Remember nature? (10/8/2019)

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus is believed to have said “It is not possible to step twice into the same river.” The reason being that even seconds later conditions in that river have changed. Different water molecules would be running by and touching your legs, aquatic organisms have moved and even particles of sand and sediment have been washed away, down stream. You yourself have aged and you are not the same as a split second ago. This may be scary when you think about it, but on the other hand it could also be comforting.

I was thinking about this when I finally dared to venture out into the woods behind our home again. The night-time temperatures finally dropped below 60° F (15.5° C), which means the chiggers go into hibernation and it gets less uncomfortable to venture into the woods. 

The woods have definitely changed over the past half year. For one when we last walked outback (as we call it) is was very wet and we had to dodge puddles. However, we have been in a drought, lately. I do not think it has rained for at least a month and instead of coloring, the leaves are shriveling. I am just hoping we don’t get a forest fire back there. While it would be good to have a good ground fire in the woods behind our home as I discuss in some of my posts, it is so dry that I fear for a crown fire and our homes.  It has really become a climate of extremes.

It has been so dry that the ponds have dried up, and even the puddles in the road which usually stay wet throughout the year are dried up. The largest pond behind our home has just a little pool left in the middle.  I am not sure if it has fish in it, but it usually has a healthy turtle population and I wonder how they are faring.  All ponds behind our home are ephemeral (with the possible exception of the large one) and they are fed or reflection of the groundwater levels.  This means that the levels usually fluctuate 5 to 6 feet every year; however, this year they seem to have dropped more than that.  Surprisingly, some of the grass along the trail was still green, while the grasses in the lawns in the yards of our subdivision are browning up. The entire south-eastern U.S. appears to be drought stricken this year, and the temperatures are way above average for the year. 

This is a picture that I took two weeks ago of the large pond and the water has dropped even more.

During our car ride back from our Century bike ride on the Eastern Shore of Maryland (which was fun, by the way), we were listening to NPR’s Weekend Morning Edition Sunday. They interviewed Larch Hanson, a seaweed harvester in Maine. Larch quoted Wendell Berry from one of his essays in “What are People for?” Berry wrote: “People are for preserving memory of place!” I guess that is what I have been doing with my blog posts over the years; trying to document the subtle changes in the woods behind my home. However, at times, while blogging, I can’t help myself and I also try to document the changes in my thinking and the society and of course in the politics around me.

A photo of my wife and I taken by fellow cyclists during the century ride this past weekend on the eastern shore of Maryland.  We had a lot of fun.  It was cold and very windy (first cold day, hence the packed in look).

Hanson said in his interview: “The water remembers us!” I would like to make an argument that nature remembers us, as well. Whatever we do to her will come back to haunt us, as we are currently experiencing with global warming. Yes, what we are seeing will likely accelerate, and Heraclitus’ philosophical outlook on life will become more and more apparent. Nature around us will start changing faster and faster and not for the better, and soon we can talk about the good old days. This is why, as Wendell Berry mentioned, we better preserve the memories of how nice it was back then (read now) by documenting it in our writing and photography while there is still time.  This is what I try to do in my writing and I hope you do that too in your form of communication with your friends and loved ones.

Fall is in the air (9/4/2019)

It is September.  Fall is definitively in the air.  A little early maybr, but our two chrysanthemums (or mums) that we have overwintered for years now, are about to bloom.  So are the goldenrod in our back yard.  I am sure that the bees are looking forward to it and to other fall flowers.  Our first major hurricane (Dorian) has devastated the Bahamas and is on its way up the eastern seaboard.  My wife and I are training intensively for another century (bicycle) ride.  We took a long bike ride last evening and it was wonderful to chase our own shadows down the road and to look over the fields in the national park behind our home while the sun was starting to set.  It was gorgeous.  Wow, the rites of fall (not of spring).

This picture was taken recently during one of our training rides.  This is in the Colonial National Park in York County.

At work it is time to plan for next year's workshops, while preparing one more full day class and working on at least two more webinars.  Crazy as it may sound, every time I step in front of a class I have to fend of questions like: "Hey Jan, when are you retiring?" or remarks like "Hope you are not retiring soon!"  Guess I am starting to look old and acting my age.

Honestly, I do have retirement on the brain.  It would be nice hang it up and relax, work on my trees, sail, travel, hike, and just hobby.  However, it would also involve admitting that I am getting old and that the decline is setting in.  I wrote about that in a somewhat rambling post <here>.   But I do enjoy teaching and working with these folks.  I am still hoping that my love and interest for the environment will rub off on some of them and that they will follow in my footsteps and help to protect the environment or at least understand the need and the urgency to do so. 

We ask the folks that attend the workshops to do a review of the class and these are just two of the latest reviews I got in August.  I took a photos because they made a comment specifically about my teaching.

Another point for not retiring is financial.  The stock market did not fair well in August and with the political uncertainty it is difficult to rely on the savings right now.  The stock market rises or declines one or two percent with every tweet or twist and turn by the current occupant of the White House.  It feels like he is just doing it for kicks; just because he can!  There is talk about a recession.  In other words, I am not sure if this is the right time to call it quits, or just to hold on until we finally get rid of him and things stabilize.  That is, if things will ever be the same, or stable, again.  Oh god, here we go again, into my favorite subject of late, politics.  Stop it!

I really like fall or autumn as some call it, except for the annoyances of the storms (which according to statistics are getting more severe thanks to global warming).  It is getting cooler, the air gets crisp, the leaves are coloring and the shadows are getting longer.  I have written about my love of autumn every year except last year (check the keyword or label: fall colors).  

Animals, plants and yes, we people are all preparing for the coming cold season.  The squirrel are digging in my bonsai pots and I think they are hiding oak acorns in them.  All the moss has been dug up and thrown out of the pots, and next spring it will be weeding time.  Of course, they are hiding acorns elsewhere in the yard, as well.  Plants are translocating nutrients to the roots and trunks in anticipation of the winter.  I teach my students that this is the time that weed control may work best.  Even we humans are preparing for winter.  Some of us fatten up in fall, for the cold winter.  We have stored our firewood and are ready to light the stove when it gets cold at night.  Bring it on!

Rails to trails in Western Virginia (10/8/2014)

A little bummed out, in Abingdon tonight and I had hoped to be able to report that I had biked all four rail to trail sites I western Virginia that I know.  Taking my bike out the trunk of my vehicle I noticed my tire was flat and pretty darn past repair.

Oh well, time to at least walk the Creeper (for the second time). The Creeper is an abandoned railroad that was converted to a bike trail.  Others in the area are the High Bridge Trail (subject to last week's post), the New River Trail, and the Huckleberry Trail.  Of these four trails, the Huckleberry is accessible to both road bikes and off road bikes.  I would do the other trails with a bike with fat tires.  The most scenic one (of the areas I've seen, walked or biked is the New River Trail, although the view from High Bridge is spectacular, and I have only seen 2 miles of the 37 mile Creeper.  Maybe I can get my bike repaired tomorrow and try it.

I took these pictures during my walk this afternoon, it was fun.  The walk back was right into the setting sun, so that was bothersome.

Farmville (9/29/2014)

After a weekend of traveling and cycling on the eastern shore, it was "on the road again" but now for work.  My job took to me Farmville, about an hour and a half southwest of Richmond.

I really think Farmville is a great little town, with Longwood University.  I applied for a job at Longwood two time, but obviously was rejected, and the only other thing I know about it is that one of the dorms burned down the year we moved to Virginia.  In addition to the University, Farmville is famous for it's (now mostly defunct) furniture manufacturing and the famous High Bridge Bike trail. The photo for today was taken on High Bridge on Monday night.

The bridge it self is an amazing 2400 feet (730 m) long and 125 feet (38 m) high.  It was constructed over the Appomattox River and flood plain in 1854, and it is a site of one of the civil war battles.  Currently, the rail line has been converted to a rails-to-trail site and it is wonderful biking in the area. My round trip from Farmville across the bridge and back was just a little over 10 miles and the trail is flat. I took the photo below using the HDR setting on my cell phone near the middle of the bridge.  For this occasion I obviously brought my mountain bike.  The trail is fine gravel and a normal bike with wider tires is needed.  My road bike with very narrow tired might have worked, but this was great.

Farmville has other attractions too.  I particularly like my lunch spot, "the Bakery", which has a European flair and great sandwiches.  I had a good visit.

Salisbury,MD (9/27/2014)

This weekend we traveled into Maryland to participate in the Seagull Century.  The Seagull, for short, is an annual bike ride on the eastern shore of Maryland.  You can choose between a 100 mile ride or a 100 kilometer (64 mile) ride.  We chickened out this year and did the 64 mile ride.

We were biking with more than 7000 of our new best friends.  It was beautiful weather this year.  It started cool and warmed up to around 80 degrees.
There is a rest stop every 20 or so miles where you are fed on bananas, oranges, baglels, fig newtons, and pickles.  There is water and Gatorade to fill up the bottles and even a bike maintenance guy.

We always say that the ride is like the marathon for cyclists, but judging from the looks of it many people participate and it is doable; although you need to train.  Still, you see that people are unprepared.  Near the end you have people standing next to their bikes, completely out of it.  This time a woman was standing next to her bike 3 miles before the finish and she told us she was out of water.  Sad to see she appeared to be unprepared.  During previous rides (as this is our 12th annual ride) we literally saw people fall over into the ditch from exhaustion; but that day it was 99 or so.

Anyway, it was a great ride this Saturday.  This picture is one of our bikes at the finish line.  We just got in and were ready for a beer.  The bike were tired too and it was easy to lean them against each other waiting for us to come back after drinking a cold one.  Everybody leaves their bikes unlocked and I've never heard of any stealing.  Cyclist are a great colorful bunch.

Yorktown Battlefield National Historic Park (9/1/2014)

Labor Day weekend was spent as a Briedé family triathlon.  On Saturday we sailed, on Sunday we split wood, and on Monday we biked 28 miles (45 km) in preparation of a century ride we will be doing at the end of September.  Although it seems that spring is finally over and summer started, the ride was fun.  (If you live in our neck of the woods, you know what I mean: we had a very mild summer, and temperatures are finally going above 90°F.)  I am sure that many climate change deniers have a lot of fun with our mild weather, but it looks like it was a warmer July for many on the globe except in the eastern US, Siberia and northern Italy.  I am not sure what August will look like.  Oh well, it seems that a lot of us try to grab at straws to prove their point and I am probably one of them, but there is nothing as aggravating to me as people just following what the pundits say on radio and television without researching it themselves.

The photo below was taking during our ride from a bridge in the colonial battlefield park.  I took pictures here before of the lizard tail, but this was such an idyllic sight: a heron standing on a fallen tree.  I did not have my SLR with me, so you cannot really zoom in on the heron, but it is still nice.  Moreover, it is tough to carry a heavy camera on the bike, so my phone will have to do.  As I mentioned before biking itself is sometimes taking you life in your own hands.  Roads are narrow and drivers seem aggravated by cyclist and don’t respect them.  On almost every ride we come by areas where bikers were killed or hurt by a vehicle; although in not every circumstance was the driver at fault.  Cyclists need to be careful, as well.  But it always gives me chills driving by a site where a cyclist was killed.

I was struck by a letter to the editor in this morning’s newspaper (not yet published, but it should appear here).  In this letter the author wrote about a cross country running team from a local high school and how they were running along a narrow road without a sidewalk, where drivers can drive 55 miles per hour.  I think that is so common for our area, nowhere for citizens to go from one place to another to go without the mighty car, truck, minivan or motorcycle.  Life would be so much nicer if we could walk, bike, or use public transportation.

Christiansburg (7/29/13)

Traveling out west I stopped for a bike ride on one of my favorite trail, the Huckleberry.  This trail goes from Christiansburg to Blacksburg.  It is approximately 6.2 miles each way and has some relief.  It is improved and great for road bikes.  A fun one hour trip.