NC & SC Western Carolina Wonder-Wander Week

My recent North Carolina trip to visit a friend in Brevard and to attend a conference on pilgrimage in Black Mountain resulted in some nice "down time" experiences in the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests in western NC and SC.  I've been in and around the Southern Appalachians many times - ranger training, camping trips, research assignments - but rarely have I had the time to just be here and wonder-wander.  Thanks to my friend and host Cheryl for the wonderful week at her place and the opportunity to sleep in e-v-e-r-y day!

Brown-Headed Nuthatch (p.eppig) 

There's something to be said for wonder-wandering, a slow meander walk that takes us this way and that, without a start or finish. The Appalachian spring accommodates this lovely style of walking because every hollow or knob makes the emergence of wildflowers and the appearance of migratory birds a very intimate, local affair, happening in its own time in its own place.  Factors like slope aspect, altitude, overstory/understory, and micro-climate can result in very different iterations of springtime. Rivers and creeks were running full while I craved a vernal pool to look for salamanders. I found a bunch of Eastern Newts in a ruined beaver pond pool along the Pink Beds Trail in Pisgah NF where I laid across the board walk and just stared dreamily into the water.

Eastern Newt

The Southern Appalachians are a naturalist's dreamscape, especially in spring when wildlflowers blossom and bees begin to fly.  We encountered a single B. sandersoni stumbling across a fireroad on our way to Bridal Veil Falls in Pisgah NF on a chilly morning. I lifted her on to my hand and she luxuriated in the warm of the sun and my warm-bloodedness. Her wings were still small and not completely unfurled, wrinkled a bit at the edges but stiffening as I stood there watching. I resettled her on a sunny, sandy patch just as a mountain biker zoomed past, crunching with a fat tire the very place where she had been crossing. Whew!

Sanderson's Bumble Bee Bombus sandersoni, (p.eppig)

We don't know a whole lot about Sanderson's Bumble Bee. Like many species in the Southern Appalachians, they occur in rich hollows and ravines in distinct local populations. I didn't make the identification in the field but took lots of pics and a sketch which I used to key out with a USDA Forest Service Bumble Bees of the Eastern U.S. (pdf) I keep in a Dropbox file.  (See Notes, below)
I travel with a small tablet that contains all of the guides and keys I have found useful in my field work, and this is one of the best for my spring forest rambles.

Blue-Headed Vireo, Pisgah National Forest

Blue-headed vireos were everywhere. Their call is distinct from other vireos in that it is melodic, slow and sweet. Unlike the chatty Red-Eyed Vireo or raspy White-Eyed Vireo, the Blue-Headed has the closest thing to a southern drawl for a bird. "How Yoooo? .......Watch y'all doin? .........Hey there!........"  Unlike many southern songbirds, the population of BHV's is increasing, due in part, says the Forest Service, the the patchiness of many of our national forests where controlled logging is permitted. Overgrown second growth or young forest is the perfect habitat for this handsome vireo and I really enjoyed spending long sits in the forest listening to them.

South Fork Mills River, Pink Beds Trail, Pisgah National Forest

Spring is fickle business in the Southern Highlands. It might be roaring ahead in one place and barely started - or stopped - in another.  The river plain of the Pigeon Branch along the Pink Beds trail looked barren and empty (except for the BHVs and Eastern Newts) while noisy waterfall ravines were popping with wildflowers and early migrant song.

Looking Glass Falls, Pisgah National Forest

Granite - a nice fine grained specimen.

At Looking Glass Falls, Cheryl and I had a hard time hearing the birdsong above the crash of water but we saw plenty of feathered forms flitting about the rich ravine forest that I giggled with delight! Migration time is full of returning birds and birds passing through - the forest is alive with movement. Even the quietest corridor through the woods is, if you stand very still among the giant trees, a fury of small things coursing through the canopy.

South Loop of Pink Beds Trail 

The Southern Appalachian Mountains are mysterious and secretive. There's a reason we don't know everything there is to know about the cove forests, knobs, and balds, but we aren't given the reason why. Instead we are invited to discover the reason for ourselves, one-on-one with the rhododendron thickets and old man's moss. The mountains keep treasures hidden and unknowable unless you have the "eye and ear" to see and hear them, and only then can you unlock a wealth of wisdom.

Warning for White-Nose Syndrome 

I'd like to list all the places we went but I'm afraid it would serve as just an inventory, an index void of the profound sensual experiences of early spring in the pockets and hollows that should remain nameless. I don't understand a lack of curiousness. Listing seems to me to filter the capacity for learning, with affection, about a place full of mystery and myth. This is where folklore and poetry holds power of place, lists aside.

Cheryl and I at Issaqueena Falls, SC

James Still comes to mind. He died in 2001 at the tender age of 91. Born in the Alabama Highlands, he lived most of his life in the Kentucky mountains and earned his eyes and ears roaming the land in search of stories found in the nameless places. He had a deep and insatiable passion for learning about everything and met the mountains "eye to eye." He ruptured stereotypes about southern Appalachian folk as illiterate, simple, and incurious. This was quite a feat in the 1930s when the entire country viewed the region as backwards and shallow-minded. It's a persistent stereotype, however, and we need to study his work more now than ever while listening to our young Appalachian poets and writers who follow in his footsteps. This can't be listed, but it can be lost.

James Still. Photo credit: University of Kentucky

I am wealthy with earth and sky,
Heir to far boundaries of field and stream,
And scarce can keep track of so much property:
Cloud herd, dew diamond, midge and bee,
Wasp-way, wind’s wisdom, and the foxfire’s gleam
I am rich despite a seeming poverty.

James Still, 1906 - 2001

Dwarf Crested Iris, Iris cristata  (Yellow Branch Falls, SC)

Oconee Bells, Shortia galacifolia (Highlands Biological Station, NC)

Halberd-leaved Violet, Viola hastata  (yellow Branch Falls, SC) 

Trout Lily,  Erythoronium americanum (NC Arboretum) 

Wake Robin (in bud), Trillium cuneatum  (Highlands Biological Station, NC)

Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea  (Highlands Biological Station, NC)

Skunk Cabbage  Symplocarpus foetidus (Highlands Biological Station, NC)

On a side trip returning from Yellow Branch Falls Valley we visited the Issaqueena Falls reached by a well-visited short trail to view a stunning 90' cataract.  Thinking about folklore and story, I was amused by a kiosk storyboard that featured a time-worn tale of some Indian maiden flinging herself off the heights. These kinds of  lover's leap tales were familiar anywhere a local 19th century railroad, hungry for tourist revenue, happened past a natural height. I've seen dozens of trail head information boards, brochures, and even historical texts repeat the same, off-putting tales about failed love affairs between some heroic white frontiersman or brave and an Indian maiden/princess/chief's daughter. Dissecting such a story in the context of the hundreds of others that span the railroad routes across the country, one sees rather quickly that these tales seem cookie-cutter, degrading. I wish interpretive historians entrusted with public educational materials exercised a bit more thought and critical consideration when repeating a railroad tourist tale as historic truth.

Issaqueena Falls, SC

Odontoschisma prostratum

While walking at the Highlands Biological Station in Highlands, N.C., my friends and I admired all the emergent plants - spikes and unfurling things, fat buds and bulbs, fresh green blades. Being a scientific research center there were lots of nondescript mounds of duff labeled but absent plants until a later, warmer time. It was a wonderful walk along the well-made trails but I often lagged behind, stopped by some named thing. I came across a liverwort, Odontoschisma prostratum, lying thinly across mounds of moss. It had no common name with only its Latin name appearing on its label and I wondered about this. Later I searched through my resources and guides and still I could find no name other than Latin, so I sounded out the scientific name over and over like a mantra - O donto schisssssssma  prostratum.  I sang it out loud in the shower, over and over like something sung at evening prayers. Who needs a common name when you can be a Gregorian chant?

Eastern Towhee

I was born humble. At the foot of mountains
My face was set upon the immensity of earth
And stone; and upon oaks full-bodied and old. 
There is so much writ upon the parchment of leaves, 
So much of beauty blown upon the winds, 
I can but fold my hands and sink my knees
In the leaf-pages. Under the mute trees
I have cried with this scattering of knowledge, 
Beneath the flight of birds shaken with this waste
Of wings.

I was born humble. My heart grieves
Beneath this wealth of wisdom perished with the leaves. 

I Was Born Humble, James Still 

Notes:

Eastern Bumble Bees of the U.S.
https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/documents/BumbleBeeGuideEast2011.pdf

Blue-Headed Vireo profile https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/buhvir/introduction

James Still profile http://www.ashevillepoetryreview.com/2003/issue-13/the-poetry-of-james-still

Highlands Biological Center plant list with flowering times: https://highlandsbiological.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Flowering-Times.pdf

MD Howard County: Two Hikes/Ten Miles

One of my trail challenges this year is to hike at least ten miles in every one of Maryland's twenty-four counties by the end of the year. I think this is one spreadsheet I can complete easily as I continue to get my strength back in my weaker leg. I work in Maryland and drive all over the state for my job, so a lunch walk or two and a weekend long walk should fill the slots by next winter. Lunch walks between meetings are a good way to avoid eating lunch in the car in some parking lot. Find a park and a five mile trail and go!

I completed ten miles in Howard County while on two different client visits over the last two weeks. The trail conditions were mostly rolling to flat but very muddy and flooded. I turned around a few times, bushwacked, and tried different combo-routes to make circuits on both hikes, including a road walk to add some fast pacing. 

Shrine of St. Anthony, Ellicott City - 5 miles 

Lots of turn-around action on flooded trails. 

The Franciscan Shrine to St. Anthony is open to the public and offers a network of wooded trails that lace through an oak-hickory-poplar woods on a series of old farm roads. I also did some road hiking and walked out to a neighboring farm (one of my clients) after taking the tour of the shrine itself with the assistant director, Joe.

Emily Caton MacTavish house on former plantation lands owned by her grandfather Charles Carroll III.

This is old Charles Carroll III land, formerly of the plantation Doughoregan Manor holdings, which over the years was sold off and subdivided so many time it's confusing. Thanks to poor farming practices over 250 years, a lot of this soil has been washed out to the Chesapeake or clogged the once deep river channel with silt and sand. Charles III's granddaughter Emily received a good chunk of land in the 1830s on which she started her own farm and had a home built by her grandfather as a wedding gift. It was fun to creep around inside it with Joe as it is currently undergoing a major renovation I like that kind of thing. 

Carroll Champion Tree

After a morning tour and discussion concerning an upcoming farm conference I had lunch with Joe in a beautiful seminary dining area surrounded by dark oak and many papal portraits staring down at us as we ate. When finished I took to the trails for a quick three mile hike but not before visiting the Shrine to St. Anthony. Anthony was a contemporary of St. Francis and in his old age preached from a tree house in a walnut tree. 

The actual shrine to St. Anthony (with a relic encased in crystal) against the gorgeous walnut carving.

From an illustration in the seminary, the walnut tree is an important symbol.

I love the complexity of tree forms both in nature and in art so I enjoyed looking at all the ways the walnut tree was incorporated into the symbolism of the shrine. I was thrilled to get to visit with a champion tree, the Carroll Legacy Poplar, which is estimated to be about 250 years old. It would have been a young tree at the time Charles III signed the Declaration of Independence and certainly would have been a favorite picnic spot for Emily and her family as it grew at the head of a old spring-fed stream on a gentle slope. As I worked my way around muddy trail sections, I found several other trees that may be quite old, including a walnut on the edge of the property where I was far off the trail to avoid a flooded section. There was even a tree house to climb - built in honor of Anthony - and a great place to do a little birding.

A custom-built tree house to preach or bird from. 

I finished my lunch walk with a quick mile out-and-back for two total miles on the road that leads into the Shrine to get some cardio into the mix, then it was time for my next appointment at two o'clock.  My leg felt pretty good until I stood up from our hour and a half  meeting. When I went to get up my leg was so stiff it wouldn't straighten! Riding home for two hours didn't help it either, so when I got back I popped some hiker's candy (Ibuprofen) and did some serious stretching.


Middle Patuxent Environmental Area - 5 miles

After a morning meeting at a local school I visited this conservation area via the Southwind Circle entrance. The main entrance is closed for the next year as a new road and environmental center are being built. It was easy to connect the two loops for a breezy five mile lunch walk through the beautiful flood plain and Piedmont woods. The trails were in excellent shape and I was able to do all the ups and downs without too much trouble - and without poles.

Middle Patuxent River - the main drainage for the Carroll lands 

The birding was great on both loops as was the mammal-watching. I observed a Red Fox on the opposite shore jogging along through the sandy floodplain being harassed by a few Blue Jays and a chorus of Squirrels. Later I caught a glimpse of a Beaver tooling across the river. Red-Shouldered Hawks engaged in courtship loop-de-loops overhead and Pileated Woodpeckers were working tree stumps and logs for tasty beetles coming to life in the warm sun.

Beaver sign included cut trees and a scent mound as well as a brief but loud ker-plunk and escape across the river. 

Red-Shouldered chases Red-Tailed Hawk.

As I switched to the north loop using a connector trail I witnessed a real air battle overhead as one of the Red-Shouldered Hawks tangled with a Red-Tailed hawk, obviously trying to chase it from its courtship/nesting area. The woodland is second or third growth, recovered from its days as tobacco land owned by the Carroll family. There are plenty of old trees, too, and Wood Ducks cruised the flyway down the river, whistling and calling on their way to scout out nesting cavities. 

Lots of male Cardinals brightened the trail.

Woodpeckers were out in force on this hike. I counted two Downies, a Hairy, four Pileated, several Northern Flickers, and two Red-Bellied.. The sun was warming the tree limbs and trunks and insects were beginning to emerge, making easy pickings for quick and easy meals. Lots of new nesting cavities were being excavated in dead standing timber. There were also more Cardinals than I could count. Spring peepers were calling from the oxbow ponds and I could see the bright green leaves of skunk cabbage unfurling in the muck. Spring is finally here!

Nice boulder outcrop  - but no rock hopping for me for a while yet!

Setters Formation Rock Type includes pink/orange feldspar bands in a Quartzite matrix.

Mineral profile - heavy flakes of Mica and a spider sunning in a warm pocket of root and rock. 

The Setters Formation geology stopped me for a few minutes as I examined the orange-ish bands of feldspar and sparkling mica in fields of dark biotite. Not far from here is Patapsco Valley State Park where there is some great Piedmont geology to be seen, including an 19th century feldspar mine tunnel. Once this leg is completely strong again, I'd like to take a hike there and photograph the abundant outcrops and mineral profiles. For now though I had to book it back to the car to make my 2pm appointment. The fast walking again felt great - especially up the hill through the open meadow and back to the south loop.

Wide, clean trails in an open woods. 

As I made for my car my cell phone buzzed and I checked my message to see that my appointment had cancelled. Down with the flu. Oh well, no afternoon meeting, but a great lunch walk and long drive home under a warm sun.



Notes:

Shrine of St. Anthony https://shrineofstanthony.org/
Trail maps are available on the west side of the old seminary/school building at the chapel entrance. The grounds contain a paved, handicapped accessible trail as well as the woodland trails. A really nice place for an afternoon hike, open to the public dawn to dusk.

Middle Patuxent Environmental Area http://www.middlepatuxent.org/
I did this hike really fast, so didn't spend as much time lolly-gagging around as I would have if not constrained for time. I should really stop back and just saunter this area for some better plant ID and rock-hounding.

Herring Run Time

Something in my bones yearns for a good herring run. Thing is, I've never witnessed one and wonder if it's in my Scots-Irish DNA to anticipate the return of anadromous fish to their spawning rivers. I have always loved fly-fishing, cast netting, and just lying face-down in a stream with my goggles on to watch fish. But this time of year, late February and early March, it's like I am drawn to my own natal stream.

Herring Run south of the dam at Conowingo was a natal stream for a large Blueback run. 

Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and Blueback Herring (A. aestivalis) are the two herring species of the Lower Susquehanna Valley. Historical data show that 1908 was when the herring fishery peaked at harvest for 66 million pounds during the annual run. The fishery has experienced precipitous declines of 80% since then. The other day, on a road walk to Lapidum, an extinct river town on the Susquehanna with my dog, son, and daughter-in-law, I stood on a bridge over a small spawning stream just wishing to see a run.   

Once a major herring fishery, the Lower Susquehanna supports only a tiny fraction of the once-abundant run.

As  the stocks steadily declined from the 1920s to the 1950s, technologies improved for taking more fish into bigger ships. From the 1960s through the 1970s, foreign offshore industrial fishing fleets intercepted Chesapeake-bound herring as the fish tried to migrate up the underwater canyon, the old riverbed that extends far out on to the Continental Shelf. Habitat destruction, pollution, continued overfishing, and blocked rivers (dams, culverts, diversions) have added to the pressure. Now there are severe restrictions for catching them and scientists are truly worried for their survival. An entire food chain is affected from Rock Fish to Eagles if the herring runs disappear.

Fishing Creek in Lancaster County was once a major Blueback stream before the dams and railroads.

I remember as a teenager in the 1970s visiting the smaller streams and creeks below the Conowingo Dam on both sides of the Susquehanna during early March accompanying friends, their dads and grand dads, who remarked how each year there were fewer and fewer herring to catch. I remember many times during 1980s when I would hike along the river and see herring fishermen with empty buckets after long days waiting.  But then I remembered to check my field journals and saw that last year I happened on a most remarkable thing...

Gashey's Creek in April of 2018 near Havre de Grace, MD, where I witnessed a small Alewife run a month before.

Last year on March 1, while on a lunch walk along Gashey's Creek near where I work at Swan Harbor, I happened to intercept a small  run of Alewife! Their shoulder spots were clearly visible as they thrashed over the gravel banks into the quiet pools above. I was spell-bound and amazed. These few hundred herring, about 8 to 10 inches in length, flashing silver in the sunlight, made such a racket that as I stood there blinking, several Hooded Mergansers, a Kingfisher, a Great Blue Heron and a Bald Eagle joined me in the valley. I think they were all as amazed as I was!

So today I emailed the Smithsonian River Herring Citizen Science Project to see if Gashey's Creek is their stream monitoring list and asked how I can get involved to learn more about herring restoration. I know what half of you who know me are saying "Oh no! Another messy, muddy, wet, and cold project!" Yes, please. 

A very bad picture of a Bald Eagle that  joined me to watch  Bluebacks work their way up Gashey's Creek last March.

Notes:

Let's see what trouble I can get into this year. I hope they get back to me.
https://serc.si.edu/citizen-science/projects/river-herring-conservation

Environmental History: Donald Hughes Wrote the Book

When I was flailing around for my doctoral research questions my adviser suggested I consider my original set of ecological (native bees) questions reframed as environmental history questions. I had no idea what she was talking about. So she handed me this book by J.Donald Hughes.  I read it almost on a dare, lounging around on a cold day by a flooding river in New Hampshire. But something about this new (to me) field made me think that combining science and history might be kind of fun. A lot of work - archives, interviews, land labs, travel, more archives - but fun.

In 2016, I found the author of that book on FaceBook, posting pictures of his world travels, having conversations with students and colleagues. I sent him a friend request and we "friended" each other. I told him how important his socio-ecological perspective of  history has been in my own work on environmental pilgrimage and working/conservation landscape history. We had a few great email exchanges, "liked" and commented on each other's social media posts, especially when I posted pictures of my pilgrimage research abroad. He liked anything I posted on St. Francis - the patron saint of ecologists.  And, he was a reader of this blog.

Dr. Hughes frequently commented on the pictures I posted of my pilgrimage to Holy Island, Lindesfarne, U.K.

Unfortunately at the time I connected with him on social media  he was already sick with leukemia and was returning from what would be his last international trip. Even so, his last few years were spent immersed in the natural and human histories near his home in Lake Worth, Florida, while he kept up a very active online presence.  He passed on February 3, 2019 at home. He was 86.

What an environmental historian "sees" in the landscape is akin to reading a thick book on the history of that place.

Hughes began his work studying ancient Mediterranean histories that examined socio-economic relationship between cultures and the land. He crafted a new set of historical analysis "lenses" that enabled us to combine environmental and ecological issues of a place with the deep human histories that gave them rise. He was quick to point out that this kind of history was nothing new, that Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides wrote extensively on the environmental impact of people on the land and seas, and the punishments that the gods would and did exact on them. As his work intensified and expanded to include case studies from around the world, it was clear that he and a few others were on to something. He was a founding member of a slew of new organizations that began to emerge that identified environmental history as a distinct (but highly interconnected) field. These include the American Society for Environmental History (1976), the European Society for Environmental History, the East Asian Association of Environmental Historians, and the South Asian Environmental History Society. 

The Red Kite's remarkable return to Spain northwards to the U.K. is a complex story of environmental and policy change. 

I realized early in our social media exchanges that when I posted pictures of my travels, Dr. Hughes was not just seeing the beauty of the landscapes but the mutli-layered socio-ecological stories they contained. And not just landscapes. Pictures of Europe's great raptors, some making historic recoveries in our lifetimes, spoke volumes to him about the conservation practices of monks of the Middle Ages as much as changes in modern European conservation policy. A photo of my son standing atop Hadrian's Wall on the great Whin Sill,  arms outstretched and huge smile on his face, elicited the comment "So many moving parts to this picture, but most of all -I know a Roman historian when I see one!" 

"I can see all the way back to the Iron Ages in this one!" (Iron Age hill fort at the top of an Eildon Hill near Melrose.)

Dr. Hughes was also a minister, very devoted to his church and congregation, interested in the intersection of faith, sacredness, and nature. When I began my trek to investigate one of the Church's earliest conservation thinkers, 7th century St. Cuthbert of Lindesfarne,  Donald was right there on social media looking at Northumbrian landscapes and artworks. Tracing his interest in sacred ecology and environmental ethics through various papers and reviews, his work gave me the courage to dive deep into waters no self-respecting historian would dare enter, but we're talking environmental historians here and I felt I knew the language and the strokes to stay afloat.

 Cuthbert's own spiritual ecology predated Franci's by hundreds of years.

It was Hughes' deep dive into the spiritual ecology of St. Francis that prompted me to investigate the life and times of St. Cuthbert, where I found such complexity in how Celtic-Anglo religious of the early middle ages thought about nature. I continue to wade through this cosmic wilderness and wonder if I can find the roots of Francis' thinking five-hundred years before he was born.

"Francis' devotion did not immediately dissolve multiplicity into oneness, but glorified God in each created being and delighted in their individuality. He advocated that praise be expressed by acting in ways consistent with respect for created diversity, not only by observing a strict rule of abstaining from harm to living beings, but also in positive treatment of all creatures. Nature took its meaning not from its serviceability to mankind, but from its expression of the multiple forms of God’s benevolent presence. "  -  From: "St. Francis and the Diversity of Creation," (1996)

 I think Francis and Cuthbert would have been great friends.

A gentle man, a gentleman, an adventurer, teacher and guide, prolific writer and speaker, and life-long pilgrim, he was giant among environmental historians, a genuine founder of the field. I hope that wherever in the cosmic wilderness he's roaming now, he's writing on human history and the ecology of the universe. 

"The human species evolved within the community of life by competing against, cooperating with, imitating, using, and being used by other species. Thus our species is an offspring of the interacting forms of life on Earth. This means not only that human bodies achieved their forms through evolution, but that the ecosystems of the Earth provided our ancestors with sustenance, set problems for them, sharpened their wits, and to a large extent showed them the way they must go." 

-  From: An Environmental History of the World, (2001/2009)

Photo credit: Donald Hughes/University of Denver

Notes:

An Environmental History of the World: Humankind's Changing Role in the Community of Life is available online in PDF format  at:  An Environmental History of the World - J. Donald Hughes

"Francis of Assisi and the Diversity of Creation," Environmental Ethics 18, No. 3 (Fall 1996): 311-320

University of Denver Publications List: https://portfolio.du.edu/dhughes

DE Fork Branch Nature Preserve

Well the coonhounds don't care for short walks but we're at least up to two miles consistently several times a week. My leg is almost healed but steep up-and-downs will have to wait. The first half of February here in South-Central PA has brought a mixed bag of the old favorite "wintery mix," some brutal cold, and spring-like days. No one I know, except maybe the coonhounds, are very happy with our sloppy, muddy, slushy opportunities for a decent walk. But on St. Brigid's Day we made a new discovery in the sunny wilds of Dover, Delaware!

Daughter Emily and Grandson Aiden in front of the new signage at Fork Branch Preserve in Dover.

We arrived late in the afternoon to low, glorious sun and cold, crunchy snow.  Located within the city limits of Dover, the area is developing around a low floodplain forest that a local family deeded to the state DNR in memory of their parents Anne and Dr. James McClements. Everything except the forest is new - gates, signage, trails, parking - and we felt kinda special counting as one of the property's first winter visitors. There's even a school bus parking spot for school groups - a perfect use for this natural oasis near the Air Force Base and NASCAR Speedway.

River Birch.

The two-hundred fifty acre tract is stunningly quiet, though swamp and vernal pools are all around, so it could get quite froggy and noisey come spring! We want to come back for that. Winter flocks of chickadees, titmice, sparrows, and nuthatches followed us along peeping and tittering. Emily called in a red-bellied woodpecker which followed us around for the better part of half-a-mile, sure it had discovered an early spring rival.

Emily and brother George are both wildlife photographers.

The walk was so pleasant and quiet. We were the only ones there. I enjoyed having both my children out on a hike. We rarely hike all together any more as everyone has families and busy lives of their own, so I treasured every minute of it. Both were raised outdoors and have kept their passion for wildlife art, photography, and hiking. I'm really very proud of them both!

Turkey Tail growing in a recent wound.

The frigid temperatures in the days leading up to our hike revealed several trees with fresh frost cracks. I remember living in northern Vermont and listening to the rifle shot sounds in the night as thin-barked trees like paper birch burst their skins.  Some trees, however, showed human damage, probably caused by machines or equipment. It's amazing to me how quickly a wound can be populated by fungal spores with fruiting bodies appearing within months of a gash.

Sunset in a Young Woods.

Though the forest around us was typical for a Delaware lowland, it's easy to forget how forests we take for granted are being threatened by development. Delaware has seen building booms come and go and it appears the state is in the midst of another as new developments pop up, roads are constructed, and office buildings and stores seem to show up overnight. It's really a choice we have to make - to set aside things that are common now - before they become rare or even just gone when we aren't paying attention. A common woods is not so common when you consider the complex interplay of tree species and environment and how important forests are for all life on earth. Another office building will never be as important to our health as a fine parcel of woods to wander.

Typical Delaware lowland forest.

We took our time, stopping often to listen and look. Aiden was just a happy soul to have woods to explore and snow to play in - no structure or directions except to stay on the trail, so sometimes he was far behind investigating or far ahead trail blazing. The new bridges wet areas revealed smooth snow over swamp pools and animal tracks bee-lining from one side of the frozen pool to the other.

Fox tracks coursing across a frozen, snow-covered pool. 

The mile of flat track we slowly walked is one completed of two loops planned for this preserve. The trail will be simple enough, a figure eight of two loops for the future. Plenty of local wildlife have already discovered the ease of travel along a human-built trail as we intercepted White Tailed Deer, Red Fox, Raccoon, and 'Possum strolling along through the snow the night before.

Mature Polar canopy with a health understory of Holly and Sassafras.

We called for owls as the light faded from our walk. I called a Barred Owl but no answers. Em called a Pileated Woodpecker and presto-bingo! A big red-crested, feathered pterodactyl came right to her call. ( I always look left and right before we call - using our voices - lest unsuspecting fellow hikers be confused as to what the heck we are doing!). He swung around trees and circled us through the Poplar canopy, curious but not staying long. By now we were getting pretty cold and the car was only a few hundred steps away. Heat on - blasting - we looked forward to a slice of Shortbread Cake and lengthening daylight through the month on this St. Brigid's Day.

Shortbread cake with  elderberry jam for St. Brigid's Day!

Notes:

Celebrating the fact we all were able to walk together, here are the links to Emily and George's websites. Emily was always entranced by the magic of the forest when she was small. Our hikes into the Shenandoah Mountains and Appalachian Foothill forays had me believing in fairies as she narrated what magical things happened along the trails after people had gone home. So its no accident that she named her woodworking business after them. George loved to walk so quietly that we could literally walk up on animals - and not frighten them off - to sit for long periods without a word between us in observation and fascination. His interests turned to wildlife photography and the art of the walk-and-stalk.

The Fairy Paintbox https://thefairypaintbox.com/

George Eppig Photography https://www.georgeeppig.com/