Excelsior: Field notes from afar (but not too far)

Monday, July 02, 2018

Field notes from afar (but not too far)

We knew we were the first hikers on the Salt Creek Trail at Lake Katharine the other day because we kept walking face-first through spider webs stretching across the trail--now there's a good reason to take turns leading the way. Blistering heat and humidity make it hard to spend time outside these days, but at 7 a.m. the woods were still cool, shady, and fragrant with blossoms and rot. We saw some interesting fungi and creepy patches of white finger slime mold, but at Lake Katharine the main attractions are trees: towering sweet gum, groves of birch and beech, and bigleaf magnolias with leaves as long as my forearm. Next time I'm taking the camera.

This morning I took the camera out for an early trek up the hill behind our house, where the wild raspberries are redding up and wild grapevines are colonizing a dead tree. Hopeful bounded alongside, happy to have some company after my weekend away. We heard an indigo bunting and some tufted titmice, but otherwise the upper meadow was utterly still, with not so much as a butterfly stirring.

Down in the lower meadow we marvelled over the debris from our May flood still clinging to tree limbs three feet above my head. (Well, I marvelled. I don't know whether Hopeful marvels over anything or how to determine her level of wonder.) If the debris is three feet above my head, and I'm standing in a field ten feet above the level of the creek, then the water must have been...really high. Wish I'd seen it.

A patch of bee balm looked flattened but the chicory is blooming all along the driveway. I know chicory is as common as dirt in disturbed soil, but I love to see their cheery blue flowers brightening up the roadside in midsummer.

In the high grass along the edge of the meadow I found a little group of Asiatic dayflowers blooming and I wondered why I'd never seen them in that spot before. Several obvious answers suggest themselves: 1. The flood washed them in. 2. I've never walked past that exact spot during the brief time when they're blooming. 3. Our wet spring made the meadow too mushy to mow, and the resident meadow-mower has been splitting his time between home and Jackson and therefore hasn't done as much mowing, which allowed the dayflowers to bloom in the tall grass that would normally have been cut down by now.

Speaking of Jackson, I enjoyed my first full weekend at the parsonage but it will take some time to get accustomed to being surrounded by neighbors. I can stand at the kitchen sink and look into a half-dozen backyards, and I assume that they can look into mine--and see what? A garden shed, a charcoal grill, a horde of robins feeding in the grass. I've seen few other birds, and I hesitate to hang birdfeeders for fear that they'll provide a buffet for the local feral cat population. At least we'll be close to Lake Katharine and some other notable beauty spots. I expect to make friends with those bigleaf magnolias, and if the price of admission is a few spider webs in the face, that's a price I'm willing to pay.