Category: Environment

One brief shining moment

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 7, 2004

Tonight I walked longer than I normally do and ended up going to my library at a later time. Driving back, the neighborhoods were getting dark and I could see the fireflies out and about in the bushes.

Just past the odd house with the stone fence, but before the miniature castle, one of the fireflies headed into my car from the front and I hit him. Normally hitting bugs is not something I worry about, unless it’s a butterfly or moth; but fireflies seem such gentle creatures, and provide so much enjoyment. I’ve always appreciated how they hover about you as you stand near them, as if they’re curious, but unafraid, of this big monstrosity.

Another block, and more fireflies appeared in front of me. I couldn’t avoid them; only catching a brief glimpse of their bright neon-green light before they’re smashed against the metal (well, plastic) of my car.

The next block and it seemed as if I had a stream of fireflies heading towards my car; I can only guess they were attracted, or confused by, the lights. Each bravely flickered its butt in one last exaltation of light before throwing itself in a frenzy of hopeful lust to a very quick, and very sure, death.

When I got home, I contemplated the orgasmic remains of the tiny, now dark creatures on my bumper and thought that all things being equal, it wasn’t a bad way to go.

Architeuthis Dux

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 30, 2004

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep,
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
Above his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green,
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

The Kraken — Albert, Lord Tennyson

The Giant Squid

The next time you sink your teeth into some calimari think of this: The giant squid has been measured to a length of 60 feet, and weighs in the neighborhood of between 1 and 2 tons. It has eight arms, each lined with two rows of suckers. The giant squid also has the largest eyes of any known creature, over a foot in diameter.

If the giant squid is like its smaller cousins, it is a predator. To make the giant squid an ideal predator, its suckers are ringed with a hard, jagged edge, resembling teeth, in order to better enable the squid to hold onto its prey. Additionally, two longer tentacles are also used to help move the prey to the large, sharp parrot-like beak.

Needless to say, you will not sink your teeth into this creature without a fight.

The Stuff of Legends

I looked in my turn, and could not repress a gesture of disgust. Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy to figure in the legends of the marvelous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes.

So says the Naturalist, in the Jules Vern classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ¹⁸. Though this book is a work of fiction, the squid encounter that Vern wrote about was based on fact, or at least a story that Vern heard about at the time. The story states that a French naval ship was attacked by a giant squid in 1861¹.

Since earliest times, there have been legends of sea serpents and large, many-armed creatures attacking boats. One of the fiercest creatures was the legendary beast known as the Kraken.

Now, modern belief is that the kraken was a giant squid and that the size of the creature has grown through numerous re-tellings of ancient stories; from creatures of 50 feet to creatures the size of islands.

A Norwegian Bishop, one Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, wrote in his journals about the Kraken and mentions the size of the creature as being one and one-half miles long ³! More recently, another eyewitness account of the size of the giant squid is given by an A.G. Starkey, who was stationed on a British trawler in World War. Starkey tells of being on deck in the evening when he noticed a light in the water next to the boat. As he tells it, “As I gazed, fascinated, a circle of green light glowed in my area of illumination. This green unwinking orb I suddenly realized was an eye. The surface of the water undulated with some strange disturbance. Gradually I realized that I was gazing at almost point-black range at a huge squid.”

According to the Starkey account, he walked along the boat, measuring the giant quid and realized that it was as long as the boat he was on. It is at this point that accounts may differ. According to a Discovery Channel special on the Giant Squid (telecast July 31, at 8:00 pm in a show titled “X Creatures”), the boat Starkey was on measured 60 feet. According to the account given in the Museum of Unnatural Mystery⁴, where I pulled the quote, the boat measured 175 feet!

Eyewitness accounts of the size of the giant squid are matched by tales of squid behavior, specifically stories of squids attacking ships.

As said earlier, Jules Verne based his squid fight in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on an eyewitness account of a giant squid attacking a French naval ship¹. Another account of a giant squid attacking a ship is given in the logs of the Brunswick, a Norwegian Trawler. In the logs an account is given of a giant squid attacking this large ship three different times, before the squid finally slid into the ship’s propellers and was killed.

A third account tells of nuclear submarine losing the use of its sonar equipment on the ship’s maiden voyage. When the submarine returned to port, the Navy found that the covering on the Sonar had been torn lose and that hooks remained in the material, hooks from a giant squid.

Other accounts tell of giant squid grabbing men from the waters as ships were sunk in World War I and II, and also of the giant squid attacking small fishing boats. Two South African lighthouse workers reported in 1966 about seeing a giant squid wrapped around a baby whale, in a ferocious fight, with the baby whale surfacing and being pulled back under before it finally stopped rising to the surface⁴

So, are there giant squid lurking off our coasts that reach a size of 150 feet and that pull folks off boats? Well, behind every tale, there is a seed of truth, and now it’s time to take a look at what we do know about the giant squid.

What We Think We Know

Amid rumor and scant eyewitness accounts, we have little knowledge of the giant squid and its behavior. Giant squid have washed up on shore sporadically so we have had a chance to examine dead specimens. We also know that the giant squid forms part of the diet for toothed whales such as the sperm whale. Outside of that, though, we have little knowledge of these of the largest known invertebrate. We have never successfully viewed the giant squid in its natural environment, and we have never had a chance to examine a living specimen. But what we do know makes this an incredibly interesting creature.

First of all, when discussing giant squid, most folks are discussing the squid known as Architeuthis Dux. There are other large species of squid, some of which have been seen in the wild. For instance, the Navy provides an audio account of an encounter between a robotic research submersible and a variety of squid known as Moroteuthis. In the account, the squid was six feet in length⁵. Compared to its larger cousin, though, Moroteuthis is pretty small: Architeuthis Dux, or the Giant Squid by its popular name, has been measured at close to 60 feet in length.

The first recorded physical record of the giant squid was made by a Reverend Moses Harvey in Newfoundland, based on a dead giant squid that had been caught by local fishermen. Dead giant squid had been washed up on shore before, but this was the first time a person had taken samples of the squid, and made scientific observations of the creature — due to the foresight demonstrated by Rev. Harvey as he sent the creature to Yale University for study⁶.

Since that time, more creatures have been washed on shore or been pulled up, dead, in fishing nets. However, no live giant squid has been captured, nor has one been seen in its native element. Most of what is known about giant squid has been derived from these specimens and from the remains of giant squid specimens found in the stomachs of whales, primarily sperm whales.

Consider the giant squid: the largest size of the giant squid is between 60-70 feet as determined from pieces of the creatures that have been found⁷. It should weigh in at close to 1 to 2 tons. In addition to its large size, the giant squid also has the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, with each larger than your typical dinner plate!

The giant squid’s territory is in the depths of the ocean, up to 3000 feet below the surface of the ocean, in a world that is as foreign and deadly to us as is the vacuum of space⁸. It, just like other squid, does not live on the ocean floor, as an octopus does, but lives, instead, between the surface and the bottom, a state easily maintained by its natural buoyancy.

In addition to its size and habitat, the giant squid’s physical makeup also differs from the squid normally consumed by people: instead of sodium chloride in its system, biologists have found ammonium chloride. Snacking on Architeuthis would be similar to sucking on a bottle of your favorite ammonia floor cleaner, without the lemon scent. Nummy.

Other than these small differences, the giant squid is similar to other species of squid. It has a mantle, which is where its internal organs are found. Along the length of the mantle is a funnel, used for expelling waste, water, and for locomotion¹⁰ — the squid ejects water through the funnel to push it along the water.

The giant squid has eight arms, each containing several suckers; to make the suckers even more interesting, the edges of the suckers have a jagged set of “teeth”¹¹ to help the squid grasp prey.

The giant squid also has two longer feeding tentacles used to push food into the squid’s mouth, which resembles a parrot’s beak. A large parrot. A large beak. It also can squirt ink to confuse predators, matching its smaller cousins capability ¹².

Other than these facts about the squid’s physical makeup, little is known about how the squid acts in its environment, a void that scientists have been trying to fill for the last several years.

In Search of…

There have been numerous attempts to study giant squid in its natural environment. Two expeditions have been sent to Kaikoura Canyon, off of New Zealand, the first in 1997¹³, and the second of which occurred in February and March of 1999¹⁴. Both of these expeditions were under the leadership of Dr. Clyde Roper from the Smithsonian Museum, probably the world’s leading expert on the giant squid. He is also one of the few people to actually taste a sample of giant squid, and it is from his reaction that I pull my “ammonia without the lemon scent” taste description.

The Kairkoura Canyon is considered a favorable spot for finding the giant squid because several specimens have been found by fishermen in the area, and sperm whales also like to hunt in the area — a good indication as sperm whales feed on giant squid.

While neither expedition was able to capture images of the giant squid, neither trip was considered a failure due to the other information the scientists were able to find, and the observations they were able to make. In addition, during the trip in 1999, Dr. Roper was able to examine a captured, dead giant squid that was in very good shape, something that doesn’t always happen when squid are caught up in fishing nets as the creatures are very fragile.

Using manned submersibles isn’t the only approach to filming giant squids. Another approach used whales, with scientists attaching video cameras to whales before they begin their hunting dives. I have seen these films, and though they haven’t, yet, been successful (the cameras tend to get knocked off by other whales), this approach is an innovative effort¹⁷.

Robotic submersibles have also been used to try and capture images of the giant squid, including the MIT Sea Grant Autonomous underwater robot¹⁶. Unfortunately, all of these efforts have not succeeded in filming an adult giant squid in its natural habitat.

However, folks like Dr. Roper aren’t giving up in their efforts. Dr. Roper is already talking about an expedition back to Kairkoura in the Spring of 2000.

Unfortunately, the 2000 expedition wasn’t successful.

So What About the Attacks?

One major question that remains about the giant squid is its behavior; specifically, would the giant squid attack boats and people. The more I learn about this creature, the more I wonder whether the giant squid was attacking boats and people as food sources — or perhaps just trying to find a ride home.

The giant squid inhabits that nether region of the ocean that is hundreds to thousands of feet below the surface but not at the bottom of the ocean. Its entire physical makeup is suited specifically to this environment. The main reason that the giant squid has been found dead and washed up on shore is most likely because of clashing ocean streams, cold water meeting warm water.

The giant squid lives in cold water that can get trapped above a layer of warm water. This pushes the poor creature to the surface. The squid’s natural buoyancy makes it difficult for it to sink beneath this warm water, and I imagine the hostile surface area weakens the giant squid to a point of desperation. So, what’s a good way to return to the depths? Why, hitch a ride on one creature it knows dives to the depths: whales. And since boats can look like whales…

Now, attacking a submarine as a food source makes a bit more sense, as these craft are much closer to the giant squid’s preferred environment than a boat on the surface of the water. However, a submarine would strongly resemble a whale, a creature the squid knows it can’t beat, so it’s hard for me to believe that the squid would attack a naval submarine because it considers it “food”.

As for giant squids attacking a whale, a creature the same size as it but weighing many, many times more than the squid — again, this doesn’t make sense unless the squid is desperately hungry. We know, though, that a giant squid defends itself from the feeding whale, which is why there are squid sucker scars found on whales, but the giant squid wouldn’t have a chance against an adult whale. However, it might have a fighting chance against a smaller, juvenile whale, which would explain the sighting of a young whale fighting with the squid, and the squid shown at the surface mentioned by the lighthouse men earlier — the giant squid was still wrapped around the young whale in combat, and the whale dragged the creature to the surface. Going back to my original hypothesis about why a giant squid would grab a boat, the giant squid attached to the young whale is not going to let go when it’s on the surface. Hence, the look of a battle.

Okay, so my guess is just that, a guess, and most likely not an accurate guess at that. But I can’t help thinking its a better interpretation of the boat attacks then the giant squid leaving its perfect little world to venture to the surface, an almost guaranteed act of death for the squid, just to nosh on a tasty new takeout.

The truth of giant squid behavior is out there, waiting for folks like Dr. Roper to find.

Updated for 2004

The majority of giant squid research is moving, more and more, to Australia and New Zealand. In particular, one of the leading researchers now is Dr. Stephen O’Shea at Auckland University of Technology.

In 2002, he managed to grab photos of baby Architeuthis dux, and even keep a few alive for a short period of time for study. (Read a lovely New Yorker magazine article on Dr. O’Shea.)

O’Shea was also the one to tentatively identify the new species of giant squid discovered recently (“giant squid” is really a category of squid, rather than any one species), calling it Colossal Squid, or by its scientific name, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni.

The Colossal is an amazing find, and may actually be the squid at the root of so many stories we hear. However, we’ll never know for sure until we can see it, as well as its cousin, Architeuthis, alive, adult, and in their native habitat.

So even now, the search continues…

The Giant Squid is found

Cephalopod enthusiasts were ecstatic when an excellent video of a giant squid was made after great effort.

Photo of Squid, (c) National Resource Center for Cephalopods²

References:

Don’t just read about the Kraken — hear Chris Hall recite the famous Tennyson poem at the BBC Nature web site.

¹ The Smithsonian has an article of Dr. Clyde Roper that discusses, among other things, the french battle with a giant squid in 1861.

² Image from National Resource Center for Cephalopods.

³ The tale of the Norwegian Bishop and the mile wide kracken comes from the Museum of Unnatural Mystery’s Kraken page.

Image of Kraken from Museum of Unnatural Mystery³

⁴ Read accounts of the giant squid at the Museum of Unnatural Mystery’s Giant Squid page.

⁵ Sorry, dead link

⁶ Read about Rev. Harvey’s squid and other interesting information at the excellent Ocean Planet: In Search of Giant Squid from NASA and the Smithsonian.

⁷ Read the Squid Educational Page at Chalk Hills Educational Resources.

⁸ Check out the How Deep can they go page at Ocean Planet — very well done!

Early illustration of giant squid, by Professor A.E. Verrill of Yale, from Ocean Planet⁶.

⁹ Diagram of Giant Squid at Ocean Planet. For fun, also check out a robotic version of the giant squid at The Tech’s RobotZoo.

^10> Again from the RobotZoo, the mechanics of funnel locomotion.

¹¹ Photo of sucker teeth from the Ocean Planet.

¹² See a video of a squid using its ink defense at the Ocean Planet.

¹³ Read about the 1997 Expedition to Kaikoura, at the National Geographic Web site.

¹⁴ Read about the 1999 Expedition to Kaikoura at Ocean Planet/Smithsonian.

¹⁵ A day in the logs of the second Kaikoura expedition, Setting up for a dive.

¹⁶ Discussion of the use of the MIT Sea Grant underwater robot at MIT.

¹⁷ Read an article on the use of Whales to film giant squid.

¹⁸ Complete text of the translated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne — from the Jules Vern Collection.

Photo of submersible used to search for giant squid in 1999 expedition, NIWA/NASA¹⁵.

Also check out the The Octopus News Magazine Online.

Critters

Walking among the dog people part 2

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 27, 2004

First published in summer, 2002 and moved to the now defunct Dynamic Earth

Yesterday I talked about my walk among the dog people, and my observations of the dogs as they enjoyed the beach, the water, and the company (canine and human).

I talked about the black lab that would bring me her ball to throw and then take it away before I could grasp it. In this process she was inviting me to share her wonder, her special moment, her fun, as we invite others to share ours, in our weblogs and in our lives. I tease the world to laugh with me, to play with me, as this dog teases her owner and willing participants such as myself with her ball.

The Jack Russell barked at the mighty ocean with all the confidence in the world that it could move those waters back and return his friends to him. There are no impossible challenges to a dog, just as there are no impossible challenges to those who are determined on a course that they must and will follow.

The moutain climber climbs the peaks because they are there. The singers sings because the melody must be heard. The writer writes because the words demand to be read. There is a need in our lives to find our unique challenge within each of us, and then meet it. When we are successful, when the waves roll back, then we throw our arms open and embrace the air. And it is fun – the highest peak of the roller coaster.

The Boxer would dash into the water again and again in its quest to capture the stick thrown by its master. Left unchecked the dog would literally drown in its drive to find what was thrown. A simple goal for the dog, but no less intense than the drive that leads us to find cures for illness, the secrets of the Rosetta stone, whether there is life on other planets, the meaning of God, the meaning of Life.

Is it too much of a stretch to call these purposeful and intense actions fun? Perhaps. But if the roller coaster’s intensity is one factor leading to the fun of the ride, than would I be wrong in equating the intensity of purpose and drive to one aspect of the fun of living? Is that a trivialization? Or is it really more of a simplification?

My favorite of the dogs was and will always be the red doberman. That she singled me out on the beach to approach. That she sat beside me. That she leaned into me with such open trust. When we reach out to others, in person, or via the threaded void that is the weblogging and the Internet, we also put a measure of trust in those who receive the message. Will they shy away? Will they reach back? Will real affection result, or is the contact as ephemeral as the medium used to transmit the message.

When I write this, I am very much like that red doberman, except that I’m approaching 2 people, 10 people, 100 people asking them to let me sit beside them at this moment, to lean against them, to share a moment together. And in that moment is companionship and contentment, perhaps the smoothest and most velvet form of fun there is.

Critters

Walking among the dog people part 1

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 27, 2004

First published in summer, 2002 and moved to the now defunct Dynamic Earth

I walk, almost daily, along the beach next to the Golden Gate Bridge. This beach also happens to be one of the few areas in San Francisco where dogs are allowed off their leashes, to run along the sand and play among the waves.

There’s a particular black lab I know that comes up to you and drops her ball just out of your reach. When you reach for it to throw it for her, she lunges in and grabs it out of your grasp and then dances around in delight at her own cleaverness. Then back again with the ball, dropping it down, expecting me to make another attempt.

One of the Jack Russell tries to keep up with the bigger dogs, running as hard as it can on its short stubby legs among the labs and the dobermans and the shepherds…until the other dogs run into the water.

The waves along the beach aren’t that small or that gentle and a small dog is not going to be able to swim in these waters. All that poor little Jack Russell can do when his larger friends jump into the water is to stand at the edge and bark for all its might. Wave rolls out, he runs forward; wave rolls in, he runs back. That cute little bugger barking at the ocean, in his mind having brief moments of triumph when the waves recede, setbacks when the waves return. He only stops when his friends exit the water, at this point having achieved a state of truce with the water.

One of my favorite dogs is a beautiful Boxer who loves to play in the water so much that his owner has to restrict him because the dog would exhaust himself and drown – the play means that much to him.

Once, a large red doberman came out of no where, walked right up to me, circled behind me, and then sat down beside me as if we were in a dog show demonstrating obedience. She then leaned for all she was worth against my leg, and just stayed there, looking out a the water. I was astonished at first, and then just started laughing. It was a moment of crystalline pure delight; the kind of moment you can’t buy, build, borrow, or create.

Absolute joy at simple gifts. I define this as fun, and it is my greatest meaning in life. And creating a little of that joy in others is my greatest purpose.

Environment outdoors Photography

Verboten

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 10, 2004

Tuesday’s temperatures were in the 90’s with high humidity so perhaps choosing the Shaw Nature Reserve for my late afternoon walk wasn’t the best of ideas. It did have the advantage, though, of being relatively deserted. Of course it was: sane people don’t walk in swamps during a heat wave.

I hadn’t been out to Shaw since all the rains and was amazed at how lush and green everything was. The field grasses were up to my chest, and the flowers were so thick that in some places, the aroma made my head buzz.

Wait a sec…that’s not what caused the buzzing. Bugs. Lots of bugs out Tuesay. I was met as soon as I left the car and escorted about by varieties of wasp, fly, mosquito, or other flying creatures tempted by my lucious self. The black flies wanted to feed on me, and the sand wasps on the flies and I was, in effect, a self-contained mobile ecosystem.

The insect life was manageable until I decided to walk through the forest; as soon as I started walking next to the stream, I attracted more and more insects until I was walking in the middle of a swarm of buzzing, biting, stinging creatures. This combined with the humidity and relentless green felt like a wall pushing against me, subtle clues that I wasn’t welcome in the forest today. Thank you, come again another day.

I continued on, stubbornly at this point because I wanted photos of the approaching storm from the prarie on the other side of the woods. However, when I walked into what seemed like a swarm of black flies, combined with a spider web across the path, it became too much. I turned around and started back. They followed and I gave an odd sort of scream and just started running– swatting about me as much as I could to keep the creatures off. I was glad no one else was around because I must have looked like a lunatic.

The moment I left the forest and entered the wild garden area, most of the creatures aburptly left me. I knew the reason for the sudden cessation of pursuit was that the insects preferred to stay near the water and out from the open–there were a lot of birds about, too. Still, I felt pushed out of the woods by hands made of flying insects, which is a bit creepy if you think on it.

It’s hard to imagine that at one time much of the area where I walked was clear cut. Back in the 1800’s much of the forested area in the Ozarks was clear cut for homes and manufacturing. Thanks to rich soil and plentiful water and sunshine, the forests are again thick with growth and lumber companies are now looking at southern forests for clear cutting, pointing to previously clear-cut lands to show that the land recovers. From the Chrisian Science Monitor story:

Looking down a clear-cut Ozark ridge, a forester argued vigorously that clear-cutting is the best way to maintain long-term forest health. “Sure it’s unsightly. It’s like a new baby being born. It’s beautiful over time, but it’s ugly to start with.”

This talk of ‘clear cutting’ being good for the environment reminds me of the recent controversy about the salmon runs in the Northwest. The current administration wants to count hatchery based salmon with the wild to determine whether a species should be listed as endangered or not — a move that not one scientist would back or validate, no matter how many were asked to comment.

We’re being told that most species would still be listed as endangered even with this new count, and that this approach is a viable method for stream management. But what we’re finding is that rather than help species recover, the hatchery fish are leading to a decline–the genetically inferior bred fish compete with the more robust wild salmon for the same resources. But that’s science. We don’t need science anymore; all we need is a great deal of assurance when we speak.

You know how it is: we don’t want to stop runoff into streams from construction or restrict agricultural pollution around streams and rivers forever–easier to just capture a bunch of fish and breed ’em.

Just like we can re-plant forests here in Missouri. Only problem is, long-term research has shown that there has been a decline of genetic diversity with the trees in our forests. Just like poodles and politicians, trees can become too inbred and the species weaken. The forests look thick and rich, and the bugs are certainly happy with their home — but whatever the true nature of the Ozarks was before we came along is gone forever. The best we can hope for now is not to continue our ‘short cuts to conservation’.

You should lie down now and remember the forest,
for it is disappearing–
no, the truth is it is gone now
and so what details you can bring back
might have a kind of life.

Not the one you had hoped for, but a life
–you should lie down now and remember the forest–
nonetheless, you might call it “in the forest,”
no the truth is, it is gone now,
starting somewhere near the beginning, that edge,

Or instead the first layer, the place you remember
(not the one you had hoped for, but a life)
as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea,
nonetheless, you might call it “in the forest,”
which we can never drift above, we were there or we were not,

No surface, skimming. And blank in life, too,
or instead the first layer, the place you remember,
as layers fold in time, black humus there,
as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea,
like a light left hand descending, always on the same keys.

The flecked birds of the forest sing behind and before
no surface, skimming. And blank in life, too,
sing without a music where there cannot be an order,
as layers fold in time, black humus there,
where wide swatches of light slice between gray trunks,

Where the air has a texture of drying moss,
the flecked birds of the forest sing behind and before:
a musk from the mushrooms and scalloped molds.
They sing without a music where there cannot be an order,
though high in the dry leaves something does fall,

Nothing comes down to us here.
Where the air has a texture of drying moss,
(in that place where I was raised) the forest was tangled,
a musk from the mushrooms and scalloped molds,
tangled with brambles, soft-starred and moving, ferns

And the marred twines of cinquefoil, false strawberry, sumac–
nothing comes down to us here,
stained. A low branch swinging above a brook
in that place where I was raised, the forest was tangled,
and a cave just the width of shoulder blades.

You can understand what I am doing when I think of the entry–
and the marred twines of cinquefoil, false strawberry, sumac–
as a kind of limit. Sometimes I imagine us walking there
(. . .pokeberry, stained. A low branch swinging above a brook)
in a place that is something like a forest.

But perhaps the other kind, where the ground is covered
(you can understand what I am doing when I think of the entry)
by pliant green needles, there below the piney fronds,
a kind of limit. Sometimes I imagine us walking there.
And quickening below lie the sharp brown blades,

The disfiguring blackness, then the bulbed phosphorescence of the roots.
But perhaps the other kind, where the ground is covered,
so strangely alike and yet singular, too, below
the pliant green needles, the piney fronds.
Once we were lost in the forest, so strangely alike and yet singular, too,
but the truth is, it is, lost to us now.

The Forest by Susan Stewart

Speaking of leaving nature alone, Jak’s View from Vancouver writes about the re-introduction of wolves back into Yellowstone. In a decade this native species has already made a major impact in recovering the natural balance in the park and surrounding area.

Beyond being a vital species to the ecosystem, it’s wonderful to think of wolves roaming freely in the park again. They bring the heart back into the lands.

I never did get to my prairie to take photos of the approaching storm, but I did manage to get some from the wildflower area; including the cactus plants, which just absolutely thrive here — bees like them.

But my digital camera, tired out from being rained on and dropped from the seat of my car when I hit the brakes, slammed against a wall during a wind, or yanked out into humid green days like Tuesday is becoming querulous when I ask it to focus; taking photos is more like coaxing an ancient relative out of a comfortable seat by the fire, than point, frame, and shoot.

We’re both getting older, which means it needs to stay home more, and I need to stay home less.