Earth Day '02 (continued)


Longtailed Salamander.


View from the hogback.


Pickerel Frog.


Shale slide with Tracey for scale.


Meadow Rue.


Fire Pink.

 

Now once again we come back for a visit some thousands of years later, last Monday to be precise.  Walking through flat and pleasant woods of beech, oak and hemlock, it is a surprise to arrive on the edge of a 'hogback', one of the narrow walls of rock left separating the loops of the creek.  From here we have to descend a series of wooden stairs, thoughtfully provided by the Nature Conservancy, eighty feet to the stream bed below.  Among other things, botany is one of Tracey's interests, and he's ecstatic when we happen on a large bed of horsetail fern, an ancient plant that's seen several hundred million Earth Days.  I'm ecstatic about having a botanist on board, who can answer my questions about vegetation.

There are streamside salamanders to look for and marvel over, and leopard frogs, and a kingfisher who is unhappy about us intruding on his favorite fishin' hole.  Under rocks along the bank, Queen Snakes abide, searching the riffles for freshly molted crayfish to dine upon.  The stream beds are still punctuated with the large granite boulders left over from the ice time - if you cannot come to Canada, Canada will come to you if you wait long enough.


Young Queen Snake

 At the big shale slide, I get to play Geology Detective.  "What's wrong with this picture?" I ask Tracey.  The shale is tilted, almost seventy degrees off the horizontal.  "This stuff is sediment, it was deposited FLAT!"  I say.  "Something, some massive upwelling from underneath pushed that shale nearly on end.  Then the sea covered it up again, and layers of sandstone got deposited on top of it all!"  He gets it, I can see it in his eyes, the realization of the incomprehensible amount of time encapsulated in these rocks.  We are mere blips in rock-time.

The spring flowers are still around, Trillium and Bluebonnets and Jacks-In-The-Pulpit, and plenty of others.  Up in the drier areas near the bluffs and rocks, the Columbine are greening up, but the flowers have a way to go. Meadow Rue is common and Fire Pinks put in appearances here and there.  At the foot of the trail up the hogback known as the Devil's Backbone, Tracey finds the day's botanical treasure, a foot-square patch of Rattlesnake Orchid.  No blooms on it this early in the year, but well worth a mental bookmark and a return later in the summer.

Finally, on our way up and out, while tramping through the beeches, a band of migrating warblers passed around us...a Cerulean, a Black-Throated Blue, a Myrtle, and other little birds we could not identify.  A Carolina Wren sang for us from the end of a fallen log, and Titmice and Chickadees peeped and seeped all around.

It was a good day, a good Earth Day, and a good day on the Earth.  Where will I be next Earth Day?  Where will you be?

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