Paths

Visitors to Bright Leaf often ask - where did the paths come from?  Who made them?  Which came first - animal paths or people paths?

My father builds labyrinths.  When he gives workshops, he has participants draw lines on a piece of paper to create their own labyrinth.  He gives fairly detailed instructions about which line to draw first, where to start your second line, and which direction to draw it in, etc.  We studiously try to draw the lines the way he says.

Then he says "The lines are not important.  The space between them - the path - is where the woo-woo is."  The labyrinth is the path, not the lines.



At Bright Leaf, there's almost certainly a mixture of animal-first and people-first paths.  Most every creature naturally takes the path of least resistance whenever they can.  So it's to be expected that, if people come to a land where animals have already created a path to the creek to drink water at dusk every night, or to catch crayfish in a reliable pool every night, that people will take the path of least resistance to the creek to drink- the animal path that's already there.

Vice versa, if people come to a land they simply want to cross to get to another land, they'll forge a new path through to the other land.  And this path may or may not be of interest and utility to other creatures.  At Bright Leaf, many of the paths that follow level ground for a ways appear to be used by coyotes a lot, since we find their scat and foot prints on the paths very often.  Who's to say if this was a people-first or coyote-first path?

But we find deer scat and tracks on the path very rarely.  Instead, we see deer forging their own paths directly up and down hill, which often cut across the level paths at right angles.  That makes some sense, since, as a prey animal of both coyotes and people, you probably want to cross paths (quite literally) as little as possible.  (Please keep in mind I'm not a trained biologist, and I'm taking a path towards metaphor here.)

There are so many paths in our world that we can't see, or rarely catch our attention:  squirrel paths in the trees, migratory birth paths through the air, ant paths made of scent, "snuffler" paths (my word for raccoons, skunks, opossums and armadillos here in my yard), vultures following paths of uplifting warm air currents, rats and mice following paths in our homes and walls (not to mention teenager paths, which are never forged to the washer and dryer, but are well-worn to the fridge).  Next time you're in a natural area, let your gaze find another creature's path.

And what about your own path?  Is it visible to you?  Let it catch your attention today.  When do you take the path of least resistance and share a path forged by someone else?  Where are you forging your own path, to better serve you - to be of interest and utility to you?  Pay homage to the space between the lines.

Valentine's Day Hike

It’s curious to me how a group of strangers will gather on a Sunday Valentine’s Day morning to walk in a preserve. 

An Indian family with am eight year old girl and her teenage sister.  Initially they were worried about the length of the hike, and without a sweep, I was worried what would happen if the young one didn’t want to make it.  But more than halfway through, she had bounded and taken the lead for a bit.  I remember fossil shells in her tiny hand that she had found herself, with no help from her mother or sister.

A Bright Leaf neighbor couple who hikes two or three times year, and the husband was a docent back when Texas Parks and Wildlife ran the place, and he had some great stories.  When we crushed juniper berries and enjoyed the scent, he told us robins sometimes get drunk on fermented juniper berries.  We had passed a small flock of robins earlier – though these appeared sober.

Another couple said they didn’t remember how they first learned about Bright Leaf, but somehow the husband is on our email list, and the finally decided to come.

A single young woman with a backpack and camera phone.  Friendly, but I don’t recall her uttering a word.

Since there was a meetup group of about 12, Bill and I split up.  He took the meetup group, and I led this group of about 12 the “opposite” way, counterclockwise around the loop trail.  I like going this way because you see things differently coming from the opposite direction – and sometimes you see entirely different things.  We often startle some deer on the hillside, and today was no exception.  It’s extremely rare that we see deer when we travel clockwise.  I like to imagine they know our path and our schedule.

As the group approached the creek crossing again at the end of the hike, they displayed the full range of responses I’ve seen – from instantly recognizing they were back where they started, to having no inkling of where they were.  Curious how some of us can turn a scene around in our heads so much more easily than others.

Besides smelling the pungent juniper berries, a few people – more than I expected - tried the tart evergreen sumac berries.     We stopped at one small shinoak on the path that had one set of leaves out, and budding out everywhere else, with catkins hanging.  I also spied the rusty blackhaw budding.  But the redbud tree had not a hint of spring in it yet. 

Spring is dry this year – no rain since December.  Here it seems the timing of rains affects things more than frosts.  My first spring was ash spring – carpets of shin-high ash trees.  Two years ago was goldeneye and crown beard spring.  Who knows what this spring will bring. 

Water is a deciding factor for where we humans live, too.  Seeing Georgia’s house, I’ve just thought about the view being a deciding factor on where that house got built.  But water was a factor as well.  There was no city water supply back in the 30s and 40s. The former docent said the old sealed water pipe sticking out at the top of the trail just before the house is tapped into a spring that Georgia used for water.  So of course the house would best be built below the spring.

He also said the named Kitty Condo was just a recently built storage shed; that the actual kitty condo was the larger building next to it.  I thought that had been the Parks & Wildlife offices, and it may have been after the cats had all died.  But when I pause to think about 30-40 cats trying to co-exist each night in that tiny condo shed, it makes sense to me that they were really in the larger building.  If you look around back, you can see a screened in section where they could lie in the sun.

The eight year old loved “Old Grey” – the last cat standing, and so did many of the adults.  This photo is from a few years ago, and already the jasmine has grown around him so he's mostly hidden.  And now, since I’m at the end of today’s story, I have to disturb my own Annabelle Lee lounged across my shins.

Give a Hoot

The great horned owl couple is hooting up a storm this spring.  I hope to not see one of their young on the side of the road this year.  Though I'm heartened to learn that they usually have more than one baby (thanks to the couple in Savannah, Georgia, stars of Cornell Lab's owl cam).

The first year I came here there was one male hooting.  When he stopped hooting, I was anxious - did he leave?  was he killed?  is it a he or a she?  would someone else move in?  After a summer of worrying, one day his hoot was back.  And then a responding hoot.  And the worrying started again - is this a rival?  will he be driven off?  or is this a mate?

I learned (again thanks to Cornell Lab's bird audio library) that the male's sound is lower than the female's.  With two birds, I was able to know that my original bird was a male, and he had attracted a female.  Her call is not only higher, but more complex, with a triplet thrown in.

Over the four years I've been here, I've learned not to worry when I don't hear a hoot.  That there are seasons to their hooting.  And I've learned to trust (take for granted?) that the hooting will return.  I hope they find this place good hunting ground for many years to come.  And I hope they make more babies, who can also find good hunting grounds - with a human who enjoys their hoots.

Thoughts on the Mother's Day weekend hikes

"How did these trees start being called cedar?", she asked, referring to the ashe juniper.

I love questions.  Part of my enjoyment of the public hikes is listening to their questions.  Good questions usually beget good answers.

We had begun walking again when this woman asked the question, and I couldn't hear Nancy's response.  And I'd like to know!

***

I've studied a lot of geology, and when you know a lot about something, it's harder to decide what to say in a 1 minute summary.  I've been thinking about how I want to tell the story of limestone, since there are always many ways to tell a story.

I like that Nancy stops and talks about it at the first top of trail 3 - that she introduces it with "this is usually under our feet, but here it's exposed".  It's important, I think, for visitors to see or hear the thing we're talking about.  Otherwise, why actually be there? We could all sit around some beers and talk about it instead.

So - my limestone story begins to be explored:  Limestone is a rock that was built by life.  All of this you see is the remains of shells that tiny animals who lived in a warm, shallow sea made.  They extracted calcium carbonate suspended in the ocean water, built up their shells with that and lived their lives inside. When they were eaten, their fleshy parts were digested, but their shells were pooped out, and sank to the bottom. Billions upon trillions of these sank to the bottom, and as more and more were added, the pressure of all those on top squeezed the water out of the ones on the bottom. More and more pressure gradually turned it into a solid mass we call rock - limestone - calcium carbonate.  If you put some under a microscope, you can still see some of the shells intact. Further up trail 3, we'll see rock that was made up of bigger shells that we can see with our naked eye.

And, since a google search makes it apparent that you can't talk about limestone without referring to current climate change, here's this, which I wouldn't talk about unless someone asked:

The ocean acts as a carbon sink, meaning that it absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. This causes ocean acidification: the ocean becomes more acid as it absorbs more and more CO2. The pH scale measures acidity. Its lowest measurement, 0, represents strong acids. Its highest measurement, 14, represents strong bases. A netural measurement is 7, the pH of distilled water. Seawater near the ocean’s surface should have a pH of 8.2. In the last 200 years, heightened levels of CO2 have reduced surface seawater pH by 0.1, making the water 30% more acidic. With present trends, seawater will be 150% more acidic than in pre-industrial times by 2100. Heightened acidity increases concentrations of hydrogen ions in seawater. It also ties up calcium ions [how? in what molecules?] and thus creates a scarcity of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is required by calcifying marine organisms to build stony skeletons and hard shells. - From Nielson, Frontier Scientists 10/9/2012

Get the Smell of it

Leaves

Cucumber weed

Kidneywood

Wafer Ash aka Skunkweed

Fragrant Sumac

Blooms
Pink Mimosa blooms - get up close and personal
Honeysuckle - just get within a couple yards of it

Acreage Comparison

BL is 214 or 216 acres, depending on your source.

We've been saying that to visitors, and I've been wondering what that really means.  Sure, 216 is a big number, especially if you compare it to today's typical homestead size.  I lived on 2.5 acres and it felt like that decimal moved to the right when I had to mow it.

But just how big is 216? Do people know enough to put it in some context? I sure don't.

So, to put that in some perspective -
For a schoolkid - A football field is about 1.32 acres (including endzones)- so BL is about 163 football fields. For a local urban adult - Zilker Park is 351 acres (265 football fields).

It strikes me that both of those examples are flat.  I'm wondering if acres are measured by how the crow flies, or if it takes into account the topography of the land. [Googleing]

Ah.. acres are measured by how the crow flies.  So there's actually much more land to traverse in BL's 216, than a flat urban park's 216. (I probably could have figured that out - if I thought about why they can use lasers to simply compute the straight line distance between the laser beam and receiver, ignoring all the hills and vales in between.)

Here's some comparisons of other hilly Preserves:
For a local park adult - Wild Basin Preserve is 227 acres (172 football fields).

For a regional park adult - Balcones Canyonlands Preserve is 23,000 acres (17,424 football fields).

Ash Spring

I declare this to be the Spring of the Ash.

This lovely, small tree is popping up all over.
Here's a field of trees at the top of trail 4.

I believe they are all wafer ashes, and here's their "bloom" which the adults have right now. They're a flat, round paper-like disc the size of a quarter, and they bear more than a passing resemblance to communion wafers.

I don't know how they taste, but I hear it's also known as the hop tree, and that Germans who came to Texas, and found they couldn't grow the hops they were used to, found these to be a substitute.  I wonder if any of our local brewers have tried it, or have plans to. I'd try it!

Some of them, however, may not be communion wafers, but a variant with long, thin wafers. This one is right at the creek crossing.

I also declare this particular hike as the Day I Discovered the Hand Lens.
This little beauty had been gathering dust in my backpack for a year.
But I took it out to see if I could take a picture of star moss through it for the newsletter article -and I could!

So I took it out again to see if the knobs on the mimosa tree were buds, or spent blooms. I could tell they were buds - and discovered two tiny irridescent green flies were on the leaves as well.
This caterpillar on the mimosa I could see with my naked eye:

But when I put the hand lens to it, I noticed some leaves folded over -not up, like a venus flytrap, but over and down. And there were more yellow that the normal looking leaves. Looking even closer, I think I saw tiny creatures had folded the leaves around themselves (gads, my thumb looks huge under the lens!).