Words from the Woods – On Visiting, Hiking, and Messing with the Food Web

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

My husband Clay visited today. We hiked to Chimney Rock, a steady uphill and very rocky trail.

I added a couple of trees to my tree ID list – Sweet Birch and Loblolly Pine.

More outdoor artwork late afternoon.

Now, because I feel this Artist-in-Residence experience in the mountains has been a very enlightening one, I will now come clean about something, a confession of sorts.

As an environment educator, I have explained the intricacies and importance of food chains and food webs to hundreds of students. I always stress the significance of each species and that when one is taken out the entire system suffers. This often takes the form of yarn strung between students, the collapsing species dropping his yarn and sitting down. After writing earlier about identifying species of this and that, this morning I killed a BIG spider in my cabin. As interested as I am in creatures, I cannot even bring myself to look at the you-know-what section in my National Wildllife Association Guide to Insects and Spiders. Moths, beetles, even wasps (they enter the picture in a minute), but NO SPIDERS. After I took out the first guy, the official arachnid recon mission showed up. Two more that looked just like the victim. They looked threatening, so I introduced them to my flip flop. In a matter of murderous seconds, I had messed up the local food chain. However (and herein may come my redemption) earlier this week I did save two exotic-looking wasps. Neither seemed aggressive (obviously I recognize animal aggression) – the first crawling around near the cabin door and the other struggling to move on the kitchen floor with a clump of fuzz hanging on his leg. With both of these wee creatures, I used the time tested method of setting a plastic cup on top of the invader (wasp) and then sliding a piece of paper under the cup, allowing the good Samaritan (me) to transport and release outside. Wow, does writing so many words about this indicate that I may have been away from home a bit too long?

Let me move forward with something poetic.

In the Gloaming

Sunset comes early up on the mountain

Rays coax the late shift to begin early in this arboreal workplace.

Jays and woodpeckers clock out

Crickets and katydids announce their attendance

Moths slip in quietly.

Bees gather a little bedtime snack from the last goldenrod of the season.

Later

I had to do laundry tonight, having missed the last two nights. This resulted in the cabin looking like some kind of outdoor outfitter preschool, filled with crazy sock and underwear mobiles!

Time for sleep. No telling what adventures tomorrow may bring.