Out and About

Goodbye to Dorothy

2012-03-10T18:11:00.000-06:00

Dorothy Baringer (1926-2012),
chair of State Preserves Advisory Board
at dedication of Strasser Woods State Preserve
with Elizabeth and Joe Strasser, 1982

I am saddened to relay the news that Dorothy Baringer, pioneer prairie restorationist and early Iowa Preserves Board member, has passed away. Among many prairie preservation activities, she was a long-time member of the State Preserves Advisory Board and a clear voice for saving Iowa's natural heritage. I am honored to have known her professionally and personally. I prepared these comments as memorial for her...

Dorothy was a friend to me in many ways. When I arrived in Iowa in 1985 as the “new guy” hired as the ecologist for the Natural Areas Inventory program of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, I was initially unfamiliar with the natural places that long-term naturalists in the state had known for many years. Knowing less than the people who regard you as an “expert” is an uncomfortable predicament, but Dorothy helped me get through that awkward stage very quickly. She invited me to visit her many prairie projects, exposing me to many native prairie remnants, many prairie species, and many, many bags of prairie seeds. She showed me the native prairie that grew on her farm only a minute’s walk from her house, brimming with native prairie plants. She drove me around the Clarke County countryside on very rural roads to special spots known only to her. She told me about remnants I should visit around the state, where they were and where she had seen special plants. I was – and still am – very appreciative of the support and friendly guidance that Dorothy freely and enthusiastically offered to me during those first years.

Dedication in 1981 of properties owned by the Linn County Conservation Board, Nature Conservancy, and the State Historical Society as new state nature preserves. From Left: George Hamilton (Director of Linn County Conservation Board), Bill Furnish (Chairman of Geology Department, University of Iowa), Robert Ray (Governor of Iowa), Dean Roosa (DNR ecologist), Larry Canterra (Director of Iowa Nature Conservancy), Dutch Vermeer (President of Vermeer Corporation), Dorothy Baringer (Chair of State Preserves Advisory Board), Carl Kurtz (prairie restorationist), Bob Fagerland (DNR Deputy Director), and Peter Harstad (Preserves Board member).

Dorothy’s influence on my professional career continued in others ways. She served on the State Preserves Advisory Board, a citizen panel that advises the DNR on natural areas preservation. Dorothy worked with the Preserves Board between 1976 and 1992, a 16-year committment. In fact, she was chairman of the Board between 1979 and 1982. I became the Preserves Board’s ecologist in 1993, the year after Dorothy had finished her 4th term, but she stayed on as an official advisor during my work with the Board. She was always a proponent of new preserves, trying to save as many natural prairies and forests as possible. In 1983, serving as chair of the Preserves Board, she wrote a letter to Governor Terry Branstad urging his support for the program: “We firmly believe that the quality of our lives is enriched through our state preserves system. It is through this system that we glimpse the way the prairies looked, how the early people lived, and underlying all, the nature of the land and its forms.”

Showy Lady's-slipper Orchid

photo from Wikipedia

Dorothy also helped the rare plant program of our Natural Areas Inventory. She once told me that she had seen one of Iowa rarest and most beautiful plant species – the Showy Lady’s-slipper Orchid – along a river in central Iowa during one of the the Governor’s Canoe Trips (an annual event by the Governor of Iowa and distinguished guests highlighting the natural and recreational values of rivers) in the 1980s. It was hard to believe: this was a very rare plant known to occur only in far northeast Iowa. Dorothy was unable to provide an exact location because she had spied it from a moving canoe on a winding river; she could describe it only as “in the woods, on the right bank of the river, near a railroad bridge, even with a big boulder in the middle of the stream." I tried to track it down, but I was never able to pinpoint it before I was distracted by other duties. Then in 2002, a botanist excitedly called me with the news that he had discovered Showy Lady’s-slipper along the same river. When I accompanied him to the site, I found myself in the woods, on the right bank of the river, near a railroad bridge, and even with a big boulder in the middle of the stream. I am sure that this was the very spot* that Dorothy had discovered many years earlier!

I tell these stories not only because they are meaningful to me individually or even to just the State Preserves Advisory Board, but because they are examples of how Dorothy interacted with everyone. I know folks with the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, the Iowa Academy of Science, the Clarke County Conservation Board, the Medora Ladies Aid, and many others could relate similar experiences of having benefited from Dorothy’s expertise and helpfulness. Thank you, Dorothy, from all of us.

(*landmarks fictionalized here to preclude poaching)

Ice-out on Red Rock Lake

2012-02-27T23:30:00.001-06:00

Blue water stretches from shoreline to shoreline in all directions on Red Rock Lake. We are elated to find the lake open on February 26, two weeks ahead of its normal ice-out date, yet another expression of the mild, nearly winter-less winter of 2011-12. It is too windy at the kayak launch, so we carry our boats to the deserted motorboat ramp just around the corner and set out from its lee aspect. Roiled by a strong southwest wind, whitecaps churn in the center of the lake, but we encounter merely choppy water as we paddle along the wind-blocking south shoreline.

Sunlit bluffs beckon to us across the bay, so we cruise with wind-pushed ease around the first headland and slip into a calm cove. Tucked into its narrowing neck, we find a wedge of rotten ice, a retreating remnant of the winter ice sheet that covered the whole lake only a week ago. Beaten into brash by waves and warmth, its undulates in slow rolls like a bedsheet billowing in a breeze.

Photo by Brian Lange

We paddle out of the protected cove and approach the exposed headland of Elk Rock Bluff. Extending beyond the wind-blocked shore, its sheer cliffs rise directly above a riot of clapotis, incoming waves colliding crazily with waves reflecting from the cliffs. Advancing slowly, we creep through the confusion with steady paddling and expectations of bracing. Conjoining waves lift our kayaks high above base level, letting us surf into troughs. A long minute of rock-and-roll paddling gets us past the pinch point and into calm water on the far side of the bluff. I look around for my partners and count all three of them: everything is OK.

An avenue of calm water now stretches out of sight along a gently curving shoreline of low, north-facing cliffs. Patches of snow linger on their shaded slopes. Waves rounding the corner from the Elk Rock headland slap against the cliffs and splash noisily onto their faces. Icy water dripping from cold bedrock in the cool air has frozen into legions of blue-white icicles, generating a landscape of daggers and dragon teeth that scrolls gently past my kayak as I drift along the snow-splotched shoreline.

Beyond the bluffs, we discover a sandy beach piled high with brash ice, so stop to explore. Brian clambers atop the ice pile and strikes a summit pose with his paddle as I snap his photo while crouching in the frigid water (comfortably dry and warm in my drysuit); from this angle, he appears to be in an Antarctic wilderness. For an instant, we are both transported to that cold, wild, faraway land, our imagination empowered by today's special, icy scene at Ranger Point, Lake Red Rock, Iowa.

Regrouping, our foursome heads home. We glide easily along the icy cliffs, enjoying them for a second time. Rounding the point at Elk Rock, the wind that had been held at bay by the bluffs strikes us from directly ahead, slowing our pace to a slow-motion crawl. It rushes over the lake, pounds the cliffs, and roars through the trees, noisily mixing disparate sounds like the cacophonous buzzing of a gigantic food blender - a stentorian voice of wild nature. Pushing through the wind, I hear it gradually diminish from a bellow at the exposed, rocky point to a mere whisper when we finally succeed in reaching the lee shore. Stepping out of my kayak onto the concrete ramp, I look back at the bluffs and look forward to a new season of visiting them.

Insect Spring

2012-02-25T20:05:00.000-06:00

Brown-colored Green Lacewing

The first spring wildflowers grab our attention, a welcome break from the flowerlessness of winter, reassuring us that life does rebound following a seemingly lifeless season of cold and snow. Alas, that botanical reassurance does not appear to us here in the Midwest until April when hepaticas, bloodroots, and spring beauties suddenly appear on the forest floor with unmissable abundance. However, insects begin re-emerging much sooner, reassuring insect-seeking naturalists of spring's return several weeks earlier than their plant-seeking colleagues (except for insightful folks who know of Skunk Cabbage).

I saw my first insects earlier this week as I sifted through windrows of brown, fallen leaves blown against a fence in my backyard, looking for galls and finding weathered specimens of Gall Midge (Polystepha pilulae) galls on pin oak leaves and Jewel Oak Leaf Galls (Acraspis macrocarpae) on bur oak leaves.

Jewel Oak Leaf Gall
(Acraspis macrocarpae)
on bur oak leaf

Gall Midge
(Polystepha pilulae) galls
on pin oak leaf

I suddenly noticed a Green Lacewing walking across my gloved hand, its tan coloration flagging it as an overwintering adult, its slow gait suggesting that it had just awoken from torpor. A short time later, a leggy brown speck on a leaf attracted my eye, resolving upon closer inspection into a Ground Crab Spider (not an insect, but a closely related arthropod). Its 7-mm body length did not deter it from "threatening" me with outstretched anterior legs (a defensive posture). Like the lacewing, it moved slowly.

Ground Crab Spider

My discovery of the lacewing and spider reminded me to check on the population of overwintering Spotted Lady Beetles that I knew inhabited the leaf litter surrounding the base of a nearby maple tree; sure enough, when I parted the hostas and peered into the void, I saw several dozen ladybugs milling about.

Spotted Lady Beetles

It did not escape my notice that all three of my early-appearing species were predators (with lacewings and lady beetles especially fond of aphids). However, speculating about the significance of that ended when I read the blog of colleague Harlan Ratcliff, learning that his first insect (observed on the same day a few counties away) - a decidedly non-predatory species - broke the pattern. Later that night, I also spotted a brown moth fluttering against our window, whipping its pristine wings against unyielding glass in a vain effort to reach the lightbulb over our kitchen table.

A few days later, an overnight snowstorm recarpeted the landscape into a winter wonderland, imposing a pause on the progression of spring. However, I'm not discouraged. Plant spring is still several weeks away, but I've already glimpsed insect spring and feel reassured that life will return again this year.

Housekeeping message

2012-02-22T22:11:00.000-06:00

My last 50 blog postings were created using Internet Explorer as my browser, but I discovered yesterday that I could no longer use it for blogging here. Prompted by Blogger's switch to Google Chrome, my new postings will be generated with that new browser, so readers will likely find it best to also view my postings with the same. All well and fine on that front, but upon reviewing my previous postings, I discovered that their formatting had been scrambled: photos formerly side-by-side were now diagonally staggered, blocks of blank space had opened up between newly separated photos, and text once neatly fit to spaces adjacent to photos was now wrapped untidily around their top and/or bottom. I spent several hours today repairing past postings (not quite done yet), but without the same success as the original work. Consequently, I hope readers of past postings will understand that the odd formatting you may see is just the best after-the-fact repair I could muster... thanks for understanding. I look forward to future postings with the new browser!

Looking for Lungwort, Unluckily

2012-02-05T16:29:00.005-06:00

I recently visited the Mines of Spain, a 1400-acre bluffland conservation area along the Mississippi River by Dubuque. The official purpose of my visit was to assist with restoration planning for a newly acquired parcel, but I also reserved time to search for Lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria), Iowa's "lost lichen", last seen 111 years ago in Dubuque and Clayton counties. Knowing that it thrives in mature forests in other parts of its range, I wanted to explore the oldest timber in the park. Located in a remote part of the park, the best way to access this area is to hike along a railroad track tightly squeezed onto a narrow strip of land between steep bluffs and the Mississippi River. Accordingly, park ranger Wayne Buchholtz and I dropped off our vehicles at both ends of the run and hiked the miles separating them, looking for lungwort.

To our right, the mighty Mississippi was frozen from bank to bank, Iowa to Illinois. I recognized islands around which I had kayaked in previous summers, appearing now merely as high spots in a white landscape of ice and snow, highlighted by dark, leafless stands of silver maple and cottonwood. To our left, steep bluffs broken by limestone cliffs rose from the riverbank, cloaked with sugar maple, basswood and red oak.

Despite their closeness, most of the trees occupied a steep, rocky slope on the far side of a ditch between the tracks and the bluffs, so I scanned the forest with binoculars, slowly moving my vision from bole to bole, watching for telltale signs of lungwort. If present, its long, leafy, lettuce-like thallus should be conspicuous. But although I repeatedly spied patches of bright green mosses, dark green liverworts, and minty green splotches of dust lichen, I failed to spot a single sprig of lungwort.

At one point, I found a rock outcrop festooned with walking ferns, their long fronds extending across the moss-matted face and taking root at their tips, collectively creating a crowded colony.

Finding ferns, mosses, liverworts, and bark-dwelling lichens is rewarding in its own way, but our lack of success with lungworts is admittedly disappointing. Does its absense mean it was once here but has vanished? Or is the explanation more mundane: was it never here? Many more trees, forests, bluffs and places will need to be searched before we gain perspective on this problem. The prospect of exploring more natural places has intrinsic appeal for ecologists, so looking forward to future forays, I let the question dangle for now.

January Hike on Elk Rock Bluff

2012-01-22T20:51:00.003-06:00

Flat gray ice sweeps to the horizon beneath a shredded sheet of banded snow and a blue-gray blanket of fog. Rugged red bluffs stand over the frozen lake, capped with black, leafless forest. Alone on the blufftop, I creep from sheltering woods onto the uppermost ledges, cautious not to slip on drizzle-glazed rock. All of us - ice, fog, rock, forest, and I - are utterly quiet. Space, silence, and solitude seep into my soul, as if I am the only parishioner in a vast, empty church.

Rousing from reverie, I clamber back over the crest of the cliff. Framed by overhanging tree limbs, wintry vistas of the frozen lake slide into view as I hike through small openings along the edge of foggy woods. A flock of crows flies just above the treetops like black wraiths, their raucous cawing briefly breaking the silence. A rustle of leaves betrays a flock of turkeys as they dart deeper into the forest, black bodies moving quickly against a white background of sodden snow.

Glimpses of green on the snowy forest floor prompt me to pause. Ferns, mosses, and cladonia lichens clamor silently for my attention, adding minutes to my miles before I resume my hike.

Breaking through a thicket at the far end of the forest, I emerge onto a platform of hard, red bedrock. Stepping carefully through a variegated rubble of sandstone cobbles, I approach the rim of the cliff. It has been years since I have come to this this place at this time of year, but it renews me now as then when I gaze upon its wild, wintry landscape. Despite the drizzle, I contemplate its capacious scale, savor its stark beauty, and linger until it finally feels right to leave.

January Paddle on Red Rock Lake

2012-01-08T18:39:00.002-06:00

Warmed by a freakish January thaw, ice on Red Rock Lake partially melted away this week, opening a few square miles of frigid water. Ensconced in cold-water gear, we launched our kayaks in late afternoon by the Cliffs of Cordova and crossed the lake to Elk Rock Bluff. Warmed by paddling, we skirted cold brown cliffs striped with a band of white ice. Coming to the sea cave, we passed through it once, twice, thrice, reveling in its winter aspect, then floated quietly along the cliff on becalmed water to the edge of the ice...

Water, sky,and ice dimmed to pastel blue as we watched the sun sink through deepening twilight. Already high above the eastern horizon, a haloed moon shone weakly through a haze of high clouds. We turned homeward and paddled through violet-streaked water along the cliffy shore, its edge marked by a gleaming band of frozen brash. Twilight, moonlight, and icegleam disappeared into black night during our deepwater crossing to the far shore. Arriving safely, we secured our boats and drove on dark roads to well-lit homes with warm memories of a cold lake.

A Windy Walk on New Year's Day

2012-01-02T16:22:00.006-06:00

I had hoped to celebrate the first day of 2012 at the 8th Annual New Year's Day Paddle on the Des Moines River, but winds predicted to gust up to 60 MPH discouraged me from driving the 70-mile round trip with my kayak perched on the roof of my car. A similar wind last year ripped a kayak and its "secure" carrying rack from the roof of a friend driving home from an outing. Having once lost a kayak from the roof of my own car as I drove down an expressway, I did not want to risk another such gut-wrenching experience. Suppressing the urge to buck the wind and join my paddling friends anyway, I instead opted to hike along the Summerset Trail, a bicycle path passing through the Banner Flats Wildlife Area and Summerset State Park.

Stepping out of my car, I was greeted by the roaring of the wind. Hiking away from the tree-lined oasis of the trailhead, I entered a landscape of open wetlands and farmfields in the flat floodplain of the Middle River. Even though I had left the trees behind, the roaring of the wild, gusty wind continued unabated like the constant crashing of surf at a seashore. Unsheltered, I felt its buffeting directly. We live at the bottom of an ocean of air, but are rarely aware of its currents until they turn turbulent.

In places, the trail was lined with a thin band of trees, mostly cottonwood, willow, silver maple, boxelder, and honeylocust, the latter bristling with thorns on its boles and branches.

More subtly, silver maples could be recognized by their smooth bark with pale patches of lichen, which in turn could be recognized as Comma Lichen by its tiny, comma-like squiggles of black lirellae against a white, endophloeodal ("within the bark") thallus.

I spotted more lichens appressed against wind-fallen cottonwood limbs...

...and still more coating the iron beam of a bridge at a stream crossing.

I took a closer look at the mosses dotting the gravelly ground along the edge of the trail, finding white-tipped clusters of Silvery Bryum (Bryum argenteum).

On taller vegetation beyond the gravel edge of the trail, I found the milkweed-like pods of Honeyvine (Cynanchum laeve). Its fluffy seeds flew into the blustery wind as I pried open their escape hatch.

Near the end of my hike, I found a pool of water filled with Cursed Crowfoot (Ranunculus sceleratus), improbably green on New Year's Day.

A piece of bark fallen onto the crowfoot mat bore the hieroglyphic galleries of a European elm bark beetle (Scolytus multistriatus), recognized by the vertical orientation of the parental tunnel and its radiating larval lines.

I finished my hike and drove home through the continuing wind. Email and blog postings informed me that that the New Year's Day Paddle was a success for friends who had braved the road trip, a temptation for me to "throw caution to the wind" next year. Nonetheless, I had walked through a wild wind on a new trail beginning a new year. I look forward to the adventures, literal and figurative, that 2012 will surely bring. Happy New Year!

Ambling Around Ahquabi

2011-12-25T11:35:00.008-06:00

Mild weather in the final days before Christmas let our family enjoy a hike in nearby Lake Ahquabi State Park. We followed the loop trail around the lake (highlighted in Hiking Iowa) taking us through the spectrum of natural communities in the park. Starting at the beach, where a broad view of the lake allowed us to observe a huge flock of Canada Geese standing on its frozen surface, we first walked through an upland forest dominated by mature white and red oaks. Most of the trees forming the canopy here were approximately 100-150 years old, having regrown from timber-cutting after pioneer settlement, but scattered here and there among them were older, larger white oak trees up to 300 years old. Recognized by their greater girth, elephantine limbs, leaning stature, and smooth white bark (the rough bark of youth having sloughed off during the years), individuals passed over by the pioneer cutting stood out distinctively amid the smaller, younger trees around them. Ironwood (also known as hophornbeam) trees filled the understory, their marcesent leaves clinging to slender twigs in rufous defiance of winter defoliation.

Mature forest of mostly middle-aged white oak and red oak

A 300-year old white oak patriarch

White oak (left) and red oak (right) leaves on the forest floor

Beneath the trees, the reddish-brown forest floor extended in all directions in open vegetation of sparse shrubs and scattered grasses. Although brightly filled with colorful wildflowers in spring, today we passed only wispy clumps of dried bottlebrush grass standing between scattered shrubs of native gooseberry and ever-troublesome honeysuckle invaders. Although shrub honeysuckles are the non-native bane of forest restorationists, their bright red pairs of fruits were admittedly pretty.

Bottlebrush grass seedhead

Honeysuckle fruits

Lichens of several species populated the bark and branches of the trees. In the shade of the interior woods, I recognized the wrinkled, bluish-gray plates of Speckled Shield, the minty green patches of Dust Lichen, and the hieroglyphic streaks of Script Lichen (low light combined with their tiny size made photography with my point-and-shoot pocket camera difficult, so I ended up with decent shots of only the lattermost). At the sun-drenched edge of the woods, bright orange patches of Sunburst Lichen shared treetrunks with bright gray patches of Rosette Lichen.

Gray rosette lichen and
orange sunburst lichen

Script lichen
-click to enlarge-

As we continued along the trail, we encountered small patches of snow and mud bearing the tracks of turkey and deer.

Coming to the dam forming the 100-acre lake, we crossed its spillway on an arching footbridge. A treeless shoreline provided a scenic vista of flat, frozen water rimmed by black forest. A cacophony of cackles wafted across the expanse from the geese congregated on the far shore.

In the swampy floodplain beneath the dam and along the wet shoreline of the lake, we spied the elegant, white boles and branches of sycamore projecting eye-catchingly above the dark-limbed canopy of oaks, basswoods, and ashes. Its stellate, platter-sized leaves covered the floor of the floodplain forest, which is brushy with thickets of dogwood and willow.

We passed through a grassy opening filled with Indiangrass and clumps of black oaks; its savanna character is a legacy of its south-facing aspect, its long-ago clearing and pasturing, and its present-day maintenance with prescribed burning by park managers. It is thickly bordered with elm and black locust trees that would quickly colonize the opening if not held at bay by recurrent fires. In the trail bordering the tree-lined meadow, we found a hefty, green, cross-corrugated, grapefruit-sized ball, evidense that we had walked under an Osage Orange tree, another pioneering species. (This species was formally introduced to science with a specimen collected in 1804 by the Lewis & Clark expedition when it passed the mouth of the Osage River in western Missouri as the explorers ascended the Missouri River.)

Leaf and bark of black oak

Fruit of Osage Orange

We finished our 4-mile hike around Lake Ahquabi at the beach, where the geese were still talkatively congregated on the ice. At a high hilltop overlooking the lake, we stopped for a family photo by the sandstone lodge originally constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s and beautifully restored by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in recent years. Filled with sunshine and shared experience, conservation and conversation, and hiking and habitat, our amble around Ahquabi was satisfyingly complete.

Family outing: Peg, Will, Tarek, Beth, me

Walking in the Wasatch

2011-12-06T21:15:00.011-06:00

As we started our descent in Wyoming, I could not tear my eyes from the spectacular scenery scrolling beneath the window of our Omaha-to-Salt Lake City airliner. A jumble of snow-capped mountain peaks in the central Wasatch Range initially filled my view but was abruptly replaced by a sharply linear front of steep, brown, west-facing slopes when we passed over their western edge and into the Salt Lake Valley. The escarpment stretched out of sight both northward and southward, forming the western boundary of the Rocky Mountains and dramatically marking its contact with the Great Basin, a geological province of isolated mountain ranges and flat desert valleys extending across Utah into Nevada and California.

As our plane banked sharply southward and cruised parallel to the mountain front for our final approach, I was treated to a succession of spectacular aerial views: a patchwork of snow-dusted farmfields in the Logan Valley, the blue expanse of the Great Salt Lake and its tan-and turquoise mosaic of marshlands at the Jordan River Delta, and the sprawling megalopolis of Salt Lake City, its center flagged with a cluster of downtown skyscrapers. All were backdropped by the eye-popping mountainscape of the Wasatch Front, whose look-at-me appeal continued to demand my attention from the ground as we taxied to the terminal. "I hope we have an opportunity to hike up there," I mused as my wife Peg and I made our way to the baggage claim, catching yet another view of the mountains through a hallway picture window.

Thanksgiving break this year differed significantly from our home-in-Iowa tradition with this special trip to Salt Lake City, Utah where we shared the holiday with our son Will, his girlfriend Maureen ("Mo"), her parents Greg and Sheila ("La"), their other daughter Megan and her husband Eric (and their dog Aussie). Having previously met Mo, we looked forward to getting to know the rest of her family for the first time. It did not take long to discover that we shared a love of the outdoors, prompting Greg and La to take us to several of their favorite places... and some new ones.

Salt Lake City literally abuts the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, which are laced with a network of easily accessed trails. We hiked in City Creek Canyon, along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail between Red Butte Creek and Emigration Canyon, and on the Pipeline Trail in Mill Creek Canyon. In addition to providing all of us with vigorous outdoor exercise in spectacular scenery, our hikes provided me with an ecological education afforded by close-up viewing of natural foothills vegetation.

Rising between flat lowlands and high mountains, the foothills formed a rolling landscape of rounded peaks. The trail meandered through a mosaic of grassland dominated by bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata) and thickets dominated by Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), punctuated by steeply tilted outcrops of ancient limestone adorned with a diversity of colorful lichens and mosses.

Gambel oak

Big-tooth maple

At times we hiked through extensive acreages of oak brush consisting of short, shrubby trees. Adapted to fire by the ability to resprout, the trees were multi-stemmed, probably from repeated episodes of burning and regrowth. As we decended into moist ravines, I also spotted big-tooth maples (Acer grandidentatum) with a similar growth-form but quite different leaves.

I often slowed or stopped to investigate the oak brush patches more closely, searching the tangle of stems, twigs, and leaves for smaller species such as the lichens forming bright orange splashes on larger tree trunks and the galls of cynipid wasps forming subtle brown swellings on smaller twigs.

Moseying through the mosaic, I recognized bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) and big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata); although both featured three-tipped (tridentate) leaves, the hoary coating and aromatic odor of sagebrush easily distinguished it from the green, odorless bitterbrush.

At risk of falling even farther behind, I stooped to photograph a handful of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), a tawny annual grass forming extensive stands where wheatgrass and Gambel oak were absent. Unfortunately, this invasive species is a bad actor, having overtaken vast areas of grassland in the arid West, displacing native species and ratcheting fire regimes to unnaturally high frequency with its dry, flashy fuels.

Satisfied with my overview of the vegetation, I trotted up the trail lined with the now-familiar forms of wheatgrass, bitterbrush, and sagebrush and caught up with the others in a tunnel of tall oak brush. Together, we finished our hike and returned home for an evening of dining, talking, game-playing... and planning for another walk in the Wasatch.

Strip Mine Sojourn

2011-11-20T21:51:00.018-06:00

After years of excuses, I finally visited Banner Lakes at Summerset State Park. Developed on the site of an old, pre-reclamation law strip mine, it features a series of linear ponds and ridges that are the abandoned pits and spoil piles of long-ago coal mining. Its originally moonscapish landscape softened by 80 years of natural succession, most of its spoil-pile hills are today covered with young forest; its pits have filled with cold, clear, sediment-free groundwater (a fact that has not escaped the notice of DNR fishery biologists, who stock it with trout). Hoping to paddle my kayak on a day that was too cold and windy to be on Lake Red Rock, I explored this long-overlooked park.

Launching my kayak at a small boat ramp, I paddled down narrow watery lanes between low, wooded hills where draglines once ripped open the earth to mine its underlying coal.

Not all of the area has grown up with trees: numerous bare hillsides dotted the mostly forested landscape. Suspecting that whatever prevented trees from growing might enable species suppressed by trees to thrive, I stopped to explore one of the larger barrens.

I hiked up a steep slope of crumbly black shale interspersed with erosion gullies and a scattering of small trees. Reaching the ridgetop, I looked back at my kayak on the lakeshore below.

White-stemmed trees caught my attention, prompting a closer look. With peeling white bark and ragged, rhomboidal leaves, they are some kind of birch resembling the native (but out of range) paper birch, but might be a look-alike European cultivar used in landscaping. Regardless of their exact species identity, they were probably introduced as part of a revegetation plan and have since gone wild, reproducing in open, sunny barrens free from competition with shade-casting neighbors.

Their trunks were home to yellow, orange, white, and dark gray lichens and also appeared to be popular with home-making beavers.

Beneath the trees scattered on the barren slopes, I spotted broom moss and still more lichens: powderhorns and pixie-cups. Paradoxically, I easily found these latter lichens here but I rarely encounter them in nature preserves that protect pristine habitats elsewhere in Iowa.

On the crest of the hill, I found a granite glacial erratic originally from the till that formerly covered the coal-bearing shale as "overburden" - somehow it wound up at the top of a spoil pile instead of being buried with its brethren boulders when the landscape was inverted by strip-mining. It was thinly covered by still more lichens, including dark gray shadow lichen and pale green, disc-studded wall lichen.

A musical tune had been cycling subconsciously through my mind since I arrived and suddenly I recognized it as Paradise, John Prine's evocative lament about the destruction of a treasured habitat by strip-mining:

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
They tortured the timber and stripped all the land
They dug for their coal until the land was forsaken
and wrote it all down as The Progress of Man

I was pleased to see that "the Banner pits" have progressed beyond their forsaken condition after 80 years of natural healing. Who in 1931, looking out onto a black moonscape of spoil banks freshly gouged from formerly fertile land, could have predicted that the site in 2011 would become a forest and fishery? Or even more paradoxically, that it would become a refuge and recreational park amid an expanse of intensive agriculture? Or that someday a kayaking naturalist would explore it for hard-to-find lichens?

Although not representing a pristine natural community, Banner Lakes at Summerset nonetheless provides a non-agriculturalized and non-urbanized platform for the development of new kinds of "natural" communities. For me, it illustrates that even highly disturbed habitats are worthy of protection as places where nature can assert itself in strange new ways.

SURREEL: Semi-annual Undertaking of the Red Rock End-to-End Loop

2011-11-14T17:21:00.002-06:00

I was not alone this year. Four friends volunteered to accompany me, quintrupling the size of the event because my two previous kayak circumnavigations of Red Rock Lake, a 15-mile long reservoir in central Iowa, have been solo. The 30-mile loop is not a literal circumnavigation because I cut across big bays and reserve the option to paddle along either shoreline depending on wind, the bane of long-distance paddlers. My first trip, in November 2006, almost perfectly matched the outline of the 20,000-acre lake because calm winds let me follow the main shoreline clockwise without interference. On my second trip, in November 2009, I still paddled from end-to-end, but stayed mostly along the south shore to hide from a strong southeast wind. You will also note that the event has not been annual. In face of these nuances, I have come to call it my SURREEL kayaking trip: Semi-annual Undertaking of the Red Rock End-to-End Loop.

November 11, 2011. With the sun shining brightly through blue sky and a cold wind blowing briskly across blue water, we traverse the first bay and round a rocky point, guiding our kayaks along a corridor of quiet water in the lee of big bluffs. Reaching the end of the bluffline, we keep going into the seldom-seen waters beyond West Beach. Our first objective is to reach Boxcars Access at the northwest end of the reservoir.

Blue sky, blue water, blue kayak, blue-jacketed paddler
at the far end of Red Rock Lake

Brilliantly white lines of faraway flocks of pelicans standing on sunlit sandbars first appear to be near but oddly seem the same distance away many minutes and paddle strokes later. The lake here is very wide and bounded by low-lying lands that provide little visual perspective, contributing to a discouraging sense of motionlessness despite protracted effort, like paddling on a watery treadmill. Eventually, however, we enter the edge of the marsh, revealed by the drag of paddling through shallow water, muddy tips on our paddle blades, a scattering of smartweeds, and the booming of shotguns fired by nearby duck hunters.

We skirt the marsh and finally arrive at Boxcars Access, a forlorn spot with a rough parking lot at the end of a long, winding gravel road serving as remote lake entry point. Used mainly by duck hunters in the fall for launching their camouflaged johnboats into the marsh, it is a flat, weedy, muddy place, its only distinguishing feature the bizarre sight of tilted, rusting walls and rooftops of abandoned freightcars protruding above the submerged bed of a long-vanished railroad. It seems to me an arbitrary spot whose unique geographic location is its only identity, akin to the North Pole, a featureless field of snow and ice accessible by crossing an endless expanse of featureless fields of snow and ice, its center marked by incongrous, man-made structures.

photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

A cold, southwesterly wind blowing across the shelterless shore prompts us to resume moving. Deciding to return to the lee side, we reverse our route. Looking up we paddle away from Boxcars Access, I spot a spiral of 200 pelicans ascending into the cloudless sky, their synchronized circling flashing a black and white sequence of shadowed and sunlit dots against a bright blue background. Pushing through a headwind, we once again find wind-protected paddling along the south shoreline.

John Craun's beautiful, self-built cedar-strip kayak

We stop for lunch on a sandy point. There is little time for lingering, but I pause to admire an oak leaf etching in the sand.

Continuing down the the length of the lake, we pass landmarks familiar from many shorter, previous outings - Elk Rock Bluffs, Ranger Point, and Whitebreast Bay - and then enter another seldom-seen zone in the southeastern end of the lake leading to the Red Rock Dam. We land at the foot of the dam as late afternoon shadows reach across its rip-rapped slope. After 23 miles of paddling, we rest on the rocks, aware that we still have 7 more to go!

Before leaving, I enjoy a few more bits of small beauty: a wrack of wave-washed pebbles lining the lakeshore...

...and a smartweed valiantly sporting summer flowers atop an autumnal stem on this mid-November day.

Twilight envelopes us as we paddle along a darkening shore. We pause near Whitebreast Point to affix lanterns to our sterns and become a tiny constellation of small white lights gliding horizontally across now-glassy waters. Absorbed with the violet afterglow of the sunset to our left as we paddle northwestward once again, we are oblivious to the moonrise behind our right shoulders. Detecting a bright glow, I twist in my kayak and exclaim in surprise at its sudden appearance. Filtered by a low-hanging haze of atmospheric dust, it is stunningly ruddy, its eyes of black basalt standing out strikingly against its pale lunar face.

photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

We paddle through moonlit darkness along the final shore, a line of sandstone bluffs in Elk Rock State Park. The eerie, monotonic hooting of a Great Horned Owl emanates from the forest crowning the bluffs as we pass. The last mile is our slowest, reflecting our physical fatigue from a long day of paddling and a subconscious desire to prolong the wonder of the night. We finally grind ashore at our point of beginning, richer in miles and memories.

The crew at Boxcars Access, our photo taken
by a courteous duck hunter during our morning visit

A Year of Blogging

2011-11-05T14:38:00.002-05:00

I started this blog in November 2010, one year, forty postings, and (if the auto-counter is to be believed) some twelve thousand hits ago. Growing up in a pre-computer era, I am amazed with the wizardry of software to integrate text and photos, enabling me to share stories with the wider world. It has been an interesting and occasionally demanding undertaking for me and I hope it has been interesting to readers as well. (I would appreciate your feedback and advice... although several friends have written supportive comments, I have no way of knowing how widely it is read.) As a commemoration, I have organized its contents into several broad, but overlapping topics in this anniversary post. I will be as curious as anyone to see what Year Two will bring!

Personal History

First Blog
My First Summer in the Sierra
Six to Sixty: A "Natural" Progression
Red Rock Reflections on the Windsong
photo by Jim Grace

Natural History
Storm Lichens
Backyard Biota: Insects
Backyard Biota: Fencepost Lichens
Signs of Spring
Signs of Fall
A Walk in the Woods
A Walk on the Prairie
A Walk through the Glade
A Prairie Landscape in Iowa
Nature in Cubeville
Davenport Discoveries
Omaha Observations

Kayaking In Iowa
Mountains of the Mississippi
Return to Red Rock
May 21 at 6:01 PM
Modern Lake, Ancient River
October Outing

Kayaking Out of Iowa
Up North
Isle Royale Circumnavigation
Southern Great Lakes
Apostles Again
Kayaking Out of Iowa
Out West
Great Salt Lake
Palouse River Canyon
Puget Sound
Yellowstone Lake

Kayaking Out of Iowa
Down South
Everglades Ecotour
Ozark Paddling: Bull Shoals Lake

Kayaking Skills and Safety
Ups and Downs of Learning to Roll
Kayak Craziness with a Purpose
Three Stages of Kayaker Evolution
photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

New Zealand
New Zealand Landscapes
New Zealand Nature: Sea to Summit

Special Events
Project AWARE
BugGuide Gathering

Other
2010 Hindsight
Frosty Morning
Our Shared Planet

October Outing

2011-10-29T13:08:00.000-05:00

We paddle our kayaks across glassy water reflecting blue October sky and dun, rugged bluffs crowned with green forest turning yellow, orange, and red. The Red Rock scenery seems impossibly new despite our familiarity with its lakeshore route. Arcs of ripple-reflected sunlight shimmer on shadowed girders of the Mile-Long Bridge as we pass beneath, abetting our sense of entry into a novel landscape through a twinkling portal.

Transported, we find ourselves in a landscape of tall sandstone cliffs, banded shale bluffs, giant slabs of emergent rock, and flat water extending along a seep-streaked escarpment to the northwest horizon.

Drifting along the bluff, we brush vertical walls with outstretched hands, watching patterns etched onto the rock by generations of mosses and lichens glide past our fingertips. Next to a spring gurgling from a cleft into the quiet lake, we disembark onto a small sandbar and wander through a maze of monumental blocks of broken sandstone. Scattering, we scramble over boulders, scale cliff faces, investigate caves, and gaze out onto the blue, quiescent lake.

Exploring the bluff, I discover a Lunate Zale Moth pressed snugly against the ceiling of an overhanging ledge and, statuesque on a mossy wall, a handsome Ichneumon Wasp. Both are utterly immobile in the cold morning air.

Reentering our kayaks, we continue paddling along the bluffs, ultimately reaching a big bay with a long, curving beach at its head. Landing once again, we meander across the sandy expanse of the beach, enjoying the unbroken view of land and water meeting at out feet and extending to the horizons.

Embedded within the grander landscape we find small photographic treasures: a purple-banded boulder, a Bidens flower still hosting insect visitors, and a cunningly camouflaged cricket frog.

Time passes and soon it is time to return. Before leaving, I pause to appreciate its beauty of the world around me and my priviledge in visiting its special places. I especially revel in the ability of my kayak to transform watery boundaries into natural pathways, enabling me to enter, explore, and experience a unique dimension of nature. In Arabian folk tales, a magic carpet effortlessly transports its rider to remote, wild and beautiful places filled with marvelous creatures and artifacts. That's the feeling my kayak inspires in me: riding on a magical craft, itself a thing of beauty.

Thanks to Diane Michaud Lowry for photos #2 (kayaker by bluff), #8 (exploring rock maze), #9 (pointing at moth under ledge), and #16 (kayak on shore).

Signs of Fall

2011-10-20T22:01:00.002-05:00

Bur oak trees drop autumn leaves

Shaded dun, bronzed by sun

Sumac leaflets persist crimsonly

Locust leaves droop goldenly

Orchids, gentians blooming late

On ryegrass, foxtail seedhead date

Orange bracket thriving on mossy log

Locust-borer harvests pollen goldenrod

Prairies tawny, colors on lake

Landscapes turning in autumn’s wake

Omaha Observations

2011-10-04T20:23:00.009-05:00

In geographic counterpoint to my visit to Davenport last week on the eastern edge of Iowa, my travels took me this week to the trans-metropolitan city of Omaha-Council Bluffs on the western edge of the state. My trip had the same three elements of herbarium research, fieldwork, and kayaking, but they played out in a much different way. I started in the field, surveying prairies and woodlands in the Loess Hills State Forest for rare plant species.

I found no rare species this time, but along the way I did encounter several interesting plants, insects, and interactions between them. In the woods, I found stem-swelling galls induced by gall midges and serpentine leaf mines created by tiny fly larvae, both occurring on plants of White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima, formerly Eupatorium rugosum). Near the forest edge, a spiny fly landed on my pants, allowing me to snap a photo and later learn on BugGuide that it laid its eggs on moth larvae.

Emerging from the woods onto a hillside prairie, I enjoyed a vista of the scenic landscape and then turned my attention to smaller, closer views of the area surrounding my feet. Peering into the vegetation, I spied the scarlet cones of another species of gall midge on the underside of leadplant leaftlets. My eyes were next drawn to the motion of a walking stick as it traveled fluidly from plant to plant across the top of the swaying vegetation.

Patches of bare soil between clumps of grass also supported insect activity. A slender Ammophila wasp alighted next to a tiny hole in the earth and disappeared into it, only the tip of its tail visible as it worked at excavating a burrow in the dry loess soil; later it will capture and paralyze a caterpillar and stuff it into the burrow as a host for its eggs. Rapid movement by shiny insects darting along an old dirt road then attracted my attention. Their elusive behavior required repeated stalkings, but finally I recognized them as Green-margined Tiger Beetles, predators of smaller insects.

Driving south toward Council Bluffs, I paused in Missouri Valley to see effects of the big, summer-long flood of the snowmelt-swollen Missouri River. When I last visited here in May, the town was bracing for the anticipated flood, exemplified by sandbags surrrounding the McDonald's restaurant. When it came, the flood inundated large acreages of low-lying farmland north, west, and south of town but fortunately missed the town itself.

Returning in September, I drove west toward the Missouri River itself. A few miles later, I entered a barren expanse of whitish mud flats, sheets of still-pooled water, and rows of dead trees standing along fencerows of eerily empty cropfields. I pulled into the entrance of DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, hoping (against fore-knowledge to the contrary) that the gates would have just reopened moments before my arrival, allowing me to take an evening's paddle with my kayak on the oxbow lake formerly known as the DeSoto Bend of the Missouri River. They were, of course, still closed.

Although I cannot show any photos of the current appearance of the oxbow lake, I can post images from previous outings (including some taken during earlier, though less severe high water events):

When the refuge eventually reopens, it will be interesting to re-paddle my previous routes to see how the deer, aromatic sumac, and cottonwood forest fared the flood.

Th final stop of my trip to western Iowa was in the herbarium of the University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO). Although Putnam Museum in Davenport was the last Iowa herbarium that I needed to inventory (see previous posting), the UNO herbarium holds numerous plant specimens collected on the Iowa side of the bi-state border. I slipped across the bridge over the now-subsiding Missouri River and spent a day databasing rare plant specimens professionally preserved in the UNO herbarium, coming up with several leads that I wil need to investigate next summer, among them a locality for the Bigroot Prickly Pear cactus. Rare plants to be pursued, interesting insects to be investigated, flood effects to be observed - an ecologist's work is never dull... or done!

Davenport Discoveries

2011-09-25T23:46:00.023-05:00

Island in the Mississippi River

Three of my favorite activities converged during a series of visits to Davenport, Iowa this summer: sleuthing in the herbarium, botanizing in the field, and kayaking on the Mississippi River. My outings often feature only one of these enjoyable activities, so the interaction of all three was especially rewarding.

View of ths Mississippi River valley from the Putnam Museum (click to enlarge)

An important source of leads for finding rare plants is the collection of plant specimens preserved in herbaria. Past collections can serve as guides to current stations supporting those species. Mindful of that goal, I have been visiting all of the herbaria in Iowa for the past three years to record collections of rare plant species for our Natural Areas Inventory database. The Putnam Museum houses the last Iowa herbarium that I needed to visit. It harbors an historic plant collection developed by early botanists working in the Davenport area between the late 1800s to about 1960, reflecting especially the efforts of Ludwig Guldner, who collected plants extensively and who organized the herbarium for the Davenport Academy of Natural Science.

One of Guldner's most interesting collections (there were many) was of Rose Turtlehead (Chelone obliqua) from along the Mississippi River. At the time, Guldner's locality was the only known locality in Iowa to support the species. He collected his specimens in 1951 and in 1960, but then the population vanished. Despite searches by botanists wishing to rediscover the species, it could not be found again. And because Guldner's locality was the only known site in Iowa, it appeared that the species had vanished from the state as well. Fortunately, the species was discovered in Iowa by botanist Jeffrey Nekola in 1991 in a similar habitat three counties away, but Guldner's locality remained empty of Rose Turtlehead.

Intrigued with the mystery, I noted the available clues of location (Mississippi River), habitat (bottomland forest), and blooming date (September) and resolved to look for it myself. Paddling my kayak and viewing the shoreline of the island from the river, I hoped to add a new perspective to the search. Learning these details in May logically meant that I must return in September because the plants would be more easily spotted when they were flowering, but, oh the wait was maddening!

Fortunately there were many other interesting discoveries in the herbarium. For example, while reviewing collections of Sweet-scented Indian Plantain (Cacalia suaveolens, now Hasteola suaveolens), I encountered a specimen collected in 1914 whose leaves were riddled with fine, serpentine insect mines which I recognized as the work of the larva of a Leaf Blotch Miner Moth (Phyllocnistis insignis). The well-preserved plant specimen impressed me as illustrating the value of biological collections because it documented the presence of the moth species in the Davenport area nearly 100 years ago!

An evening's paddle with my trusty kayak

I returned to Davenport several times in September, visiting the Putnam Museum herbarium during the day and paddling my kayak in the evening. I paddled along the Mississippi River; in places its shoreline was highly urban with views of the Davenport skyline; in others, it was wooded and more natural. Over the course of several trips, I paddled several miles upstream and downstream, scanning riverbanks for glimpses of tall, purple-flowered plants in bottomland forests.

Davenport skyline from the Mississippi River

I found several things of interest as I plied the water and walked on shore, among them the giant acorns of the bottomland variety of bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa var. macrocarpa) littering the forest floor, extensive rafts of miniature mayflies on quiet backwaters, and the ambiance of riverine sunsets. But, alas, no Rose Turtlehead!

Comparison of the large acorns of the bottomland variety of bur oak (macrocarpa)
with the small acorns of the upland variety (olivacea)

Tiny mayflies (Centroptilum)
(Above: male; right: female)

Sunset over the Mississippi River

Although all of my outings in nature are satisfying in their own way, I was disappointed to not find any turtlehead despite searching in promising habitat. Still not wanting to concede defeat, I resolved to try again later. On my final trip to Davenport (my herbarium inventory at the Putnam Museum now complete), I visited a natural area managed by botanist friends who knew of my yearning to find Rose Turtlehead. After an informative tour of their area, they led me into a bottomland forest dominated by stately bur oaks to show me a site of special interest. Glancing through the trees out onto the Mississippi River, I recognized a reach that I had paddled only the night before. Reaching the spot a few steps head of me and grinning from ear to ear, my friends parted like curtains to reveal a patch of Rose Turtlehead in full bloom - rediscovery of Guldner's site after a hiatus of 50 years!

Rediscovered Rose Turtlehead

My visits to Davenport were now complete in every way: the Putnam Museum herbarium records were safely in our database, I had explored new shorelines of the Mississippi River, and one of Iowa's rarest wildflowers had been rediscovered where it had been lost. Discovery and rediscovery - the rewarding results of research, re-searching, and resolution!

Modern Lake, Ancient River

2011-09-04T21:28:00.002-05:00

Bluffs of the Elk Rock Cliffs formed in erosion-resistant sandstone

deposited as sandbars in the riverbed of an ancient stream

Most boaters on Red Rock Lake realize that they are traveling on the old course of the Des Moines River, impounded by the Red Rock Dam constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1969. Few, however, realize that they are also traversing another river, one whose flow ended 300 million years ago. Its ancient riverbed now stands above the modern lake in the form of tall sandstone bluffs admired by passing boaters while its ancient floodplain reclines in low-lying beds of mudstone and shale, its unremarkable topography ignored by nearly everyone.

Low-lying muddy shore

formed in soft shale and siltstone deposited in ancient floodplain

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

During the Pennsylvanian era of geologic history, the river flowed swiftly westward, transporting water and sediment from the high and rising Appalachian Mountains to the proto-Pacific Ocean whose embayment occupied what is now Wyoming and Nebraska. Dropping its sand-rich load at low flow, the river constructed new sandbars on top of previously deposited sandbars and were later buried by still newer sandbars. Loose sand pushed over the top of bars by currents formed slanting cross-beds draped across their downstream ends. Compressed by successive burials and cemented with mineral-rich groundwater, the stack of sandbars ultimately lithified over millenia into sandstone, their downstream-pointing crossbeds enabling modern geologists to deduce the direction of flow of the ancient river. Iron-rich groundwater percolated unevenly through the bedrock, staining the sandstone red in places, becoming the namesake of Red Rock Lake.

Cross-bedded sandstone at the Cliffs of Cordova

Cross-bedded sandstone with iron staining

The floodplain of the ancient river also received successive layers of sediment, but of muddy silt and clay instead of sand, deposited whenever the river overflowed its banks. Forests of now-extinct trees grew prolifically in the swampy flats of the floodplain. As they died, their organic matter decomposed only partially in the anerobic swamp water, eventually turning into coal. Traces of the long-vanished trees, preserved as casts and impressions in the rocks, represent a fossil forest that thrived some 300 million years ago. The low, muddy shores of Red Rock Lake hide the remains of the Pennsylvanian coal swamps where fossils of the ancient trees slowly weathering out of their encasing rocks are sometimes discovered by attentive beachcombers.

Cast (left) and impression (right) of Lepidodendron scale tree

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

Cast (left) and impression (right) of Sigillaria tree

Impressions of seed ferns, scale-trees, and

other Pennsylanian plants in black shale

Cast of Pennsylvanian log weathering out of sandstone.

Fossils are generally not preserved in riverbeds, but this one

likely became buried under a sandbar following a storm

300 million years ago

Kayaking on Red Rock Lake can be a time-bending experience if you appreciate the full range of features displayed along its shoreline, including rugged bluffs and deceptively subtle lowlands. Both represent the ruins of the same ancient landscape of swamp forests flanking a swift river on its way to a nearby sea. To me, it is like exploring the labyrinth of an exhumed temple, discovering relics in newly found chambers. I have found them high on the bluffs where I lifted my boat onto sandstone outcrops and in the soft, wet quicksands of shale-footed beaches, hidden in plain sight. The world is a big and interesting place, made bigger and more interesting by the presence of past worlds alongside the present one!

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

Three stages of kayaker evolution- confessions of a Stage 2 paddler

2011-08-26T20:17:00.001-05:00

Karl was scolding me. A few days earlier, he had seen me paddling on Red Rock Lake; we had waved to each other across the broad expanse of the giant, bluff-lined reservoir on that beautiful fall day. Now, in a conversation in his car, my ears burned and my face flushed with embarrassment mixed with anger over having my shortcomings bluntly pointed out to me. “You were paddling on Iowa’s biggest lake, alone in a remote area, on a windy day in October, without a wetsuit in cold water, without the ability to roll, having never practiced a self-rescue. You are lucky you didn’t capsize. We would have read about you in the disaster section of Sea Kayaker.” Deep down, I knew he was right, but my self-dignity required at least a feeble retort: “But I didn’t capsize. Everything turned out fine. I had a great time.” That only set me up for the final broadside: “That’s the attitude that victims have right up to the moment of their disaster. Then they flip and can’t get back in their boat, or swim to shore, or stay warm, or get rescued. It will happen to you sooner or later if you keep that up.”

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

His words stung because I had always considered myself a capable outdoorsman, having honed wilderness survival skills for many years as a backpacker and hiker. I knew how to make fire, create shelter, and find my way, but during my self-review provoked by Karl’s criticism, I discovered a fatal flaw: my skills were suited to land, not water. I could survive in a terrestrial wilderness, but from a capsized kayak, I would first need to get to land for them to become effective. Karl was right – in my newfound enthusiasm for paddling, I had glossed over the need to learn a new set of water-based survival skills.

I decided to fix that. I purchased a wetsuit and learned to brace and roll. I learned how to self-rescue and how to rescue others. I am now a 3-star BCU paddler, an ACA-certified instructor and trip leader, and a continuing student of paddling safety. Reflecting on my own evolution as a kayaker during the past ten years, I perceive three stages that new paddlers potentially pass through during their progression from novice to expert:

Stage 1: Novices Acting Like Novices

These are self-admitted beginners who engage in conservative paddling in calm, benign, near-shore environments without exposure to the dangers of wind, waves, tides, storms, or isolation. As long as they paddle within these parameters, declining to venture into risky environments or promptly retiring ashore when risky conditions threaten, quiet water skills are usually sufficient. Their self-image as conservative paddlers coincides with the reality of their conservative paddling.

Stage 2: Novices Acting Like Experts

In this stage, enthusiasm for adventurous paddling outpaces the real level of skill possessed by the paddler. These overconfident paddlers venture into places that are – or could easily become - windy and wavy, exposing them to risk because they are unskilled at avoiding, escaping, and recovering from the danger in which they place themselves. The pages of Sea Kayaker: Deep Trouble [Ragged Mountain Press, 1997] are filled with fatal and near-fatal examples: people who paddle without wetsuits but are soon soaked with cold water; who cannot read the water but paddle across rough tidal straits; who start out in benign conditions but are later overwhelmed by wind, waves, and weather. In these cases, their self-image as capable paddlers is not matched by the reality of their unpreparedness. This is where Karl perceived me to be on the day I earned his scolding.

Stage 3: Experts Acting Like Experts
Here is where most of us want to be, paddling at a level where are risks are matched with needed skills and equipment. There is a gradation of “experts” within this broad class, ranging from newly minted adepts to deeply experienced old hands, but a quality they have in common is the ability to balance risk with competence and good judgment. They include the guides we respect and the adventurers who inspire us. They go into to but also return safely from beautiful and sometimes dangerous places.

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

However, even experts can get overconfident or show lapses in judgment, essentially creating a fourth class: 3B, Experts Acting Like Novices, or Smart Paddlers Doing Dumb Things. Examples from Deep Trouble include the experienced kayaker who inadvertently left his floatation bags at camp but still paddled through a narrow sea arch into violent surf, swamping and ultimately sinking his kayak; and another expert who knowingly set out into a developing gale, but even after capsizing in chaotic seas and struggling to shore, he relaunched into the maelstrom, declined assistance from a passing boat, and capsized again, finally signaling for rescue from a second boat and - after the ordeal - blaming his kayak! Like the Stage 2 novice, overconfidence can lead even experts into conditions beyond their ability.

The goal of new paddlers should be to progress from Stage 1 directly to Stage 3 while skipping Stage 2 (overconfident novices) and avoiding overshooting the mark into Stage 3B (overconfident experts). Ways to eliminate Stage 2 are to take kayaking lessons and to practice basic skills before venturing into risky waters. Experts should strive to avoid 3B and to set good examples for novices. It’s really up to you to choose the right path because not everyone will have a friend like Karl who tells them what they need - but don’t want - to hear.

Even though we may not realize it at the time, we all need friends like Karl to provide us with the "tough love" of giving good, but potentially unwanted advice. Let's all work on being safe and helping our fellow paddlers be safe, too. If you're giving advice, try to be helpful, not insulting or condescending. If you're receiving advice, listen and accept its intended message. It might save your life someday.

Apostles again

2011-08-14T17:14:00.007-05:00

I returned to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin for my third kayak-camping expedition here since 2007, this time with nine friends for a four-day outing. After a false start on the previous afternoon (canceled only one minute after launch due to a sudden, but ultimately inconsequential thunderstorm alert from my NOAA weather radio), we lined up our kayaks in Little Sand Bay on a beautiful morning filled with bright sunshine, cool air (a relief from the >100 degree heat index in Iowa), and happy banter, then paddled to the Swallow Point sea caves on Sand Island (video with soundtrack).

Panorama of Swallow Point sea caves (click to enlarge)

The sea caves were as beautiful and intriguing as ever. Many of the rooms easily accommodate a kayak, allowing us to enter into a world of surreal sensation: bobbing on a bouncy surface of wavy water, paddling through portals among interconnected, shadowed chambers filled with red and tan sandstone walls and the deep-chested thumps of collision between ancient bedrock and eternal waves.

Paddling away from the sea caves, we crossed brilliant open straits to York Island, Raspberry Island, and Oak Island. Clear water, sandy lake bottoms, gentle breezes, and unfettered sunshine were among the delightful features we enjoyed this day, augmented by glimpses of wildlife, both large and small: a family of mergansers churning water to escape our unthreatening passage, an out-of-place tree frog on a sea cave pillar, and a daggermoth caterpillar (Acronicta dactylina) devouring an alder leaf next to our lakeside camp.

Plant life crowded the islands with green foliage, bursting with the flowers and fruits of midsummer, including scarlet drupelets of thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) and green, gracefully drooping inflorescences of fringed sedge (Carex crinita) and Wiegand's ryegrass (Elymus wiegandii).

On our Oak Island campsite, I also discovered another fascinating intersection between flora and fauna in the form of the artful mines created by larvae of the Common Aspen Leaf Miner, each created as tunnels in the mesophyll of aspen leaves by a tiny moth larva (Phyllocnistis populiella).

Among my favorite habitats on the islands are sand dune prairies. The sand dune prairies are dry, open grasslands developed on low, windblown hills behind sandy beaches. Marram-grass (Ammophila breviligulata) is the dominant ground cover, interspersed with a variety of sand-loving wildflowers. Among the most abundant and interesting members of sand dune vegetation are reindeer lichens (Cladonia [Cladina] spp.), forming intricately branched, gray-green mounds on sandy spaces between grasses. I stepped carefully between the fragile clumps of lichen as I picked my way across the prairie on Rocky Island.

Marram-grass forms a distinct band on vegetated dunes;
reindeer lichen is a common companion in this community.

Another favorite habitat is the bog, often developing in wet swales behind beach ridges. (Technically speaking, these are actually nutrient-poor fens because they receive groundwater seepage.) Sphagnum moss and ericareous shrubs such as leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) dominate these plant communities, but one of the most distinctive species is pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea), forming clumps of red-tinged, insect-capturing green tubes. As i walked through the Rocky Island bog, I saw that recent rains had replenished the water in the pitchers and that numerous gnat-sized insects had become entrapped.

Bog in wet, peat-filled swale behind beach ridge;
pitcher plants were abundant in this community

Kayaking to these special places introduces a unique element of adventure to the visit. Lacking gills, fins, or wings, terrestrially adapted humans generally paddle the straits between these islands when the lake is benign and the chance of capsizing is low. We certainly enjoyed the periods of calm water during our trip; indeed, it is the only time when exposed crossings to distant destinations like Devil's Island are seriously considered!

Calm water crossing

On this trip, our island-hopping crossings took us as far east as South Twin Island, some 14 miles from out point of origin at Little Sand Bay. We had taken two days to meander our way here but had planned to return the whole distance on our final day. As luck would have it, strong west winds of 20 MPH blew that day, directly obstructing our intended route. We cautiously ventured from the windless enclave of our protected bay into increasingly intense wind and waves. We proceeded into the teeth of the wind and bucked the choppy, oncoming waves (up to three feet in height, intimidating when viewed from the perspective of kayakers whose eyes are two feet above the water!). These are conditions that require both hands on the paddle and both eyes fixed on the sea; finding it impossible to handle my camera, I consequently I have no photos to post of our return passage. Fortunately, one advantage of padding directly into wind and waves is that we were not likely to broach and capsize... unless inattention or lack of skill let us lose control of our bouncing boats.

Rough water

Our bodies and minds focused on the tasks of staying upright and moving forward, we slowly but steadily progressed through the churning lake. Pushing through the waves, we made landfall on the beaches of intervening islands, first at Bear (4 miles), then at Raspberry (3 miles) where I and two fellow paddlers split off from the others to exit the lake a day early. Facing a 7-mile direct crossing to Little Sand Bay, we instead aimed for a closer point along a cliffy mainland shore by Point Detour where we hoped the bluffs would block the wind. The wind and waves were stronger than ever as we set off, so we stayed in tight formation in case one of us needed assistance. Reaching the bluffs, we found a small beach and rested until we felt ready to tackle the final reach.

The bluffs above the beach had indeed blocked the wind, which reasserted itself as we paddled away from shelter. Despite the muscle-wracking slog that remained, I actually enjoyed this final push, watching the rocky, wave-washed shoreline creep slowly past my laboring kayak, each paddle stroke bringing us perceptibly closer to a destination that we knew was now close. Suddenly the coastline curved away and we could see the beach at Little Sand Bay. Now completely unblocked by the bluffs, the wind tried one last time to push us back and tip us over. Experienced by a day of adversity, we adjusted to this final challenge and angled across the waves toward the waiting shore. We topped crest after crest and then glided into quiet water behind the breakwater where carefree swimmers were playing on the beach. I was glad our ordeal with the wind was over, but I am also glad to have experienced it. Our struggle with the wind has now become another memory of our trip, taking its place next to sea caves, dunes, bogs, and sunsets.

BugGuide Gathering

2011-08-04T22:04:00.006-05:00

I participated in another experiential educational event last weekend: the semi-annual BugGuide Gathering, held in Iowa this year. Approximately 30 insect enthusiasts, ranging from amateurs to professional entomologists, came together in Ames from across the country for a 3-day weekend of exploring, photographing, collecting, and simply enjoying a diversity of insect life. Despite the predominance of cropfields of corn and soybeans in central Iowa (and an oppressive heat wave engulfing the region), we investigated a variety of natural habitats including forests, prairies, and wetlands. Photographic results are still coming in, but 600 photos covering nearly as many species have been posted in the days following the event. BugGuide, of course, is the premier insect identification website with an active community of on-line contributors, editors, and experts. Their virtual presence becomes tangible when they leave their computer screens to become "real people" at BugGuide Gatherings as at past events in Minnesota (2007), Tennessee (2008), and Washington (2009).

Some folks photographed insects, others collected them, some did both, and still others just tagged along to enjoy the discovery, scenery, and camaraderie.

Although armed with a relatively simple point-and-shoot camera (and busy serving multiple roles as field trip organizer, navigator, answer man, and field botanist), I managed to photograph many interesting insects; here is a sampling:

Big Sand Tiger Beetle (Cicindela formosa)
in sand prairie

Grasshopper in tallgrass prairie

Common Burrower Mayfly (Hexagenia limbata) on lakeshore

Dancer Damselfly (Argia) in prairie

In addition to enjoying the shapes, sizes, and colors of these interesting creatures, I also sought out the more subtle "sign" they leave on plants, allowing me to detect their indirect presence and multiplying my appreciation of their diversity and abundance. Some of the galls and mines they create are artful in and of themselves, such as the acutely peaked cones of Hackberry Gall Midges and the delicately woven mines of agromyzid flies:

Sharp-pointed green galls of Hackberry Gall Midges
(Celticecis spiniformis, foreground) and the blunt white cylinders
of Hackberry Nipplegall Makers (Pachypsylla celtidismamma,
background) on the ciliate-veined underside of a Hackberry
(Celtis occidentalis) leaf

Agromyzid fly (Ophiomyia quinta) mine
on Zigzag Goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis)

I nearly missed another gall while hurrying through an especially hot and humid forest edge, but a glimpse of small domes of white fuzz on the underside of a bur oak leaf arrested my flight. I am glad that it did because in addition to being a new species for me, it was also the first time it was recorded in Iowa for the BugGuide gallery.

Oak Flake Galls from the cynipid wasp Neuroterus floccosus
on Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa); later inspection
of the close-up at left revealed a tiny wasp on the upper gall

Still other galls had a more grotesque beauty, such as swellings spotted on an an isolated, misshapen flowerhead in a prairie teeming with symmetrical flowerheads. The flower galls on this Yellow Coneflower are the work of gall midges whose presence on this plant species is evidently a first report, the kind of small discovery that fuels a naturalist's curiosity.

Galls in the disc flowers of Yellow Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)
probably induced by gall midges (Asphondylia ratibidae),
previously known only from Texas on Mexican Hat (Ratibida columnifera)

Although insects were the primary focus of the Gathering, we enjoyed pursuing them through a world co-populated with other organisms. I could not resist taking the photographs of especially handsome lichens and mushrooms.

The joy of discovery during the Gathering was enhanced by sharing it with others, whether it concerned a new species, an image on a camera, or an opportunity to get to know each other.

And of course, naturalists love just being out in nature, letting moments of spontaneous beauty surprise and overwhelm us.

Sunset at Doolittle Prairie

Project AWARE: A Watershed Awareness River Expedition

2011-07-18T20:57:00.004-05:00

I participated in Project AWARE again this year, my eighth year for the nine-year history of the week-long event. In addition to participating with my wife Peg in paddling a canoe down the river to pick up trash, I offered guided nature walks in the evening to acquaint folks with the flora, fauna, and places we encountered along the way. Many educational programs are integrated into the AWARE experience, but it is best known for its tremendous success in cleaning rivers of unsightly and unnatural accumulations of trash ranging from scattered bits of plastic to large deposits of rusty metal.

Something lies beneath...

Groping for the bottom edge

Tug of war with embedded junk

A typical day begins with paddling away from the launch site while scanning the shoreline for any unnatural objects. Sometimes they are obvious as heaps of junk on the banks but often their presence is revealed only by glimpses of submerged shapes. Spotting junk triggers a quick turnaround of the canoe, wading into the flowing water to evaluate the size of the job, and - if large - beckoning additional paddlers to the challenge. A team of people quickly materializes and sets to working probing, prodding, pulling, and pushing the junk whose years-long second career of obstructing the riverbed is about to end. After a flurry of idea-hatching, the group settles on a plan and gets to work.

Loading big junk onto "canoemarans" for paddling to take-out point...
no trash (well, almost no trash) is too big...

...or too small!

Shovels, ropes, helpful hands and strong backs soon extricate the junk from the river. It is then loaded onto a fleet of waiting canoes, each accepting their share of the bounty and then whisking away toward a downstream drop-off point. Some pieces of junk are far too large for a single canoe, but this problem is resolved by lashing two canoes together to form a primitive, but incredibly stable catamaran that is guided downstream by its foursome paddlers.

Part of one day's haul

At the drop-off points, offloaded junk quickly grows to enormous piles sorted by material. Tires here, metal there, with still other subsets for cans, bottles, plastic, and miscellaneous others. A goal of Project AWARE is not simply to remove junk from the river for re-deposit in a landfill, but to reclaim and recycle as much of the material as possible.

After finishing a day of paddling and trash-removing, volunteers camp overnight along the river; this year, camping was provided by the Fayette County Conservation Board at Gouldsburg Park and Gilbertson Park, by the City of Elkader at its municipal park, and by the Clayton County Conservation Board at Motor Mill Park and Osborne Park. Camaraderie developed during the day and from previous years extends into the campground. It's like sharing a giant campsite with a hundred of your closest friends!

Reminders that we are moving through a natural habitat abound. Deer, muskrats, eagles, kingfishers, herons, sandpipers, waxwings, fish, mussels, crayfish, dobsonflies, cottonwoods, boxelders, and sedges are among the most obvious. Many others are bypassed, unrecognized or unseen by the busy paddlers, but that is one of the functions of my evening nature walks: helping eager volunteers learn more about the natural world through which we are passing.

While scouting sites for my evening nature walks one day this week, I discovered a small population of Glade Mallow (Napaea dioica), a state-listed "Species of Special Concern" that inhabits riparian areas in northeast Iowa.

Glade Mallow

We also met organisms from the distant past: trilobites, cephalopods, and corals weathered out of 375 million-year old Ordovician rocks bordering the river. Dr. Kata McCarville of Upper Iowa University provided morning orientations about the rocks and fossils we would encounter on each day's upcoming float, prompting us to watch for them as we plucked trash from sandbars, bluffs, and riverbanks. I was fortunate to find a beautiful trilobite fossil as I went ashore for a lunch break on a gravel bar.

Trilobite preserved in Ordovician mudstone, found on gravel bar.

Thanks to geologist Brian Witzke for identfying this as
Anataphrus vigilans from the Elgin Member of the Maquoketa Formation

At the end of the week, Project AWARE had lived up to its name, raising awareness of the beauty and biodiversity of the river, both among participants and observers who watched from bridges, backyards, and boat landings or who saw its story told in newspapers and on televisions. Along the way, its 400 volunteers removed over 600 tires and over 30 tons of junk, letting the water flow over a more completely natural riverbed once again. Future paddlers will glide over a river that is now a bit wilder and more scenic; the river and its wildlife will be appreciated more widely by a public more aware of its values.

Six to Sixty: a "natural" progression

2011-07-03T23:03:00.017-05:00

The arithmetic speaks for itself: 2011 - 1951 = 60. Although I don't feel any different than I did yesterday, last year, or a quarter-century ago, reaching sixty years of age seems like a good time for retrospection. Looking back, I am glad that I followed through on an early fascination with nature and adventure. In Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv noted the importance of outdoor childhood playspots in building appreciation of nature as an adult - that certainly resonates with my experience! Although I did not think of myself as a naturalist or adventurer when I was six, my ready access to a woodlot at the end of my suburban street helped shape my familiarity with and yearning for outdoor places the rest of my life. Those childhood exposures to trees, forests, hills, swamps, and ponds and my adventures with exploring, climbing, hiding, running, and fort-building were the beginnings of a natural progression leading to my dual love of nature interpretation and outdoor adventure as an adult.

1951-1974 Michigan

Obtaining an old box camera while in junior high, I started photographing natural scenery in bits of undeveloped land near my neighborhood. Color film was too expensive for my allowance back then, so my photos were nearly all black-and-white. "Why are there so many pictures of trees?," my mother would ask when I showed my growing photo albums to the family. "They're just interesting," I would shrug. Their shapes, sizes, and artful poses appealed to my sense of aesthetics; the wild places along the undeveloped flanks and floodplains of the Clinton River where they grew in abundance elicited my curiosity.

My first vegetation map, 1968

A breakthrough came in my sophomore year in high school. Mr. Stewart, our biology teacher, led the class on a field trip to a local creek. He reached into the water and drew out a stringy green ball of algae. "Ewwww, scum!" was the universal reaction of the students, but he patiently teased apart the strands, plucked a segment, and placed it under the field microscope he had brought along. "Look at that!", he instructed. One by one, the students peered into the scope. Most looked up questioningly: "so what am supposed to be seeing?", they asked, obviously disinterested. My turn: I looked into the barrel and gasped at the stunning and unexpected beauty of green ribbons of chloroplasts spiralling within curving, translucent tubes of magnified cells. So much order and pattern hidden within the shapeless, scummy mass pulled from the creek! "What is that?", I asked, amazed. "Spirogyra", he answered. I was amazed for the second time in succession. "It has a name?", I asked incredulously. Suddenly the concept of order in nature, of species having identities, came crashing into my brain. I was hooked.

I jumped deeper into field biology by attending a natural history summer camp, quickly learning to recognize insects, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Our instructor instilled a sense of respect for the species we studied ("It's not 'what is it?', it's 'who is it?' They have names!") and for the habitats that sustained them ("Roll that log back into place after you look under it - how would you like a giant to rip off the roof of your house?"). Irruptions of June beetles, the territorial patrolling of dragonflies, and the secretive behavior of salamanders were sources of delighted discovery. Back home, I set up my own "trapline" of peanut butter-baited jars buried to their rims to serve as pitfalls, marveling at the diversity of shapes and colors of the insects that I would catch and release. Back in school, Mr. Stewart awarded me the school medal for biology. I was as proud of that as an athlete for a varsity letter. I still have it!

Graduating from high school in 1969, I enrolled as a biology major at nearby Oakland University and participated in a campus gathering for the first Earth Day in the spring of 1970. After exhausting the small number of ecology courses in the Biology Department, I became interested in animal behavior, ethology, and somewhat anomolously, psychology. I traveled to Bermuda when my ethology professor (in the Psychology Department) took a small group to the biological station there, where I studied the social organization of seashore-dwelling rock crabs. I also volunteered as a naturalist at the nearby Cranbrook Institute of Science. The most significant event of my time at OU, however, was a unique experience (through the newly created Environmental Studies Program) to participate in a six-week, 150-mile, natural history-oriented backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The breath-taking scenery, close contact with an amazing array of mountain wildflowers and wildlife, and the exciting challenge of moving through a mountainous landscape convinced me that I must find a way to make a career of working in the natural environment.

Sierra Nevada six-week backpack trip, 1971

My first opportunity with gainful employment as a naturalist came in the summer of 1973 when I was hired as a camp counselor for Falling Creek Camp in Tuxedo, North Carolina. I taught natural history, started a camp insect collection, and led field trips into the wooded hills. The camp was strategically located near Pisgah National Forest and the Blue Ridge Parkway, enabling me to spend my weekly time-offs exploring the peaks and coves of the Appalachian Mountains. Many adventures were packed into those 36-hour liberties, including hiking on the Appalachian Trail, climbing the Devil's Courthouse, and backpacking in the Shining Rock Wilderness. It was a great summer, one I wished to repeat.

Camp counselor/naturalist, 1973

It was not to be, however. Wishing to enter graduate school but lacking scholarships or sponsors, I decided to work at a "real job" from which I could earn money to pay my educational expenses. Reluctantly turning down an offer from the camp to return, I found a factory job on the outskirts of Detroit. Working as a laboratory technician, I prepared mixtures of chemical powders as part of an assembly line for the construction of industrial grinding wheels. For a year, I spent day after day indoors, my only view of the outdoors a parking lot in the midst of an urban industrial park. I drove a crowded freeway home, arriving late and tired. Despite weekend respites with birdwatching, the net effect was dispiriting. I wondered if I had made the right choice.

Industrial grind, 1974

My year passed. I resigned from my job, determined to move on to grad school. On my last day, several of the guys with presented me with a souvenir: a grinding wheel etched with my name. All encouraged me to follow through on my plan to return to school. "We're working men who will spend the rest of our lives right here," one said, "but you have a special dream, go out and make us proud." An unexpected lump in my throat, I walked out the door for the final time.

1975-1978 Illinois

My new ID

In the Okefenokee Swamp

I took a post-factory, pre-grad school fling via canoe through the Okefenokee Swamp and then entered Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where I studied forest ecology. My research project in southern Illinois was part of a larger team effort to characterize the structure and function of oak-hickory forests. Similar research in various forest types was being conducted across the country, fueled in part by the controversy over clear-cutting that had started a decade earlier at the Monongahela National Forest. Within our SIU forestry research group headed by Dr. George Weaver, we studied different components of the ecosystem; mine focused on nutient cycling, particularly the part of the nutrient cycle in which biomass and minerals returned to the forest floor through litterfall (the annual shedding of deciduous leaves and the more intermittent falling of large branches).

Master's thesis, 1978

Ozark Hills, southern Illinois

Taking a summer course in field ecology at the YBRA camp in Red Lodge, Montana taught by Dr. Phil Robertson led to another breakthrough when I discovered, much to my surprise, that I was better at botany than zoology! Montana also captured my heart as well as my mind with its spacious, wild landscapes of mountains and plains, forests and prairies. After completing that summer course as a student, I returned twice more as a teaching assistant. Now in love with the Yellowstone country straddling the Montana/Wyoming line, I also returned a third time for a summer job with the Shoshone National Forest, backpacking with my friend Kent Houston into the North Absaroka Wilderness and ranging widely across its rugged landscape to obtain field data for forest fire modelling, map its vegetation, and incidentally gather scat for a research team studying grizzly bears. A decade later, the big Yellowstone fires of 1988 swept across this landscape; hopefully our data helped managers predict the fire's behavior!

1978-1982 Wyoming

As I neared completion of my master's thesis at SIU, my advisors urged me to pursue a doctorate in ecology. Eager to return west, I looked for opportunities for ecological research in the Rocky Mountains and was fortunate to join the research team of Dr. Dennis Knight, a reknown vegetation ecologist at the University of Wyoming. My new research topic was centered on lodgepole pine forests, a forest type covering immense areas of mountainous land. Once again, an underlying goal of our research was to characterize forest growth and nutrient cycling so as to better understand the effects of forest management. I spent several summers in the Medicine Bow National Forest gathering diverse data sets ranging from the weights of large trees towering over the forest floor to the numbers of tiny roots beneath it. Combined with dendrochronological study of tree rings, my dissertation integrated all of this information into a model of how forests grow and cycle nutrients over hundreds of years.

Doctoral dissertation, 1982

Although lodgepole pine research figured largely in my time in Wyoming, it was by no means my only interest. My base in Laramie became a launching pad for adventurous trips to mountains and plains both near and far, including Vedawoo State Park, the Snowy Range, the Encampment River Wilderness, the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Bridger Peak, Yellowstone Park, and Canyonlands National Park. Early in my time at UW, I jumped at the chance spend a month in the tropical forests of Panama when invited to volunteer as a field assistant for Dennis Knight at Barro Colorado Island studying forest succession and for Ron Hartman in Darien Province exploring cloud forests for new plant species.

Barro Colorado Island, Panama, 1978

One June weekend in 1979, I traveled across the Medicine Bow Mountains for the Woodchoppers Jamboree in the tiny logging town of Encampment. I intended to attend a square dance, camp nearby, and explore the adjoining national forest the next day. By prior arrangement, I met my "date" there - she had driven over from Laramie with her boyfriend, who didn't square-dance and who was happy to have me serve as her dance partner, getting him off the hook! After several sets, she and her boyfriend went off to see the rest of the jamboree, leaving me to find another dance partner. Across the floor, I spied an attractive woman who seemed to be partnerless at that moment, so I asked her to dance. Her name was Peggy West, a local schoolteacher (originally from upstate New York and having worked in New Mexico) who lived on a nearby ranch. She liked square-dancing, nature, Wyoming, and hiking in the mountains. Hmm, we seem to have common interests! We began seeing each other regularly, fell in love, and married exactly one year later: June 15, 1980.

Wedding invitation - can you see our initials woven together in the mountains?
(John A. Pearson and Margaret M. West), designed by Jed Miller

Wedding in Encampment, Wyoming, 1980 (photo by Susan Tweit)

1983-1984 South Dakota

After graduating from UW in 1982, I landed my first job as a professional ecologist with the South Dakota Natural Heritage Program, then a cooperative venture between The Nature Conservancy and the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks. (It is now part of the SDGFP Wildlife Diversity Program.) Based in Pierre, I spent two wonderful years working closely with talented coworkers (particularly botanist Dave Ode) to inventory the natural diversity of the state. I was thrilled to work in iconic natural areas such as Sica Hollow State Park (location of the state's westernmost sugar maple-basswood forest), to participate in the rediscovery of McIntosh Fen in the Black Hills National Forest (home to rare willows), and to spearhead the establishment of the Turtle Butte Natural Area (location of the state's easternmost ponderosa pine forest). We assembled the first comprehensive list of the state's rare flora and fauna.

At home, Peg and I now had two young children, Beth and Will. For our first year in South Dakota, we lived north of Pierre in a small subdivision surrounded by expansive, flat wheatfields. That rental unit was sold out from under us, so we moved to another in Fort Pierre, which is located across the Missouri River from Pierre. Our house there was a small farmhouse on the far outskirts of town, bordered by dry, prairie-covered hills flanking the Bad River. One day as Peg and the kids sauntered across our tiny yard, Beth stopped, pointed at her feet, and said "Look, Mom, snake!". It was a baby rattlesnake about 6 inches long. Peg promptly scooped it into a jar for later relocation by me into the nearby Fort Pierre National Grassland.

Back at work, our young Natural Heritage Program was unfortunately facing extinction from lack of funding and during a particularly bleak economic moment, I was compelled to leave the state to find sustainable employment and support for my own young family. We had enjoyed our time in South Dakota.

1985-2011 Iowa

We moved to Iowa when I was hired by the Iowa Conservation Commission, which became the Iowa Department of Natural Resources a year later. My role in Iowa was nearly identical to the one I had enjoyed in South Dakota: an ecologist for the state Natural Heritage Program (known as the "Natural Areas Inventory" here). There was a crucial difference: the Iowa program was now institutionalized within the DNR, having successfully made the transition from its initial and temporary support from The Nature Conservancy. I set to work inventorying the state's natural communities.

One of my earliest projects was working with botanist coworker Mark Leoschke to find fens, rare bog-like wetlands harboring many threatened and endangered species. Prior to our inventory, only a few fens were known in the state, most of which, like the the famous Silver Lake Fen, were in northwest Iowa. Our multi-year effort to track down new fens was very rewarding, yielding over a hundred sites with a plethora of rare plants. In addition to finding and describing fens, we also worked to protect them from destruction by alerting landowners to the special natural areas that they owned. We led field trips, organized seminars, and helped produce outreach materials to educate people about fens and why they should be saved.

photo by Stacey Snyder

One of the best fens we found during our statewide inventory, "Becky's Fen", initially seemed on the brink of destruction, but by working respectfully with the farmer owning the land, we found a way to place it under permanent protection with a conservation easement. Numerous field trips since have introduced hundreds of people to this beautiful and biodiverse place. On a personal level, it has been gratifying for me to come to know the Kauten family and to now count them as friends. One of my favorite photos is of me standing with Rebecca (the daughter who championed protection of the fen) at the sign marking the edge of the fen, beaming a shared happiness.

photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

Reaching my 50th birthday in 2001, I surprised myself by discovering new interests: kayaking, insects, lichens, and creative writing. Inspired by presentations at the annual "Paddlesports Expo" (organized by CanoeSport Outfitters in my local community of Indianola) of kayaking trips to stunningly beautiful places, I joined the Central Iowa Paddlers for outings on local streams and lakes and was soon leading trips of my own, combining paddling and natural history interpretation as we explored state parks and preserves along waterways; these tours have been very well-received by fellow paddlers.

Insects have become new interest, thanks to the influence of fellow bug-lover MJ Hatfield, the Iowa Insects Mailing List, and the BugGuide identification website. In a sense, this was a rediscovery for me of "the path not taken" following my interest in insects as a high school student 40 years earlier! Starting out by posting many ID requests for my insect photos, I have now become an editor for BugGuide, where I bring my botanical expertise to bear on insect identifications that require recognition of host plants.

Hover Fly

Mason Wasp

Sweat Bee

I always had a liking for lichens, but it was not until I took a course in Bryophytes and Lichens from Dr. Jim Colbert at Iowa State University that my interest finally moved beyond general appreciation into active study. Shortly after completing his course, I worked closely with lichenologist Nancy Wilson and photographer Diane Michaud Lowry to establish the Ledges Lichen Trail in Ledges State Park in central Iowa. I also began collecting specimens during my travels to natural areas throughout the state. Most recently, I have started contributing my collections to the Great Plains Lichen Flora project.

Mint Moonglow Lichen

Scientific and technical writing has been a mainstay of my career for many years in the form of innumerable reports, papers, articles, analyses, management plans, letters, memos, and emails. Two of my best efforts were involved with the creation of the current Guide to Iowa's State Preserves and a chapter on the effect of flooding on natural communities for the book A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008.

Creative writing is therefore a new venue for me, one that arose recently and spontaneously. Somewhat inexplicably, I felt the need to write about what the natural world means to me on personal and emotive levels. It was as if bottled-up feelings about nature finally found release after years of relegation to deeply private corners of my mind as I focused on fulfilling my occupation's demand for purely objective exposition. My first ventures onto this uncertain ground were tentative because I worried that readers would find them uninteresting - or worse: silly sentimentalism. One of my earliest attempts was a narrative of a solo kayak outing on Red Rock Lake on the day after Thanksgiving:

"Another clear, calm, mild day for kayaking on Red Rock Reservoir. Temperate days in November like this one are like the last grains of sand disappearing down the narrows of the seasonal hourglass. Winter will soon fill the void. Today is a grain of time that I will spend on the lake...."

I submitted it to the newsletter of the local paddling club. Several weeks later, I received an email from a canoeist whom I knew only slightly from a trip over a year before. "JOHN!", she wrote, "I enjoyed your holiday treat, the story of your Red Rock adventure. You are definitely a writer at heart, keep up the good work. It has been a long time since I was on the water, so it was a wonderful escape for a moment... for just another grain of time..." Encouraged, I continued writing with this new and unexpected expressiveness. When I submitted Red Rock Reflections on the Windsong to the Wild Iowa Essay Forum in 2006, I was stunned to learn that it had won an award! In 2008, I was honored to be invited to write an essay to accompany the beautiful nature photography of Linda and Robert Scarth in Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa. In yet another unexpected development, I started writing this blog in November 2010.

Having reached sixty years of age with over 25 years of service to the Iowa DNR, I am frequently asked if I have plans to retire. "Not at the moment" is my current reply, but I am certainly aware of the growing indications that my time is approaching: age, seniority, retirements of long-time coworkers, and the increasing frequency of inquiries about my retirement plans. On the other hand, I enjoy my work and am engaged in several projects that I wish to finish. Intellectually, I know that something, someday will cause a shift in the constellation of my stars, but right now I don't know what that will be. In the meantime, I'll keep on doing what I'm doing. It just comes naturally.

photo by Eric Ribbens

Nature in Cubeville

2011-06-26T22:56:00.009-05:00

Stll life on my cubicle desktop:
earthen turret of cicada nymph, bur oak twig with bullet galls,
wax replica of morel mushroom, flash drive, coffee cup/pen holder

Conservation work is not always conducted in the great outdoors. To be effective, fieldwork must become paperwork so that it can be shared, remembered, and used effectively. Field biologists look upon paperwork as a necessary evil, akin to dental appointments, traffic lights, and election campaigns. Their sense of indoor sacrifice is intensified when they conduct their paperwork in overpopulated complexes of those undersized workspaces known as "cubicles", the cookie-cutter units of the communal workplace which the Dilbert comic strip has satirically named "Cubeville".

My office is a cubicle in the Wallace State Office Building on the Iowa State Capitol campus. In fact, the Capitol itself is just across the street.

The Iowa State Capitol Building

Wallace State Office Building
(note reflection of the Capitol in its gold windows)

Check out my office with me on this virtual journey from the street...

through the lobby...

up the stairs (I don't use elevators - electricity-burners! - if I am carrying no load)...

and through the maze to my cubicle...

As you can see, my office is a small cubicle in a maze of many small cubicles that could easily be the physical backdrop of any Dilbert episode. Although I joke about the "cubeville" aspect of my workplace, it is actually a pleasant place to work because it is located in the headquarters of the Department of Natural Resources and is filled with people earnestly working to sustain and improve prairies, forests, streams, wildlife habitat, water quality and many other features of the natural environment.

And although I cannot spend all of my time outdoors, I receive many opportunities to enjoy nature within the confines of my cubicle when people send me photographs of plants to identify. For me, it's a kind of virtual field trip! Here are several examples:

Joe Zito of Cedar Rapids posted this photo of a brilliantly red inflorescence blooming in a prairie restoration at the Indian Creek Nature Center. I recognized it as Scarlet Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea), an uncommon species occurring in both rocky and mesic prairies in eastern Iowa. I last saw it growing on a rocky prairie opening several years ago, but who can forget such a distinctive flower? (Botanically speaking, the red "petals" are actually colored bracts subtending the "real" flowers, which are the less conspicuous, slender green tubes between the bracts.)

District Forester Bruce Blair relayed this photo to me on behalf of Mari Wolter, who owns forested bluffland along the Mississippi River in northeast Iowa. She recognized it as a honeysuckle, but wondered if it was an invasive species that should be controlled. Many honeysuckles, particularly introduced shrubs like Lonicera maackii, are indeed invasive and are targeted for removal in woodland restoration efforts. However, I was able to assure her that this one was Grape Honeysuckle (Lonicera reticulata), a native vine that posed no threat to the natural woodland community.

Photographer Dick Lutz is constructing a website about plants in the Iowa City area and needed to know what this abundant, but unshowy species was. Having seen it innumerable times as I traipsed through the forests of Iowa, I recognized it as Honewort (Cryptotaenia canadensis), a common forb throughout the state. In the upper left corner of Dick's photo, you can see a close-up of its tiny white flowers and a visiting honeybee.

When my new cell phone emitted an odd trilling that I had never heard before, I fumbled with buttons and discovered that I had just received my first-ever MMS message. It contained the above photo, an unfamiliar phone number, and the text "John, what is this?". The sender proved to be Jeff Korsmo of the Howard County Conservation Board, who was searching for the rare Glade Mallow (Napaea dioica) in a riparian forest. Knowing he was in suitable habitat and that the plant sported palmate leaves, he had encountered this likely candidate and needed confirmation. Unfortunately for his search, this was not the rare Glade Mallow but a common Black Snakeroot (Sanicula). Happily, he spotted Glade Mallow nearby.

While visiting my office, Luke Wright of the DNR Rivers Program tried to describe a plant to me that he had seen while constructing a portage trail around a lowhead dam on the Iowa River at Iowa Falls in Oak Park. Experience has taught me that it is nearly impossible to identify plants from verbal descriptions, so I asked him to send me a photo. He relayed my request to Mary Hyland (who lives near the park) and she cooperatively emailed several images to me, including this one. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words! I immediately recognized it as Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense), a native forest species forming large colonies with heart-shaped leaves in moist, shaded woods.

Not all of the identifications I have made have been of plants or even of photographs. Earlier this week, Jimmie Thompson of Ames posted this note on the Iowa Native Plants Listserv:

"I had an interesting large flying bug bounce off my chest today at the Pohl Preserve. I picked it up off the ground, put it in a baggy, and brought it home. I am a little curious as to what species it is and what it's abundance is in Iowa. It is one of those jointed beetles that makes a clicking noise. It is 1 1/4 inches long, black with sparse gray mottling on it's wings, and two large, black ovals surrounded with gray rings that look like eyes on it's front joint. With the big ovals that look like eyes, it looks very ferocious for its size."

Contrary to my experience that it nearly impossible to identify a plant (or insect) from verbal description, Jimmie's description stirred a memory of an insect that I had photographed two years ago in Lake Ahquabi State Park. I had posted it on BugGuide, where it was identified as the Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus oculatus). When I extracted that photo from my files and forwarded it to Jimmie, he replied "Yes, that is exactly the beetle I found today!"

All of the people I helped with their identifications were very appreciative, but I have learned from all of these interactions as well. Their photos and inquiries took me on a virtual journey across the eastern half of the state and showed me things I could not have seen from my cubicle, briefly bringing the great outdoors into my small indoors.

Glimpses of the Southern Great Lakes

2011-06-17T21:36:00.002-05:00

In June 2004, I traveled from Iowa to Detroit, Michigan to attend a nephew’s wedding. I drove my car and carried my sea kayak on the roof, intending to visit several places along the Great Lakes on my way there and back. I had visited the Indiana Dunes east of Chicago on several previous occasions, but always on foot, never by kayak, and was eager to see them from a new perspective. My kayaking destinations in Michigan were drawn from “Between Land and Lake: Michigan’s Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands”, a guidebook by Dennis Albert, an ecologist with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory. In addition to describing and explaining the diverse geological and ecological settings of wetlands in Michigan, this informative book identified specific localities along the coastlines of Lake Michigan, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Erie where natural areas could be visited, a service that enabled me to move beyond armchair appreciation of deltas, drowned river mouths, and sand-spit embayments by experiencing them in personal adventures. My route first brought me to Indiana Dunes on the open, wave-racked southern shore of Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana, then east to the delta of the St. Clair Flats on Lake St. Clair (the little Great Lake between Lake Huron and Lake Erie) north of Detroit, south to Erie Marsh in North Maumee Bay on western Lake Erie in the extreme southeast corner of Michigan, and ending with a second visit to the Indiana Dunes during my return to Iowa.

Indiana Dunes (Part 1) - The black asphalt road climbs over big dunes of golden sand partially covered with green Marram-grass and finally descends to the broad sandy beach where Lake Michigan sprawls bluely to the horizon. Stopping my car at the cul-de-sac at Porter Beach where windblown sand spills onto the pavement, I peer through a throng of sunbathers and swimmers at the water’s surface. It is roiled with waves, but from this distance, it looks like something I can handle. I glance at the NO PARKING sign and, leaving the engine running, quickly unfasten my kayak from the roof and dump it under the sign. I drive the car back up the road a block to the public parking lot and, having already donned my wetsuit at the campsite, walk back to the beach, arms laden with an unwieldy load of paddles, PFD, sprayskirt, paddle float, bilge pump, water bottle, drybags, and camera. Glancing at the descending sun and my watch, I dress quickly, climb into the cockpit, and knuckle-walk the kayak directly into the surf until it floats free of the beach. Grabbing my paddle, I struggle to keep the bow pointed into the oncoming waves, which threaten to shove it aside and push the kayak back onto the beach, broadside.

I break free of the shoreline surf and paddle past the buoys marking the edge of the swimming area. The choppy waves rocking my kayak are less than two feet high, but their high frequency prevents the boat from recovering from the rise and fall of one before the next arrives. A brisk wind from the southwest crosses the waves at a right angle and pushes against my stern, attempting to bully the kayak to into facing it. I paddle firmly against the wind and waves to maintain a gently rotating perspective of the scenery. Agitated by these conflicting forces, my kayak bucks like a bewildered colt. To the north, the open vastness of Lake Michigan fills my view. To the south, a line of rugged sand dunes stretches eastward toward Michigan City and westward to the smoggy, industrial complex of Gary. The dunes are naked sand on their lake-facing side but cloaked with dense green forest beyond the undulating ridgeline. Eastward, the undeveloped shoreline is contained within Indiana Dunes State Park. Beyond the teeming swimming beach, a long reach of open shoreline with no bouys, buildings, or people beckons. Westward, the dunescape is broken with cottages perched on hilltops amid fragmented forest.

I turn to the east and begin paddling, but the knowledge that I will soon need to return through contrary wind and waves in a gathering twilight holds my urge to paddle aggressively in check. I make it only slightly past the end of the easternmost buoys to the edge of the pristine shoreline before I reluctantly stop, gaze wistfully at the remaining reach, and return westward to my point of beginning. Maybe on my way back to Iowa....

St. Clair Flats - I drive through 20 miles of congested traffic between Mt. Clemens and Algonac to reach the ferry for Harsen’s Island, a large island in the St. Clair Flats, a huge, freshwater delta formed at the mouth of the St. Clair River where it enters Lake St. Clair. The ferry ride across the North Channel- a wide, deep waterway that separates the delta from the mainland- costs $5 and takes one minute. It is the only way to get a car onto the island. Once there, I drive on a bermed roadway past cottages and dense stands of tall Phragmites for an additional 5 miles to a DNR boat access. The tall reedgrass frames narrow waterways that serve as motorboat routes to open bays and the main lake. I park in the grassy lot with a few other vehicles, unload my kayak, and paddle toward Fisher Bay, the head of a large horseshoe-shaped embayment formed by two arms of marshy ground extending into Lake St. Clair.

To reach Fisher Bay, I must cross the Middle Channel, a deep, wide waterway that cuts through the interior of the delta. Like the North Channel, it heavily used by motorboats traveling to and from the main lake. Bobbing in the wakes of passing boats, I wait like a jay-walker at an urban street for an opening in the high-speed traffic before darting to the opposite shore. I make my way through canals past clusters of cottages on small islands armored with iron seawalls and finally emerge onto Fisher Bay through a narrow channel bordered by extensive beds of bulrush. Apprehensive of a collision with nearby speedboats that I hear but cannot see, I creep cautiously beyond the increasingly sparse vegetation. At the outer edge of the bulrush bed, Fisher Bay comes into focus as an oval expanse of open water rimmed by marshland. I continue paddling into the bay, anticipating that I will soon have to veer away from the deep water exploited by motorboats, but gradually realize as I extend my exposure that the open water is too shallow for them. The sandy bottom is less than 3 feet under my hull even in the center of the bay. Motorboats can confidently speed only within the deep channels dredged through the marshy edges. I am safer here, protected by shoals and long sight distances, than I was in the alleyways of the marsh channels.

I paddle across the bay to another channel through the delta, the Chenal A Bout Rond, whose French name (roughly translating to “channel with a round end”, probably alluding to the lagoon of Fisher Bay at the end of the waterway) has been abbreviated and Americanized to the “Sny”. Like the North and Middle channels, it is a major thoroughfare for motorboats. I avoid the main channel by paddling on the outer edge of the marsh, separated from the boat traffic by a wide band of bulrushes. The motorboats are confined to the linear confines of the deep channel, but a trio of jet-skis suddenly bursts across my path, buzzing like angry hornets and spewing high roostertails of white water as they zip through narrow channels and across the edges of bulrush beds. As the jet-skis weave crazily through the marsh surrounding me, it is clear that they are adapted to the same shallow-water habitat as my kayak. A collision seems inevitable due to my invisibility below the skyline of vegetation and the fact that their sight distances are rendered myopic by high speed and inattention. I hold my paddle vertically over my head and wave it above the level of the vegetation in an effort to alert the jet-skis to my presence. I need to get out of here. I wait until they roar past me, then bolt out into open water still roiled by their wakes. I paddle hard until I am beyond their frenetic circle of activity. Only after their buzzing fades far behind my stern do I relax and return to paddling slowly along the edge of the marsh.

My newfound quiet is short-lived as I am discovered by terns that are nesting in the bulrush beds. Their strident alarm calls summon an ever-growing flock of agitated birds, including individuals of two species (Common Tern and Black Tern). Not wishing to disturb them by lingering, I paddle farther along the marsh. However, these mile-long bulrush beds are evidently one large nesting colony and my passage only adds new terns to the mob, now numbering over a hundred chattering birds. Bolder terns swoop menacingly at me, but apparently mistake the bow of my kayak for my head as they strafe me. I have a close view of the dive-bombing birds as they harry my bow as I hurry along. The attacks subside when I reach the far end of the bulrush beds. Satisfied that they have driven off the intruder, the terns return victoriously to their nests.

Pausing for lunch, I remain on board (there is no solid land here), letting the kayak drift with the wind into the bulrushes. Two species of bulrush- hardstem (Scirpus acutus) and threesquare (S. americanus)- form separate patches in the marsh mosaic. The wind continues to blow my kayak deeper into the bulrush bed until the increasing density of stems slows my drift. Flotsam of dead bulrush stems from last year’s generation forms thick rafts here, beyond the normal reach of wind and waves. Judging from the abundance of downy feathers strewn on the surface of the rafts, the terns evidently rest and breed here. As if to prove the point, a tern suddenly flies up from a nearby raft and begins its territorial chattering as I drift closer. I paddle slowly out of the bulrushes and back into the open bay.

Having paddled three-quarters around the oval perimeter of Fisher Bay, I need only to strike across its open mouth to return to my point of beginning by the cottage canals. Before doing that, I want to paddle slightly out into the still-bigger, more open expanse of Goose Bay, which then empties into the main body of Lake St. Clair. The band of bulrushes between Fisher Bay and Goose Bay grows progressively thinner and sparser as I paddle beyond the mouth. The skyline of Detroit, 30 miles away, comes into view on the southwestern horizon. I absorb the vista, then turn around and make my way toward the narrowest crossing point. I pass an armada of twenty mute swans cruising along the outer edge of the marsh. I wait for a gap between passing motorboats and paddle across the strait.

When I returned to the parking lot, it was crammed with trucks and trailers. A DNR conservation officer preparing to launch a skiff told me that today was “Jobbie Nooner Day”. In what has become an annual event dreaded by law enforcement agencies, a thousand people in hundreds of motorboats converge upon Gull Island, a large barren sandbar on the outer edge of the delta, to party boisterously into the night. The giant party has developed an unsavory reputation for drunkenness, violence, accidents, and injuries. The conservation officer grumbled that his duty today would involve “watching over a bunch of drunken fools in high-powered boats” and that numerous law enforcement agencies- including the County Sheriff, State Patrol, Michigan DNR, U.S. Coast Guard, and Ontario Provincial Police - would participate in policing the unruly event with boats and aircraft. In fulfillment of the CO’s prediction, the next day’s newspaper reported that many people had indeed been arrested for operating boats while intoxicated. The story also mentioned two large fights and an attempt by an angry boater to ram a Coast Guard vessel. It seemed sadly incongruous to me for a dysfunctional urban celebration to play out in the natural setting of the St. Clair Flats.

Erie Marsh - It begins to rain shortly after I leave the dock, but is not stormy, so I continue across the bay toward the tip of Woodtick Peninsula, a wooded sand spit separating North Maumee Bay from Lake Erie. It is three miles away and will take about an hour of steady paddling to get there. The bay is turbid with sediment washed from the agricultural watershed north of Toledo. Small patches of grass-leaved pondweed float just beneath the surface of the water, but otherwise there is a dearth of aquatic vegetation- the muddy water is just too dark for submerged green plants to absorb sunlight. The blades of my paddles completely disappear into the brown water each time I dip them for a stroke. In the middle of the bay, I pass two wooded islands- Indian and Guard. The tip of Guard Island tapers to a long, narrow, barren sandbar overwashed by waves. My kayak briefly scrapes bottom as I cross through a low spot in the shoal. A stand of lotus (Nelumbo) fills the quiet lagoon between Guard Island and Woodtick Peninsula. Rainwater on the water-repellent surface of the floating, platter-like leaves beads up into fluid jewels that writhe and slide mercurially as I pass. Several of the leaves are elevated above the water surface on stout stalks like trays held aloft by adept waiters.

The mouth of the bay yawns broadly as I draw closer to Woodtick Peninsula, blending with the open lake. Sandy beaches decorate the peninsula just ahead of me. I veer away from the surf zone and ride parallel to the curving shore. I squeeze between the tip of the peninsula and a shipwrecked snag- adorned with a winsome tuft of purple loosestrife- and suddenly emerge onto the placid expanse of Lake Erie. Ahead of me, I see the low, dark hull of a lone ocean freighter on the dim, gray horizon. To my right, the distant skyline of Toledo. To my left, a narrow strand of beach between lake and forest curves gently out of sight. Great blue herons lift smoothly off the beach on upraised wings and glide away in calm escape. I drift slowly along the strand and pull ashore for beachcombing. Sandbar willows crowd the beach, forming a shrubby ecotone with the forest of cottonwood, peachleaf willow, and red ash above the waveline. The wave-packed sand is studded with small rounded pebbles of quartzite and basalt, washed out of glacial till on distant uplands. In the clear water off the beach, scattered shells of fingernail clams and aquatic snails dot the rippled sand. I sit contentedly on the stern of my kayak and gaze out to sea. The vast view, the solitude, and the primal simplicity of the watery landscape are unexplainably restful to me. Peaceful, timeless, otherworldly. I linger until the tug of unfinished traveling breaks the spell, then pack up and retrace my route toward car, highway, and home.

Indiana Dunes (Part 2) - This time the lake is calm. Long, low swells gently lift and drop my kayak in a roller-coaster motion with just the right mix of stability and giddiness. Pressed by the sinking sun, I paddle swiftly down the row of buoys along the swimming beach toward the beginning of the pristine shore that I glimpsed five days ago. I break through the imaginary border like a runner through the tape of a finish line and keep going. The row of natural dunes beyond the swimming beach begins to scroll past my starboard side, brightly gold and green in the evening sunlight. I pass several blowouts where lake winds have blasted into the dunes and blown away Brobdingnagian volumes of loose sand, leaving giant bowl-shaped voids where a high sandy ridge once stood. The foredunes between the barren blowouts are densely covered with the light green foliage of Marram-grass, contrasting sharply with the deep green of black oak dominating the woods on the ridge crests and backslopes. Jack pine forms a line of conifers along the leading edge of the oak forest. At this distance, I cannot see the sand cherry, puccoon, prickly-pear, and other low shrubs and forbs that live under the grass, oaks, and pines, but I know from previous land explorations they are there.

I have allotted 30 minutes for my outbound journey because I have only an hour to complete a round trip before sunset. On the 29^th minute, I look for a place on the shoreline to mark my apogee, but the undulating landscape is free of man-made landmarks, just a continuing mosaic of blowout, dune, and forest. The 30^th minute arrives, but the scenery is too beautiful to justify turning around. The 31^st minute slips away, too. I finally turn around on the 32^nd minute and paddle through glassy water toward the setting sun and the distant skyline of Chicago. I make it back to Porter Beach at twilight and watch the end of the sunset from a darkening shore.

Sunset at Indiana Dunes (Chicago skyline in far background)

A Prairie Landscape in Iowa

2011-06-10T21:53:00.004-05:00

Disoriented, I peer up the shallow valley. Something is different here, but I cannot pinpoint the source of my puzzlement. I feel a sense of vertigo, but the landscape is merely rolling,... a sense of spaciousness despite the smallness of the place,... a sense of diversity even though all I see is green. I stop fighting the contradictions and let the impressions wash over me: spaciousness, naturalness, wildness. After the wholeness of the view settles over my artistic side, the scientific part of my mind comes slowly back into play and starts examining the details.

I begin at the bottom. My feet are slowly sinking into soft, wet muck. A remarkably clear, gravelly stream gurgles nearby. Tussocks of robust sedges fill a wet meadow in front of me, their shaggy crowns waving in a cool, strong breeze. Low hills rise gently beyond the sedge meadow, sporting a spotty veneer of reddish-brown grass with a promise of prairie. An achingly blue sky arches over the whole landscape. I see no houses, no roads, no cars, no power poles. There are no trees, nothing but grass, air, and exploration between me and the encompassing horizon.

Marsh Marigold fruit
(Caltha palustris)

Spring Cress
(Cardamine bulbosa)

Stepping into the sedges, I spy splashes of color amongst abundant greenery. White spikes of spring cress, hidden from horizontal viewing by taller sedges, seem to jump out at my feet as I stumble through the tussocks. Starbursts of marsh marigold fruits inform me that I have arrived too late to witness the spring explosion of their showy yellow flowers. A sward of sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) stops me in my tracks and I kneel to examine its graceful panicle and to savor its special role in Native American culture.

Emerging on the far side of the wet meadow, I ascend a grassy slope onto a dry prairie. Soft, wet muck gives way to firm, dry gravel. The vegetation shifts from tall, dense, and green to short, sparse, and tawny. Grasses replace sedges. Brown and wispy, their slender culms and blades not yet emerged from last year's litter, they whisper their identity: little bluestem, hairy grama, satingrass. In contrast, colorful forbs fairly shout their names: puccoons (hoary and fringed), prairie violets, prairie grounsel. Less clamorously, pasqueflowers and biscuitroots advertise their post-bloom presence with fuzzy fruits and polished pods.

Prairie Violet
(Viola pedatifida)

Fringed Puccoon
(Lithopsermum incisum)

Biscuitroot in fruit
(Lomatium orientale)

Pasqueflowers in fruit
(Pulsatilla patens)

Some announce their presence without the megaphones of flowers or fruits, silently sporting a distinctive coat of white pubescence or an array of sharp spines...or both in the case of Flodman's thistle.

Diminuitive lichens on boulders, pebbles, and in the bare soil between bunchgrasses silently retain their identities until I crouch down and give them my undivided attention. Even then, I struggle to understand the clues they call out, so many remain nameless for now...but I recognize the muted color of mint moonglow lichen boldly emblazoned on a granite boulder.

Mint Moonglow Lichen
(Dimelaena oreina)

Reaching the crest of the hill, I gaze back into the valley where I wondered before I wandered. The answer, now obvious, floats gently into my mind. The wet meadow is not just an isolated meadow and the dry prairie is not just an isolated prairie, they are seamlessly linked here as a continuous prairie landscape. While commonplace in other states, an uninterrupted gradient of native vegetation from low and wet to high and dry is a rarity in Iowa. To a mind overly-accustomed to fragmentation, my unexpected encounter with an intact landscape had bewildered me, like meeting a old friend whose name I had thoughtlessly forgotten. Now reacquainted, I look forward to renewing this lapsed friendship.

Kayak Craziness...with a Purpose

2011-05-31T17:58:00.003-05:00

CanoeSport Outfitters' Casey Holmes showing off her balance

Capsizing is the last thing kayakers want to happen unexpectedly... which us why we practice capsizing on purpose! Time spent upside-down during practice and play ensures that we will react instinctively to get rightside-up when the unexpected happens. Recovery from capsizing is actually a last resort, preceded by bracing to prevent capsizing and by balancing to stay upright in the first place. And what better way to practice balance, bracing, and recovery than by purposefully getting off-balance, tipping, and dumping?

Rolling practice!
(photos by Peg Pearson)

In a recent entry on her blog, my friend and co-kayaker Diane Michaud Lowry posted a video collage showing that off-balance, upside-down, and very wet practice, far from being stressful, can be a source of great fun and entertainment: look at those smiles and hear that laughter! Even when... no, especially when things, um, don't go as planned: video clip #7 shows a bow roll rescue gone awry... but succeeded by success in #8. (Videos #1-4 are pool sessions with the ISU Canoe and Kayak Club; #5-9 are of yours truly in the yellow sea kayak at Lake Red Rock.)

Sculling brace... yes, I got back up!
(photo by Diane Michaud Lowry)

Bow roll rescue...rotating the capsized blue kayak upright
(photo by Diane Michaud Lowry)

Rolling and scull-bracing

(video by Steve Parrish)

In a continuing effort to improve my skills, I am heading to Duluth, Minnesota this weekend to seek ACA (American Canoe Association) training and certification.

About to roll over and get in over my head...wish me luck!
(self-portrait with deck-mounted camera)

Oh, and why do we do this at all? Because, beyond the fun, it enables us to venture into and return safely from places of great natural beauty.

Heading home