Categories
Critters Photography

Sucking clay and beaver tracks

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I went for what was a three mile hike yesterday and ended up going six miles, primarily because I followed an animal track rather than the trail meant for humans. In the Spring here in Missouri when the marsh grasses are fresh and tall, and haven’t been beaten down by other hikers, you can mistake a natural path used by animals for one used by humans — until you reach that moment when you go, “Way a sec. This can’t be right.”

My moment yesterday was when I drew close to the river and realized that much of the trail was under water, and what was above was very wet clay. If you have not walked on wet clay before, you may think that walking on something like ice is difficult. However, ice just sits there, being hard and shiny and fairly dependable–you know if you step just right, your foot on the ice will go a certain way. Wet clay, on the other hand, is devious. It will seem to be hard and stable one moment, and just when you think you can walk at a normal pace, it liquifies beneath you in a brown goo that slides out from under your foot even if you’re not moving. Worse, it sucks at your shoe so that each step is accompanied by faintly obscene and definitely undignified sounds.

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Thankfully I had my walking stick with me and was able to use it to hold myself relatively upright, as well as test for shallow pockets of muck, as compared to ones that will eat you alive. It didn’t help that I wasn’t wearing my hiking boots, but was, instead wearing my relatively new, though bought at a lovely discount, white tennis shoes.

At one point, the trail, what there was of it, split in two directions but neither was marked. I picked the wrong one, which is how I ended up walking through hip high green on a narrow trail that never did stabilize. Being pigheaded, I was determined to follow it until I reached the regular trail, but the path ended up going into the river. Not, however, before coming face to face with a nicely sized beaver, who I can tell you, was more than a little miffed that I was tromping through his territory.

(Some would say that bears are the most ill tempered mammals, but no creature can get meaner than a beaver — just ask people whose dogs have been drowned by the critters.)

April Flowers

Beaver are hard to photograph and here I was, faced with a golden opportunity to get a nice picture. I reached — ever so gently — to get my camera from its case, but even with the care I took, the beaver took alarm at my actions and vanished into the tall grass; moments later I heard a splash as it headed into the river. All I was left with was the opportunity to capture his tracks. In all the lovely muck.

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I returned to where the trail split and this time headed in the right direction. Along the way I passed fields full of wild flowers–amazing flowers– and birds and dragonflies and other colorful insects. I used my walking stick to wave in front of my face when going through dense greenery, to break any webs across the trail — it’s not particularly pleasant to walk into a web on a trail and then end up with a harmless but intimidating spider crawling on your face. Even if you’re not frightened of spiders, and let me assure you, I am, the experience is not edifying.

During all of this, I met no other hikers, which was unusual. The day was beautiful and the area usually has people about, even during the week. Finally, I met up with an older woman and asked her if I was heading in the right direction to make it back to the main trail. She assured me I was and warned me not to head in the western direction, because much of the area was flooded and impassable. I told her I had just come from that direction.

“Oh, but you don’t look that…”, and then she looked at my feet and lower legs, my hands, and my face, “…muddy.”

When I got back to my car, I was exhausted, and dirty…but satisfied. It felt good.

Categories
Plants Weather

Summer in April

We’ve had an unusually warm Spring this year. The temperatures yesterday and today are close to breaking record highs, and I think today we’ll actually make it. That means over 90 F (that’s ‘hot’ in Celsius). This combined with the rain we’ve had has led to an explosion in growth, and even people who have lived here for years say they don’t remember when we’ve had a finer Spring.

Too hot to focus on a couple of projects I’m working on, and that includes writing: professional, weblogging, and some new tutorials for WordPress. I think tomorrow I’ll get up at dawn and find some place by one of the rivers to spend the day. This is one of those times when I wished I had a kayak or canoe to actually take out on the water.

I was driving in the hills last week when something hit my windshield, sounding like a chalk bag hitting the floor. It was a pollen or small seed bag of some kind that had fallen from the trees, and there was this circle of light green dust on my windshield. It reminded me of Tinkerbelle in Peter Pan, and her bag of magic pixy dust. I continued to get hit while making my way through the trees, and by the time I got home, my car looked like it had been attacked by an army of mad Tinkerbelles.

I just now looked to my left at my dark gray slide scanner and noticed it was dusty again, but when I run my fingers across its surface, they come away coated with that same light green fine dust. I’ve been leaving the windows open, and the place is covered with pollen. I have no idea what it will do to electronics. I know that I’ve been taken over by a strong desire to just find a cool green field somewhere and lay down in it.

It’s just now gone on midnight, and from the street below, I can hear laughter from a balcony, mixed with the sound of our wind chimes. “Let’s go to the park, throw around the football,” I hear one voice ask, to a chorus of laughing assent, and then gradual fade to silence as they start to walk away. The voices aren’t all that young, either.

Categories
Photography Plants

Day at the Gardens 2

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Categories
Photography Plants

Day at the gardens

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Categories
Books Plants

Of found gold and ghost orchids

After the orchid photos last week, a friend recommended that I check out the The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean. As serendipity would have it, Mike Golby just wrote a fascinating essay on the movie version of the book, Adaption, and the topic of passion, Gibson and otherwise:

We all have our desired Ghost Orchids and, damn it, we need them. I’m all for orchids. But the stronger our passions, the more we project them and the larger our shopping baskets become. Sometimes, we’re given opportunity to fill them. But I sometimes find myself hoping that, if confronted by one of my Ghost Orchids, I’d duck and run. Well, maybe not run; I’ll just play things cool… thinking things through, you understand.

There is beauty in the Ghost Orchid; beauty that can act as both impetus and anchor, and there’s only a thin fragment of self separating the two. As for me, I’m not sure that I am that passionate, about anything. I think, though, if I did come face to face with my Ghost Orchid, knowing who I am now, I would be content to look and not own. Regretfully.

Returning, though, to more mundane matters in passionate absentia, I was able to find The Orchid Thief at my city library, and the movie Adaption at my county library, along with a much desired documentary film on James Agee. I feel like a woman who has discovered gold coins when putting her hand into a seemingly empty satchel, and I will now indulge in an unseemly fit of gloating.

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