Exploring the Edge of Appalachia

I think I know a thing or two about Ohio's wildflowers, but all I have to do is travel a little off the beaten track to find out how little I know.

This morning we visited the Edge of Appalachia Preserve, which, at 20,000 acres, is among the larger wild areas in Ohio. The preserve is operated as a partnership between the Cincinnati Museum Center and the Nature Conservancy, and since we are longtime supporters of the Nature Conservancy, I've often read about the preserve and wanted to visit. It's a little far to drive from our house, but from Jackson it's only an hour and a quarter southwest, so we strapped on the canoe, packed a picnic lunch, and headed out, scoffing at the rainclouds the whole way.

The preserve is nestled among tall hills on the southern edge of Ohio, and Ohio Brush Creek winds along the edges through tall grassy banks and overhanging trees. Brush Creek is a little low this time of year but heavy rains last night raised the water level enough to allow us to paddle some distance upstream from the State Route 125 bridge. We had to get out and portage at a few low rocky spots, but we enjoyed seeing multiple kingfishers criss-crossing the creek and huge swallowtail butterflies fluttering among the tall summer wildflowers on the banks.

After a few hours we squelched out of the creek in wet boat shoes and ate lunch in a shady spot where catbirds and a Carolina wren provided free entertainment, and then we decided to hike one of the many trails that weave through the preserve--even though we'd both forgotten to bring our hiking shoes.

The woods and high prairie openings were buzzing with pollinators visiting flowers I could not identify, although I'm going to spend some time trying. We'd made it most of the way up the Jane Jones Portman Trail when we were stopped by a snake stretched across the path; when my husband tried to gently urge it off the path with a stick, the snake reared up and staked out its territory. By this time our boat shoes were heavy with mud from the trail and the sun had finally come out from behind the clouds, so we were ready to turn back anyway. We left the snake in possession of the trail and went back to our van.

We spent a total of four or five hours at the preserve, but that whole time we never set eyes on another human being.  Birds, yes, and butterflies and a snake and some large animal tracks in the woods and fish jumping from the creek, but no people. We saw only a small piece of the 20,000 acres in the Edge of Appalachia Preserve, but that taste only made me want to go back and see some more. I like to think that some of my donations to the Nature Conservancy have helped to keep the preserve going, and if that's the case, it was money well spent.

What is this?

I think this is a rose pink.

No idea what this is.

Or this.

I don't know what this is but I love the red stem.

I think this is nodding onion.

Near the start of the Jane Jones Portman Trail. A little muddy.

Goldenrod is just starting to bloom.

Turkey vulture high above the creek.

Too dim early this morning to get a good pic of this great blue heron.

Ohio Brush Creek.

Not quite nimble enough

You want nimble? I'll show you nimble: when my two larger classes grew too big for socially distancing in their assigned classrooms, I adjusted my syllabi based on the assumption that I'd have only half of my students in the room at a time. And then when I learned that the Powers That Be had conducted a mass shuffling of classroom assignments to allow most classes to meet all together, I cheered and started adapting my syllabi to new conditions.

And then this morning I went to look at my two new classrooms and found that they're not my favorites but I can adapt. I mean, I know some of my colleagues really love old-fashioned chalkboards, but I don't; on the other hand, if chalk dust is the price I have to pay to fit all my students in the same room, I'll manage. And I have a firm policy against teaching in rooms with raised platforms or steps because of my proven ability to fall on my face in front of students, but again, I'll manage if it means keeping my students together.

So I thought I was all set to finish up my syllabi until I decided to take one last look at the online course schedules and found that one of my larger classes has been moved from the big chalkboard room back to the smaller room where they'd started out. And sure, okay, I can adapt to new information, but when was someone planning to inform me of the change? And how do I know the location won't be changed again? My new teaching nightmare come to life: showing up ready to teach on the first day of class but I can't find the classroom. Nobody is nimble enough for this mess.

Bev be nimble, Bev be quick,

Bev can change her classes--quick!

Move 'em here, move 'em there,

Bev can teach 'em anywhere.

Bev fall down and breathe chalk dust,

but she'll teach there if she must!

There's just one place Bev can't bear

The undisclosed location. (WHERE?!)

Finally, blossoms (blurry)

Finally, the rattlesnake plantain orchids are blooming at Lake Katharine! Kind of a bad time to have left my camera bag sitting on a bench inside my front door 80 miles away. My phone camera just doesn't perform well under low-light conditions, so everything is a bit blurry. Maybe next weekend...

No tiara for the pristine princess--or, emerging from an emergent condition

The high point of my recent 24-hour immersion in the health care maelstrom occurred when a doctor looked at an MRI and pronounced my brain "pristine." Unfortunately, though, they don't give out tiaras for pristine brains, and I don't even want to think about how much the hospital is going to charge for all the tests required to inform me that there's probably nothing wrong.

It all started on Wednesday when I was sitting at the desk in my office and suddenly felt like I was having a heart attack--a not unreasonable assumption considering my family history of heart problems and the pain and pressure in my chest and jaw. The pain subsided after about five minutes, only to be replaced by numbness in my right arm and the right side of my face and tongue.

So I called my doctor's office, where they told me to go to the Emergency Room immediately, which I did. I drove myself there (it's only a few blocks) and walked in feeling pretty much okayish and I was immediately surrounded by a flurry of people focused on determining whether I was having a stroke. I don't know how many people were in the room but I can tell you that it's no picnic trying to comply with the resident's request that I read five sentences while a phlebotomist was jabbing a needle in my arm. (She got it on the first jab. If anyone deserves a tiara, she's the one.)

Next came a barrage of tests and the decision to keep me under observation overnight, and they weren't talking about passive observation: sleep was impossible given the constant stream of people needing to ask me the same questions and put me through the same tests over and over and over.  (Please, if you love me, don't ask me my birthdate or tell me to touch my finger to my nose any time soon). I got poked and prodded and hauled off to CT--they wouldn't let me walk anywhere even though I kept insisting that I felt fine. As test results trickled in, I kept hearing that there was probably nothing wrong but they were going to run a few more tests just to be sure.

By morning I was still in the dark about what had caused my alarming episode and I really wanted to go home, but they told me early in the morning that they needed to run just one more test and then they'd release me. Great, I thought, I can make my 11:00 meeting!

Ha!

The test got postponed again and again, and I was left to my own devices for another six hours, with nothing to do but watch home improvement shows on a TV set so high on the wall that it hurt my neck to look at it. My cell phone had long since died and I had not had the foresight to carry a book or laptop computer with me when I left my office. I was what they call emergent, but now all I wanted to do was emerge from the hospital and go back to whatever semblance of normal life I could manage after a sleepless night and an onslaught of health care.

I have to say that every single person I encountered at the hospital was helpful and competent, and I have no complaints about the care I received except to note that six hours is a long time to spend waiting for anything, much less an unpleasant medical test. I've endured dozens of CT scans over the years but the MRI scan of my brain was the worst, triggering my claustrophobia and threatening a full-blown panic attack. But I managed my breathing and remained calm by mentally taking myself outside the confined space and imagining my favorite hike at Lake Katharine, which reminded me that there's a whole big world out there outside the big noisy machine.

In the end I emerged from the hospital with a wobbly diagnosis--I may have suffered a bad case of heartburn or a migraine variant, but it may have been a TIA, the kind of mini-stroke that doesn't cause lasting damage but may portend worse strokes to come. So I'm on a couple of new medications and I'm due for a follow-up in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, I feel fine, if a little ridiculous over causing all that fuss and bother (and expense--I don't even want to think about it) over what might have been indigestion, but on the other hand, I keep reading about women who ignore heart-attack symptoms and then get suddenly struck down. So I guess I'm relieved that everything seems to be perfectly fine, and if nothing else, I can hold on to the assurance that no matter how hard I may be working my brain, it's still in pristine condition. Here's hoping that it stays that way for a long time to come. 

Baffled by unbaffled beasts

Can a squirrel-proof birdfeeder deter a clever raccoon? I look closely at the online description and find the words "dismantles easily for filling and cleaning," and I know it's hopeless. The raccoon family that has developed a talent for removing and dismantling my largest birdfeeder--knocking it off the pole and unscrewing the top to dump out the birdseed--is not going to be dissuaded by a squirrel-proof feeder that "dismantles easily." If I can dismantle it, so can the raccoons.

We stopped filling the smaller feeder under the sweet-gum tree about a month ago after waking to see a whole family of raccoons using as a buffet, but the big feeding station seemed impervious to raccoons, sitting high on a tall pole protected by a baffle. But somehow all summer we've seen feeders go from full to empty overnight, and the perforated metal base of the feeding tray keeps ending up on the ground. Squirrels, I thought, jumping over from the tree or the birdbath.

But we kept filling the feeders until it became apparent that something bigger than a squirrel was somehow baffling the baffle to climb up on the tray and totally take apart the biggest feeder. Twice we've found it on the ground, empty and with the screw-top lid taken off and set aside. A squirrel couldn't do that, but a raccoon could, or a whole family of raccoons.

And so today I'm looking online for raccoon-proof feeders and finding nothing that will do the job. There's a whole world of suggestions: take feeders inside at night; buy birdseed coated with hot-pepper oil (deters mammals but not birds); give raccoons their own separate feeding station. The one solution that will work best has not been mentioned--get a dog.

I would admire the raccoons' skills if I didn't have to clean up the mess caused by their marauding. And then there is the whole issue of birdseed, still not considered an essential commodity and therefore in short supply locally. But at least thinking about outwitting raccoons gives me something to focus on besides my fall-semester classes, which will be upon us in just a few weeks. How long will it take the coronavirus to dismantle my foolproof syllabi? I don't want to think about it.

Improving odds for ogling orchids

Odds are getting better that a small pleasure is heading my way, if I just keep my eyes open.

All summer I've been monitoring a particular patch of rattlesnake plantain orchid in the woods at Lake Katharine, visiting once or twice a week to see the checkered leaves send up a stalk that got a taller each visit and developed a bud that kept swelling until it looked like it was getting ready to pop, and all week long as I worked back home I'd wonder whether I would get back to the woods in time to see the blossoms before they got picked or trampled or otherwise destroyed.

Then last Monday morning my husband joined me on an early hike and while I was scanning the area to the right of the path to find my familiar orchid, he looked to the left and found another rattlesnake plantain also getting ready to blossom. Twice as many to monitor! Odds are getting better.

Then this morning I saw four more in different parts of the woods, for a total of six patches of rattlesnake plantain orchid getting ready to burst into bloom, mostly located in places where they're unlikely to get trampled. From the looks of the swelling buds, I ought to have something to see when I come back next week.

This is what my life has become: working diligently all week long at home so that I can pile into the car on Friday and drive 90 minutes in hopes of seeing a diminutive orchid in full bloom. Who knows, maybe this is as good as it gets.

The tallest stalk is about 12 inches

This one barely peeks out from under a mossy log

Bumbling amongst the bees

Bee balm

brings calm

to me

(not the bee);

Purple fuzz

gives a buzz

to the bee

(not to me).

Chains, shackles, and other teaching tools

Every time I go to campus, there's something new to see and experience--new routes through the building, new dividers in offices, new signs intended to keep people distant from each other while allowing face-to-face teaching in the fall. Every new change, though, raises a whole new crop of questions.

Take the new signs designed to prevent crowding in small office spaces: a bright yellow chain across the doorway and a sign saying "Pioneers lead the way--in practicing social distancing." They're spiffy-looking signs and I'm all for preventing people from barging in and violating my personal space, but at the same time I'm struggling to improve my availability to students outside of class and keeping them out of my office negates that message.

The one area where I regularly get low marks on course evaluations is my availability outside of class, and the scores are declining each year even though I spend a ton of time in my office, totally available. I tell students right up front that I don't have cell-phone access at home and so there's no point in giving them my cell-phone number, and I frequently remind them that the best way to reach me is via email. This used to be sufficient, but these days students resist using email and want to do everything by texting, which ain't gonna happen at my house. A really diligent student could look up my landline number in the phone book, but I guess they'd prefer to give me low marks on evaluations.

Now office visits will be unlikely and, from what I've heard, students are no more likely to use office hours on Zoom than they are face-to-face. Further, I can Zoom only when I'm on campus because of unreliable home internet service. I could do what I did when we shifted to all-online teaching in the spring--move to Jackson, where the internet service is more reliable--but then I would have to give up all hope of face-to-face teaching, and at the moment we're hoping to meet with students face-to-face at least part of the time.

To facilitate this, classrooms are being reconfigured to socially distance students, who will be required to wear masks. I have a hard time making myself understood when I'm wearing a mask, a problem that led to a minor understanding when I encountered the College President on campus this morning--good thing I wasn't trying to say anything particularly important. But not to fear: the College is installing transparent dividers so teachers standing at the computer console in front of the classroom will be able to take off masks and teach--as long as they stand behind the divider.

Well, I don't know how to teach while standing still. I need to wander around waving my arms and drawing ridiculous diagrams on the whiteboard, which will not be possible if I have to stay behind a clear divider. They'll need to install some leg irons to shackle me in place and keep my students safe.

And that's what it's all about--keeping students safe. If all this disruption will hold the virus at bay, I'll gladly go along for the ride, even if it means forcing myself to stay still while teaching or taking a different door out of the building because traffic patterns have changed. Chain me in, shackle me up, and let's get learning!

 

A cracked and leaky decision-making process

There's a type of paralysis that comes from too much choice, too many options, too many opinions--if I dig far enough into the consumer reviews of this electric hotpot, I'll surely find a one-star review that scares me off, but then there are hundreds of other hotpots available, each offering a host of options I don't know whether I need, in prices ranging from the negligible to the laughable, each with a gaggle of admirers touting the glories of this hotpot but, again, read far enough and I'll find the complaints, and how can I possibly spend real money on a hotpot that might leak just as badly as the one I'm trying to replace?

And it's worse, of course, when the decision is more consequential. I won't break the bank buying a wonky hotpot, but what about a new water softener system? Is a $1500 system twice as good as a $750 system, or is it just a lot of hype? And what about the roof? I don't need to replace it tomorrow but one of these days it needs some attention, so I keep asking friends with experience in such things to recommend roofing contractors so I can get some estimates--but every recommendation comes with its own caveats, its own negative consumer reviews, though it make take a little longer to find them.

And then if I did find a water softener or a roofing contractor whose record didn't scare me, how would I feel about having workmen at my house during a global pandemic? I survived having the air conditioner serviced, but that was a quick bit of work by a guy who kept his distance and never came in the house. Maybe it would be better to just postpone everything until life gets back to normal? But if everyone thought that way, roofers and air conditioning repair dudes and water softener installers would go out of business. Isn't stimulating the economy part of my civic duty?

I can't decide.

Life would be so much easier if I could just flip a coin and trust to chance, but the little Puritans who live in my brain insist that mistakes are costly and every penny counts. So I live with a leaky hotpot, wonder about water softeners, worry about the roof until the need becomes urgent enough to spur immediate action. Meanwhile, I'll just sop up the water leaking out of the hotpot and sit down for a nice cup of tea.

Perpetual motion machine on the premises

When the slides at the playground are too hot for the grandkids to slide on, and when I can't carry my camera because my hands are too sweaty, and when two adults and three children are tempted to squeeze into a tiny kiddie pool, it's too stinking hot.

I know I shouldn't complain because the heat wave is worse further south and we are blessed with abundant air conditioning--and besides, the heat wave has slowed the grass down so much that I may not even have to mow this week. But the heat melts my brain cells and makes it hard to make sense of our whirlwind weekend, and when you mix in sleep deprivation caused by the abundant amateur fireworks taking place in our neighborhood, it's really hard to formulate a coherent thought. Nevertheless here are some highlights of our holiday weekend:

We worked a jigsaw puzzle, splashed in the kiddie pool, visited playgrounds, had some socially distant visits with fun people, ate hot dogs and sweet corn and homemade potato salad followed by fresh peach pie (a group effort) on the Fourth, colored pictures and chalked sidewalks and threw rocks in the creek and (some of us) went for a long walk in the woods very early in the morning before the temperature hit triple digits.

My grandson hit some long balls in the backyard, with Grampa pitching. My younger granddaughter, dressed as a rainbow, decorated our front walk with sidewalk chalk. My older granddaughter tried once again to build a bridge across our creek, so determined that I have no doubt that one she'll finally succeed. We told stories and silly jokes and looked at birds and buds and butterflies.

All weekend our household felt like a perpetual motion machine, lubricated by love and laughter so that even when the thermometer soared, the machine never stopped working. Now, though, it's time to give it a rest--preferably indoors, in front of a fan.

No rock is too big for this kid.