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.

Seeing the forest from the trees (1/24/2018)

Such a great expression. I am afraid the title says it all, that what many people imagine when they think about a forest: a group of trees. They see trees and they think they see a forest; however, there is so much more to it. So what is a forest? In this and in some of the next posts I would like to visit the world of forests with you, mostly by way of my back yard but with excursions elsewhere. If you are a regular reader, you have been out there with me already; in my most recent post I mentioned a few of them, but a search of my labels for forest, trees, nature deficit disorder, forest bathing, Newport News Park, and alike should you get an idea of some of the things I have written about. At the end of this post I have a list of some of the most relevant blog post where I discuss the biology or management of the forests behind our home. For the rest, I will revisit them and some new subjects.

I took this photograph on December 15 in the woods behind our home and to me it symbolizes the title of this post "seeing the forest from the trees." There are a lot of trees out there.

It was fascinating to see that the word “forest” and the word “foreign” seem to have the same root, they come from the Latin word “foris” which seems to mean outside. Boy here we can dive head first into the politics of today here already but I will restrain myself. This evolved to “forestem silvam” or "outside wood" and to the French “forêt” translated as woods or forest. But as you see, it has to do something to do with wood (trees perhaps) and the outside. However, I do want to revisit the word foreign. I do think there has been this inherent fear of forests (hylophobia), or the dark forest especially at night or nyctohylophobia. We also have dendrophobia and xylophobia. Dendrophobia is the fear of trees and xylophobia is not the fear of xylophones but the fear of wood (wow doing research is fun).

Nyctohylophobia, it seems that according to a survey 18% of the U.S. population are afraid of dark wooded areas, while 41% would not want to spend time out alone at night in the woods. Not surprisingly women find the dark woods more scary than men (I got this information here). We all grew up with stories of big bad wolves living in the woods, and witches that imprisoned Hansel and Gretel. It is also where the criminal characters seem to hide. I learned this fascinating story how escaped slaves hid in the Great Dismal Swamp and created whole communities called maroons. They actually lived there relatively peaceful and sheltered away from the slave/bounty hunters until the end of slavery, no one dared to venture into the dark swampy woods.

I know the feeling, as a field biologist I felt apprehensive every time that I entered a stretch of forest for the very first time, never really sure what I would encounter. The slight feeling of fear would usually ebb away very quickly once I broke through the boundary of the woods and got into the interior and it was replaced with my curiosity and love for the area. In addition, we sometimes go night hiking in the woods behind our home (don’t tell the park rangers please). Yes, there is always this heightened alertness, a somewhat faster beating of the heart and that wonderment of wonder how many eyes are looking at us that we are not seeing. I particularly remember an early morning (5 am) hike, walks during snow storms, and a few hikes at night in the snow at full moon; they were exciting but scary to start with.

A photo I took during our evening "snow storm" hike in the woods behind our home. I used the head lamp to light-up the subject, although we hardly ever turn the lamp on. I really don't understand people who walk their dog at night with a flashlight, that would make me night blind and I just love to see the stars, clouds and even the deer trying to sneak away out of the yards.

I took this picture of our do Lucy during my 5 am hike through the woods. I used the head lamp again only to take this picture, going out is was dark, but it was so energizing. On the way back it was getting light.

The woods behind our home can be classified a number of ways: bottomland forest, coastal plain forest, mixed coniferous forest, you name it. Originally, they were not unlike some of the area of the Great Dismal Swamp. They were cleared in early colonial time to grow tobacco and then to fight all kinds of revolutionary and civil war battles. But does it all really matter? Parts are now a nature preserve and our yard runs into it. As I discussed in various posts the preserve was established for the Mabee salamanders which is an endangered species. These guys need ephemeral or vernal ponds and the woods behind our home are littered with them; we call them Grafton ponds.

Some of the common woody species we have back there include loblolly pine, Virginia pine, red maple, white oak, overcup oak, willow oak, black gum, tulip trees, tupelo, hickory, beech, sassafras, sourwood, holly, dogwoods, and blueberry. There are also a lot of ferns and a smattering of other plants. From the looks of it, these woods are approximately 50 to 100 years old. There are a few large trees around, a few oaks, tulip trees, and beech trees.

We have lived in our current home since 2000 and spent time in the woods ever since. It is a bit buggy out there in the summer months, and regretfully, we spend too little time back there in the period between mid-April and late September. Early spring there are too many ticks to be replaced by mosquitoes in the summer and early fall and supplemented by chiggers in August and September. Every year I promise myself to spray my legs, pants etc and ignore these critters and keep on enjoying the woods, but I just hate the smell of these sprays, and I hate having to leave the dogs at home; but they would be covered by ticks. I have gone out at times and I still love it, but if you have ever been bitten by chiggers, you know. We also bike through it so now and then in summer and that is a way to avoid them. Having said it, I do have a lot of experience with these and other forests in the area, having worked as a field biologist before my current job. I miss being out there, and that is why I spend a lot of my free time in the woods.

These are the most relevant blog posts about the woods behind our home that discuss something biological, ecological or management related:

Yorktown (11/8/2013) Bugs, Nature Deficit disorder, Walks with my dogs

Yorktown (12/15/2013) Shedding of branches, Trees

Yorktown (12/31/2013) Coyotes, Mabee salamanders

Yorktown (1/11/2014) Mabeee salamanders

Yorktown Battlefield (2/7/2014) Deer

Yorktown (2/16/2014) Birds

Yorktown (3/3/2014) Evolution, Mabee salamanders, Ephemeral ponds, Vernal pools

Yorktown Battlefield National Park (3/15/2014) Decay, Natural balance, Trees

Newport News Park (3/19/2014) Owls

Newport News Park (3/21/2014) Wetlands, Headwaters, Lowlands, Nature deficit disorder

Newport News Park (3/28/2014) Frogs, Mabee salamanders

Yorktown (4/19/2014) Pine pollen, Spring

Newport News Park (10/12/2014) Mushrooms, Mycorrhizae

Beautyberry (10/14/2014) Beautyberry

Newport News Park (10/19/2014) Moss, mushroom

Newport News Park (11/18/2014) Fall leaves, tree species deer

Yorktown (12/23/2014) Lichen

Newport News Park (1/4/2015) Deer, coyotes, wolves, biodiversity

Newport New Park (1/9/2015) Trees, salamanders, ephemeral ponds, Grafton ponds

Newport News Park (2/7/2015) Trees, beech, oak, forestry, salamander

Newport News Park (2/17/2015) Succession, birds, winter wren, winter, snow

Newport News Park (3/24/2015) Forest management, deer

Yorktown (11/11/2015) Fall, leaves, litter

A walk in the woods, the naturalists have it (Yorktown, 12/22/2016) Description of the woods behind my home

Dog-hairs in the woods (3/16/2017) Forest management, thinning, politics

No, it does not have to be perfect (10/13/2017) Photos, explanations

Too many hobbies?: Bonsai lessons in the woods (11/28/2017) Trees, roots, forest management, bonsai

Leaves, leaves everywhere (12/8/2017) Litter, fall, leaves

Forest bathing II (12/22/2017) Spider, trees, deer, birds, leaves, litter

Forest canopy (1/10/2018) Trees, forest management