Wonderful Warmth

After Saturday disappointed both me -- who was looking forward to a good run outside in the light of day -- and multitudes of trick-or-treaters by being chilly and solidly rainy all day long, Sunday dawned beautiful.  I took today off work and so I have had 2 free days to enjoy the unseasonable warmth (over 70 today!) and I have been taking full advantage.  In the last 2 days, I've walked/run about 30 miles, visited 5 forest preserves, and gotten a lot of yard work completed (although actually Chris beat me to the punch on that and did a lot while I was out running!)  I've  seen 3 species of hawks, crows and geese, blue jays, robins, countless small birds including a lot of juncos, which have returned. I've seen deer and chipmunks and squirrels and more... 

Here are a few photos to show what the days are like... In this one, I tried to capture the oak leaves that were falling falling falling as I went through the woods.  It was just a constant shower of dancing leaves -- they were twisting and twirling, spinning, floating, flipping and flopping (sometimes right onto my head).  Despite the fairly constant shower, it took me several tries to get a photo with a leaf actually visible floating through the air.  That the picture has the moon behind the oak branches is so much the better!

This photo shows how rapidly the trees are losing their leaves... quite a difference from last weekend and even mid-week!

I like this photo because it shows the carpet of leaves through which we were wading -- and it shows the long shadows (including of me) characteristic of this time of year.  This photo was taken not long after mid-day... and, with the time change, not long before sunset either!  Not too many hours between them!

Finally, because I can't resist... here are just a few of the fungi I saw:

We look forward to another couple of warm days (though I'll be at work) before the seasonal weather returns at the end of the week!

Puffball World

This morning I came across several logs just covered in puffballs. 

They are at that place where if you touch them, clouds of spores come out like a brown plume of smoke.  I tried to capture that in a photo with less success than I'd have liked...

In other news, serviceberries are looking lovely this time of year, no? 

Plants of Devil's Lake (and a Fungi)

Obviously, I saw thousands of plants in five days. And many, many of them were doing something phenologically interesting. I limit, therefore, my reporting, to a few that are new to me, or special, or just pretty.

This pale corydalis was new to me, and not the easiest to identify, either. Its leaves are similar to Dutchman's breeches -- feathery -- and its irregular flowers have striking color changes, though, which gave it away once I figured it out. It seems to prefer growing in rocky areas.

Native honeysuckles, of which we saw a few, including this hairy honeysuckle, are always exciting. They provide a nice contrast to the evil invasive things that out-compete native trees and shrubs that we usually refer to when talking about honeysuckles.

I did get to see my hoary puccoon at the Shack after all... just a month later.

I did not know that the foxglove beardtongue, quite common and blooming all over right now, had a native sibling, the large-flowered beardtongue -- Penstemon grandiflorus. The pale purple flowers are really very lovely, and I want one badly. Next native plant purchasing season, this will be my quest. They will look lovely in our side yard, which is next year's major project...

The squawroot or cancerroot was a mystery plant last year (see entry on May 21) and I was happy to remember it and its habits this year... though I did have to look up its name again!
These fungi had such a neat purple color...

See people? I really edited myself on the plants.

Next: Vertebrates, and then we're done with the trip!

Up North

I spent the week in the north woods, where a first frost -- presumably weeks ahead of ours -- has already started turning the maples red and orange and yellow. On cloudy days, their brightness popped against the grey of rain, and on sunny days the blue of the sky contrasted starkly with the autumnal oranges... it really was beautiful. I wrote in my nature journal, during one of our reflection times, that I think I must have nature ADHD... this after a sentence about mergansers, then one about autumn colors, one about the sound of the lapping of the water on the shore, and one about the shape of the dead log, already harboring a small oasis of new life, jutting into the water. But upon looking at my photographs, I have determined that I am surprisingly mycology-minded.

And, if you think that this is overkill with the fungus photos, I would like to state, for the record, that a) I edited a lot out of these, and b) I would have taken a LOT more pictures of fungi if I hadn't had 58 lbs of canoe on my head for a lot of the time, which seriously diminishes the ease of... and desire to... take pictures.

We saw mushrooms in every color but blue and green. The first one here, though the photo doesn't capture it that well, was light purple!

I think the eyelash cups are so cute, don't you?

That last one was very crazy... about 4 inches in diameter, covered in dark purple-grey powder above and below, and curved up. Students noted that it looked like the empty paper of a Reese's peanut butter cup.

You made it this far? Here were a few non-fungal discoveries...

a brightly-colored leopard frog

This moth LOVED me, sat on my hand and probed my skin with its proboscis, and came back several times even after I got tired of not being able to write and brushed it off. It landed on my head for a while, where its wings buzzed by my ears like a tiny helicopter, and spent time on both of my hands. Eventually, it tired of me and decided that a yellow flower was more to its liking.

Such pretty colors in this hawkweed.

Big Thoughts on Small Things

On the seemingly interminable drive from Acadia in Maine back to suburban Chicago, we listened to the audio version of Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns’ National Parks: America’s Best Idea. As a side note, this was a nice follow-up to our east-bound listening, Eaarth by Bill McKibben. They complimented each other in an odd way, and I would recommend both, although I would not read Eaarth if you have an inclination for depression. It definitely made me want a Prozac… it essentially described how humans have gone past the point of no return in terms of wrecking the planet, and that our only hope for the future is an immediate re-definition of our expectations and lifestyles. It made me glad I don’t have children; in fact, it made me wish I was old. Because I don't think people are any closer to listening to this advice now than they were when The Limits to Growth was published in 1972. Actually, I suspect we're further away. And although I'm one of the people that would enjoy McKibben's prescribed changes more than most, I don't see them happening to our society voluntarily, and the involuntary way seems pretty scary. Some of us are going down. But back to the point.

National Parks, on the other hand, described the same as one of the great and hopeful innovations of America. Although it was balanced, and presented some of the unsavory and disappointing aspects of the NPS, the book, overall, made me proud. It even made my eyes tear up a bit. It also made me think about my relationship to the national parks, and to nature in general.

At Acadia, one of my favorite things was the trail around Jordan Pond. If you’ve been there, you know that this 3.3 mile trail is one of the few in the park that is completely flat… elevation change: 0. It doesn’t climb a mountain or take you to the edge of the Atlantic. It does offer some spectacular views of a pristine lake surrounded by pine-covered hills. I, like the other thousand people that visited the park that day, (or at least like all the ones that got more than 100 yards from the store and restaurant) snapped a picture of each perfect view.

Unlike everyone else, my scenic view photos will be couched in the photo album between a great many close-ups of lichens and fungi, berries and bugs. I remarked, as we were traversing a boardwalk through a mossy forest, that this was a place in which I could spend 8 hours exploring and not get five feet from where I’d started – not even notice the clear mountain lake reflecting the landscape around it.

I think I have a very different relationship with natural spaces than John Muir. At least as described in National Parks, he sought out the grand views – the mountains and waterfalls. I like those as much as the next guy, I suppose, but that’s not where my head is really at. I seek out and celebrate the small things…

It reminds me of my first real job interview. I was 24, and had spent a few years after college doing seasonal environmental ed jobs. I’d interviewed for them over the phone and never, honestly, doubted I’d get them. But for this interview, I dressed up in a suit (probably overkill) and went in person to the Nature Museum in Chicago. And the moment I remember, the question that sticks out in my head, was “Describe your personal relationship with nature.” What? Certainly I had a relationship with nature. I’d spent a year living in the northwoods in Minnesota, outside every day. I’d spent a year on the Georgia coast soaking up sun and learning the intricacies of ocean life. And I grew up in a family that went camping pretty frequently. For many years, my parents took us west each year, to spend a few weeks in Colorado or one of the magnificent parks described in National Parks – Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Tetons, the Grand Canyon… but I grew up in the suburbs, not in the back country, and so I had the confused relationship to nature you might expect from someone with such a duplicitous upbringing. I really hadn’t spent a lot of time defining this relationship. Certainly, this was not one of those interview questions that you typically prepare for when getting ready for an interview…

Part of me answer -- the part that I still remember discussing word for word -- was that the relationship was really based on small wonders. I see magnificence in the ordinary, in the things that most people walk by every day while they're searching for the perfect mountain vista, or even on their way in from the parking lot or whatever.

So... here is a collection of my small wonders photos. I would like to note that

1. This is just a small selection of the photos of moss, fungi, lichens, parasitic plants, etc. that I have, so I did some major editing... and

2. I recognize that I probably should do some more, but I can't pick!

You're still scrolling down? OK, these last are a little different, but from the Jordan Pond hike so I've included them here. I also did some sketching, and later I will scan and put that in too...