One Day, Two Walks, Part II

Walk at Clark 4/27; clockwise: ledges and spring foliage, path over glacial-scoured rocks, triiums, dead cedar

One Day, Two Walks, Part I

Mom takes a nature walk 3: white violet

Mom takes a nature walk 2: Spirea 

Mom takes a nature walk 1: clockwise, unfolding maple leaves, squirrel nest, Loretto Brook, Mom admiring the view. 

Baltimore Woods walk collage: clockwise: Mourning cloak butterfly, round-leaved yellow violets (rare in the area), sharp-lobed hepatica, double bloodroots. Photos by Mary Stebbins 

Peregrine

Neva Austrew illustrated my haiku (shown below) with this striking picture of a peregrine falcon. www.nevaaustrew.com/

Under tumbled black,

Liquid pigeons pour through sky,

Chased by peregrine.

Haiku by me, Mary Stebbins

Bloodroot as seen through my new hand lens (and Oly the digital camera). This picture was taken at the Black River in Michigan 4/17/05. 

Coltsfoot along The Invisible Trail near Morel Bay, April 10, 2005. This was on the return trip! There was only one open on the way out. 

The Invisible Trail

The Invisible trail

(050410p Sunday April 10, 2005 3:18 PM)

I am out on my constitutional on the invisible trail that starts across from the Spiral Grove at Three Rivers. I've written about this trail many times. Every time I come here, it has ceased to exist a little more. The game management people have even taken away the restricted area no trespassing sign because only those old enough to remember when there was a trail here would come here to walk. Most people that old probably don't want to fight through raspberries, blackberries, multi-floral rose and prickery autumn olive.

The trail has so ceased to exist that I must bushwhack around the edges of where it used to be. Because the trail was open and exposed to light, it is now more densely grown with "unfriendly flora" than the woods that surround it.

It is a perfect spring day, shirt-sleeve warm with a cool breeze, not a bit hot. Blue sky, thin clouds, peepers peeping, wood frogs motoring. Aspens are unfurling their catkin-flowers. I am on the not-trail to Lycopodium Power Bay. But, given the intensity of work I have to do, I may not choose to go that far. I came to these woods particularly to avoid the other people who might be out on this spring-fever day. Most won't come here because it doesn't exist in their vocabulary of walking places. Rather than stick to open sunny areas as I partly have been, I decide this is a time to enjoy the woods while the sun can penetrate the unleafed branches and no biting bugs are out yet.

I do wish I'd remember a water bottle, though. Gasp! The exercise and sun are making me thirsty!

This spot is not "scenic," not here, anyway. It's not ugly, but there is little to specifically recommend it. The woods are full of vernal ponds that are full of leaves, peepers, wood frogs, and I think I now hear some other frogs as well. The sun coming through bare trees widely dapples the old fall leaves, the ponds and hummocks. The trees are mostly relatively small, as if the area were cleared 60 years ago, perhaps. Glacial boulders and rocks are strewn about. A pleasant warm woodsy odor fills the air.

I'd like to sit on a boulder and write, but I need to stay on task: sorting and packing, cleaning and discarding. That's what I've been doing, sorry indoor work for a beautiful day, but I'm out NOW and I'm glad. Breathe in the spring. Feel the sun on my cheeks.

Already, one of the woodland ponds is nearly completely covered with duckweed, an indication that it is not a vernal pond but largely present, and that it gets sufficient light for duckweed probably year-round in spite of being deep in the woods.

I am back on the remnant of the trail now because the woods became too swampy and this portion of trail is navigable.

I see my first coltsfoot. YAY!

I come to a newly downed white pine, still living at this point, that creates what looks like an impassable barrier, water on either side and the branches thick and close. I turn off my watch, fight my way through it, and turn it on again. I'll have to repeat the procedure on the way back.

If I had my small folding saw I could make an opening for myself, but I don't.

I pass an area full of bird dropping under white pine and think "owl." The needles are too dense to determine if the owl is home, or if in fact it’s a hawk or crow. I don’t think in my onward flight to look for owl pellets or other “sign.”

(3:53 PM) I reach Lycopodium Meadows and Lycopodium Power Knoll. For me, this place is "Sacred," but because I feel upset by the vastness of what I must accomplish, I don't linger. I walk a short ways toward the bay and stop on a small berm where I can sit for just a moment to overlook the bay.

It's the same bay that yesterday I attempted to reach from the far side but turned back because the geese were nesting.

This portion of the bay is shallow and since I began coming here, is grown up to loosestrife and other weeds. Across the wet fields of dry loosestrife, I see flocks of geese resting on the open water and hear the chorus the vibrant peepers and low engine sounds of the wood frogs.

Young beech trees still have last-year’s leaves and they rattle in a stiffening breeze. I have only seen a single flower so far, the one coltsfoot.

I love it here. I love the solitude. I love the wildness, the traillessness. The company of plants and animals and sun and wind. No trash here. No stink of auto fumes. No mindless chatter but my own.

I turn the Psion off and sit in silence.

(silence---ahhhhhh)

(resume thoughts and observations)

Under my feet is a huge old decaying grapevine and around me, trees of every age and stage of growth, illness, death and decay. The whole cycle of life.

The peeper and frog sounds rise and fall. Guns fire nearby, I hope not too close.

I walked 26 minutes to get here and I’d better start back. So much to do. So little time.

{Note: I discover that I have missed half this journal. It is on the Psion and will have to be downloaded and added later!!!!! This is a result of making back-up files after losing some—the back-up contains the complete journal and I downloaded the incomplete version! DUH!}

Skunk Cabbage on The Invisible Trail

Skunk Cabbage Along "The Invisible Trail," April 10, 2004

Almost Invisible (the guide replies)

Between knolls and homesteads

now abandoned wound a road here, long ago.

No straight way.

Grew up to maple saplings, autumn olive

and multifloral rose. A footpath followed

the old road bed ‘til that too faded.

Nothing remains

these days, but deer

tracks crossing. Small remnants, here

and there, of the old trail, almost invisible

(‘less you're mighty keen). Now

the body knows the way, the twists

and turns, the curve of hill and dip of swale,

the best morel and fiddlehead spots, the dens

where foxes lair and beaver lodge and the winter

yards of deer. Think my guiding's

wizardry? It’s naught but long memory, old age.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

For ES

050415-3V; 1C, 1st 5-11-02
note: I changed the Blog date so that the poem would follow the entry for 4-10-05