through these holes into the soil; thus achieving what I teach: runoff reduction.  We will have to monitor it and see how it works.  The photo below show the results of a two-weekend job, minus the sore back.

Yorktown (9/10/2014)

I commute from Yorktown to Richmond every day when I don’t travel to somewhere in Virginia.  An exception is Fridays when I telecommute.  My favorite commuting routes brings me into Yorktown proper, along the Parkway, and only then will I pop onto Interstate 64 and do the rest of my commute.  On the way back I take a similar route.  Having these small traditions or shall we call it rituals is very important to me and I suspect, to many people.  For me, it gets the work day started and, in the afternoon, it is a nice end to a busy day and a crazy commute. 

What I don’t understand are all these commuters that get antsy and try to pass you on the Parkway while you already drive two or three miles over the speed limit.  To me the Parkway is not really for commuters; it is a ritual, a way to relax and almost meditate.

I clearly suffer from horizon deficit disorder (I just made up that term, but I have it).  I need to be able to see far and preferably see the horizon.  In the 80s we lived for three months in Durham, NC; and I still remember that feeling of claustrophobia; all those trees everywhere and no horizon.  I grew up on an island in the Caribbean and remember that on clear days we were able to see the mountains of Venezuela, more than 40 miles away.  I need to see the horizon, or at least past the next tree and this is why this ritual is so important to me.

This morning was magical.  We have had two days of rain in our area, and some was very heavy.  The town of Smithfield reported 12 inches (or 30 cm) of rain during the past two days).  So it was great to see the sun peak out of the clouds this morning.  Looking at the horizon I was amazed by the interplay of sun and light in our partly cloudy sky.  I saw sunbeams streaking down, while a tanker waiting to load (or unload) at the oil terminal was in the shade of a cloud.  I had to stop and take this photo of the scene. 

Back in the car, driving down the parkway I all the sudden saw a bald eagle coming my way flying above the trees.  Bald eagles are gorgeous majestic birds and I was absolutely amazed how big this one was, soaring over the trees, wings wide and looking in the direction of the river.  It was absolutely magical; a great start of a new day.  I just wonder how many commuters experienced the same thing.

Rainy day in Yorktown (5/16/2014)

It has been a rainy morning today.  A great day to telework and fade to the background.  Today I am working on the inspector classes for erosion and sediment control, which is very appropriate seeing the amount of rain we had this morning.  As a side project I am doing a little literature research on one of my hobbies: trying to understand why some people are so anti science.  Naturally, things that come up are the anti vaccine people, people who do not believe in (human) evolution and the climate change deniers.  As an educator I find this fascinating, and I am really struggling with how we can convince these types of people. I guess all the science we bring forward is flawed in their eyes and they simply glaze over and shut themselves down.  This feeling was even  amplified after watching some of the debate for the Idaho governor's race.  However, I do think this research is even relevant to me in the job I do now.  As one of the quotes I read says: "the biggest threat to humanity is our stupidity."

Oh well, stepped out into the back yard after the rains stopped.  This picture is of our heron statue in the back yard.  As you can see there is a lot of standing water in the ephemeral ponds behind our home.  It's a source of mosquitoes, wonderful frog and salamander calls, and a great place to recharge and experience the power of nature.  

Shenandoah State Park (4/25/2014)

We had a wonderful weekend at Shenandoah State Park the last weekend of April.  In my books this comes close to being the best park in the Virginia State Park System.  It is a great place for some hiking, biking, kayaking and even some wine tasting at the nearby wineries (which are really good and in a future post, I may write a review of the ones we have visited in this area).  Friday started out a rainy, but after the rains were over we had a great walk on a nearby trail. 

Rain (3/29/2014)

It was a wet weekend here in eastern Virginia.  The ponds are full again, and with the rising temperatures, the frogs are out calling for mates.  When I teach my classes I always remind people that nature is about a few things.

First of course is sex, or shall we call it procreation.  That is why all those frogs and salamanders are calling.  It is why the birds sing and the plants flower.  They want to procreate and continue their species as is or maybe as they slowly evolve.

Nature it is also very parsimonious.  This is one of my favorite words, it means stingy/cheap.  Being somewhat older now, I finally understand why my two best classes in college were biology and economics, and I understand why I specialized during my Ph.D. studies in physiological ecology.  It all is a game of supply and demand; putting in as little investment as possible to get the biggest return.  Nature does not waste. 

I think here is where we humans diverge from nature, we waste a lot, and we have sex purely for pleasure (in addition to procreation).  I often wonder if this will be our eventual downfall.  While sex without procreation is fine, there are still groups of people that have more than 2 children (note that you only need two children to replace father and mother on this world when they die).  Having more than two would almost be irresponsible; but of course there are groups that only have one child or none.  Our waste is something else.  We are accumulating it everywhere; we are drowning in our waste (including greenhouse gasses).  I worked with pigs that were kept in a big run, and they did their thing in one corner and kept the rest pretty clean.  I hear that horses do the same thing.  We humans are trashing our planet; which is unsustainable.

Anyway, of my soap box, this picture was taken on a wet Saturday morning.  What struck us was how dark the bark is and how strongly the moss stood out that lives on the bark of the trees.  An amazing contrast, worth taking a picture of. 

Seaford Yacht Club (12/29/13)

I went to inspect the new (old) port (window) that I installed on my sail boat the day before (http://www.seafordyachtclub.com/).  It was a restoration job, and I had done my best to make it work.  It had literally rained cats and dogs the whole morning and early afternoon, and I was curious about the effectiveness of my restoration job.  This photo was taken from the boat; you can see the rain clouds in the distance and the shimmering of the wet dock and boats.

The restoration job did not work, the port leaked like a sieve, something I was afraid of.  Very disheartening, and it is back to the boat to take it out and do it a different way, that I know will work.  This was a case of one step forward, two steps back.  Oh well, a learning experience.  But it was a beautiful afternoon after all the rain.

Yorktown and Seaford (7/22/13)

It has been a tremendously wet couple of days.  Sunday night a rain guage in our neighborhood recorded 5.5 inches of rain in 2 hours, and Monday evening it rained again.  It probably only rained 2 inches, but the soil was so saturated that it was flooding all over the place. We live in a neighborhood that was built in a swamp and you can really notice it.  But the fun thing about it is the frogs.  They came out like gang busters; sitting outside you could hardly understand each other, they were so noisy.

Seaford (7/21/13)

We received 5.5 inches of rain Sunday evening.  This was a foreboding of what was to come.

Yorktown (7/14/13)

It's been so wet there are frogs everywhere.

Rainy day (7/11/13)