Cruel to be Kind (2/4/2022)

Nick Lowe wrote the song with the same title of this post some time ago (1979) and somehow this week I was reminded of at least the title. Then came a poll from George Washington University that I saw on TV where one of the statistics was that Republicans’ (or conservatives) dearest value was freedom while for Democrats (or liberals) it was ethics (and civility). This hits home for me very hard after what transpired this past week, but let me explain.

First, let’s look at Lowe’s lyrics. It starts out with:

“Oh I can't take another heartache
Though you say you're my friend, I'm at my wit's end
You say your love is bonafide, but that don't coincide
With the things that you do
And when I ask you to be nice, you say

You've gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure
Cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind, means that I love you, baby”

These first few words of this love song are enough but the words “cruel to be kind“ are repeated over and over. What happened this week? Monday morning when walking my dog Jasper in the woods behind our home, I discovered that someone with 4-wheelers or ATVs had gone into the woods, driven the trails and torn through the Grafton pond that I have been following for the past 20 years, and probably shown you photographs of here in my blog. These ponds are habitat to the endangered Mabee’s salamander, barking tree frog, Harper’s fimbristylis and pond spice. Angrier and angrier looking at all the destruction I walked home. I called the game inspector for the park. She came to inspect the area and she later told me that the vandals destroyed four ponds. By the way, the area is posted; it tells visitors that no motorized vehicles are allowed and that we all need to stay on the trails.

At least the tracks were still visible in the snow that had fallen on Friday night.  You can see how high the water sometime is in the pond by the yellow pollen line near Jasper's tail in the bottom picture.

The inspector tell me that the culprits also went onto Federal (National Park Land) and this has become a Federal, State and local issue. She asked me who I thought it was that did this. Kids three houses down from us have been terrorizing the neighborhood with their ATVs and dirt bikes for the past weeks, I tell her. We were walking the woods on Sunday morning at 11, the woods were pristine, and just before we got home we heard the ATVs start up and the kids were leaving home on them. Around 4 pm when we took the dogs around the block the kids were pressure washing the ATVs in their driveway, the ATVs were covered with mud. I also told the inspector that this could all be circumstantial. She told me that law enforcement would definitely be on their way to check things out and talk to them and their parents.

I put a note with photographs on our development’s Facebook website about what had occured. I called the culprits vandals and called it vandalism. I mentioned that law enforcement was looking into the matter. I wanted to make sure that folks understood that the national park and the city park could easily deny us access to the area. I purposely never mentioned kids or what I told the inspector. I intended my note to be cruel to be kind and let the guilty or at least their parent soul search about what had transpired. I was also afraid that this incident would ruin it for us all and that we would be denied access to the woods. It brought out a few comments that wondered if it were the kids that were terrorizing the neighborhood with their ATVs, but mostly remarks about how terrible it was. But then it started, civility went out the window. Parents started to defend kids:

• They needed to be able to go outdoors
• We have all these natural areas behind our development but we can’t enjoy them (by the way, I enjoy it every day)
• They had no place to play with their ATVs around here
• Who are we to tell them what they can do and cannot do
• This is public land and should be open for all to us they see fit

Some folks became amazingly defensive of their kids, while in my post I deliberate did not accuse anyone and did not even hint at the fact that these kids were suspects. They became uncivil, abusive and in fact fighting for their freedom. This became particularly apparent when I asked the simple question: “so teach them (kids) they can get away with breaking the law and destroying the environment?” Here I saw exactly what I learned just now the difference between Republicans (65% of the electorate in our development) and Democrats (the other 35%), abusive and very vocal about freedom versus ethical, environmental and empathetic, respectively. You also saw whose kids did it; that the parent’s know it, they came out in a hurry and that they were trying to shelter them from the authorities.

At this point, I needed to stop all comments to my post and the administrator of our Facebook page had to remind folks of the rules of civility. Here I was trying to be protective of the environment and of people’s enjoyment of it; however, my post ended up to be too “cruel to be kind” (to some). That is why that song popped up in my head. It seems that we are increasingly loosing civility in our society and more polarized; another example of schismogenesis at work!

Winter is here (02/03/2021)

Winter has come to our corner of the world.  Not like the rest of the East Coast where they got up to 2 feet of snow yesterday and today.  We just got flurries and cold wind.  Of course it was on the day of the great rodent weather prognosticator, the wood chucks.  Strangely enough we all know that the astral spring is March 21, which is about 6 weeks from now; in other words it would make sense that it will stay somewhat cold for the next foreseeable few weeks.

I took this picture late last week after our first decent snowfall in a few years.  Decent means one or two inches.  The wind came up and blew some of the snow off the tree limbs and it was just beautiful and magical.

Teleworking is still interesting during these cold days.  My wife works down stairs, and I am sorry (for her) to say that the heat rises so she is cold and I am pretty comfortable up here in my perch.  We tend the run the wood stove only in the evening since it is in our library or what we call the stove room.  That room is the furthest removed from where my wife works, so it would have little or no effect on her warmth.  Moreover she would need to keep the darn thing loaded with wood.

Walking the dogs is fun now.  Jake the old guy loves this weather.  While he was on death's door a year ago and was given only a few days or weeks to live (read this post of last year), he is holding on, now a year later.  He absolutely loves this cold weather and actually is frisky.  He wants to join us on our lunch time walks and is genuinely disappointed when he has to go on a smaller walk in the morning before work.  He is just very slow.

I don't mind being slow when going out back into the woods.  I still like it when nature comes over me and when I have a chance to enjoy the sights, smells and sounds of the woods.  It never gets old, no matter what the weather is.  Right now, it is very wet out there and we are avoiding it somewhat; however, on the weekends you can find us somewhere in the woods.  I cannot believe there is anyone who can live without seeing or experiencing nature.  It is so darn important to get out there folks, there is beauty everywhere.

One more photo from our winter hike a few days ago.  Our favorite pond.  It has not been cold enough for it to freeze over.

Reading that post I wrote about Jake, now almost a year ago, I am not depressed.  Maybe it is because I have a powerful grow light next to me that helps with my little tropical bonsai trees that are next to me on my desk.  Maybe it is because of the change to a more emphatic political climate; although there are still a lot of nut cases out there.  But I try not to let it bother me right now; I have more work to do than I had in the past few months.  This, as the saying goes, should "keep me out of trouble".   As long as I can get out into the woods.  I have plans to get a few airlayers from a beech this spring.  Stay tuned.

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.

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.

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

Wow, two posts so close together!  But I felt I owe you one.  I have been on political and environmental rants or soap boxes lately and need to get off it; although today's post started out from lots of anxieties including a lot of political ones.  Rest assured, I will not go into them.

Working from home today, I needed my "smoking" or maybe I should call it my "socialization" break (I don't smoke).  I had just pulled up a few websites and all kinds of news items stared me in the face, and then my arm buzzed.  "Ready to take me for a stroll?" my Fitbit asked me?  That darn thing has a feature that reminds me every hour at 10 minutes before the hour that I need to get my 250 steps in that hour.  At least it does that when I sit on my ass that entire hour.  So as any good slave to their activity tracker does, I obliged.

Being a student of "forest bathing" and, as I already mentioned, not in the best of mental shapes this morning, I go for broke.  What the hell, I think let's just go for a little stroll out back on the path in the woods behind our home, and ignore all the ticks and potential chiggers.  I need to forest bathe!  Somehow the dogs also think they should forest bathe.

On the forest trail behind our home.

This is partially a serious and a not so serious post, so let's get the not so serious one out of the way.  We do not put our dogs on the leash in this area (don't tell the park rangers, please!), it is behind our house, there is never anyone there and I was only going out for 10 minutes.  Our beagle Lucy started eating grass all the way; in other words it was slow going.  This would have been fine, I wanted to forest bathe, and really relax.  However, this is fairly difficult with a loudly gagging dog behind you on the trail, disturbing the peace and quiet of the woods.  So I just walked a little faster, figuring out she knew where I was going.  I also wanted to stop on the way to take some photos and take in nature, so I was planning to go slow anyway.  This confused our other dog Jake somewhat: "aren't we waiting for Lucy?"

At least I got my forest bathing in, the smells and the sounds were great (with the exception of the occasional gagging behind me in the distance).  We've had a wet couple of days; it actually rained over 3 inches two days ago, so I expected a wet mess.  To my surprise it wasn't: the pond behind our home was still dry.  These (Grafton) ponds are groundwater fed and we've had a dry fall, so I am not that surprised.  

As you can see this pond is still dry despite all the rain we had the last couple of days.

It was just nice to slowly walk the trail, to smell nature, to observe the beauty and come to my senses.  Taking photos helps me see things more clearly.  The photographs do not need to be perfect it is just fun, it makes you slow down, look around and observe.  Get out there and do it.  Like my walk today, it was not perfect, but it was what I needed.  I would not want to change it for anything else.

The lichen on this tree grow on the north side of the tree that is mostly in the shade.  the south side has no lichen growing, probably because it is too hot and dry from the sun beating on it.

This oak had beautiful sloughing bark.  When I was living and working in the mid-West this was of great interest to us because this was where the endangered Indiana bat live under during the summer months. 

  

I just loved the seeds (nuts) of this sedge and how they hung like that.

And yes, even this post does not have to be perfect!

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!

Water (2/12/2016)

Walking in the woods this morning after a very cold morning I was reminded of one of the things I really try to push in my classes: 

“The importance of (clean) water!”

I tell my students that life is not possible without water and that one of the reasons is that water has these special properties.  One of these properties is that is expands when is gets colder than approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  Below that temperature water becomes more buoyant (lighter) because of the expansion and rises to the top of the water column.  When temperatures drop below freezing water freezes on top and creates this insulated layer which allows fish and aquatic life to survive in lakes, ponds, rivers and oceans (and it allows my crazy Dutch country men and women to win gold medals in speed skating).  If water would freeze from the bottom up these water bodies would be lifeless because every thing wold freeze to death.  This is also one reason why NASA is so fascinated by the (water) moons of Jupiter and Saturn, because they are expected to have liquid water deep down.  There may be life up there!

After an night of frost you can see the small cracks that formed and refroze as a result of the expanding ice, creating this magnificent mosaic.

The photograph above gives a great example of it all.  There is liquid water under the ice.  Obviously after the water froze it got even colder and the expanding ice has all kinds of small cracks in it from expanding and now looks like a mosaic.  Really cool!  Although it may be quite disturbing that instead of enjoying nature, I am constantly analyzing things in nature, just like that cartoon that I saw on Facebook of how a scientist spends his vacation on a tropical island.

Click <here> to see the site where I found the cartoon and to see many more science cartoons!

Anyway, I do teach almost daily about the importance of water, about the importance of clean water and about keeping it clean through erosion and sediment control and stormwater management.

Expanding ice in wet soil causes what we call frost heaving.  These soil particles become very loose and can become erodible and end up in our stormwater.

What can you contribute to keeping our water clean?

1. Pick up your animal’s waste, especially when they do it on the road or in or near a place where it will readily enter the stormwater
2. Don't over-fertilize or apply too much pesticide to your yard
3. When you apply fertilizer or pesticide stay a few yards away from streets or your property boundary
4. When you wash your car do it on the lawn not on a paved surface, like your driveway or the road in front of your home.  Better, do it at a car wash.
5. Don’t poor waste oil or any other wastes down the storm drain
6. Minimize the bare soil in our yards and mulch

We all can contribute to clean water, and it is so important!  If we run out of water, our earth will turn into something like Mars, lifeless; without clean water who knows, but it will not be pretty.  As I teach my students:

"Filthy water cannot be washed!"

The big ephemeral pond behind our home has the same mosaic like features.  The water in these ponds is so nice and clean.

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. 

Newport News Park (2/17/2015)

So here I write a blog post on the 27th of January about my experience with snow as a kid, and while I did not really meant to complain, nature had a different understanding and dished out some snow this week.  Just to get even with me complaining; nature has a way to get back at you.  On top of that it is supposed to get really cold.

The photo above is actually from one of the Grafton Ponds out back.  The ponds were mostly frozen over before the snow hit.  However there were enough holes in the ice and the weight of the snow (5 to 6 inches or 12 to 15 cm) was heavy enough to force pond water to intermingle with the snow and turn is yellowish.  This is a good thing, at least you can see where the ice is, because I'm sure that the ice was not hard enough when the snow started falling.  So no wienie roasting on the ice as I did as a kid in Canada.

It was beautiful though, the white world and the sun after a day old cold and cloudy.  I'm also thankful that the boss (or the Governor I guess) gave us an extra day off to dig out and to enjoy the snow.  For me it is a great chance to explore great out doors and nature.

I guess we are slightly different, we get of the beaten path and we "bushwhack."  Knee deep beagle snow was a bit too much for our small (12 year/old) beagle, but she was a trouper.  Like us she enjoys it a lot and that's what counts.  Both dog were smelling every hoof print that all the deer left in the ice, which was hilarious to watch.  Quality of life, enjoying the outdoors, getting in touch with nature and living in the moment are all very important.  And living in the moment we did; there is always something fun and new around every corner. 

Here we are walking away from the edge of a pond, through a wetland; hence the sedges. To the right you can see an area with some recent tree fall (recent being probably caused by hurricane Isabel 12 years ago).  The gap in the forest is now starting to fill in with some small loblolly pine saplings.  The natural succession as we see here is a good thing.  Generally after logging you have a very even aged forest, and it is the occasional tree fall that makes a forest more dynamic and diverse.  Now if we could control the deer, we would even have more diversity, especially in the understory.  Looking back this is what we saw:

Sitting behind my desk and behind my computer, I already miss being outside in nature, and experiencing this beauty.  The virgin snow covers all imperfections and even the litter you sometimes find in these far flung places.  The innocence of this landscape under a white blanket is amazing to me.  It is so peaceful and fun.  This was also evidenced yesterday by this little winter wren which was darting from trunk to trunk over the ice, pecking the bark for bugs and other food items.  The diminutive bird did not care about us and our dogs.  It came close to us and for a while just stood there on the ice and watched us. I generally find them very secretive, but this little guy had no worry in the world and was having fun on the ice.  A fun peaceful place to spend an afternoon.

(this post is part of my contribution to Cee's Fun Photo Challenge)

Newport News Park (2/7/2015)T

This morning we again experienced that sometimes the road well traveled is not the most exciting road.  It is great to bushwhack through the woods and see where it leads.  We decided that the trails we always seem to walk was just not for us today.  The sky was blue, the air was crisp and we were not interested in finding the straightest line or the fastest ways between two points.  This was also evidenced by the mountain bike trail we crossed at times bushwhacking this morning.  Mountain bike trails seem to wind back and forth through the woods, not making much headway, but who cares.  It is the exercise that counts, or it is the trip that counts in my eyes, not the destination.

During our walk today we went through an area that was obviously cut over 20 or 30 years ago.  It is mostly covered with hardwood trees, and to our surprise there are some really large trees left.  Most of them are large beech trees.  The following is one between the "abandoned road" and the golf course.

But as I said we soon stepped off the "abandoned road"into the nature preserve, to just enjoy the trip, and nobody cared about the destination.  The dogs just love smelling everywhere and Jake, our pseudo lab loves deep pellets, which we now have coined doggy probiotics.  We just walked keeping the sun in mind, and figuring that if we kept the sun at a certain angle we would eventually make it to a trail that leads directly to our home.  We did not care if it was straight or what we would be running into.  Naturally it was one of the biggest beeches out back (I know of one or two more out there) that made us deviate from the course we had plotted in our mind, but that's the fun of it.

In the background you can see the general circumference of the other trees in the area.  It makes you really wonder why the foresters did not harvest these few beeches when they were at it.  Currently, with the advent of mechanical tools beech trees seem to be favorable trees throughout the world; they have very hard weed, and even here in the U.S. they seemed to be likes as lumber.  But I thank whoever for not harvesting these beauties.

The weeds behind our house have remarkably much relief, with some of the low areas occupied by the vernal pools that I write so much about (look in the labels for Grafton ponds, ephemeral ponds or maybe the Mabee salamander).  The last photo here shows a picture of Jake (one of our dogs) on a root crown of an oak near a pond.  I was impressed by the burl on the oak.  It seems that they are actually preferred by specialty wood workers and can fetch a lot of money,  

Amazing all the things you learn walking out back and when you are looking and enjoying yourself.  Sometimes not traveling the shortest distance between points give you the most bang for your buck anyway in enjoyment, relaxation and just fun.

Newport News Park (1/27/2015)

I have not been blogging very much this month.  Probably because I am busy and with the winter in full swing, we are kind of home bound.  But today I had to share something.  It snowed overnight, and if we are lucky we get one or two snow days each year.

Of course I needed to go for a walk this morning to see the effect of the snow on the ponds behind our home, and just to take it all in.  Actually amazing.  I am someone who was born and raised in the tropics and I generally do not like cold weather.  But snow, I always have to experience that.  That is something different.  Not that I always liked snow.  I remember as a kid visiting Elliot Lake Canada in early March.  We lived in Caribbean at that time and my parents had this bright idea to go to Elliot Lake in Ontario, somewhere at the end of a road between Sudbury and Salt St. Marie (the U.P. of Michigan).  You can imagine what I though of that.  It was cold and the snow was at least arm pit deep.  I was suffering, and then our hosts had this bright idea to go and roast wienies on the middle of a lake.  They build a campfire and we went to roast hot dogs on a stick.  Man was I cold.

Oh well, we had only and inch or so and it was a fun walk this morning.  I did it again in the afternoon and most of the snow was gone, but the sky was gorgeous.  The clouds were pinkish and it beautiful and crisp.

The walk did me tons of good, after being stuck in a classroom, trying to teach people something about stormwater and erosion and sediment control.  The classroom had no windows and I really needed to get out and fight my nature deficit disorder.  I was surprised by an owl (or did I surprise it).  Owls are amazing creatures in the woods.  They are the most silent flyers and I am sure I would have missed it if would have been looking down to see where my next step would have to go.  But now, it scooted out of a tree in front of me and soared away from me through the trees at eye level not making a sound.  I could not identify it, but I expect it was a barred owl, knowing what we have in the woods.  A beautiful secretive sight that not many of us see.  Just what I needed.  It's been a nice productive day.

Newport New Park (1/9/2015)

Yes another picture of the park.  This is one I have been itching to take after I saw it during my walk one day, but did not have my camera with me.  It shows what I would call heartwood.  Heartwood is typically formed in the center of the trunk of a hardwood tree and it the hard stuff you want to make flooring and furniture from.  Obviously this photo shows the old trunk of a tree that was cut.  The soft wood (aka sapwood) near the bark is completely gone (evidenced by the mossy ring), while the heartwood is still there.  It's great evidence of the hardness of this heartwood and its relative resistance to rot.  It really is what keeps the trees up.  Such a neat example.

The tree which was most likely an oak, was growing next to the pond I took the next picture of.  This pond seems to be used for research purpose, since it has white PVC pipes in it, which are probably used to study the water level in the pond.  I tried to hide the pipes when I took this picture.  

The water in the pond is currently about 3 feet deep, and by early spring it will hopefully be 5 to 6 feet deep; and then by summer it will be dry.  The reason for this fluctuation is not the runoff.  The level of the water in these ponds indicate how high the groundwater is.  As I mentioned in previous posts, this is so important for the amphibian in our woods.  A pond that is dry in the summer cannot have any fish, and so there are no fish in these ponds to eat the tadpoles of the frogs and salamanders that live in our area.  Our ponds are the breeding ground of the endangered Mabee salamander.  These gusy will come out on warm days in late February to breed and lay their eggs.  Probably the neatest thing is to hear their mating calls in late February.  The woods in the back really come alive around that time.

You can see the setting sun shining through the trees.  It has been cold these past few days, and the pond is currently frozen.  No problem, it looks like they'll be ready for the salamanders and frogs come late February, early March.

Newport News Park (12/25/2014)

Christmas day and time to play with our new toy camera (an Olympus TH-3 ... kind of Olympus' answer to the Gopro).  This camera is waterproof and shock proof, and this was our chance to try it out in water.  Thank goodness it rained the day before and the ponds had some water in it.  Below are two pictures, the first one was just before I submerged the camera and the second one is actually an underwater picture in the pond.  The water is somewhat murky with leaves and pine needles sticking up.

It is definitively a camera what we will be having fun with, in particular on the boat and in other more nature oriented situations.  Everything I've done with the camera is very satisfactory.  I love it.  Time will tell is we keep that opinion.

To everyone, hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year.

Newport News Park (10/19/2014)

Home in Newport News Park again.  The leaves have not yet turned, although they are on the verge.  It is amazing how we are two to three weeks behind the rest of the state.  This serves as evidence that we have such a long varied state, as I often mention in my classes.  We go from the coast and coastal plains to a place like Highland County which is the county with the highest average elevation on the east coast.  Yes, there are higher locations, but still that place is high and cold.  Being a bit of a nature geek, it really is fun at times to make the drive from Yorktown all the way to Abingdon, which is about a 6 hour drive (370 miles) and you are still in the same state.  You see all kinds of vegetation types, rock formations and even birds.  The first time I traveled to the hill from the coastal plains I was amazed to see all the plants I was so familiar with when we lived in Cincinnati.

Back to Newport News Park.  Sunday we took a 2 hour walk.  We went out our back yard into the park, walked all the way on to the Yorktown Battlefield and then followed a trail that take you by a swamp, a heron rookery, an area with huge trees with a pawpaw understory that almost looks like an old growth forest, and Grafton ponds.  You can see forested wetlands, ephemeral forest streams and ponds and all kinds of things that delight the soul.  This is my kind of spirituality!

On our walk we all the sudden noticed these green patches of green moss with bright orange mushrooms popping out of them: nice and contrasting (I know I recently did a mushroom post, but here is another one).  After teaching plant evolution at the college level, I am always hesitant to call this moss; a lot of these green patches may actually be the sexual phase of a fern also known as prothallus.  I experienced this first hand: I try to grow bonsai and here I thought I had a nice moss cover on my soil, until they all turned into ferns and my pot is covered by ferns.  Anyway, this is a picture of the moss.  I am also entering it in Cee's weekly photo challenge and this week’s theme is green, kind of a strange subject for fall, but so be it.  

One from last weekend, chanterelles popping out of moss

Water or Winter Challenge (8/13/2014)

Any regular reader of my blog knows that it somewhat serves as a diary of what I do in life.  However regular readers also know that, so now and then, I participate in a challenge, in particular one from a photo blog I particularly like.  I really do not know what got in her head wanting you to post something that relates to water or the season of winter.  I have plenty of each in my arsenal, but what the heck, to celebrate this mild summer I decided to combine the two.

This picture was taken on January 22^nd of this year, less than 1500 feet behind our home.  It is one of the largest ephemeral ponds (aka Grafton ponds) in the woods behind our home.  In the fall, winter and spring the ponds are typically wet; while in the summer they are dry.  In the summer the area behind our home is teaming with mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers, and to tell you the truth we haven’t gone back there since early May, and I really miss walking there with the dogs.  I guess it is time to spray myself with some poison and venture out.  I kind of feel what’s called “nature deficit disorder” lately.

These ponds are wonderful for amphibians such as frogs and salamanders.  Since the ponds dry up in the summer, they cannot support a fish population which would eat all the tadpoles, and yes the only things we see at times are a few wood ducks and an occasional heron.  So, yes they are great for these critters.  I know I have mentioned that before; but because of this, our ponds are the home of the endangered Mabee salamander. 

A few years ago I walked over to this pond every Sunday at 3 pm for two years in a row (rain or shine), to take a photograph from the same spot.  It is amazing to see all the changes that occur from week to week.  In particular the Sunday after hurricane Isabel hit our area.  No trees down, but the week before there was no water in the pond, and the Sunday after Isabel the water was easily 4 feet deep.  My wife and I are still toying with the idea of producing a picture book about the ponds behind our home.

As you can see, I miss the ponds and I think it is time to brave all the insects and go out back!