Rural development mis-steps (12/19/2022)

I suspected already that my end of year post would not be the last. The reason was that Christmas weekend the nighttime temperatures were going to dip to 18 or so degrees Fahrenheit or almost -8 degrees centigrade. I figured that was probably worth a post on my greenhouse performance and bonsais.

Little did I realize that our Governor would get me riled up in the meantime. I have started to call him tRumpkin; however, his real name of course is Younkin. So, what has Younkin (a.k.a. tRumpkin) been up to this past week to get me back to writing a political post again?

For one, tRumpkin is proposing stricter abortion rules in his new budget. All my readers know that even as a full-blooded male, I am fearlessly in favor of women’s right, and very pro-choice, or better in favor of allowing women to choose what to do to their own body. As you can see in this paragraph, I have written many posts on it and if you like to read more opinions of mine check these out. I will not go into it any further here.

There was another thing that our governor who seems to be completely out of touch with reality wants to do. According to tRumpkin and his Homebuilders’ Association cronies, there seems to be a shortage of affordable housing. Actually, I can somewhat agree with them this far. But now comes where we diverge. In his ultimate stupidity (he thinks it is wisdom) tRumpkin wants to ask/mandate the counties, cities, towns to open their rural areas to smaller lot sizes and thus allow denser development in these areas.

Rural areas around us typically allow lot sized of 3 acres (about 1.2 hectare) or larger. This would allow for the location of a septic system since these rural areas are typically not serviced by public sewer. Moreover, these large lots usually support larger homes that are built by more affluent folks, we often tend to call them MacMansions since they all tend to look somewhat alike or cookie cutter. I am sure that all these richer folks in their four- and five-bedroom homes will welcome a neighborhood with half or quarter acre lots and low to middle income folks nearby. Oh, and maybe some townhouses anyone and a dollar general which is the only place some of these folks can only afford to shop? I am not being disparaging, condescending, or facetious, but I can predict their reaction: “not in my back yard (NIMBY).” Younkin lives on a private 30 acre horse farm in Great Falls, Fairfax County, Virginia. I am sure he will subdivide his land and make it available for the construction of low-income housing.

In addition to this tRumpkin proposed to make all this development a bit easier by relaxing the wetland and other environmental regulations. He saw this one correctly, I teach in my classes that all the easy-to-develop land has already been taken, and the remaining land has issues. It either has horrible soils and cannot infiltrate water and is unsuitable for septic and stormwater management, or is a wetland, you name it, it has issues. So, let’s build these lower income neighborhoods in or near wetland areas or other marginal areas. Wetland areas flood more frequently, who cares a little mold won’t kill them, and if they get sick, that is what we have the emergency rooms for or the 24 hour clinics down in the strip malls. The folks in the MacMansions live high and dry and if something happens to them, God forbid, they have insurance, and the government will bail them out.

Furthermore, let’s not talk about paving over nature in the age of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental disasters (boy, I already wrote about this in 2015). Let’s all migrate to the countryside and pave it over. tRumpkin’s proposal is going to make this all worse. Abandon the inner-city, instead of redeveloping it and making it more livable. More livable inner cities like in Europe would attract younger folks from all walks of life as well as lower income folks. This would work, as long as we make them livable and erase the food deserts that exist in many of our inner cities.

No, Governor Glenn Younkin you are out of touch with reality while living your sheltered life on your 30-acre horse farm. I am sorry, but you are not a man of the people, you are a conservative elite who has never worked a decent job in his life. I want to bet that you do not even know the price of a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread or a bale of hay for your horses.

This red oak grows in the Colonial Battlefield National Park.  It is one of the stately trees grows in a grove.  It is actually one of the smaller ones, but what impressed me on the morning I took this picture was the shadows on the trunk that shows the live veins which are a sign of advanced age or development.  Thank goodness, Glenn Younkin's proposals cannot harm this grove; however, if it depends on him, these trees would go to the lumber mill or worse the paper plant and the area would become another subdivision.

2019 Here I come (1/9/2019)

It has been somewhat of a New Year's tradition of me to look back at the previous year, and even prognosticate a bit of what the new year may bring. I was not sure if I wanted to do that this year, but I got so many hits on last year's review in the recent days, that I almost felt I needed to do it again.  It seems that my readers are wondering what my thoughts are.

Breaking a little with the tradition, I want to tell you about the famous resolutions that people make at the beginning of the year. Well, I don't believe in them. Having been member of the YMCA in Cincinnati and now an active yoga practitioner at our community center, you see them come right after New Years, and after a month you are there again with the same crew for the remaining eleven months of the year. There may be a slight uptick in May or June, just before beach or pool season, but that's it.

My New Year's resolutions?

1. Not to die this year!
2. To be more active in preserving the environment.

These are my two major goals. That simple!

Goal number one needs little explanation. I hope it is something we all want. I have blogged about death and suicide before and I am not going there this time. I need to live to be able to work on and achieve goal number two! Naturally, I may stray so now and then, so be it!

Like this triple-trunked red maple in the woods behind my home I want to reach for the sky this year and work on fighting for the environment.  Teach folks more about it, talk more about it, before it is too late, and that time is rapidly coming.  This past year there has been an all-out assault on the environment by our political administration, supported by the far right, and industry.  In wetland science, we use this triple trunk is an indicator that the area it is growing in, is most likely a wetland.  Here, I am using it as an indicator that there is something very wrong with our environment.

So how about goal number two? In my eyes, the environment is under siege! As I also mentioned before, I absolutely do not understand those folks who used to scream about the federal budget and our children’s future but then are completely silent or sometimes blatant hostility when it comes to discussions about the environment and those same children. Although in today’s political climate those same folks are awkwardly silent when it comes to the budget and their offspring.

As a provider of environmental workshops I do my best to provide as much basic theoretical information as possible to my students; however, my reach is limited. In addition, with this blog I get between 200 and 400 hits per month. Not bad, but I wonder how many actually read them versus just browse it. I purposely do not advertise. Maybe I should; I wonder if the Googles of this world would send more folks my way, if I did? In addition, I would make a few cents. But for right now I’ll keep writing and trying to educate as many as possible (you all) about the beauty of nature and the importance of preserving and protecting nature. To me telling my readers a little bit about the science behind some of these things I see in nature is so important. I really think that this understanding helps people see the beauty, cultivates the love the love of nature and helps with the motivation to preserve nature.

So what am I going to do about preserving the environment? I hope to intensify my blogging effort about the environment. I will try not to be too political, but I will let the chips fall where they may. Regretfully, it seems that one political party seems to be more cavalier about protecting the environment than the other; I will keep calling them out. So be it! My wife encouraged me to volunteer a newspaper column on the environment. I am not sure if that would conflict with my job, and I am sure I could not make a living writing for the newspaper and from this blog, although that would be the ideal world. An occasional letter to the editor may work.

However, one thing is for sure we all need to roll up our sleeves and do something about our deteriorating environment before it's too late. Reports abound that tell us that our kids and grand-kids will suffer the consequences if we do not it serious and start taking drastic steps to protect the environment within the next few years. I want to be part of protecting this earth for them. It's the only one we they have!

I took this photograph this morning while walking in the woods.  I am lucky, my job allows me to telecommute.  This saves gasoline and saves the environment.  It is also good for my mental health.  The sun had just come up in the woods and I was ready to get to work.  Walks in the woods do a number of things for me: they help me focus on the day's task ahead; they help me think through things I am currently working on (like the course I am developing); the calm me inside and lower my blood pressure; and it is great exercise.  The rising sun against the trunks of the trees symbolize to me the intentions expressed in this post, my New Year's Resolutions.  Bring them on!

The old man and the woods (12/27/2018)

It was early in the morning, the old man and his dog decided to go out for a walk in the forest that was located behind his home. The air was crisp this particular morning in December. The soil was moist. Actually, it was very wet. It had been a very wet year, and all the rains this autumn had not helped. Sections of the trails were flooded and when you got off the trails, you could never see what was hiding under the dense layer of fallen leaves and pine needles. Not that this is all bad, this part of the world is known for its “bottom land forest” and these woods are definitely part of that ecosystem. The old man’s home should have never been built where it was, in a wetland ecosystem, but it was built before there were any laws that prevented or at least regulated that.

Jake the dog was easily bored and when he noticed that the old man took his regular trail, the old man’s canine companion hesitated. Like some other times he just stood there in protest ready to turn around and go home. While it is a requirement in these woods to leash dogs, the old man hardly ever leashes his. Jake does not stray far from his side, and the only real mischief he gets into is eating deer pellets or what the old man coins “doggie probiotics.” So, there is no way for the old man to force the dog to join him.

There are; however, two remedies to entice Jake in joining the old man on his walk in the woods. That is bribing the dog with cookies or going off the trail and bush whacking. So, off the trail it was this time. However, the return trip always involves the trail anyway. While simply walking down the trail is often meditative, having done it so many times, bush whacking is always fun. There may be a rotten out stump hidden under the leaves and then all the sudden he would sink ankle or even sometimes shin deep into the ground. Having the groundwater only an inch or two under the surface would mean shoes full of muddy water. In addition, the woods are littered with fallen trees and branches. Sections of the woods have a dense stand of low bush blueberry, the only plant that the deer in these woods do not seem to browse. While this does not slow down the old man, Jake has trouble with the blueberry plants the branches are touch and they hit him in the snout and eyes, and the old man tries to avoid the densest stands as much as possible. However, the lowbush blueberries grow in the driest parts of the woods, which is nice on these wet days. 

Nature is still very active in the woods observes the old guy. While most of the deciduous trees appear dormant, the pines may still have some activity during the warmest parts of the day. A close observation of one of his favorite beech trees in the woods the old man stood still to examine the bark. There he observed insects that where hiding in the crevasses of the bark. At first look they appeared to be dormant lightning bugs that had bedded down for the winter. Birds abound in these woods and little warblers appear to have an eyesight in a wavelength that allows them to pick out bugs like this from the crevasses in the bark from quite a distance away. Obviously, the birds had not discovered these guys yet. Maybe they’ll survive till spring.

A little further in the woods, the man discovered group of yellow coral mushrooms poking out through the leaf litter. A wet log was covered by tiny small paper-thin mushrooms and a little further down the trail he discovered a tree trunk that had the white hairy mass hanging from it. Hen-in-the-woods, an edible mushroom; but let it be. 

Coral Mushroom sticking its head out from in between the leaf litter.

These little (papery-thin) guys were growing on a rotting log

These hen-in-the-woods were growing on a dead trunk of a maple tree.
The trunk closest the camera was still alive.

It was an exhilarating morning, walking off the trail, just anywhere where there was no standing water. But now it was time to find the regular trail and return. For the man it was time to hit a familiar path and enter a somewhat meditative state and for Jake to linger behind once he noticed this was the road back home which was worse than taking a familiar path. It was a time to absorb what he had seen and experienced that morning, to be in the moment, and not to have his thoughts clouded by what was going on it the world around him. Clouded by the pressure that these types of lands will be under in other states thanks to the policy of this insane government of ours.  Or clouded by the thread of having to postpone retirement and an even  longer working career because of a bizarre stock market.

Thanks heaven these thoughts were interrupted by some other shit, or better by what appeared to be coyote scat (or shit) on the trail. It could be fox scat as well, but it was the size of what a dog would deposit.  The poop were full of hair; whatever deposited the turds there must have swallowed the poor animal skin and all. The last interesting find in these woods before returning home after a satisfactory walk.

Still not sure who laid that heap of scat.  It appeared to consist of mostly hair, so it was a predator (a fox or a coyote?). 

Nothing better for Jake than to explore one of the ephemeral ponds out in the woods.  While Jake is not a hunter he enjoys the shallow ponds and just drink some of the water and smell the banks.  He does not like to go too deep.  Being a male dog, his wee-wee is his depth gauge.

Wetland delineations (8/14/2018)

One of the classes that I teach introduces my students to wetlands, their value and how to recognize them.  Wetland regulations have been a contentious issue for quite some time here in the U.S.A., and I suspect it will not go away soon, although under the current administration things could change on a dime.  Wetlands always seems to cause a confrontation between the environmental community and sometimes the government on one side and landowners and developers on the opposite side: “Who are you to tell me what I can or cannot do on my property?”  This is partially because there are periods in the year that some wetlands can be bone dry.  Let me explain:  Here in the U.S. a site is usually considered a wetland when the soil is continuously inundated or saturated for more than 5% during the growing season (or when there are leaves on the deciduous plants).  In my neck of the woods of eastern Virginia that is as short as somewhere between 9 to 12 days.  You can see how this can piss off a property owner who claims that his property is usually mostly dry.

While this may not be one of the most photogenic pictures I have ever taken, it illustrates the point I write about above.  This is a wetland and in the winter and parts of spring and fall, you walk through water here.  However, on a warm summer day this is dry as a bone as you see here.  A property owner could easily say: "What wetland?"

I teach my students this and what some of the additional red flags are in recognizing a wetland, just in case a landowner forgets to report a wetland when they are about to develop their property.  I mostly teach folks who deal with projects that are at that (early) stage of development; it is therefore important for them to recognize them, so they can let us know before it gets impacted by the construction of a new building, a subdivision or parking lot.  I tell them that I can absolutely not turn them into wetland scientists or wetland delineators; I just want them to be able to recognize some of the "red flags."

I often start out with telling my students how wetland delineators do their jobs and the way I started out in this business back in the early 1990s.  I was a part-time assistant professor at the Gallup branch campus of the University of New Mexico, when the Chair (and only full-time staff member) of the biology department got a call from an owner of an old sawmill just across the border in Arizona.  The sawmill had shut down, but in the past, they had treated their lumber with arsenic to make treated lumber.  My understanding was that the soil was contaminated, and they were going to be required to clean things up, but the site drained into a wetland, and they were either supposed to stay out of a wetland that was below the site, or only supposed to clean up the wetland since that was the place where all the arsenic had ended up.  Either way, they needed to know the extent of the wetland and were wondering if there was anyone at the university that could help them.  I was hungry and wanted to start my own consulting business, so I went for it (the chair was a human biologist and could not distinguish one plant from another, let alone identify a wetland).  Truthfully, I had never done it either, did not know what the heck I was doing or what it was about.  All I knew was that I was an ecologist, so, I thought, it must not be very difficult to figure out.

Being at a university I was able to get a hold of the Corps of Engineers “Wetland Delineation Manual” and I set out to work.  It was a very isolated site on the Navajo Reservation, not too far from Gallup, kind of interesting an abandoned sawmill, eerie but still neat.  I figured that it would not be very difficult, here we were in the Four Corners, in the Sagebrush Steppe which can be considered part of the Great Basin Desert or if you are a splitter it technically can be called the Colorado Plateau (Desert).  Whatever you call it, the area is dry, and a wetland should be darn obvious.  Boy was it ever!  That is the nice thing about working in the desert.

A few years later, after moving to the mid-west and gaining more experience I became quite the expert wetland delineator.  I first lived in Cincinnati and ended up traveling throughout the U.S. to do delineations.  While living in Virginia I traveled all over the eastern U.S.  In my blog post that contains my sermon I discuss some of the perils of field work, including being hit by a cottonmouth.  

What I had learned during my career as a wetland scientist was that desert ecology and wetland ecology was not that different.  Plants were under stress.  In wetlands plants had oxygen stress in their roots because of flooded soils, and because of that could often not take up water unless they had very specific adaptations.  Being an arid land physiologist by training (who could not find a job and thus ended up in consulting), I found that this was not very different from desert plants who were also often under (drought) stress and had very specific adaptations to survive.  The issue is that plants only have four major hormones and only one of those four hormones, ethylene, mediates stress.  I spent a lot of time studying this hormone; in the past it was thought that is was released as an adaptation to flooding and it helped with fruit ripening (that’s how we get evenly ripened fruit like bananas on the shelves in our grocery stores); however, we were able to show in the lab that it also made plants more tolerant to drought stress.  Oh well, I will leave it at that.

When I started my career as a wetland scientist I learned that I had to look for three main characteristics in the field: certain plants that are known to grow in flooded conditions, while other plants absolutely could not; soils that showed signs of flooding; and landscape features indicating flooding.  We also call this the three mandatory wetland criteria: vegetation, soils and hydrology.  This is what we look for when we examine a site, we look if it is a wetland or has pockets of wetlands.  Over time wetland delineations got easier and easier to a trained eye, although it was always exciting when you got to a new area in the country, where you had never delineated before.  You got to see new plant species and new soil types.  I was always a bit nervous to start out in such an area.  I usually studied the soil survey of the county to see what kind of soils I may encounter, while in the field I often collected plants to take back with me to my motel room or to my office so I could take my time to identify them.

We sometimes joke that we delineate with our feet; actually, it is a combination of feet and eyes.  With a bit of experience, you start noticing subtle changes in vegetation composition, and the consistency of the soil under your feet.  The ground might just get a little softer and at the same time it feels like you just stepped one or two inches lower in elevation.  This may be important, for as I described in the beginning of this post, wetlands can be bone dry, especially in the middle of the summer.  But, together with a minor vegetation change like the entrance or disappearance of one specific plant species may be enough to make you stop and wonder.  Now it is time to examine the soil.  Has the soil also changed when you crossed that subtle boundary you think you perceived in the field.  At first, I would take several soil samples with a probe or an auger on both sides of the boundary to compare.  Once I determine that I may have a soil that is representative of a wetland soil I may use a shovel to dig a decent soil pit to get a representative soil description.  Subsequently, I determine the boundary of the entire wetland, flag it and describe it, after which it is ready to be surveyed.  I often survey it with GPS, although that is not as accurate as a survey done by a licensed survey crew.  After that it is often up to the engineers, the owner and the developer to decide what to do with or to the wetland.

One of these days I may write more about wetland plants, wetland soils or the more illusive hydrology.  Stay tuned.

A wide-angle photo of one of the ponds behind our home.  There is still a little water visible in the center of the pond which is 6 feet (1.8 meters) deep in the middle.  In winter and early spring the water comes all the way to where I am standing.  As you can see, at that time and in early summer these trees stand submerged in water.  Species include: black gum, red maple, tupelo and overcup oak. They are what we call wetland species. 

A walk in the woods, the naturalists have it (Yorktown, 12/22/2016)

I have been reading a lot about nature.  In fact , as a biologist I consider myself a naturalist, or maybe an amateur naturalist.  I write a lot about nature in my blogs; it often revolves around the interaction between us humans and nature, or what I have started calling “nature deficit disorder.”  It is a term I stole as most of my readers are aware (there are now 30 posts on this blog where I talk about it).  

In the distant past I have wanted to become a naturalist writer.  But I am not sure if I have the quality to be one or to become one, so this blog will have to do, at least for now.  Among my favorite naturalist writers are John McPhee, Gretel Ehrlich, Sue Hubbell, and Edward Hoagland, among others.  Naturally, I devoured writings by Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold. 

The last quick read I had was Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.”  A friend of mine tried to convince me that it was Hemingway’s way of telling us that a man can be defeated but not be destroyed, or as he said, maybe that it is a metaphor for Apostle Paul’s writing when he describes that outwardly a man can waste away but inwardly he is being renewed.  Santiago was reborn as a legitimate fisherman; the book ends in him regaining respect from his colleagues and of course having respect in him self.  Hemingway himself claimed there was no symbolism in the story.  I mostly read the story because it is on a list of the top 100 books, as a lover of the water, a sailor, for entertainment, and as a naturalist (I used to fish when I was a teenager).

I have so many unfinished books.  That is not because I don’t like them, but it is partially because of my varied interest and because the only time that I can read is in the evening after work when I am tired.  I usually do not read novels, but read, you guessed it, naturalist and non-fiction books.  Right now I am trying to concentrate on a book on human psychology (Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman) hopefully it fits in with my study of humans and the idea of nature deficit disorder.

To me nature is very important for the human psyche; whether it is that freshly fallen sassafras leaf in the fall; the timing of the pine pollen in spring (mostly on my Instagram Pictures); my frequent walks along the New River Trail in far Western Virginia (7 entries); being out on the water in my kayak or my sailboat (too many to count); or examining a pine tree that apparently snapped in a recent storm (during my latest walk).  I like it all and I need it!  I like to take my time and enjoy taking it all in; the sights and sounds; the feeling of just being immersed in nature, being one with it.

Sunrise on the trail in the woods behind our home.

Take this past Sunday.  It promised to be one of those rare early winter days when the temperature was going to be above 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  We decided that there was no better way to get our spirituality that day then to get out in nature and we went for a two hour hike in the woods behind our house (no church for us).  We went off the beaten track on a trail that is not traveled on by many people.  

The trail leads from our home by some ephemeral ponds that so often write about.  This time of the year they are not as full other years.  They were fuller a month ago, and the water level has slowly been dropping.  These ponds are groundwater fed, meaning the water level in the ponds are as high as the groundwater and we've had a dry month and a half.  Groundwater levels usually rise in the winter and reach their highest level around the middle of February.  All trees are dormant at this time and throughout the winter.  There is little transpiration from plants and the evaporation is at its lowest as well.  By early April the groundwater levels and the levels in the ponds start dropping and the ponds dry up completely by mid to late June.  By that time the water level has dropped almost 6 feet.

Examining a pine tree that must have snapped during a recent storm this past Sunday.  This was on the trail.

The rest of the walk takes us by very young pine forests where the woods were cleared in 2003 after Hurricane Isabel devastated a certain area, through a shallow stream valley, back up to what is my favorite area: a wooded section with huge tulip popular trees.  I would estimate that these trees are close to 300 feet tall and probably more than 100 years old.  After that the trail descends into a mixed forested wetland that is often difficult to cross.  It is wide, dark and wet and often has shallow running water in it.  After passing through the wetland it becomes a fun trail and passes by a heron rookery that appears to have been abandoned in the past two years, and a large swamps where we love to watch redheaded woodpeckers and all kinds of ducks.  Eventually the trail end up in the Battlefield National Historic Park and from there the hiking and biking choices are limitless, but well defined.

A piece of broken off bark covered with lichen that I found lying on the forest floor.  I just loved the color contrast between the bright green and the leaves.  I want to bet it was knocked off by a woodpecker of some kind.

It was a great day for a hike!  Walking around you find all kinds of treasures, large and small, up high and down low.  Getting back from the hike I had my daily 10,000 steps, but the exercise was not the most important.  I felt mentally and spiritually recharged.   

Try it yourself, get out.  It is not scary out there; if you have not done it in a while, start in small doses or just go for a walk in your neighborhood and observe people's yards, the plants, trees and birds.  Take it all in.  Cure your Nature Deficit Disorder!

Just standing still and looking up in the woods is nice!

Nature-deficit disorder (Yorktown, 11/25 and 11/27/2015)

A real term or not?  I strongly believe it is.   Just like attention deficit disorder (ADD) is, there is something to being too long away from the natural world.   While people with ADD can not focus on one thing for an extended period , I believe if you have nature-deficit disorder you need a regular nature fix or you can no longer fully focus on life or the task ahead or other things like depression set in.

I did not invent the term, or the concept.  I was introduced to it by Richard Louv in his books "Last Child in the Woods ..." and "The Nature Principle."  While maybe no literary masterpieces  (says this non-native English speaker and amateur blogger), the books introduced me to some great concepts and ideas that I intuitively knew, but never articulated.  They really are great books.  Being in nature recharges me and brings me inner peace.  Mr. Louv even has examples of bringing peace to inner city gang members by bringing them to nature. (See also this webpage on the movement he started).

Readers know I am a biologist, a naturalist and an educator who loves the outside, both the blue and the green.  I suffer terribly from nature-deficit disorder, I need to get out there after a few days (just to recharge and get my sanity back).  If you are a regular reader you should know, and just look at the labels, there are at least 21 posts where I used the term.  So on my first day off on the long Thanksgiving weekend I took off for a walk in the woods with the dogs.  It was just above freezing and sunny; perfect.

To me walks like this are like meditation, the mind goes where it wants to and you observe it.  If it goes too far you call it gently call it back.  You don't speed walk, but just observe.  But still, I actively look around, observe and take photos.  Here are a few photos I took during my walk:

Teaching my wetland class, I always walk around with my teacher hat on and had to take this photograph of three multi-stemmed red maples in a row.  A clear sign that this site may be wet, or at least as I say in my class, "a red flag."

I was somewhat surprised to find this turtle on my path.  It was a cold morning and I was expecting that they were in hibernation by now.  The dogs sniffed it and you could hear it clicking in the shell making sure it stayed closed. 

Right after seeing the turtle I was struck by the way the sun was shining through the trees and striking the ground, the trees, and my face.  I just had to take this picture.   At home I converted it to black and white.   

I found it so encouraging that the outdoors store REI started the #OptOutside movement for Black Friday.  They did not open their stores on Black Friday  and encouraged their employees to enjoy the great outdoors.   We did the same, we took the sail boat out and enjoyed blue nature. It all fits in with fighting Nature-deficit disorders.

Enjoying Blue Nature on Black Friday.

Being out there is so important to me.  Try it, it is good for the soul, the mind and for those creative juices.

On trainers and teaching, Part VI, what walls? (11/25/2015)

It is always interesting to see that when you start something it has unforeseen consequences, in particular when they are positive.  Call it serendipity or coincidence, but it is often not the intent.  In my case, it brought down a few walls, or boundaries.

So what am I talking about?  As I recently mentioned in a post I was developing a course on wetlands and how it relates to stormwater and erosion and sediment control.  We felt there was a tremendous need for a class like this, since we always talk about wetlands in our classes and the need to avoid impacting them.  We felt that I was the person to do this because I have worked as a wetland scientist throughout the U.S.A. since the early 1990-s.  Well, we have rolled out the class and given it at two locations.  The class has been well received and the evaluations are great.  Both the materials and the teacher (me) are well liked.  So there is something to say for being multifarious, a jack of all trades, it helps in thinking things through in developing a class and standing in front of a room and talking about a subject.  I discussed that in this post as well.

A tidal salt marsh in a creek that is a tributary to the York River.  Tidal marshes are really interesting, to the eye they may seem fairly uniform and only occupied by a single species.  But this is far from the truth.  During high tide they are teaming with small (young fish) and at low tide they have fiddler crabs and other critters.  The plant species in them have a very narrow tollerance range of water (tidal) depth.  It is a really neat system.

Why then the unforeseen consequences?  That for a big part may have to do with my personality.  While I love to teach and be in front of a class; I hate to practice, do dry runs of my classes, tell people how it goes, what I am doing, you know it.  I find it difficult to develop outlines of what I am doing or how the class will go (a waste of time almost, I rather be developing the class or think about it).  For me developing a class is an organic I start out with a few ideas and things go from there I put things before it and behind it, wherever it makes sense in my eyes; I brood.  This can be infuriating to my supervisor, although he has learned to live with it and understands it.  However, you can imagine that people who do not know my style and more vested in the subject matter can get concerned when they experience my style first hand.  I do not like to rehearse my classes, and when I do, I find it difficult to treat a group of my colleagues, who I assume know as much as I do of the subject, as the students I am supposed to teach and know very little.  It feels like I am talking down to them and that is something I cannot do.  I like to talk to people at their level, which is probably why people rate me so high as a teacher (am I too arrogant here? I really don't like talking down to people, unless I don't like them, then I talk down to them like the best of them!).  Moreover, I do not rehearse my classes.  As I tell my students in the first class: “You guys are the dress rehearsal and the main event all at the same time!” 

During the development of the class I’ve felt two or three times that the class would be cancelled because of the sensitive issues that wetlands raise in this country.  We understand more and more about their importance as an ecosystem and habitat that needs to be protected, and for that matter the push back that conservationists have had in the past from the development and home building community.  So it is logical that this class was under somewhat of a microscope to start with.  Moreover, people are protective of their own turf, so it is difficult to have an outsider like me teach a subject that another group in our department is responsible for; they are the experts and they had no idea what my level of expertise was or what my teaching style was.  On top of that was my style of course design and development (in other words don't do as I do when you do course design) and my marginal ability to articulate it.

However, I can report all is well and I have received compliments from the group that considered asking us to cancel the classes and we received an offer from them to co-teach the class with me, the greatest compliment I can get.  I consider it a breaking down of a virtual wall between groups that is there whether you want to admit there is a wall or not.

But one thing is for sure you never get to tear down walls or get these neat unforeseen consequences if you don't try!

And yes, I need to really try to be more transparent in my course design, I guess.

On trainers and teaching, Part V on new courses and old experiences (9/15/2015)

These past two months I have been working on the development of two new courses that I am supposed to be rolling out this fall.  They are both on subjects that I am very familiar with,  so it should be a breeze,  shouldn't it?  Well, not so fast.  I think familiarity makes it often more difficult to explain a subject to a novice in such a way not to blow him or her out of the water.  Making things understandable and a learning experience without being condescending or dumbing it down too much as in being offensive is a challenge.  Up to now I have been relatively successful with it, but I don't want to fail now.

The courses I am working on is a course on wetlands and a course on soils.  Both are geared towards practitioners in erosion and sediment control and stormwater management.  These are people who need to know the basics but definitively do not need to become experts.  In a way they need to be able to interpret reports that they get to review or understand that they need a report when they did not get one.  Having worked intensively as a wetland scientist since 1994 and been involved in soils all the way back since the early 1970s, it is fun developing classes that interesting and applicable.  Thanks goodness, I have a friend, a fellow teacher and a soil scientist (all wrapped up in one person) who is partnering me on the soils class.  David will also be helping me teach it; we make a great team when we are on the road.

For my wetland course I am teaching my students how to recognize a wetland in the field.  So I went out back, behind my home to take pictures, braving ticks, mosquitoes and chiggers.  These trees show clear signs of flooding.  So nice to be out in the field tromping in the woods.  These trees show clear signs of seasonal flooding, the dark wood is how far up (3-4 ft.) the water gets in the winter.

In my class design and delivery I rely on my life experience, dating all the way back to my college years in the mid 1970s.  Yes, I have that advantage, I have all this experience.  However, I feel that in the past six years I have somewhat stagnated in my professional field.  I can't believe that I've been away from field work and into the class room (and class design room) for that long, having to rely on my past experience and on stories that I now hear from colleagues.

This realization that I have such a multifarious experience came rushing back to me these past few weeks or so since I received a surprise email from an old high school friend of mine who lives in a foreign country.  It was fun to hear from her, and in writing back made me relive a lot of my life back then, but also between the time that we parted our ways and now.  I wrote her a very brief email where I described what happened to my wife and I during the passed 38 years and our world travels.  Just thinking about that email makes my head spin, which is why we typically don't mention it to people, because when we do, we mostly get blank stares.  But yes, I (we, my wife and I) need to write (a book?) about our experiences in particular about the time we lived in Uganda in the late 1970s under Idi Amin.

Idi Amin

But come to think of it, all these 38 years worth of experiences are what I bring to class development and teaching, and I hope many teachers do the same.  When I teach, I tend to tell stories, anecdotes, and give examples of what I have seen (no I don't teach about Idi).  It is relatively easy, having worked for almost 40 years.  However, I sparingly use my international experience in my classes.  When I teach the stormwater classes I will mention my experience in Nepal where deforestation resulted in the disappearance of streams, of firewood and fodder for livestock, or worst, landslides.  I sometimes see students look at each other and smile (kind of in disbelieve that I also worked in that field) when I start a story with: "When I worked in the mining industry in New Mexico ..."  But I really did work in the mining industry.  I hope that these stories makes the classroom experience more fun for my students, and of course more interesting and a better learning experience.    For myself, I do think it is so invaluable to be able to bring real life work experience with me in the class room and I even  gladly borrow examples from other people's experience to illustrate points (I will give credit and will not claim them as my own).

I kind of miss being out there in the field and making new experiences.  I am starting to notice that I am getting rusty.  Thanks goodness I still learn and gain other experiences and expertise by fixing my sail boat, sailing and traveling through Virginia; I will never stop learning.  Hopefully I can apply my boat stories to my teaching one of these days.  If you are a teacher I hope you too reach in that big bag of experience you are carrying on your back.

On a work trek with my wife (and one of our two dogs) in the mountains of Nepal in 1982 or 83.  I sometimes had to walk 7 days for a an one hour meeting and walk back seven days.  Thanks goodness it was through the project area and I always had my eyes and ears open to do project (extension) type work and talk natural resources conservation.  This is probably close to the hill (looking at it) that dammed the Kali Gandaki valley by a landslide after this year's earthquake. 

York River (1/16/2015)

The York River is very interesting, it is only named the York when the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi come together at West Point.  At this point it becomes a very wide river.  The river has fairly steep slopes and except for some neighborhoods it is fairly undeveloped until you get to Yorktown.  Before Yorktown you have three areas that are owned by the Federal Government and you see signs on shore that tell you to stay away from these areas, or else!  Another stretch of the south shore of the river is a state park (York River State Park).  That's where we visited today.  The photo below was taken from the visitor's center, looking towards the northwest.

These facilities have a kayak launch and you can also rent kayaks if you don't have your own.  There is a great creek that runs through the marsh you can see below.  It has some fun wildlife, in particular a huge population of fiddler crabs.  Today we hiked along the marsh and saw a number of birds including two soaring bald eagles.  The north and west facing slopes of these marshes are spectacular.  I absolutely love the ecology of the area.  It still amazes me to see pretty darn big trees in this area and a dense understory of mountain laurel (yes they do grow here on the coastal plains).  The photograph below was taken near one of the bird watching platforms in the creek (yes this is a great bird watching area).

I assume that the park is across an area where the native American population lives that became a Disney legend. Archaeologists and historians place Pocahontas' village on north shore of the York. How's that for historical significance.  I guess that's why there was this thing in the local newspaper today telling us that some citizens are trying to get an historic and ecological significance designation for the river.  Hopefully this will be successful.

Yorktown (9/14/2014)

Sunday was a great day for a bike ride, the temperatures were mild, and the breeze was not too bad.  It was a great day for a training ride to get ready for the century ride we are doing at the end of the month.  After the ride it showed that we had gone 35 mile.

The ride was fairly uneventful, but at one point we had a motorcycle come by and right when he came by he put on the "after burners."  It was deafening and we were not sure if the guy did it on purpose or if we was just inconsiderate.  A little later a couple on bicycles wanted to pass and in good biking fashion they yelled " passing on your left." Actually we just coming to an intersection where we had to stop because a car was coming that had the right of way.  My wife said something like "go ahead, if you want to die", which was exactly what I thought.  They passed us after the car came through the intersection; we already had 28 miles in our legs, so we gladly let them go. It was a good ride, but it would be so nice to have bicycle paths or a wider, trash-free shoulder. 

This photo was taken at a rest point.  We love to stop at the end of Bay Tree Beach Road.  Bay Tree Beach appears to be an island that is connected to the mainland by a road.  The island has a tidal marsh between it and the shore.  On the northeast side of island is the Chesapeake Bay. There are a few valuable homes built along the beach, and it would be fun living there were it not for Northeasters or hurricanes.  I visited one of the homes once as member of the wetland board, and their bottom floor was a two car garage with garage doors on all sides.  When it storms they can open all the doors and save their home that way.  Water just flows through the garage.  This photo was taken of the marsh, looking southwest.  It is a nice place, you can almost always see a bald eagle, osprey or other critters there.  You sometimes have to zig-zag around the fiddler crabs when the water is high.  A great place and a great ride indeed.

Seaford (7/12/2014)

Friday and Saturday were the days for a “supermoon”, or the closest a full moon comes to the earth that year.  So naturally we had our evening coffee on the boat this Saturday evening play some music and gaze at the horizon for the moon.  Truthfully, it was spectacular but nothing you can capture with your measly cell phone camera with only has a digital zoom.  But of course I forgot my hotshot camera.

There were others at the marina, drinking beer/water and enjoying in conversation.  A few had ventured out to see it come up over the bay.  Moreover, I heard (after the fact) that there was actually a moonlight (sail) race that night as well.  Sailboat owners are an active bunch, and it is fun to be part of them. 

I really think sailboat owners represent a fairly good cross section of the population.  Yes, sailboats can be expensive; in particular new ones, but the members in our club range from conservative to liberal.  They needle each other so now and then, but the one thing they have in common is their love for being on the water.   Although, some of the guys openly admit that it is nice to be out of the house for a bit on the weekends to work on the boat.  Another thing in common is the love of nature; sailing in a sewage lagoon is no fun, and most if not all are committed to keeping the Bay clean.  This is very much like people from organizations like Ducks Unlimited.  Yes they are all duck hunters, but without good wetlands there would not be any ducks, so they are a driving force in wetland protection.

I think this all comes to show that persons with great differences in conviction and belief can work together to further a good cause.  While we live in a pluralistic society, it feels more and more like we live in a polarized society.  I sense a loss of civility, compassion, and empathy, whether it is in international politics and strife, or our national politics.  I find this very disturbing, and I’m not sure what I, as an individual, can do about it, except for trying to practice empathy myself and writing this blog.

Anyway, this is my rendition of a wonderful evening of watching the supermoon and thinking about things I see and learned this Sunday in the church I attend. 

Yorktown (7/10/2014)

I am on the wetland board of our county, and had a board meeting last night.  Being in Yorktown 15 minutes early I took a very brief walk in the downtown (down village) area, and shot this photograph.  It was not as crowded as I expected for a Thursday evening, there is usually an event called "Shagging on Riverwalk", but that was cancelled because of the rain.

Being on the wetland board is interesting.  We are one of the steps that any construction activity that is near the water need to go through for a permit.  It is always interesting and ranges from bulkheads, to riprap and all these other things.  Yesterday we dealt with one permit for the repair of a bulkhead and actually a violation.  I really feel good about these meeting.  We are not against development on or near the water, but we are protective of the environment and for sensible and environmentally sound development.  Yes there is always politics but as a board member you need to go through these things without a personal agenda.  I honestly try to leave that at home; although it seems that the board's decisions are often interpreted as motivated by politics and personal ideology.  York County is very political and it is amazing to be on the periphery of it all.

I guess this picture might be symbolic after what I just wrote.  No this is not a loose canon; it has been tight down with a chain!  It is located downtown, a great place to walk, with some reasonably good restaurants.  But you can see, it was quiet last night.

p.s. I entered this photo in a challenge ... I actually shot is for that purpose but waited if I could find a better one, so it's a bit late.

Lizard's Tail (6/22/2014)

What a great name for plants that look like this.  We decided to take the bikes out this wonderful early summer day, and bike the tour road in the Yorktown Battlefield National Historic Park.  Stopping on the bridge over the Beaverdam Creek we saw this gorgeous looking plant in the water and we had to stop and take some photos.  Lizard’s tail or Saururus cernuus is an aquatic plant that grows in the water.  It seems when the flowers dry up, the green seed heads look like lizard tails, hence the name. 

The tour road on the battlefield is one of our favorite bike routes.  It is approximately 10 miles and mostly has a number of memorial plaques that tell you the story of the battlefield.  There are a number of nice vistas; tow places with canons; a memorial cross; and a big round-about marking George Washington’s encampment.  It is very nice; however, I can imagine that tourists who are used to the other battlefields will be kind of bored driving this route.  It is therefore very quiet and great for biking.  My wife and I often wonder if the park should consider erecting more statues etc, to make it more attractive to tourist; but then, it is our road!  Surrender Field is a different story; that area is very attractive and very impressive! 

Sunday was a great day to bike and get some exercise.  We had a quiet ride; a fitting closure to a action packed weekend.

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.  

Newport News Park (3/21/2014)

I may be becoming a melancholic or sentimental old fool, or maybe it's the sciatica playing tricks with me (I am in pain!!), but during my walk in the woods this morning I came upon this scene. It's a scene I see frequently, but this time it filled me with love and just pure joy. It is a picture of one of the headwaters of the Warwick river (and yes I realize this is not the best picture I've ever taken). I had two thoughts running through my head. First it was what a friend of mine posted about us thinking we are the most intelligent creatures on this earth and the question is "why do we screw it up?". Secondly, I had to think about the phrase " Nature deficit disorder." Not so long ago I finished a book by Richard Louv called "The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age".  In the book Mr. Louv discusses this need for people to reconnect with nature. I really believe is we get more people out in nature there would be more respect for this earth and probably each other as well.


Also during our walk we ran into a heard of 20 or so deer, who were plotting how to take over the world!