Link Trail Journal

Testimonial

2011-12-01T08:16:00.000-08:00

I'm always bragging that not only do my niece and nephew enjoy hiking with me on the Link Trail, they practically beg me to take them hiking on the Link Trail specifically! Here's proof.

Fun with the Kids along Canastota Creek

2011-11-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

Before we played "Three Billy Goats Gruff" with the kids, we had fun hiking to Canastota Creek, not to mention playing the simple game I've played with my daughter for seventeen years: "Throw the stick from the upstream side of the bridge and watch it appear on the downstream side."

Teaching Dylan and Abby about Seed Dispersal

2011-11-30T07:08:00.000-08:00

Here's my favorite thing to do with kids: take them out in nature and hone my translation skills.

I have an engineer's vision of natural processes as being cut from the same cloth as heat transfer and osmotic gradients. I think of seed dispersal and root branching in terms of entropy and suface-area-to-volume ratios. But I can't talk to kids about heat transfer and osmotic gradients and entropy and surface-area-to-volume ratios. I need to fit my vision to their eyes. Between the majesty of nature and the child's perception must stand an intermediatry: a Metatron whose voice a nascent ear can hear. To be that Metatron is a life's calling.

I've given variants of this speech to Dylan many times during our walks along the roadside. To teach Dylan, and now Abby, the sundry evolutionary innovations in seed dispersal, I speak in terms of mother and child, of animals and fire. Nature has no intent, but I rely heavily on anthropomorphic imagery. A decade or two from now I can explain to them my abstruse notion that evolution doesn't happen, but rather fails to not happen. For now, I fill their heads with vivid images of nature to lead them to reverence.

Three Billy Goats Gruff

2011-11-29T03:40:00.000-08:00

Grace and I drove to Oneida on Thursday morning to spend Thanksgiving with my family. We'd barely gotten our coats off before Dylan and Abby started asking if we were going hiking on the Link Trail. Oh yeah. I've got 'em hooked.

We hiked in from the Mount Pleasant Road trailhead, crossed Canastota Creek, followed the railroad bed for a few hundred yards, and turned around. On the way back, we made a few little movies based on an idea I'd had while crossing the bridge on the way out: "There are four of us. And we're all different sizes. We have the perfect cast to enact 'Three Billy Goats Gruff'!"

So we shot these videos with Grace's phone. There was much giggling. Especially when we started switching up the roles assigned to each actor. My favorite is the last one, in which Abby plays the Biggest Billy Goat Gruff.

A video survey of my section - October 22, 2011

2011-11-28T14:36:00.000-08:00

On October 22 I spent a few hours working on the Irish Hill section, the mile and a half which I steward. The trail didn't need mowing, but I gave it a quick manicure anyway. Happily, there was again no vandalism. I'm hopeful that I'm wearing out the vandals.

There were a lot of branches, and one medium-sized tree, fallen on the trail, but nothing I couldn't wrestle away. I used a lot of them as trail guidelines. When I got to the Irish Hill end, I remembered a conversation I'd had with a gentlemen who lives just down the road. He had looked down the trail and assumed it went straight. So I arranged some branches to better delineate that first sharp turn, similar to what Steve Kinne did farther on where the trail bends to follow the stream.

On the way back I took the time to shoot three videos, because the leaf color was worth sharing. Here they are. Enjoy.

CNYNCTA 2011 Meeting Presentation

2011-10-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

Here are the photos I used in my presentation at the Canastota Library yesterday.

Short and Oh So Sweet!

2011-06-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

I only had time to take my niece and nephew on a ninety minute hike. As it turned out, that was plenty of time for them to bombard me with questions, and for me to saturate their little heads with information.

I parked on Nelson Road, and moments after stepping out of the car I got my first reward: Dylan reminded me of the inchworm on my dashboard. I'd seen it when I first got into the car, and made a point to say that I'd take it out when we got to the trail so that it wouldn't die in the car. I took it out and thanked Dylan for reminding me. It's gratifying to instill in kids a respect for life.

The act of depositing the caterpillar on a plant turned out to be a conversation starter. It fell off the leaf, but then dangled in the air on a strand of silk that it must have anchored on the leaf as it skidded past. I told the kids that caterpillars spin silk like spiders spin webs, and one of the kids asked about caterpillars turning into butterflies. I told them about chrysalises, and when Abby asked if all caterpillars turn into butterflies, I said I didn't know. I must remember to follow up on that question; it's important to teach the kids a dual lesson of admitting when you don't know something, and educating yourself about what you don't know.

We started walking east, and I was pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to turn around. I hadn't been hopeful about continuing far on this section of trail, because it's usually thick with blood-sucking insects. But somehow we got lucky. I explained this to the kids, and took the opportunity to give them a sense of one small piece of the food chain: where there's water, there are insects; where there are insects, there are spiders; and where there are insects and spiders, there are birds.

As usual, the first thing I noticed along the trail was a folded leaf. After years of training my eye to see them, they leap out at me. The folding agent is usually a spider or a caterpillar, and on this trip I only saw evidence of the latter. I kept unrolling leaves and finding either a caterpillar and its feces, or just the feces.

I saw a butterfly, and Abby asked if that was the caterpillar we saw! I explained that caterpillars take months to turn into butterflies, and repeated that I don't know whether all caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Before we got far, we noticed a peculiar blanket of fluff on the trail. I didn't recognize it, so I started wondering out loud what it was. Dylan asked if it was milkweed fluff, and I told him that milkweed plants don't release their seeds until around October, so it couldn't have come from there.

Soon I found a strand of half-open seed pods on the trail. I couldn't recall seeing anything like it before. Clearly the fluff was coming from pods like these, so I took it as an opportunity to give the kids a lesson in deductive reasoning.

I told the kids that there were no other low-growing plants in sight that were releasing fluff, so I was looking higher. I saw some fluff on a small tree near the trail, and for a moment I thought that was the source. But when I compared the branching structure of the pods I found on the trail to that of the pods on the tree, I saw that they were very different. So the fluff couldn't have come from the tree either. This gave the kids a quick and dirty introduction to taxonomy.

Since the fluff didn't seem to be coming from any of the shorter trees, I had to look higher still. I saw maples, elms and poplars along the trail, and I knew that maples and elms didn't produce fluff. So I began to suspect that it was raining down from the poplars. I tried to convey this process of elimination to the kids.

A few minutes later, I found a branch on the trail that confirmed my hypothesis. It had both poplar leaves and a strand of the same fluff-bearing seed pods. Mystery solved!

As we continued east, I taught the kids about some of the flora along the trail. I showed them Jack-in-the-Pulpit and trillium, and pointed out that though the leaves look very similar, the trillium leaves are radially symmetrical but the Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves aren't. I showed them a huge vine and pointed out how high into the trees it climbed. And I showed them the light green patches on a rock, and told them about lichen.

As I kept unrolling leaves and finding only caterpillars or caterpillar leavings, Dylan asked a very good question: "Why are there no spiders?" I used this as an excuse to tell him about the spider life cycle, and how other organisms need building materials with specific qualities, just like humans do. We weren't seeing spiders for two reasons: first, they won't be laying eggs for another month or two, so they're not building shelters for their egg sacs; and second, they can't just use any leaves for their shelters, and there don't seem to be many of the berry bushes they like along this section of trail.

Before we got too far, Dylan started finding railroad spikes. He's quite fascinated by the iron artifacts from the old railroad, and I'm encouraging that fascination. So I started finding spikes for him, as well as a reinforcing plate. I made a throwaway comment to him about how one could make some strong armor from plates like these, and a bullet would just bounce off it. He got curious, asking "Why don't people make armor like that?" This led to a conversation about medieval armor, and protection vs. speed in medieval warfare. Thus I laid the groundwork for introducing him to some educational programs.

Soon after we reached the scenic slope down to Canastota Creek, a big black fly with a brilliant yellow thorax landed on my right hand. It was nearly the size of a horsefly, so I suspected it might be about to painfully draw some blood. But as I told the kids, I really wanted to get a shot of the thing. I kept my hand still and asked Dylan to grab the phone out of my pocket. I got some great shots, I didn't get bit, and I taught the kids a lesson about risking some pain for the sake of intellectual curiosity.

On the way back, one of the kids spotted a curious-looking little grey mass with two narrow tubes sticking out of it. At first I thought it was a piece of a carcass with a long worm running through it. It took us a few seconds to figure out that it was the rear end of a mouse: one end of the "worm" was the mouse's tail, and the other was a strand of its intestines. There was a slug a few inches away that appeared to have been feeding on it. Dylan said that a fox must have eaten the mouse, and I thought that sounded about right. One of the kids asked what ate the fox, and I said that there probably wasn't anything around here that eats foxes. It occurs to me that I was wrong; coyotes probably eat foxes. I'll have to look it up and follow up with the kids.

During the hike, I had several opportunities to educate Dylan about arachnids. At one point he saw a "big spider" and I came to look. It turned out to be a daddy longlegs. I told him that daddy longlegs are arachnids but not spiders, and that they are ancient, like sharks; fossils of daddy longlegs that lived hundreds of millions of years ago look like daddy longlegs of today. I also had an opportunity to show him the "boxing gloves" on a spider, and tell him that those are pedipalps, which means the spider is a male.

I saw a large insect on a low leaf, and tried to show the kids. It dropped off just before Dylan got there, but it turned out to be a lesson in following your curiosity and being open to what you find, instead of what you expected. As we looked for the insect, we found a slug, and then I saw a spider crawling right over it. I believe it was Enoplognatha ovata, the same leaf-folding species I'd been telling Dylan about!

Here are a few more tidbits I got to teach the kids: those squiggly whitish lines on the leaves are from tiny leaf miners tunneling between the layers of the thin leaf with their little mouths; we can't walk on this side trail because it's private property as opposed to public property; that slope is bare because of erosion, which means wind and rain wearing away soil; leaves with this particular shape are touch-me-nots, whose seed pods we'll be popping in a few months; and the water running in that stream fell as rain miles away a few days ago, and trickled down plants and through the ground before ending up in the stream.

All this, in an hour and twenty minutes. I'm a lucky guy to have a nephew and niece who are receptive to my enthusiasm.

Trail Maintenanance

2011-06-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

My Section of the Link Trail

On Sunday I spent about five hours hiking my section of trail, replacing blazes that someone had torn down since my inspection around Easter, and mowing the grass with a string trimmer. The trimmer was slow, but thorough. Here's a shot of one of the salamanders that I came so close to mulching...

...and here are a few shots of the lovely sunset I saw as I drove home.

Abby's First Link Trail Hike!

2010-06-06T17:51:00.000-07:00

Dylan and Abby were both exceptionally whiny during breakfast, so I was resigned to a not-so-fun hike. As it turned out, their behavior during the hike was diametrically opposed to their morning behavior. We started at the Canastota trailhead and made it all the way to the bridge over Canastota Creek, despite the fact that it started pouring right when we reached the top of the long staircase. Abby only whined a little bit when it started to rain, and that was it. She made it the whole way out and back under her own power, and Dylan was ever the gallant brother, making sure she safely navigated the slippery bits. What great kids!

30 Miles

2010-06-05T18:43:00.001-07:00

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

I got into town late on Friday night, and I had made plans to have a cookout with my sister and her kids at 6:00 on Saturday night. I estimated that I had to start hiking not long after 7:00 AM in order to have time to stop for lunch and rest my feet in Cazenovia before turning around and getting back on time. This meant that I only had time for about four hours of sleep. I got up at 6:30, brewed a thermos full of tea, and hit the Canastota trailhead at 7:35.

The first thing I noticed was the forget-me-nots blossoming ten feet into the trail. White and purple-pink dame's rocket was blooming along the trail. It was a lovely day: warm and sunny. Rain had poured down the night before, so I had to be careful of slippery spots.

I don't recommend making a commitment with zero margin of error as a means of keeping yourself on schedule during a long hike. I suppose you could say that it worked for me, but I was so obsessed with finishing the hike on time that I wasn't enjoying the beginning. I don't remember too much about the first few miles.

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

A few hundred yards east of Nelson Road the trail crosses a farm path. Just west of this crossing, there's an eroded gap at the top of the slope on the northern edge of the trail. Runoff is carrying clay soil down the slope, across the trail, and into the creek on the south side. This section is rather slippery with clay, as you can see from the pictures above. It might warrant anti-erosion measures before long.

I crossed Nelson Road at 8:18 and then my feet started getting seriously wet. There's a lot of enthusiastic greenery encroaching on the trail. I was happy to see that I was wrong about the rate of erosion at a particular spot a few hundred yards west of Nelson Road: the creek hasn't eroded any more of the bank just north of the trail, as I thought it would have by now.

Between Cottons Road and the next lawn, the trail was even more overgrown. This is the section where I got soaked from the thighs down and got seeds and leaves from many plants in my shoes. It's also where I once again felt privileged to pass through the biggest grove of bloodroot I've ever seen. The ground was completely obscured by them, for ten or fifteen feet on either side of the trail, for about a hundred feet. If you took every patch of bloodroot I've seen in my life and put them together, it wouldn't equal the size of this patch.

After the bloodroot came a pleasant patch of mayapple. Then I passed across the lawn and through the woods, dodged many fresh cow pies, traversed the cow path and the railroad bed, and crossed Quarry Road at 9:17.

It must have rained with exceptional force on Friday night, because I noticed something I'd never seen before: all along the trail, every daisy fleabane blossom looked sadly bedraggled, like a fifties greaser who'd gotten his pompadour all set but then got caught in a prank with a firehose. Now I wish that I'd taken a moment to unpack my camera and get some shots, but at the time I was too invested in not breaking my pace.

I reached Ingalls Corners Road at 9:44 and stopped for a few minutes to eat a Zone Bar and drink some tea. Then I forged ahead through my least favorite portion of the trail: the two and a half miles of roadside hiking between there and the Freber Road trailhead.

By then I was having a few strong reactions: consternation that I didn't seem to be maintaining anything like the pace I kept on this same hike two years ago; sad incredulity that I seemed to be the only one taking advantage of the trail on such a lovely day; and gratitude for the lovely day itself. As I sweated my way up Seibenbaum Road under the sun that by then was blazing, a bull rose and assumed a protective stance in front of its harem.

By the time I reached the Freber Road trailhead at 10:51, I was so amazed at the time I'd made two years ago that I'd begun to wonder if I'd written it down wrong. But I knew that I'd been meticulous, so I wondered if I might actually hike from Freber to Cazenovia in a little over an hour. It seemed impossible.

I picked up the pace and made every effort not to slacken it. I crossed Carrys Hill Road at 11:15 and climbed the stairs at Bingley Road at 11:40. There was no way that I'd be in Cazenovia in twenty minutes. I prepared to be humbled by myself from two years ago.

On the trail along the falls I met a friendly bicyclist named Molly. We talked about the trail and I told her about this journal. I also had to stop and wrap my left little piggie toe for the first time. Messing around with my feet had become a real pain. Getting my socks soaked early in the hike hadn't helped them at all.

I reached Route 20 at 12:34, grabbed two slices of pizza and a Pepsi at the Sunoco station, and wolfed them down before hitting the trail at 12:48. That is correct: I will never be mistaken for a nutrition expert.

It wasn't long before I had to stop and wrap my right little piggy toe. A few weeks ago I took a twenty-five mile hike and didn't wrap that toe until it was way too late: I got a big blister and ended up losing the nail. I was not about to make the same mistake.

My feet kept giving me grief during most of the hike back. I had to stop, both to empty out my shoes and to re-wrap one toe or the other, with irritating frequency. Then, not far from Freber Road, I had the most frustrating missed photo opportunity in recent memory. I caught a small bit of motion on the trail that my eye immediately identified as a spider. I saw that it was a cute little orangish-brindle salticid* of a species I’ve not seen before. I waved my hand in front of it enough to make it freeze, and then kept my eye on it as I took my pack off.

It had barely moved by the time I got my camera bag unzipped and taken the Canon macro rig out. I glanced at the camera to turn it on and make sure that the mode dial was in the right position, and when I looked back the little bugger had disappeared. I spent a few minutes blowing on the immediate area in hopes of making it twitch, combing the leaf litter, and occasionally admonishing the spider.

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

Well, I guess that got the lion’s share of my frustration out of my system, because when I broke out of the tree cover and onto the road, and saw this sky, it felt like a reward and a benediction. There’s nothing like a sky I’ve spent a whole day walking under. It feels like I can come closest to touching it because I’ve come closest to earning it.

By this time I was about as satisfied with my foot wrapping as I was going to get for this trip. I was still kicking myself for not wearing better socks, though, and I resolved to get some good hiking socks before the next trip.

I was troubled by my slowness relative to two years ago, but pleased to find myself much less achy. I could tell that I would get serious blisters out of this hike, but not the agonizing level of achiness that I had then. All the twelve- and twenty-five-mile hikes I've taken lately have gotten me conditioned.

Nothing notable happened between the splendid expanse of sky over Seibenbaum Road, and crossing Cottons Road. I was so preoccupied with getting back to the car that I didn't linger on any of the little asides that make a hike magical. Again, this is not how I would recommend that anyone do this hike. Don't make a family commitment for the evening that leaves you zero margin for error.

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

A few months back I read an article about leaf galls in a natural history magazine. I don't know whether this primed me to notice them, or whether it's an exceptional year for galls, but I've been seeing them everywhere lately! Just past the gate where the trail crosses Cottons Road and heads toward Nelson Road, I saw a magnificent selection of grape leaf galls. I'd never noticed anything like them before. The clipping shown above is the best of the bunch.

I reached my car at the Canastota trailhead at 6:12. I was disappointed that it took me so long, but very pleased that I wasn't remotely as achy as I remember feeling two years ago. And just think of how much faster I'll move after I've dropped thirty-five pounds!

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

Here are the socks I wore out during this hike. The final tally of injuries was: a major blister along the bottom outside rear edge of my left foot; a largeish blister one on my right piggy toe; and some smaller ones here and there. But I'm happy to report that I didn't get any grief from my toenails this time!

*If my memory is to be trusted, the salticid that I saw was this species. Unfortunately I don't know what the species is because it's an uncategorized entry in BugGuide!

Maintenance hike on the Irish Hill section

2010-05-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

As of last November I'm the steward of the mile and a half section of trail between Irish Hill Road and Damon Road. This was my first hike of the year through the whole thing, so I was excited at the prospect of doing some trail-clearing. I parked at the crook of Irish Hill Road and hit the trail at about 5:00. The first stream crossing was vastly easier than it was in March, when the water was twice as high from the spring melt.

Carrying two axes and a machete was awkward, but I soon discovered a way to make it less so. I remembered that my cheap little worn-out day pack had a carry loop on top. I stuck both axes in there and they stayed well enough for the purposes of this hike. I need to come up with a safer and more secure arrangement, though.

Red wintergreen berries provided the first cheerful wink of color along the trail. Withering trout lily leaves testified to yellow that had passed, and cinquefoil leaves promised more yellow to come.

I could hardly believe how soon I'd passed over the stream crossing that Grace and I helped redirect on July 4th. In March, when I was gingerly making my way through, over and around mud and runoff with a six-year-old, it seemed like a much longer hike!

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

I passed out of the woods and headed south on the wider section that parallels the hedgerow. I found that part more delightful, not just because I've spent less time on it, but because of the forget-me-nots sprinkled liberally along the verges. The way they grew partially obscured among the grasses and tiny maple trees made me think of faeries.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

Along with the touch-me-nots I saw lots of dandelions, both blooming and seeding. Once again I was rewarded for taking the time to get some macro shots of a flower that I've seen hundreds of millions of times: when I looked at these pictures later, it was like seeing a dandelion for the first time.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

I stopped to take pictures of violets, apple blossoms, and a bird's nest made of mud and straw that I found just a step off the trail, about six feet off the ground in an apple tree. Now I wish I'd have taken pictures of the wild mustard that stitched the trail with yellow. What new intricacies would a closeup have revealed? I'll make a point to find out next time.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

Now that I've looked at the shots, I have to say that the most rewarding of all the photographic subjects on this hike were last year's burdock. I love the way the seeds were so clearly waiting to be shaken loose by an animal attempting to worry the burr free from its fur, and I'm fascinated by the golden yellow hooks that I never would have noticed if not for the macro shots.

Even more so than the forget-me-nots, the copses of myrtle made the trail magical. There are large patches of open, shady woods along the western edge of the trail that resemble nothing so much as a gently undulating sea of periwinkle. In one particularly dramatic spot, the remains of an old tree jut up from a mound so that the dark green sea seems to wash against a craggy island spire.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

When I saw the treefall across the trail a few hundred yards north of Damon Road, my heart rejoiced. It's been far too long since I've had the opportunity for some real trail-clearing. This one was nothing compared to some of the monster blowdowns I cleared in the Adirondacks back around the early aughts, but then again I'm not in my best shape right now, so it was a good workout.

My father's words about always clearing the ground before swinging the axe echoed in my ears as I went to work with the machete. I got the little stuff cleared away and then went to work with the axe.

It's always much more challenging to chop through logs when they're suspended over the ground like these were: the position puts you at a muscular disadvantage, and the lack of bracing means that a lot of your striking force is dissipated. So naturally I place my first cut to bring down the entire length of log that needs to be cleared.

I tend to cut up logs so that the pieces are right at the upper limit of what I can move. This always feels a bit weird because I'm minimizing the time I spend chopping, an activity that I enjoy more than almost anything. But it also makes it as difficult as possible for me to wrestle the pieces off the trail. This is exactly what I want, because it gives me the best possible full-body workout.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

So I got that big log up on the bank where it couldn't possibly jump out and bite anyone, and took some shots of my kill. I just looked back at the time stamps on the pictures, and found that fifty-nine minutes passed between the last shot of the treefall and the first shot of the cleared trail. Under an hour: not bad for someone so out of shape.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

When I reached Damon Road there was still plenty of sunlight, so I decided to continue south for a while. This section was even more delightfully forget-me-not-ridden, but another problem soon soured the experience: it was a mud pit, and it was obvious that ATVs were the reason. I made my winding way, avoiding the mud as best I could, but still wound up with wet feet by the time I turned around, probably less than a mile in.

On the way back I met a hiker with her dogs and had a pleasant conversation about the trail. When I reached my car and headed back toward Oneida, I was shocked to see that it was 8:30. I'd sure had a lot of fun on the trail for three and a half hours to have flown by so fast!

One Last Time Capsule from Summer

2010-02-23T17:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a third time capsule, this one from August 22nd. For more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

Dylan and I walked east from Nelson Road. It was a hot day, so when it started raining we didn't mind much. The only problem was that it kept me from taking my camera out toward the end of the hike. So I didn't get any pictures of Dylan or me, nor of the rolled leaves that I noticed at the beginning of the hike.

What I did get was some shots of a wildflower I'd never seen before. Just a minute or two into the hike I noticed that the marshy area to the south of the trail was full of magenta blossoms that I couldn't immediately identify. When I went closer, I was surprised to find that I still couldn't identify them. After years of walking all over the hills and ravines south of Oneida I didn't think there was a showy wildflower I hadn't seen. I was wrong.

I just found the flower in my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. It's hairy willow-herb (Epilobium hirsutum).

Touch-Me-Not

2010-02-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

Here's another time capsule, this one from September 19th. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and I took Dylan and Abby on a short hike west from Nelson Road. It was Abby's first hike on the Link Trail, and the timing couldn't have been better. The touch-me-nots were ready to pop, and the kids duly popped them to their little hearts' content.

I just looked up touch-me-nots, aka jewelweed, in Wikipedia and was surprised to find that what I thought was one species is actually two: orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) and yellow jewelweed (Impatiens pallida).

Dylan's First Link Trail Snowshoe Hike

2010-02-13T20:52:00.000-08:00

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

I hadn't been back to Oneida since December so both Dylan and I were looking forward to getting back to the Link Trail. I was particularly eager to try snowshoeing with Dylan. His parents had gotten him a pair a year or two ago, but I hadn't had any excuse to take him out on them.

We parked on the side of Quarry Road and I gave Dylan a little instruction on how to work the straps. I got my own somewhat more extensive bindings strapped on and we hit the trail. Dylan immediately started falling down and complaining, but not too loudly. As usual, I framed it as a learning experience -- a phase he'd have to go through in order to someday climb snow-covered mountains. I stressed that although wearing the snowshoes is tiring for him now, next time it will be easier.

Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota)

As soon as we got onto the trail I saw a great photo op: several Queen Anne's lace plants, each one cupping a small load of snow. I love plants like this that stand like sere watchmen through the winter. They manage to seem at once sad, funereal and graceful.

Here's some interesting information about Queen Anne's lace from the Wikepedia entry.

Uses

Like the cultivated carrot, the wild carrot root is edible while young, but quickly becomes too woody to consume. A teaspoon of crushed seeds has long been used as a form of birth control; its use for this purpose was first described by Hippocrates over 2,000 years ago.[citation needed] Research conducted on mice has offered a degree of confirmation for this use—it was found that wild carrot disrupts the implantation process, which reinforces its reputation as a contraceptive.[2] Chinese studies have also indicated that the seeds block progesterone synthesis, which could explain this effect.[citation needed]

As with all herbal remedies and wild food gathering, extra caution should be used, especially since the wild carrot bears close resemblance to a dangerous species Water Hemlock. The leaves of the wild carrot can cause phytophotodermatitis, so caution should also be used when handling the plant.

The wild carrot, when freshly cut, will draw or change color depending on the color of the water it is in. Note that this effect is only visible on the "head" or flower of the plant. Carnation also exhibits this effect. This occurrence is a popular science experiment in primary grade school.

The following is from the book A Guide to Nature in Winter by Donald W. Stokes. I stumbled upon it in the library today, and it's so delightful that I ordered a used copy from Amazon. I'm looking forward to reading from it to Dylan.

The seeds, small and lined with four rows of spines, are dispersed by animals, whose fur picks up the seeds as they pass by. Wild Carrot seeds can be gathered and steeped in hot water to make good-tasting tea -- fun to make after a winter walk. If you bite one of the seeds in the field you will find its flavor similar to that of cooked carrots. The seeds can be used as a spice; in fact, many plants from which we get spices are related to Wild Carrot, such as Caraway, Fennel, Coriander, Anise, and Parsley.

American Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia)

See the Picasa web album for more shots of withered seed pods and fruit.

My second photographic subject was a brindle seed pod. It reminds me of a Chinese lantern plant, although this was a shrub. I eventually found it in Graves's "Illustrated Guide to Trees and Shrubs".

Rocks blackened by manganese oxidation?

I looked up to the rock cliff to the left and saw another teaching opportunity. I pointed out the rocks to Dylan and told him that the rocks we've seen fallen along the trail came from up there. I said "Look at how some parts of the rocks are blackened, and some parts are light brown. The black parts are black because of oxidation. That's a chemical process that you won't understand for a long time, but the point is that when some things are exposed to air they turn black. The parts of the rock that have been exposed to air for a long time are black, but the light brown parts haven't. That's how you can tell that rocks broke off from those parts recently."

I know very little chemistry, so I wanted to check up on the assertion I made to Dylan that the black parts of the rock were black because of oxidation. A spot of Googling led me to the Pro Trails page on Petroglyph National Monument. The stones there, into which the Ancestral Pueblos carved their petroglyphs, certainly look similar to what Dylan and I saw. That page says that "The dark desert varnish on the face of the basalt rocks was caused by the oxidation of minerals such as manganese and iron."

Grace and I were dredging our memories of chemistry in an attempt to figure out exactly why an oxidation process would change the color of a stone. Eventually I found an interesting article about manganese and its several oxidation states. Then I looked at the Wikipedia entry on desert varnish, which says the following.
Desert varnish forms only on physically stable rock surfaces that are no longer subject to frequent precipitation, fracturing or wind abrasion. The varnish is primarily composed of particles of clay along with iron and manganese oxides.[1] There is also a host of trace elements and almost always some organic matter. The color of the varnish varies from shades of brown to black.[2]
So although the rocks along the trail certainly look like they were discolored by the same process of manganese oxidation, I'd need to talk to a geologist or a chemist to be sure.

Common barberry (Berberis vulgaris)

Gosh I love the intellectual process sparked by traipsing about a trail and looking at stuff that catches my eye. And this particular process was spurned by the most unintellectual of exclamations: "Red!"

For decades I've found that what one finds in nature is exponentially proportional to how hard one looks. In spring after the snow melts and the residue of winter coats every surface, it's easy to look at the landscape and see nothing but brown. Likewise, when the leaves have dropped and the world seems to have devoted all its energy to quiescence like a sullen child, it's easy to see nothing but stark white overlaid with shades of grey. But that's just us casting our own mental shadows onto a system that knows nothing of our dourness. Nature is always processing. Nature's always got plenty of red.

Don't believe me? In the spring take a moment to look past the road scum. Gaze into the brush. Focus on the midground. Look for that hazy strip of red -- the constellation of reddish tinges from all the buds on all the shrubs focusing their energy like a legion of tiny green barbarians painting themselves in preparation for the frenzied yearly assault on entropy.

But you don't have to wait until spring. Hop in the car and park along Quarry Road. Hike a little ways southwest on the Link Trail. At first you'll just see white and grey. I did. But if you're like me, you'll notice a little red and then start seeing more. Before long you'll be seeing a barrage of red: red that jumps out at you, screaming at you, daring you to call it "quiescent".

And if you're like me, you'll be drawn to the source of the red: thorny shrubs, each with a host of ruby berries still hanging from them. You'll take lots of pictures. Then, later, as you're spending hours going through more than nine hundred pictures and choosing which ones to show people, you'll fume at yourself for doing so.

Then you'll get curious as to what exactly the buggers are. It'll bother you that you've seen them all your life and all you really know is what your father told you: don't eat them because they might be poisonous. So you'll Google "thorny shrub red berries" and several variations on such wording. You'll find nothing.

Eventually you'll find yourself at your local library thumbing through copies of Peterson's "Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs" and Graves's "Illustrated Guide to Trees and Shrubs". On page 119 of the latter you'll find the following.

Then you'll do a bit more Googling and feel a sense of wonder. The Wikipedia entry for Berberis vulgaris is so fascinating that I'm posting a big chunk of it here.

Culinary uses

The berries are edible, and rich in vitamin C, though with a very sharp flavour; the thorny shrubs make harvesting them difficult, so in most places they are not widely consumed. They are an important food for many small birds, which disperse the seeds in their droppings.

A widely available Russian candy called Барбарис (Barberis) is made using extract from the berries, which are pictured on the wrapper.

The Zereshk (زرشک) or sereshk is the Persian name for the dried fruit of Berberis vulgaris, which are widely cultivated in Iran. Iran is the largest producer of zereshk and saffron in the world. Zereshk and saffron are produced on the same land and the harvest is at the same time.

The South Khorasan province in Iran is the main area of zereshk and saffron production in the world. Barberry cultivation in Iran is concentrated there, especially around Birjand and Qaen. About 85% of production is in Qaen and about 15% in Birjand. According to evidence the cultivation of seedless barberry in South Khorasan goes back to two hundred years ago.[1]

A garden of zereshk is called zereshk-estan.

Zereshk is widely used in cooking, imparting a tart flavor to chicken dishes. It is usually cooked with rice, called zereshk polo, and provides a nice meal with chicken. Zereshk jam, zereshk juice, and zereshk fruit rolls are also produced in Iran.

The entry goes on to describe the plant's use in alternative medicine and its historical impact on the United States wheat crop. The USDA Forest Service Fire Effects Information System entry for Berberis vulgaris goes into more detail on this subject.

Eradication efforts and effects on local distributions: Soon after the introduction and escape of common barberry in New England, colonists determined it was responsible for dramatic reductions in wheat crop yields [28]. Common barberry is an alternate host for cereal stem rust (Puccinia graminis). As a host, common barberry provides an inoculum source and a sexual reproduction site for stem rust (Leonard 2001 cited in [71]). When common barberry grows near cereal crops (‹330 feet (100 m) away) (Roelfs 1985 cited in [71]), it can support the development of new genotypes able to adapt and attack rust-resistant crops (Leonard 2001 cited in [71]). Earlier reports suggested that common barberry in urban areas was also able to spread stem rust to other grasses that eventually passed it on to wheat crops [80], suggesting there was no safe distance between common barberry and cereal crops. During epidemic stem rust outbreaks, wheat yield losses up to 70% were reported [71]. In 1916, stem rust was considered the principal reason for a 200 million bushel reduction in wheat yields for Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana [80].

In the 18th century, the New England colonists of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island wrote laws restricting the planting and spread of common barberry. Over time many other states developed laws against the sale, transport, and planting of new barberry (Berberis spp.) plants and for the removal of established plants. It was not until 1918, after "devastating" wheat losses to stem rust, that federal laws and funding were devoted to eradication. Eradication projects and funding between 1918 and 1942 led to the destruction of 309,645,502 landscape, escaped, and nursery plants from the 964,000 mile² (2,497,000 km²) eradication area that included nearly all of the North American spring-wheat growing areas [28]. Between 1935 and 1950, there were 150,087,197 common barberry or American barberry (B. canadensis) shrubs destroyed in West Virginia [84]. By 1956, nearly 500 million barberry shrubs were killed on 149,318 properties in 19 states [12]. Widespread barberry eradication was "gradually phased out" by 1980 [71]. It is important to note that scattered common barberry populations persist in several areas of North America, and the potential for long-distance seed dispersal by birds makes monitoring and early detection of common barberry important to long-term control.

It's amazing to me that I can walk out onto the trail and obtain a profound connection to world and local history through the simple expedient of looking up teasel, St. John's wort, Queen Anne's lace or Common Barberry.

Dylan bracing himself against one of the fallen rocks that I'd told him about at the beginning of the hike.

Dylan got tired quickly, as you'd expect of a kid who's not used to snowshoes. He asked to turn around before we got to the quarry. At about that time I noticed a lot of vertical cracks in the rocks on the southern slope, so I took advantage of another teaching opportunity.

I said to Dylan "You know why the rocks fall off those cliffs? When it rains, the water goes down into the cracks in the rocks. And then when winter comes and it gets cold, the water freezes and expands. Do you know what that means?"

Dylan immediately answered "It gets bigger." Ah. I remember this feeling. It's the differential between adult perception of time and youthful passage of time. I still think of Dylan as four years old, but he just turned six. A lot of neurological development happens between four and six--a lot of neurological development that I've taken part in. Who knows, maybe I'm the one who told him what "expands" means during an earlier hike.

So I continued with my explanation of how water fills cracks in the rocks, freezes, expands, and makes the rocks fall apart. I remember my father telling me this. I love coming full circle.

Snowdrift ridge along the top of the slope and the northern edge of the trail

This wavy soft-serve snow crest prompted me to attempt the most-difficult-to-teach lesson of the day. I pulled a trick I used to pull on Morgan when she was about eight years old and I was attempting to teach her the concept of surface-area-to-volume ratios. I said to Dylan "I want to tell you about something but it's very hard to understand." I never even got to the "I'll try if you think you're ready to listen" part. He said something like "I want to hear it."

So I tried to translate what I know about the behavior of particles suspended in a fluid stream into kidspeak. Which is tricky, because "I just barely passed" is the polite version of the description of my performance in the fluid dynamics course I took eighteen years ago at Cornell. The not-so-polite version is "I was so completely clueless that I never should have passed at all."

What came out was something like this: "The wind comes up the slope and then, here where the ground flattens out, the wind slows down because it has to fill this whole space. And when the air is going slower, it can't hold as much snow, so it dumps it right here along the top of the slope."

There'll be more teaching opportunities.

Time Capsule from July 4

2010-02-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

For many, many, MANY more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

After Grace and I got back from the work hike on the morning of July 4, we took Dylan on another hike. Unfortunately I've not had the time to document it until now. But perhaps February is an appropriate time for a July retrospective: I know that looking back on the light and colors of summer makes me smile.

Dylan was very excited to get back to the Link Trail. It's times like this when I feel like I could stop counting my blessings at one, and still consider myself lucky.

I started to present him with his choices for places to hike, and at first I didn't get beyond "We could go back to the bridge over the creek where you threw sticks in, or we could go to the quarry..." He interjected that he wanted to go back to the quarry, but I said "Slow down, you haven't heard all the choices yet!" I continued, telling him that there are some parts of the Link Trail he hadn't seen, that go along a pretty stream. Immediately he changed his mind, saying he wanted to go to the part where he hadn't been!

We drove to Bingley and parked in the little area at the end of Emhoff Road. While looking at wildflowers right next to the parking area, I got excited at seeing a small toad. Unfortunately I lost it before I could show it to Dylan. We went north a few hundred feet so that we could write in the trail register, and then headed south. As we descended the small gravel switchback trail to Bingley Road I explained to Dylan the concept of a switchback, and how we were walking gradually downward and across the slope rather than trying to go straight down. Then, after climbing the staircase, I explained to him that the fence with the door is there to let people through but keep four-wheelers out.

Before we got far, I got excited about photo ops and Dylan got excited about construction equipment. His most excited exclamation of the day was "WOW, FRONT LOADER!!!" Having a quarry and a few private businesses with construction equipment along the trail is a huge bonus for hiking with a small boy.

Snail on plant

This snail was the first photo-op of the hike. This photo represents the state of my macro photography skills. The tail end of the snail, along with parts of the plant it's climbing, are in focus, but its antennae are little more than a blur. Yes, this gives a sense of intimacy and focus on the rear shell patterns, but I would like to be able to choose to have more of the critter in focus, and for that I need to spend more timer jiggering with F-stops and exposures and ISO settings.

Deptford pink

This species has been a favorite companion ever since around 1992, when I began my wildflower hikes. It's an elusively narcissistic little bugger: it doesn't deign to show its face at my parties very often, but on those occasions when I catch a blast of saturated pink from the side of the trail, I always stop and smile. How could I do otherwise?

Forget-me-not

Here's what I wrote after my first, erroneous attempt to identify this flower.

Wow. I just had one of those frustrating experiences where I thought I knew something and then I spent the better part of an hour having Google and Wikipedia teach me otherwise. This looks like what my mother used to call "baby's breath" but, as it turns out, that's about as definite as saying "That's a Queen Anne's lace". There are over 70 species of what people call Queen Anne's lace, and as it turns out there are about 100 species in the genus Gypsophilia. If anyone could tell me what species this is, I'd appreciate it.
As it turns out, I made the mistake I always make: confusing baby's breath with forget-me-not. This looks like a Myosotis laxa, or tufted forget-me-not. It also looks like Myosotis nemorosa, or possibly like several others on the Wikipedia page for the genus.

Harvestman

I can never resist a good shot of one of these fascinating creatures. For more on the ancient order Opiliones, see the Wikipidea entry.

What my father used to call a "water-skipper"

Sigh. I thought the term "baby's breath" was vague, but that's nothing compared to this insect's genus. Gerridae contains "around 500 known species, commonly placed in around 60 genera". Good luck figuring out which species this is. I know enough from the hours I've spent on BugGuide.net that I'd need much more detailed pictures than this in order to get even close to identifying them.

We saw a fairly well-traveled trail coming in from the left that looked like private property to me, so I took the opportunity to tell Dylan about the importance of respecting private property and staying off it. Then we saw a big trail that led down the slope to the right. It was clearly a public fishing access, so we headed down to check it out. It turned out to be an ideal place to take a kid, and to take pictures. I tried to explain to Dylan how the steps beneath the culvert slow down the stream flow so that it hits the downstream pool as gently as possible and so minimimizes erosion. I don't know how well I did.

Unidentified arthropod on rock

Identified anthropoids on rocks

Buttercup

This is probably a common buttercup, or Ranunculus acris, but it could be one of a few Ranunculus. It's impossible to say for sure because I didn't get a shot of the stem or leaves.

We crossed the slippery, tippy rocks while holding Dylan's hand, and I got some great shots of flowers and arachnids and water-skippers. Grace got some shots of me and Dylan on the culvert, and we made our way back across the stream and up to the trail.

Fragrant bedstraw, or Galium triflorum

My first guess was wild madder because I remember that one from my old wildflower walks. But after looking it up in my Peterson's I think this is fragrant bedstraw. Note that the lower leaves are in whorls of six and that the stems appear to be hairless.

Tiny spider on leaf

Grace spinning Dylan

I'm grateful to Grace for being such a cheerful companion to Dylan, because it gives me some leeway for lagging behind and snapping away with the camera. She kept him busy while I got many shots for the Link Trail wildflower guide that I'm hoping to start compiling soon. And of course there were the lucky finds of bees and spiders and such on some of those flowers. When I caught up with them, Grace was swinging him around like a giggling whirligig - a whirligiggle?

Wild basil, or Satureja vulgaris

I spent an hour or two identifying this plant. For most of that time I was in the blue/violet section of my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. It's not the first time I've made this mistake. A lot of flowers I think of as primarily blue, Peterson obviously thought of as primarily red. Also, judging from some of the botanical plates I found online, this particular species seems to have a blue variety and a pink variety.

So I was on the verge of pulling my hair out, thinking this was in the genus Mentha but not being able to find anything closer than pennyroyal. But the two were structurally different in enough ways that it seemed impossible that they could be the same plant.

I actually started to wonder if it was a speedwell but the blossoms looked much more like a mint than a speedwell. Finally I noticed on page 352 the note "See also pink and lavender species on p. 252." Once I started looking in the red/pink flowers, it was only a matter of time before I discovered the wild basil. I gave myself a mental forehead-smack just now as I noticed the following words at the front page of the "Violet to Blue Flowers" chapter.
We repeat the warning here that it is not always easy to separate some lavender or reddish-purple flowers (treated in a pink-red section, which starts on page 212) from some violet ones, shown here in the following pages. If in doubt, look in both places.
I won't forget again.

Hop clover, or Trifolium agrarium

When I looked at the nodding head on the left I thought "hops". Imagine my delight when I found the following entry on page 150 of my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers:

...When flower heads (1/2-3/4 in.) wither, florets fold down, become brownish, suggesting dried hops.

Black-eyed susan, or Rudbeckia hirta

Heal-all, or Prunella vulgaris

If you have a Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers take a look at pages 350-351 (which unfortunately aren't available in the Google Books preview). I think that the general appearance of the flower head, combined with the near-toothless leaves, allows us to unambiguously identify it as heal-all.

Rough-fruited cinquefoil entertaining a guest

I've always gotten a smile from this very common species, and that was before I took these macro shots. That last shot is the best photo I've ever taken. I jumped up and down and squealed when I saw it on the screen. See a larger version of the shot here.

Yarrow, or Achillea millefolium.

Wood strawberry, or Fragaria vesca

Leaf miner tracks

Purple-flowering raspberry

This is a Purple-flowering Raspberry, or Rubus odoratus. Note the insect on the flower in the second picture. Don't see it? That's OK, I didn't know it was there when I was taking the shot! See the closeup in the third picture. That's one of my favorite things about nature photography: the surprises waiting for me when I look at the shots on a computer screen.

After about two hours browsing Bug Guide I believe that I've unambiguously identified the critter: Tarnished Plant Bug (Lygus lineolaris). If my image submission gets moved by one of the experts, I'll know I was wrong.

Cow vetch

I believe that this is cow vetch, or Vicia cracca.

Midges(?) swarming against a rock(???)

On the way back I saw one of those things that makes you stop and wonder just what you're looking at. The sun picked out a seed pod or somesuch suspended in midair between a tree and a rock, so I went to check out the spider web. As I approached the boulder a cloud of insects scattered away from it, some colliding with me and some zipping past me. But much of the cloud remained, swarming around the shaded face of the rock. They appeared to be battering themselves against it, although the motion was too frenetic to be quite sure what I was seeing. All that I know is that I've never seen anything like it. Take a look at the shots and tell me if you know what I saw.

Closeup of cinders from the old railroad bed

I asked Al Larmann about the material found on old railroad beds, and he said that gravel or other small stones were used, and that this was called ballast. I replied...
Thanks Al. I think you've led me to the answer. The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_ballast says that...
A good ballast should be strong, hard-wearing, stable, drainable, easy to clean, workable, resistant to deformation, easily available, and reasonably cheap to purchase.[2] Early railway engineers did not understand the importance of quality track ballast; they would use cheap and easily-available materials such as ashes, chalk, clay,[3] earth, and even cinders from locomotive fireboxes.[4] It was soon clear that good-quality ballast made of rock was necessary if there was to be a good foundation and adequate drainage.[3]
So am I correct in thinking that this material that covers parts of the Link Trail is cinders? It does seem like something that came from a furnace, because it seems far too light and porous to be unprocessed stone.
Al's reply goes into some interesting history of the railroad.
Hugh--
I concur--The original Cazenovia and Canastota RR was built about 1870. Although their surveying skills were good--given the manner in which they were able to find a way around the Perryville area falls and cut into the hills as you approached Cazenovia, I am sure that the basic ballast used was cinder based.I do not recall where I saw the comment, but there was some industry locally that generated a large quantity of cinders. The engines were small in size and limited in power output. I do remember that the original bridge in Cazenovia spanning the creek was tested by placing the steam engine upon it--it passed, an empirical solution.

Daisy fleabane

I believe that this is daisy fleabane, or Erigeron annuus.

Tiny flies on oxeye daisy, or Leucanthemum vulgare

Yellow avens (Geum aleppicum) with aphid (nymph?) on blossom

The top picture shows the whole yellow avens plant. The second shows a cute little aphid on the blossom, and the third shows the distinctive fruit. Look closely - here's another example of spiderwebs being everywhere!

Bee pollinating oxeye daisy, or Leucanthemum vulgare

One last parting shot of Deptford pink

Seen on the Link Trail

2009-08-08T03:44:00.001-07:00

Bettina submitted the following shots and captions from her hike yesterday. Thanks Bettina!

Great Lobelia

Black Snake root

Beebalm

Red baneberry, berries

White baneberry, 'Doll's Eyes'

Joe Pye Weed

Turtlehead

Boneset

Work Hike Details (July 4)

2009-07-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

Grace and I met Steve, Mike, Carol, and Kathy at about 9:00 in Cazenovia. From there we carpooled to a section of trail a few miles south of Stone Quarry Art Park. We divvied up the pick mattocks, shovels, rakes, buckets, bow saws and sundry supplies and headed south. Grace and I talked to Steve as we followed the winding trail through the woods. He's a retired Air Force doctor who does volunteer work now, so he's an interesting person to talk to. Of course Grace, being a Columbia student, had more in the medical line to talk to him about.

These beautiful little flowers were all over the place. At the time, Grace and I thought they were wintergreen, but they turned out to be partridge berry.

We got to the site, dropped the gear, and followed Steve as he explained the whys and wherefores of the project. There was a beautiful view down to the stream on our left from along the top of the steep right bank. For a hundred yards or so the trail ran along that edge and then crossed near the ravine's downhill entrance. But the crossing itself had become a problem. The stream banks, along with the trail leading down to them, were steep enough to cause falls. Today's goal was to close off that section of trail and establish a crossing upstream.

Steve had chosen a point where the stream flowed over a broad, flat, level shelf of solid rock. We would be cutting a new trail that curved to the left off the existing one, forming a switchback with a gentle slope down to the crossing.

The main engineering task was to level off the trail and extend it out into the stream so that hikers will be able to take a single, short step down onto the stone. Since the edge of the stream was very muddy, this meant constructing a platform. Steve told us what size rocks we needed and sent us to gather them from the soon-to-be-ex-crossing. I started hauling buckets of these rocks up the trail while Steve went to work with his chainsaw.

By the time I'd formed a decent pile of rocks downstream of the crossing, Steve had returned with two sawed-off pine logs about six feet long and eight inches in diameter. He placed the logs about three feet apart on one end of a sheet of Eco-plastic fabric. He and Mike began carefully placing the rocks onto the fabric between the logs, fitting them together to form a solid foundation. I, Grace and Kathy kept hauling rocks while the platform slowly took shape. Soon Steve folded over the Eco-plastic and tucked it in, making a sort of rock sandwich.

Before we could start piling on the dirt, we had to have a dirt supply. Fortunately there was one forthcoming: the switchback trail we were about to carve into the slope. Steve spotted an adorable little salamander, and I got some shots of it while he explained about digging the trail. I also got some shots of a harvestman that was very anxious to be part of a photo op.

Per Steve's instructions, we used the mattocks to chop and slough off the top layer of organic material and roots, and then went to work with the shovels and rakes. The idea was to make a trail with a consistently gentle slope, and a slight outward slant so that rain wouldn't collect on it. We cut the upward edge with the mattocks, pulled back the organic layer, shoveled the underlying dirt downward, collected the dirt in buckets, and shuttled it down to the platform. Pretty soon we couldn't see where the trail ended and platform started: we were building a level terminus to the crossing. As we were finishing up, we met a pair of hikers with their dog. They were the last hikers to travel down the old trail.

The new trail was taking shape, so we branched out into new jobs. Grace and Carrol took hammers and went to work removing old blazes and nailing up new ones. The rest of us piled branches onto the trail just beyond the new bend so that people would know to take a left. I spied a medium-sized pine tree lying uprooted about forty feet north of the old path, so I grabbed a bow saw, cut if off at the base, and wrestled it back through the woods. This would have been a lot easier if the base hadn't been pointing away from the trail to begin with; I had to turn it around before I could start dragging. By the time I'd hauled it onto the newly closed section of trail, I felt very close to my father. I'd had an excuse to do something egregiously manly, which was just his style.

By the time I got this done, everyone but Kathy was at the other end of the new section, clearing trail and blocking off the old stream crossing. Steve was just about ready to wrap things up when Grace and I said our goodbyes a little before 1:00. We had a date with my nephew for another Link Trail hike!

As we walked back through the woods to the car we marveled at the dramatic change we'd wrought in just a few hours. I agreed with Grace that it was a shame to close off such a beautiful section of trail, but I pointed out that people will still make their way around our little jumble of brush to have a quiet lunch off the trail. And besides, the new, improved trail looks fantastic!

Letter to the Editor

2009-07-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

This is the letter I'll be sending to all the local papers. I'm happy with it, although I think it may need some trimming before it sees print.

When I was a kid I could walk along Fairview Avenue for a mile without seeing a car. I could wander through woods where my father took me to swing on vines, pastures where I knew tasty woodchucks were living, and farmer's fields where I learned that corn leaves could cut like knives. My father told me about tadpoles turning into frogs. There was transformation in nature, and that knowledge brought a new magic into my world.

I can't go back to the frog pond where my father first showed me those tadpoles. I can't take you to the vines. The land is all posted. And when I walk with my five-year-old nephew along that same stretch of road that I first walked alone when I was his age, twenty cars race by before we can walk a mile. No one in their right mind would let him do it alone. The world has changed.

Ever since my earliest wanderings I've loved secret places. Isolated forest glades carry a touch of the mystical, but it's those hidden spots that lie just steps off the beaten path that make me feel like I've entered another world. Last summer I found a doozy. It's called the Link Trail, and you could walk twenty feet from it and never know it was there. If you step inside, you may feel what I felt: some of that old magic returning.

Maybe you're not as emotional as I am. Fine. But I defy you to see your enthusiasm reflected in the face of a five-year-old and describe the experience as anything but magic. And that magic is exactly what you get when you share nature with a child. So take the kid out onto the trail. If he likes construction, tell him about all the people and expertise and equipment that it took to build a trail over a ravine, or the long staircase near Canastota Creek. If she likes fantasy, show her the fairy dust sprinkled beneath the old log from countless larvae chewing into it. If you're religious, bring him to God's cathedral and read him Job 12:7-10. If you're into history, show him the patches of bloodroot and tell him about the Native Americans who used them for dyeing, and if you're a conservationist tell him why you're not allowed to pick them. If she's obsessed with death, show her the rabbit fur in the coyote droppings and the saplings growing on dead trunks--show her that you don't get death without rebirth.

But whatever you do, unstick that kid from the glowing rectangle du jour and get him out onto the Link Trail. And remember, nothing you do for a child is ever wasted. Don't believe me? Take a look at www.CNYLinkTrail.blogspot.com. See the beauty I've seen. See the magic I've shared with my nephew.

And get that kid out there.

Work Hike Video

2009-07-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

It may take me a while to prepare my entry for the July 4th work hike; there was a lot of great strategy and leadership and hard work, not to mention fungus and flowers and arachnids and a beautiful little orange salamander. But for now, here's the video I took. It shows the results of about eighteen person-hours of work.

Geocaching?

2009-07-04T04:50:00.001-07:00

I was talking to Al Larmann the other day, and he was telling me that most of the people who subscribe to the NCTA Newsletter are older folks. The more I thought about this the more it bugged me, because of all the great joys I get from the Link Trail, seeing my nephew embrace my enthusiasm for it is the greatest. I think that the Link Trail is a jewel that should be shared with young people most of all! So I started mulling over potential ways to attract younger people to the trail.

The first idea I came up with was geocaching. Wikepedia has a good summary of what that is.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.[1] There are over 820,000 active geocaches in the world right now.

The idea of geocaching is simple enough. I have a good idea of how to do it. What I'd like help with is what to put in the caches. I mentor a young boy in New Jersey, and I know what he'd say: Bakugan cards! But New Jersy isn't Cazenovia. I don't know what young people around this particular area would most like to find in a geocache. So please, comment on this post with your ideas, or e-mail them to me. I'd like to start geocaching on the Link Trail soon.

National Trails Day: Hike

2009-06-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

For many more pictures, see the Picasa web album for this hike.

Some people from the morning visit to the Canal Town Museum gathered at the trailhead near the graveyard for a short hike. The trail was beautifully sun-dappled, and there was a new flower blooming around every turn. I lingered at each one, wondering if I should break out the camera yet, and began falling back before we'd even hit the reservoir trail.

I managed not to get too far behind - for about ten minutes. Then I saw a bug on a plant just north of the old reservoir, and it was all over. Later I used BugGuide to find out that this is a female Panorpa. Judging from the Wing Guide of Ontario, I'd say it's a Panorpa acuta. It's definitely a female, because the information page tells us that the males have an appendage on the rear of the abdomen that looks frighteningly like a scorpion's stinger. They don't sting, though, so you can relax. I know I did.

I caught up with the rest of the folks just as they were entering the woods. Then came the depressing part of the trail: the procession of broken birdhouses. It turns out that Kathy Disque had just put them up this spring, and as we passed through the woods to the tall staircase, we saw that they'd all been vandalized.

Looking at the sad bundle of birdhouse slats that Mary collected, I thought again of my old theory to explain why people seem hard-wired to engage in vandalism. I think that it's a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. In attempting to gain a reproductive advantage over its peers, an organism has two basic choices: work to build up its own resources, or work to destroy the resources of others. Since the entropy of any system always increases, it's always far easier to reduce order than to increase it by the same amount; tearing something down is much easier than building it up. It seems clear to me that an evolutionary process could select for vandalism, enraging though the results may be. Thoughts like this help me cope.

We crossed the big bridge over Canastota Creek and the little one over the tributary just upstream, climbed the slope to the old railroad bed, and gathered around while Al told us some of the history of the railroad. Then we turned back, stopping on the bridge for the shot at the top of the page.

While Mary, Kathy and others fished some garbage out of the creek, I noticed a spider hanging from its web a few feet away. I took the opportunity to snap a few hundred shots as it devoured a fly it had caught. Later I referenced BugGuide and found that it was Mangora placida, or tuftlegged orb weaver. There was something strange about this one, though, because orb weavers are, by definition, supposed to weave orb webs. This one instead had a simple, thick, horizontal tangle web. It also had a bum leg, as you'll see if you look closely at shots in the Picasa web album. I wonder if that had anything to do with its aberrant, slipshod approach to web-building. Check out these gorgeous shots of the same species.

At the top of the stairs Mary paused to see if anything could be done for the bench, also recently vandalized. Apparently not.

Between the stairs and the trail I got some shots of a yellow wood-sorrel, but unfortunately my shots don't show the angle of the seed pod stalks, which would tell me what species it was.

On the way out of the woods I snapped some shots of herb robert, a constant - one might say unavoidable - companion in these parts.

We passed back out of the woods and along the path over the old reservoir, and as I reentered the woods northwest of the cemetery I made a point to get some shots of the delightful blue-eyed grass I'd seen on the way in. They're not what you'd call rare, but they're also not something I see every day, and that little blast of saturated blue with a brilliant yellow center always makes me smile.

Nearing the end of the trail, we passed through a plentiful copse of dame's rocket, an old favorite of mine from back when I was traipsing up and down Fairview Avenue with my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers.

I certainly couldn't end the hike without grabbing some shots of the first burst of color I'd seen that day: some forget-me-nots growing in the stream just a few feet from the trailhead.

National Trails Day: Canal Town Museum

2009-06-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

For more pictures from the museum, see the Picasa web album for this visit.

Among the people gathering in the office next door to the Canastota Canal Town Museum were a bunch of Link Trail folks. We watched a video presentation about the museum, and then went next door for a tour. I got talking to Mary and Kathy about Link Trail stuff, so I fell behind the main group before it got past the first room.

When I walked into the second room I got that pleasant shock of making an unexpected connection. The air vent on the front of the old wood stove shown above had lost its cover, and I immediately realized that the radiation hazard symbol came from that shape.

I got a big kick out of the assortment of Weed Tire Chains advertisements from the early 1900s. They used hard-sell FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) techniques; it looks like they sold their product by scaring the heck out of people.

As I passed on, down the stairs into the basement level, through into the next room, back up the stairs, and on through the rest of the upstairs rooms, I became more and more impressed. This little museum packs a lot of New York State's history into a very small space. I regret not going in before, and plan to come back. On the way out, I spent the $10 for a yearly membership.

Urti-WHO now???

2009-05-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

The following incident did not take place on the Link Trail, but rather a few miles away in Oneida. It is relevant to this journal because your child may encounter a cocoon from the same species of caterpillar on the trail.

Grace and I babysat Dylan and Abby for a few hours while their parents went out to celebrate their anniversary. While the kids played on the lawn I spent some time snapping pictures of spiders. In order to steady my hand, I grabbed a block of wood to prop up my arm. There happened to be a cocoon on this block of wood, and Dylan noticed it. The kids poked at it, which I though harmless enough. Little did I know what perils awaited our young charges. (CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Well before his parents got back, Dylan was complaining about discomfort in his hand. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but he asked me to take a picture of his thumb soon after he touched the cocoon. I had forgotten all about this until weeks later, when I was going through my pictures from that day. There was a series of shots of the hairs embedded in his thumb - hairs I didn't even know were there when I took the shots!

Grace took a close look and noticed tiny hairs sticking out of both of the children's fingers and palms. I was shocked. The only time I'd heard of something like this was when, visiting Arizona in 2003, I was warned about the hairs of the teddy bear cholla. But I had no idea that hairs from a soft-looking cocoon could get stuck in the skin! I remembered that the best way to remove teddy bear cholla hairs is to apply Elmer's glue or duct tape and then peel it off, so I went and found some tape.

Thankfully the hairs from the cocoon don't burn like those from the teddy bear cholla; they seemed to cause the kids considerable itching, but not what you'd call pain. So they were patient and relatively fidget-free while we pressed the tape onto their little piggies again and again. It took a long time, but eventually we got most if not all of them out.

I thought that was the end of it, but no such luck. Two days later I was back at the office and I got a call from my sister. Dylan's hand had gotten worse! The discomfort had increased, and there were little red bumps on his hand. I called Madison County Cooperative Extension and posted a request for expertise on the BugGuide forum. Then I did a whole lot of furious Googling.

Among other things, I found this thread on Arachnoboards.com, in which the general consensus was that no one quite knows whether the hairs cause irritation via purely mechanical means, or whether they contain a poison like the urushiol in poison ivy. I think that was where I first saw the term "urticating hairs". It seems that tarantulas and some caterpillars have them, and that the cocoons of those caterpillars retain the hairs!

I called my sister back, conveying to her the general sense I got from skimming a number of sources: an injection may not do anything, so don't let the doctor stick the kid unless he can show you a good reason to do so. The best thing to do in these cases is to apply a topical steroid, which is exactly what the doctor ended up prescribing.

I spoke to my sister a few days later, and Dylan's hand was fine. The strange thing was that Dylan suffered much more than Abby, despite the fact that she got more hairs in her hand than he did. This might be because Dylan had been exposed to something similar before. If you read the Arachnoboards.com thread, you'll learn that the poison in urticating hairs effects people like the urushiol in poison ivy: most folks show no reaction the first time they're exposed, a moderate reaction the second time, and so on.

The irritation comes at least in part from the mechanical properties of the hairs, but it seems likely that the allergic reaction comes from a poison. This morning, nearly a month later, I read an article* about a moth with poisoned urticating hairs that I printed out from JSTOR**. It seemed to show conclusively that, although the initial skin reaction is due to the hairs' mechanical properties, there is a separate allergic reaction caused by poison.

OOH OOH!! I just went to Google the article so that I could see if it was available outside JSTOR, and look what I found: "Investigative Studies of Skin Irritations From Caterpillars"***. Note that you can download the entire .pdf file!

...pauses to read the article...

Interesting! And by "interesting", I mean the fraction that was not so densely technical that I had no clue what the authors were going on about. Here's a summary of the germane bits.

In clinical practice, skin exposure has been usually accidental in the woods or in the forest. In the home, caterpillars or cocoons or moths may get into sheets, pillows, etc. and irritate the skin even after prolonged periods of drying of the arthropod. In one area of Texas, according to Bishopp (8), schools had to close until the larva were under control. Katzenellenbogen (22), has described caterpillar dermatitis as an occupational disease in plantation workers. Ziprkowski, Hofshi and Tahori (23) report 600 cases of caterpillar dermatitis among 3000 soldiers encamped in a pine grove. Occasionally the irritant material may be even dustborne. The airborne factor is more important in the development of the irritation from the hairs of moths. "Yellow tail moth dermatitis" is well known among merchant marine personnel who use ports of Central and South America (24, 25, 26). Also well known among the troops in Korea is the papular dermatitis from the "Yellow Korean Moth".

...

When setae were immersed in water, saline alcohol, etc., and dried out, although they were very brittle, the insertion of these into the skin did not produce any reactions. It was not possible on microscopic section to see a definite foreign body reaction around the inserted setae. Therefore,the seta itself produced no significant foreign body reactions. However, setae removed freshly from the caterpillar or left by the caterpillar were found to contain the irritant material. This is again additional proof for the basic idea that the setae, themselves, in spite of their barbed appearance serve merely as a tube to carry the irritant substance.

...

Although the caterpillar has been studied for some time, the exact nature of its irritant principle is still not known definitely. Its polypeptide nature is suspected; 5-hydroxytryptamine may be present. We, however, could not find this important material in our extracts. The poison glands of the caterpillar appear similar to the salivary glands of the other arthropods of dermatologic interest. The skin reactions vary according to the sensitivity of the individual. ...

So, in summary: lots of live or caterpillars or their cocoons or even their remains can cause skin reactions of varying severity. The immediate reactions may be caused to a greater or lesser degree by the mechanical properties of the urticating hairs, but the more serious, and the more long-term, reactions are due to a toxin of unknown nature. So don't go nuzzling any caterpillars.

*The Poison and Poison Apparatus of the White-Marked Tussock Moth Hemerocampa leucostigma Smith and Abbot
Paul M. Gilmer
The Journal of Parasitology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Dec., 1923), pp. 80-86

**Helping put Grace through the School of Physical Therapy at Columbia has its perks, foremost among which is that I get access, through her, to pretty much any research article I want. JSTOR, an online library of many research periodicals, is the best of the sources.

***Investigative Studies of Skin Irritations From Caterpillars
Leon Goldman, M.D., Faye Sawyer, Ann Levine, John Goldman, Steven Goldman and Joan Spinianger, B.S.
Presented at the Twentieth Annual Meeting of The Society for Investigative Dermatology, Inc., Atlantic City, N. J., June 7, 1959.

Look at the big spider!

2009-05-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa Web album.

I had promised Dylan that I’d take him on a hike this weekend, so it was the highest-priority item on my list of things to do before I left town on Sunday. I had been wanting to fill in my trail maps with pictures from the Canastota end, but Dylan’s mom had said that he wanted to go to back the quarry. So I engaged in a bit of subversive redirection. I asked him if he remembered the bridge over the stream where we threw sticks in and watched them float downstream, and asked him if he wanted to go back there. Thankfully he was excited about that prospect.

Either Dylan remembered me rubbing alcohol on his legs after last summer’s hike through a section with lots of poison ivy, or his mother reminded him to avoid it, because on the trail through the woods near the cemetery he kept pointing to plants and asking me “Is that poison ivy?” I assured him that I’d tell him if I saw any.

After passing under the tree trunk growing horizontally over the trail near the cemetery, Dylan turned around and watched me make my way under it. Laughing, he pointed out how he didn't even have to duck his head. Oh, kid, it’s not lost on me. The years are flying by so fast that I fear you’ll double in size if I blink once, and lose all interest in what I have to share with you if I blink twice. So believe me, I’m savoring the moment.

Before reaching the path back to the old reservoir we saw the first white trillium of the day, and the first of several cute and colorful birdhouses that someone put up since last fall.

On the path we enjoyed seeing the violets that were popping up everywhere. I pointed out the massive poplars to the left of the trail and, when Dylan asked what the concrete structure was, told him that it used to be a reservoir. That, of course, led to the question “What’s a reservoir?” I love it when kids ask questions. As we mounted the staircase he asked about the notches in the log steps, so I explained about traction.

As soon as we reentered the woods I encountered an excellent photo opportunity: a beetle on a trout lily blossom. Unfortunately my holding still and snapping shots also represented an opportunity for insects to land on me and start sucking my blood.

We continued on through scads of mayapples and white, pink and black trillium. There were also a lot of what I think was false Solomon's seal, but I didn't think to get any shots of it.

I also started to notice a curious plant within the leaf litter: shiny pale stems that seemed to have sprouted from the earth and plunged right back in again. later, after I got home and talked to Grace about it, she indicated that these sprouts are quite common. They must be one of those things that I never noticed before, but I'm sure my eye will catch them from now on.

We descended the staircase amid a slope sprinkled liberally with trillium. As we walked along the path of 4x4s that skirt the stream, Dylan asked why the crosswise slats were there. As I got some more shots of trillium I explained again about the importance of traction on otherwise slippery wood.

Just as we reached the bridge, Dylan said “Look at the big spider” and I said “Where?!” He pointed, and there was a large brownish grey spider clinging to the Canastota Creek sign on the side of the bridge! While Dylan threw sticks into the stream I got a few hundred shots of this beautiful specimen*. See the “boxing gloves”? Those are pedipalps, and the fact that they’re swollen means that it’s a male. Believe it or not, they’re copulatory organs. Check this out.**

At some point while Dylan was playing around on the bridge and gathering sticks to throw in the water, he got a sliver in his finger. He was rather distressed but agreed to let me dig it out. I thought of my knife, but then remembered the teardrop corsage pins I'd put in my camera case as size reference for photographs. Their first use turned out to have nothing to do with photography. I poked and teased at the sliver as Dylan's distress intensified, manifesting itself as a high keening noise. I have to give him credit, though: he endured it with minimal squirming. Eventually I got it out, and the keening subsided.

We headed back through the ravine and up the stairs amid the blanket of gentle green sprinkled liberally with white and pink trillium blossoms. Dylan did a bit of tree-climbing while I snapped shots of violets.

The sun came out and I got some very satisfying shots of shiny young poison ivy. I showed Dylan how the leaves grow in clusters of three, and told him that the waxy shine comes from the oils that rub off on your skin and give you rashes and blisters. I believe I took the opportunity to drill into him the old mnemonic "leaves of three, let it be". I also reminded him that Virginia creeper is shiny but not poisonous, and that older poison ivy leaves are not very shiny but they are still poisonous. The point is that poison ivy is best identified by its clusters of three leaves.

One of the joys of macro photography is getting the pictures home and seeing things that you had no idea were there when you shot them. And in my experience, spider webs are number one in that category of retrospective joys. Those little suckers are spinning their webs everyhwere, and this is never more apparent than when I examine shots that I thought were just of plants and insects. Click on the photo above and look at the top. See the web leading down to the broadleaf toothwort next to the poison ivy?

Likewise, I never saw the webs strung between these two poison ivy plants (look on the left)...

... or the delicate strands on this garlic mustard plant.

*I looked up the spider later and found out that it belongs to the genus Dolomedes, also known as fishing spiders. I had no idea that fishing spiders were so widespread! I believe this one to be a Dolomedes scriptus.

**If you're really interested in the subject of spider mating, find a copy of the following article.

Studies on the Habits of Spiders, Particularly Those of the Mating Period
by Montgomery, T. H., Jr.
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. 55 (1903), pp. 59- 149
Published by: Academy of Natural Sciences

Not exactly a Link Trail hike, but we can dream...

2009-05-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

For many more pictures, see the Picasaweb album for this hike.

Grace and I met Kathy, Kathy, Mary, Dawn, Sigi and Horst at the Canastota thruway exit at 9:00 as scheduled. Our caravan made its way through Rome and north toward Pixley Falls. We parked at the southernmost trailhead, piled into two cars, and proceeded to our starting point: the Boonville Nice N' Easy.

We were lucky to have a sunny, cool day. We walked past a beautiful mural painted on the wall of an old building, and over the footbridge. From there it was a simple matter of walking southward along the path on the eastern bank. I enjoyed chatting with Dawn about travel and wildflowers.

Before long I fell far behind. You probably won't be too surprised to hear the cause: a picturesque patch of Cladonia fungus. I think it was Cladonia pyxidata but it could be any of a number of similar-looking species on this list.

I caught up with the group while they were pausing at an old piece of machinery that was presumably put there to control the flow between the main canal and the connecting stream.

We moved on, crossing Route 46 and pausing to view the lock just beyond...

... and to admire the work a beaver had done on a tree across the trail from the canal...

...and the pussy willows glowing in the spring summer sun.

Over the next few miles we saw several locks, one of which had a fairly new-looking footbridge crossing it.

Once again, I fell behind as I lingered on an irresistible photo op: a community of red-topped fungus on a post. These were also Cladonia, but a different species: my best guess is Cladonia didyma, but it could have been Cladonia magyarica.

At one point I got to talk to Mary about the work that she and other have done to make the Link Trail a reality. It took years of work just to get the State Parks Commission to talk to them, let alone allow them to build the trail. But after more than ten years of work, the trail between Cazenovia and Canastota was completed. Then, immediately after that was finished last summer, New York State allowed horse traffic on the trail, ignoring the misgivings of those who made it. It's no wonder that, as Mary said, the folks who worked so hard on the trail are "feeling ill-used".

I think that the Link Trail is a gem. I feel lucky to have such a beautiful, secluded trail so close to my old stomping grounds, and I'm glad to be able to contribute to it. I thought of all this as I walked with Mary, and as she pointed to the bluffs off to the left. She's working on a way to extend the Link Trail northward to connect with the one we were walking. That's an exciting prospect.

These old structures look like buttresses, but what they used to buttress is anyone's guess.

We left the main trail to have lunch near the falls north of the park. A few of us descended the steep trail to explore the area where the two streams cascade over waterfalls, converge, and flow southward.

Between our lunch spot and Pixley Falls State Park, the grade must steepen, because it seemed like there was an old lock every time I looked. Along with the locks, there were recurring companions of the day...

...such as marsh marigolds...

...trillium...

...and more beaver work.

We reached Pixley Falls and made our way down to the bottom of the falls. I used the timer to get the group shot at the top of this entry. Then we hiked the last two miles or so, which was steeper than the rest.

We got back to the cars parked at the trailhead and shuttled back to Boonville.

A quick followup

2009-04-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

For more images see the Picasaweb album for this hike.

On the previous day I forgot to get size references for the bloodroot and the moss, so I took Grace on a quick hike in from Quarry Road. I got my size reference, but the tape measure was very awkward. There must be a better way, and after this hike I spent lots of time pondering what that might be. I need something that will hold itself in place next to the subject - perhaps something I can stick in the ground? I don't want to go poking large holes in the ground, so something narrow such as a hatpin might be just the thing. I haven't found a hatpin yet, so I've stuck two of my mother's old white teardrop corsage pins into my camera case. As I was typing this it occurred to me that I should take a small file and score millimeter markings into the shafts. This should give me an excellent size reference for flowers or insects on the ground, or even insects on trees or wooden structures.

My first hike with Morgan and Ben

2009-04-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasaweb album.

We had an hour to spare before getting Morgan and her boyfriend Ben back to Ben's house, and Morgan asked if we could take a hike to the quarry. The dilapidated structures along that section of trail fascinate her, and she enjoys photographing them. I was particularly quick to say yes because I'd just gotten a new camera: a Canon EOS Rebel XSi with a Tamron 90mm macro lens. I was eager to get the new rig onto the trail and find some small subjects.

We hiked in from Quarry Road, and almost immediately I got a pleasant surprise: a wee bloodroot poking up through the leaf litter blanketing the south side of the trail. Apparently I haven't seen them this early in the year before, because I never knew that the leaf wrapped itself around the blossom stalk like a slender woman wrapping her cloak around herself for warmth. But what surprised me more was the fact of its location: I've never seen a bloodroot growing in such a dry and sunny spot. This was my first hike with Ben, so I took the opportunity to tell the story of how native Americans used the red sap of the roots to dye their clothes, and how it's illegal to pick the plant because it's endangered.

The patch of moss shown here is about 3" wide.

The patch of moss shown here is about 3/8" wide.

Minutes later my eyes landed on the melange of greens and browns in a small patch of moss. Then I saw the tiny stalks sprouting up through the mat, and I was hooked. I got myself into macro mode: kneeling, crouching, bracing my elbow on whatever was available, and exhaling smoothly in calculated intervals, I started snapping away.

Three days before, when I got the camera, I didn't know a thing about SLR photography. During those three days I gave myself a crash course. Between my friend Karen's uncle Joe and various internet resources, I gained a theoretical understanding of apertures, shutter speeds and ISO settings. That's sort of like saying "I gained a theoretical understanding of juggling." It takes a long time and a lot of work to go from understanding it to being able to do it well. This was the first step on that path.

The little heads on the moss sprouts are between 1/8" and 1/4" long.

The depth of field of this new macro lens is stunningly shallow, so I kept refocusing on different clusters of the little capsule heads nodding on their slender stalks. I also experimented with different F-stops*. I wanted to get a sense of my aperture limits for handheld shooting, so I didn't use the tripod yet. I didn't bother going above F8 because I figured I'd get nothing but blurs if I narrowed the aperture too much.

It wasn't long after I tore myself away from that first subject that I was captivated by a trio of them. A pair of bloodroot stood in front of one of the many remnants of the old railroad: a rusty spike jutting from a tie that was slowly being overcome by moss. This time I set up the tripod and used the two-second timer so that I wouldn't be touching the camera when the shutter went off. I wanted to see what my effective aperture limits are for tripod-mounted field shots.

I started with the two bloodroot, moving all the way up from F/2.8 to F/32 while focusing on the nearest one, then moving the focus to the farther one and going back down to F/2.8. I see that the shot I chose to show both flowers in the same frame was taken at F/16. I'll have to review my original shots to be sure, but this may confirm the claim I read that this lens starts to produce softer images once the F-number goes higher than 16.

I moved on to the railroad spike, again trying different F-stops. These two shots show the dramatic difference in mood between F/14 and F/2.8. I particularly like the F/2.8 shot because I find that having everything blurred but the spike, the tree trunk, and the narrow strip of tie, gives it a feeling that's intimate, even lonely.

I finally tore myself away from the flowers and the spike when Morgan and Ben came back, Morgan excitedly telling me to come look at what they'd found. It was the same stone structure Mary and her fellow hikers wondered at two weeks ago. I put a mental star next to my mental note to research it. I should have taken a picture of it! Oh well... next time.

While the youngsters hung out by the quarry I went ahead to where the trail reenters the trees. This is where, during the summer, we found lots of snails and a few tiny frogs. I didn't find any frogs or occupied snail shells, but I was very pleased with the closeup shot of a shell that turned out to be empty.

Right after I left the shell I saw rabbit remains of a fresher sort than the coyote droppings Grace and I saw a few weeks ago. It seems likely that coyotes were responsible for this too.

On the way back I got some shots of one of the coltsfoot that are sprouting near the quarry, and some of the first bloodroot I saw. Then I snapped away at the lovebirds. There was smooching. It's good to know that a hike with dad doesn't kill the romance.

*To see the camera settings I used, click the "more info" link to the right of any photo in the Picasaweb album.

The humble origins of yet another obsession

2009-04-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of entries about my fascination with a spider found on the Link Trail. If you're not interested in population genetics, give this one a miss.

Up until July I'd never heard of Enoplognatha ovata. Now I'm not only reading research articles on the little suckers, but getting ready to contact some of the folks who wrote those research articles so that I can better understand the population genetics involved. Oh well, anything for a weird life.

Back in July I saw a lot of spiders on the section of trail south of Freber (aka Hodge) Road. At the time I thought that most of them were the same species. After taking a look at the macro shots, I saw the differences in coloration and laughed at my silliness. But after I spent some more time looking at the shots and trying to identify them in BugGuide, I was startled to find that I was right the first time: they were the same species!

Since the female E. ovata shelters her egg sac in a rolled-up leaf, her species only lives near foliage that it can curl up just so. Those kinds of leaves grow on the blackberry bushes along the Link Trail - and in the hedgerows of Nidderdale, a town on the far side of England in Yorkshire. As it turns out, researchers as far off as Nidderdale and as nearby as the Syracuse University research station in Lafayette, New York have been puzzling over E. ovata for decades. And the reason they're so interested is the same reason I thought I was seeing different species.

E. ovata has a striking color polymorphism, which is a pretty way of saying that a spider can have one of several distinct color patterns that are determined by the color genes it got from its parents. Most of the spider's body is a creamy white, yellow, or greenish color. The Lineata morph has no additional color. Redimita individuals have a pair red stripes running down their backs, and in the Ovata morph there's no gap between the stripes: the entire back of the abdomen, i.e. the dorsal opisthosoma (god, I love saying "dorsal opisthosoma") is red. The individual in the lower right corner of the composite image above is Redimita. The other two are Lineata. I didn't see any Ovata, and I'm not likely to: none of the researchers found any in this part of New York State.

Now here's the hook: Although the gene for Ovata is dominant over that for Redimita, and both of the red morphs are dominant over Lineata, percentages of the three morphs in natural populations are the inverse of what one might expect. Most surveys show somewhere around 70% Lineata, 25% Redimita, and 5% Ovata. And these proportions are remarkably stable within almost every local community sampled. This piqued my curiosity. It did the same to a lot of researchers. In the posts to follow I'll be telling you about their findings.

An Early Spring Trip on the Link Trail

2009-03-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

A day like late June in CNY, even though it's really late March. All snow is gone from the trail, even in the hedgerow from Ingalls Corners Rd. to the old rail corridor.

Six people from the Bullthistle Hiking Club (from Norwich, NY) and two guests from the CNY Chapter of the North Country Trail Association started hiking about 9:30 am after having spotted cars at Mt. Pleasant Rd. parking area--our destination.

I'm out to just enjoy the trail after having spent the last 10 years building trail, but I can't stop myself from noticing that Steve and Mike's brute work on creating stone steps from the edge of the escarpment down to the old rail bed have held up well over the winter.

We turned north past the abandoned quarry and paused to wonder over the stone structure looming over the taril---what was it for? Lime kiln? Support for a (wooden) water tank for the steam locomotives?

There were a few tiny coltsfoot on the barren March ground and as we approached the Quarry Rd. crossing I noted with pleasure that the buzzards are back. All summer they spiral and float along the edge of the escarpment here, riding the rising air waves. There are usually half a dozen or more; today we see two.

There is a new wind generator right next to the trail. One of our member trail workers has installed it behind his house. Though we can feel no breeze at our level on the trail, the blades and turning fast and quietly.

Soon, the trail swings east and we are in the very bottom of a valley drainage, with wetlands and small streams on each side. The stream are the upper waters of Canastota Creek and we marvel how they (in the 1800's) built a railroad here, in a wetland, in the very apex of the valley's drainage. And the sky looked like a laute June sky...

East of Nelson Rd., at the base of the ledges, we found a few hapatica already in bloom. What marvels! We had lunch at the waterfalls on the outlet to the old Canastota Reservoir. Had to believe this was onece the water supply for the village. It'd almost filled with sediment now and is only a pond. Remnants of concrete conglomerate just belwo the dam, and traces of a wagon road on the other side suggest that a road once crossed on the earthen dam.

We were at Mt. Pleasant Rd and our cars before 2 PM, even with the liesurely lunch and stopping to look at marvels along the way.

Winter's last gasp

2009-03-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

For more pictures, see the PicasaWeb album for this hike.

Grace and I had an hour or two before sunset, so we decided on a quick hike south from Perryville. At the Freber/Hodge Road trailhead, the white skein of clouds in an azure sky contrasted brilliantly with the brown desolation on the ground. The snow cover had all but melted, leaving the grit and scum of winter amid the remains of last year's wildflowers. The still-green grass had not yet regained its vitality, and this year's shoots had yet to poke up through the litter. Overall it seemed as though the landscape was spent from its exertions in enduring the winter; the promise of spring was certainly in the air, but first it needed a minute to lie, panting and damp, and catch its breath.

As we walked, we saw here and there a last holdout of snow and ice: to our left a strip of white traced the path of a small stream tumbling down through its rocky channel. To our right, the sun turned the occasional rivulet into a vein of flaming brass. An ice stalagmite still stood within the sluice of water pouring down into the ravine near Carey Hill Road. But the mystery of that day's hike lay beneath our feet.

Every few minutes we found a type of animal dropping we'd never seen before. Its shape was much like dog droppings, but its composition reminded me of owl pellets: it was composed mostly of greyish white hair. The more of these we saw, the more it became clear that it was rabbit hair. Then we began finding some with bones. Clearly a species that frequents the trail had been devouring rabbits more or less whole.

Several times during the next day we came back to the topic of the strange droppings: Birds and snakes swallow their prey whole, but there certainly aren't any around here big enough to swallow even a dismembered rabbit. What animal would be big, hasty, and indiscriminate enough not to bother stripping the desirable meat from the rest of the carcass? We were starting to think that it must have been a pack animal like a coyote, and then I did some Googling and found that we were right.

This site has a good picture that matches what we saw. This one mentions that bobcats, like the rest of the cat family, tend to scratch at the ground in order to cover their scat. Since we didn't notice any signs of scratching, this also points to coyotes. The following excerpt from an article on the Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve website further supports our conclusion.

Coyotes are opportunistic omnivores. They eat mice, rabbits, other small animals, insects, lizards, frogs, fruits, berries and along urban fringes, domestic livestock and/or garbage. Often the only sign a hiker sees of the local coyote population is the scat they leave along the trail. Coyote scat are difficult to recognize from fox scat. Coyote can be distinguished primarily by their size - those 3/4" or more and greater than 4" are probably coyote. Scat change seasonally -- during the summer and fall they have more berries. During winter and spring you will often find more small animal bones. Scat usually crumble apart in a few days. Finding scat on the trail indicates a coyote has been in the area recently.

Hikers often ask why scat are found on the trail. The rangers propose two theories. First, coyotes use the trails because they are easier to navigate; the same reason hikers remain on the trails instead of trying to go cross-country. Second, trails make excellent natural territorial boundaries. As such, coyotes use scat to mark them.

Another quick hike with Dylan

2009-02-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

During my last few visits to Oneida I hadn't had much time to spare, and the weather had been extremely cold, so my outings with my nephew Dylan had been limited to walks along Fairview. This weekend, though, I made a point to get out onto the Link Trail. I packed flashlights, got Dylan thoroughly bundled up in winter boots, plenty of layers, and ample forehead and ear protection, buckled him into the car, and set out for the trail. We parked beside Quarry Road and hiked westward toward the quarry, Dylan's favorite spot on the trail.

There were several inches of snow on the trail, which is rather a lot for a four-year-old, but Dylan made excellent progress. I knew that such a cold, silent, still day didn't afford the opportunities for teaching Dylan about nature that a summer day would, so I decided to focus on that very absence of summer things. I told him how we could see much more of the valley because the deciduous trees had lost their leaves, and pointed out the dark green clumps of coniferous trees across the valley that had not lost their needles. I told him how most, or maybe all, of the spiders we'd seen were dead, but their eggs were down in the leaves beneath the snow, waiting until spring to hatch. I asked him to listen for birds, and told him about migration. I told him how the frogs we saw were now hibernating, and tried to describe that concept. And I showed him some squirrels' nests that, again, we could now see because the leaves had fallen. This awareness of changes as facets of a grander continuity of natural cycles is something I always try to impart to him.

I'd set my countdown timer for about 25 minutes, because I figured that's when we should turn around if we were to make it back to the car before dark. The alarm went off just as we reached the quarry, I lifted up Dylan for a quick peek, and we headed back.

I'm a bit obsessive about finding the perfect walking stick, and I seem to be imparting this obsession to my nephew. Here and there a stick that might be just right for Dylan seemed to call out to me from the trail's edge, and I'd grab it, break it off to the appropriate length, and hand it over for testing. Of course Dylan has no notion yet of how to use a walking stick, so he mostly flails about with it in a way that actually makes him walk slower. But it's the thought that counts, right? And he sure does appreciate the thought. One of these days he'll be outdistancing me, stick or no, so for now I'm going to enjoy this period of contributing to his inchoate hiking skills.

Given the amount of snow on the trail, I was impressed with Dylan's speed. I kept drilling into him the importance of keeping a good pace in order to stay warm, and either it got through to him or he was just enthusiastic about hiking with Uncle Hugh. In any case, we made great time back to the car, and I got Dylan home on time - with his new walking stick!

Three generations enjoying the snow

2008-11-28T18:46:00.000-08:00

For more pictures, see the PicasaWeb album for this hike.

Dylan had been raring to get back to his beloved Link Trail, so Grace and I made sure to take him for a hike while we were in town for Thanksgiving. We were lucky enough to have Nathan available to join us. We parked at the Freber/Hodge Road trailhead and walked south onto the trail. Dylan, being four years old, is highly distractable, especially in the snow. Grace did an excellent job of keeping him on task; here is her description of her technique.

It was a mix of 3 things: context (what to expect from the outside world and feelings inside himself), locus of control (I gave him 2 choices, both acceptable, over and over.) and distraction (hero of his own sports story, sense of humor, silliness.)

A) I told him what to expect: how long it was before the end ("see that bend there, it's just beyond there" "we're more than halfway back to the car; can you look for the car?"), that it might feel difficult but that was normal and all the sports stars knew that the very end is harder work, that a little rest would give him alot more energy to run again (kids work in bursts - run, rest, run, rest).

B) I gave him 2 choices:
rest for 1 minute now or keep walking/rest later;
walk or run;
run now and shoulder ride later or walk and no shoulder ride

C) I did sports play by play narration of his running, which was apparently very inspiring and silly.

All this I learned from salon.com/tabletalk.

Thanks to Grace's efforts, Nathan and I had the opportunity to walk and talk amid the quietude of the stark winter day. The bare trees allowed us an open view down into the valley and the ravines. We all did our best to keep Dylan out of the wet spots. With Grace's coaching and coaxing, he did an impressive bit of running toward the end of the hike; he and Grace were one or two hundred yards ahead of me and Nathan by the time we reached the car!

A short hike on a bright autumn day

2008-10-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

For more pictures, see the PicasaWeb album for this hike.

It was a pleasant, brightly sunny and cool day - perfect for a hike. Dylan was, as usual, very eager to go. We didn't have much time, so we opted for a quick walk along the section just west of the Cottons Road crossing. This allowed us to revisit the log that Dylan and I found during our hike in September. The tiny creatures burrowing into it had kept busy; sawdust was still raining out of the holes, of which I think none were more than a millimeter in diameter.

As usual, Grace and I were gratified to tell Dylan stories about the natural world. I showed him some hops and told him about how lots of people around here used to work picking them for the brewing of beer. The teasel gave me the opportunity to tell him the story of how people once used them to raise the nap on wool. And he showed me a particularly interesting rock.

It seemed that the season had conspired to create a palette that was bittersweet and intimate: curlicued teasel towered stolidly against the vibrant blue sky; the umber and russet of the maples and the rioting reds, yellows and greens of the sumac stood out against the fields, striped with austere yellow bands of crisped sweet corn and still-green bands of grass and clover; brilliant ruby apples hung from their green island in a spuming grey-brown sea of spent goldenrod.

A Blaze of Glory

2008-10-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

I assumed that this work hike would involve trail-clearing so I loaded my trunk with axes and machetes. I left Oneida at 8:30, driving west through Clockville and south on Nelson Road. Other than the guy in the Saturn who passed me and the car ahead on a double line, it was a gorgeous, crisp, sunny morning. The valley was filling with more yellows and reds than I've seen around Oneida in years.

Just before 9:00 I pulled into the designated meeting spot: the parking area at the southwest tip of Cazenovia Lake. Then I found out that Kathy Eisele had sent me an e-mail telling me that all we'd be doing was marking trail. It turned out that Yahoo had put her message in my spam folder, so here I was with a trunk full of blades instead of the one thing I needed: a hammer. Thankfully Kathy had at least one extra.

Once everyone was gathered we formed a caravan and drove to the Dugway Road trailhead. Coordinator Kathy Eisele handed out the new blazes to the group: me, Margaret Maloney, George Zacharek, Kiley Barr, Ron and Linda Wallace, Patrick Dermody, Bill Zimmerman, Jonathan Bienes, Kurt Wheeler and his three young daughters, Chanda Vincent, and Al Larmann. The youngsters went ahead to clear some brush near the far end of the trail while the rest of us who weren't supervising them paired off. Each pair got a stack of yellow plastic rectangles with two holes for nails. Our job was to replace the old blue blazes with these new yellow ones.

Kathy instructed us to skip about a dozen markers ahead of the foremost pair and begin blazing from there. This leapfrog pattern would allow us to efficiently cover the whole trail. My partner Margaret and I started working on our section and I soon learned that there's more to trail marking than I'd expected. The basic rules turned out to be as follows.

Blaze on the right side of the trail.

Leave the nails sticking out so the tree has room to grow before it swallows the marker.

To indicate direction change use two blazes, the one on top offset in the direction of the turn.

Don't overblaze; if the old marker was unnecessary, don't replace it.

Don't blaze cherry trees; the wood is valuable.

It seemed to me that many of the previously marked trees were so young that a nail might kill them within a few years. I tried finding larger trees, but in many cases the bark was so spongy and thick that I would have had to bury the nail. Sometimes there were no suitable trees on the right side of the trail, so we had to use a cherry or a tree on the left. All the rules seemed made to be broken.

Margaret and I alternated friendly chatting with scratching our heads over which blazes not to replace (the trail was seriously overblazed) and which rules to break when there was no satisfactory tree to the right of the trail. Per our instructions we turned around when we ran into the group of youngsters and started working on the other side. I didn't count how many blazes we replaced but when I got back to the
trailhead at about 1:10 I was amazed at the enormous stack of blue markers filling my cargo pocket. We'd done more work than I'd realized.

My first Link Trail goup hike

2008-09-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to join in a group hike since I discovered the Link Trail in May, but each time I was out of town or had other commitments. Today, though, I finally had the opportunity to meet some of the folks from the North Country Trail Association and the Adirondack Mountain Club who helped build - and who hike on - the Link Trail.

I met Jerry, Kathy, Kathy, Dawn, Janet and Amy at the Canastota Thruway exit at 9:00 AM. We drove to the trailhead next to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, left the cars there, and rode in Kathy's van to Cazenovia. We parked at the Cazenovia Highway Department and hit the trail just before 10:00 AM.

The sky was overcast but the rain held off for a while, so our first few miles of hiking along Chittenango Creek were full of pleasant chatting, greeting other hikers and runners, and wondering what the structure near the trail - collapsed except for an arch and the low remnants of its stone walls - might have been. Long before we reached Bingley the rain began falling in earnest and the jackets and ponchos came out. We admired the NCTA-built wooden staircase at Bingley Road, made our way along Emhoff Road, and reentered the woods.

The day seemed close, intimate: our world extended from the wooded slope on our right to the silver curtain of mist one or two hundred yards to our left. The grey sky hung low, and the dull pewter gleam of rain on every surface imparted a bittersweet beauty to the first bursts of fall colors amid the greenery of the overgrown orchards leading down into the valley. Here brilliant red berries nestled within slate-grey bracken, and there a small cluster of sumac leaves exploded with yellow and red. Fallen leaves - some speckled red and yellow, some a brilliant pink - had begun blanketing the trail. The mist-shrouded far side of the valley existed only in our imaginations.

As we passed the filled-in ravine I had the opportunity to show the group the collapsed remnants of the tallest mullein I've ever seen, and an example of the folding that spiders love to do with blackberry leaves in order to shelter their egg sacs. I enjoyed talking with my companions about travel, language, and history as we passed on toward Carrys Hill Road.

Walking over the old railroad bed toward Hodge Road, I noticed a white fuzzy caterpillar of a species that I don't think I've seen before. This may be the best way to describe what a good time I had today: I was so immersed in the hiking and the conversations with these engaging new people that, although I remembered to ask Kathy to take a picture of the caterpillar, I never thought to ask her to take one of us! Ah, well. Just picture a drizzle of rain falling from a grey sky through sparse tree cover and onto the heads of seven soggy people having lunch around a wooden vehicle barrier that separates the trail from the road. That's us.

We finished our lunch at around noon and walked the section of the Link Trail that follows roadsides down into Perryville and northward to the hedgerow at the end of Ingalls Corners Road. By this time the conversation had turned to politics, so I was glad when the trail - and we - plunged back into the trees. Somehow walking single-file through a hedgerow lends itself more to focusing on the hike than on our national three-ring circus.

We wound our way down the stone staircase that the NCTA volunteers worked so hard on this summer, rejoined the old railroad bed, and passed the quarry. By the time we crossed Quarry Road our pace had flagged but, knowing we had only a few miles to go, we soon perked up.

On the thirty mile hike in June my legs felt like they were on fire for a little while after I, wearing shorts, walked through a patch of stinging nettles near Cottons Road. After that hike I looked up the plant so that I could identify and avoid it, and today it paid off: I noticed a patch covering the trail and warned the group about it.

While Jerry and I were waiting in front of the car restoration shop on Cottons Road I noticed a link to Madison County history: a hop vine growing up the tree near the road. That vine was probably a direct descendant of those that formed a significant part of Madison County's economy during the nineteenth century, when itinerant workers picked the hop blossoms that were then dried and sent west to feed the beer industry. I picked some of those little cones to show the group, and spent the next mile or so pleasantly sniffing one of them while thinking of how I've come not only to love hoppy beers, but to have pleasant associations with the smell of raw hops!

We crossed Cottons Road and Nelson Road and then, during the last leg of the journey, Jerry and I decided to kick it up a notch. We maintained a very fast walking pace - well, very fast for me, but pretty normal for Jerry - for the last two miles. Jerry left and I, having gotten the power-walking out of my system, went back to keep the rest of the group company for the last stretch. I didn't get far, though - obviously they'd barely gone any slower than us, because I ran into them within three minutes. I think we were all grateful to reach the cars and rest our feet.

I'm excited to have met such a great group of people, and have already made plans with Jerry and Amy to do Adirondack snowshoeing and more Link Trail hiking. Yeah!

Biological Buzzsaw

2008-09-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

While hiking with Dylan along the section south of Cottons Road, I noticed some sort of powder beneath a dead tree trunk next to the trail. The trunk was bare, about eight inches in diameter, and suspended two or three feet off the ground. The closer I looked, the curiouser I got: it looked as though someone had sprinkled powder not only along the entire underside of the log, but all along its edge. I finally looked very closely, and saw that those clumps were small mounds of sawdust surrounding tiny holes less than one millimeter in diameter. So many tiny worms had been burrowing into the wood that they had created a trail of sawdust beneath the entire log!

A few days after the hike I had a conversation on the BugGuide forum about what the boring insects might have been. I'm writing this months later, and in the interim I've seen many trees like this one and at least one more example of the accumulation of sawdust from burrowing insects. This sort of biological breakdown of dead trees is, of course, going on all around me all the time; I just never noticed it before. It's one more example of my perceptions changing upon looking closely.

My latest obsession: BugGuide.net

2008-08-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I began delving into BugGuide.net. Once I got used to navigating its pictorial taxonomic guide I was impressed with how easy it was to identify species I'd never seen before. Once I noticed its mapping tab - which shows geographic and seasonal distributions at any taxonomic level - and began uploading my own images, I was very impressed. It's quite a project, and I'm very thankful to all those who volunteer their time toward running the site and classifying submissions.

As far as the Link Trail is concerned, the neatest thing about BugGuide.net is its search engine. Each uploaded photo has an associated Identifier field where you can type whatever information you like, and this field is included in the search. The upshot is that, since I put the text "CNYLinkTrail" in the Identifier for each of my photos from the Link Trail, all I have to do is enter that text in the search box to show only those photos. And since the search specifications are part of the web address, I can provide a link directly to a page with all Link Trail pictures! This is the first step in compiling an entomological guide to the Link Trail - a guide to which anyone could add by simply uploading photos with the text "CNYLinkTrail" in the Identifier.

When one hike just isn't enough

2008-08-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

See my Picasaweb album for many more pictures from this hike.

By late morning my four-year-old nephew Dylan had asked me at least five times when we were going on a walk. I thought he might melt down completely if he had to wait until the afternoon, so to tide him over I took him on one of our traditional walks along Fairview Avenue. If you want to know much traffic has increased on Fairview in the last thirty years, walk along it with a four-year-old. I made sure to get us both well away from the road whenever cars were coming in each direction, which amounted to every few minutes. When I walked that same half mile of road as a child in the seventies I doubt I ever saw one tenth of the traffic I saw on Saturday. It makes me that much more thankful for quiet, secluded foot paths like the Link Trail.

We'd barely started when Dylan made me glad I'd brought my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. He pointed to what he thought was a dandelion. I couldn't remember what it was, so I took it as a teaching opportunity. I opened my Peterson's, found out that it was a sow-thistle, and pointed out some distinguishing characteristics: the tough, rough stem that resisted his attempts to pick a flower head; height; and leaf shape. We walked a half mile before we found a dandelion to compare it to, which itself was another opportunity to show Dylan how the seasons change and nature's forms flow: where earlier in the summer dandelions flourished we saw new flowers; the daylilies still stood there, but their brilliant orange blossoms were nearly all gone; we saw deadly nightshade for the first time this summer; one animal dead by the roadside had decomposed into nothing but bones, skin and hair; and the vulture circling overhead may have been attracted to the fresher carcass that we smelled as we walked by what used to be my uncle's farm. On the way back I pointed at the hedgerow across the road from the old farm and told him about the hop kiln that stood there when I was a child, and how people in this area once worked picking the hops that were used to make beer.

As we walked I pointed out the constant companions on our walks over the last few years: chicory, buttercup, tyrol knapweed, burdock, poison ivy, field bindweed, milkweed, butter-and-eggs, bird's-foot trefoil, and plaintain. Once again I made a point that he should recognize and avoid poison ivy, and that rubbing crushed plaintain on skin exposed to poison ivy can reduce the rash. We watched cloud shadows inch their way along the road and I tried to help Dylan visualize how the clouds move over the earth. When I pointed out two ladybugs mating on a milkweed plant I got the "What's mating?" question again, and again I said "That's when a male and a female get together to make babies." I'm going to have to figure out what to say when he asks for more of an explanation.

None of that took place on the Link Trail but I love my walks with Dylan so much that I couldn't resist telling about it. There's a worthier reason for including, though: it puts his receptiveness into perspective. When we went on the afternoon hike I'm about to describe, I'd already barraged him with all that information - and he was still eager for more!

In the afternoon Grace and I walked with Dylan from Quarry Road west to the quarry. I got preoccupied with a fascinating subject: a harvestman with three mites on its back. When I caught up with Grace and Dylan they were enjoying the view out over the valley. I kept falling behind whenever I'd find something interesting to photograph - first a spider that posed nicely for me on a root in the sunlight, then some wildflowers that were growing in a large patch but that I don't think I've seen before. Dylan enjoyed letting a caterpillar crawl on him. I noticed a tiny grey spider - its body was no more than two millimeters long - and the harvestman that was ambling toward it in that creepy way that reminds me of a Roger Corman movie. During the rest of the hike I noticed more and more of those tiny grey spiders. I'm starting to wonder if almost invisibly tiny spiders make up the majority of the spider biomass in the area, because now that I'm looking closely they seem to be everywhere.

Both the quarry and the snails that live nearby fascinate Dylan. He showed me the old machinery that he thought came from mowers, and I showed him the fragments of snail shell that I thought came from an animal eating the snail. As we started back I saw another harvestman with only five legs, so apparently it's not so uncommon a sight as I thought when I first noticed it a few weeks ago.

As we walked back past the quarry my eye locked onto a whitish piece of fuzz drifting on the air, and in a moment I knew it wasn't fuzz - it was an insect I'd seen only once before, on the Finger Lakes Trail in Ithaca around 1991. At the time I would have sworn it was a bit of fluff from a dandelion or a milkweed pod or somesuch, but after watching it "float" for a while I realized that it wasn't floating - it was flying in a way that mimicked floating. Obviously it made an impression, because here on the Link Trail seventeen years later it took me only a second to recognize another of the same species. Excited, I called Grace over to see. I didn't know I was about to get even more of a treat.

The insect seemed to be incredibly unlucky, because it happened to land on a plant about an inch from a small spider that immediately pounced. As I snapped away I figured I was getting shots of the insect's final moments, but I was wrong - after a few seconds of wrangling the spider disengaged and backed off, and the insect righted itself and flew away! I've since identified it as a woolly aphid. That "fuzz" is a waxy substance that, among other things, supposedly protects the aphid from predators. I'm not sure if that explains why the spider backed off, though, because I get the sense that the wax only hinders recognition; it's not clear to me whether it could have done anything to deter a predator that already had the aphid in its grasp.

Music to my Ears

2008-08-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

I got another dose of audio ambrosia from my four-year-old nephew today. I was talking to my sister on the phone and she asked if I wanted to say "Hi" to Dylan. She put him on and he said

"I can't wait for our next hike".

How cool is that?!

Two days ago Grace's father sent me this article about how children are growing up disconnected from the natural world. After reading it I feel even more blessed with my nephew's enthusiasm for our hikes: he's one kid who will grow up connected to the natural world. I'm really looking forward to introducing him to more of the trail and its inhabitants on Saturday.

Harvestmen Harvested

2008-07-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

See the Picasaweb album for more pictures from this hike.

I love this time of year. Orange daylilies, blue chicory, and hot pink sweet peas shout from the roadside like some exuberant shapenote choir transposed from sound to color, and occasionally a patch of black-eyed susans bursts into a bravura solo. The only combination I like better happens in late summer when the fields fill with yellow and purple as the New England asters and the goldenrod blossom side by side.

I parked at the Freber (aka Hodge) Road trailhead and spent a few minutes enjoying the profusion of wildflowers. The mullein blossoms weren't what you'd call showy, but the way the spikes towered over the other plants made them seem like the natural leaders of the yellow contingent. Of course St John's wort, with its blasts of saturated yellow, kept drawing my eye back down near the ground. Looking upward again, I finally picked out the lemon-yellow stigmas of a few evening primrose that, as usual, I'd mistaken for mullein at first glance.

The teasels kept drawing my eye, and again I thought how particularly evocative they are. In the winter, when the rest of the dead flowers are laid low under a blanket of snow, the teasels stand there, alone and just as dead, with only a light dusting of snow to show for their stolidness. They have an aching sadness: all the life - all that was green and white and wet - has fallen away from their stems and pods, and what's left seems to embody the funereal dryness that Poe called "crisped and sere". On this summer day, though, they told a different story, catching my eye with their contrasting textures and colors. Each flash of delicate lavender was a band of tiny flowers around the middle of a pincushion-like head, which sat inside a phalanx of thorny bracts. After reading the Wikipedia article I know that that lavender band was poised to split; as a matter of fact, if you click on the picture above you'll see what Grace just noticed: on one of the teasels in the background the ring of blossoms had already split in two.

The Queen Anne's lace were in full flush, forming a sparse web over the lower greenery like a pearled snood. The good old Tyrol knapweed formed a vibrant purplish backdrop within the shadows of the lower greenery, while burnt umber froths of curled dock made the roadside look like it had been singed by a selective fire. Just before I headed onto the trail I noticed a yellow cinquefoil that I don't think I'd seen before. I've since identified it as rough cinquefoil.

One of the first interesting things I saw was a harvestman with only five legs. I've seen plenty with one or two legs missing, but this is the first one I've noticed who'd lost three - and it had lost them all from one side! It seemed to be getting around perfectly well anyway.

Moving on, I saw a harvestman of a species I didn't think I'd seen before - it's always hard to say because the details are too small to see with the naked eye. That's one of the reasons I love macro photography - the closeup shot of this guy revealed a beautiful Rorschach pattern dappling its body.

Within a few hundred yards I'd reached the blackberry patches that cover both sides of the trail. Two weeks earlier, back in Millburn, I'd noticed that the harvestmen seem to love wineberry bushes, so I inspected these blackberry bushes very closely. Not only did I find that each plant was practically covered with harvestmen, but I discovered the unexpected theme of the hike: I was walking through a hidden harvestman graveyard.

I'd seen plenty of spiders lurking within leaves that they'd curled up with their own webs, so when I noticed a downward-curled blackberry leaf on an otherwise thriving plant I turned it over to see what was underneath. The few small black filaments I saw looked surprisingly familiar: I was almost sure they were harvestman legs. At first I thought I might have been mistaken, and anyway the harvestmen might not have been eaten - they could have simply tugged free of those trapped legs and continued on. But I kept seeing similar bundles, so I started to think that some local spider favors harvestmen. Then I saw the flaw in my logic. This summer I've trained my eye to see harvestmen, and now it's clear that they are bloody well everywhere! And since they seem to be constantly crawling along every surface they may represent 99% of the species that ever touch those spider webs. Of course the spiders are eating harvestmen - they're the only game in town! And I did eventually find proof that the spiders were eating them: the biggest clump of remains contained not just legs, but the dried husk of a harvestman's body. See the straw-colored blob in the closeup above?

I saw more and more of those down-curled blackberry leaves - once my eye got the hang of it I couldn't stop seeing them - and although concealed webbing was responsible for all of them, I hardly found spiders under any of them. I began to think that I was seeing an arachnid behavior that was analagous to that of a human trapper: he sets a bunch of traps throughout his territory and then, as time allows, he comes along and checks them. Again I quickly saw a flaw in my logic: there could have been a spider beneath each one of those curled leaves five seconds before I came along, and the spider could have dropped off when it felt the vibrations from my footsteps. I think I was also wrong about a single species doing all the leaf-curling.

Of the few spiders I found under those curled leaves, almost all of them looked the same to me, and there was something pleasing to me about the thought of a single species of spider harvesting from this whole trail. Again, though, the macro shots tell a very different story. See the spider with the small black spots? I thought that was the same species as the one with the red racing stripes! If you look at the Picasaweb album you'll see other spiders - some with greenish colors, some with fawn-colored stripes - that I also thought were the same! It's amazing how our brains, given insufficient detail, will fill in the gaps in a way that's convenient for what we want to believe. I suspect that when I read up on spider behavior I'll find that this leaf-curling (and perhaps trapping?) behavior is as common as dirt.

While I was in minutiae mode I got to see a lot of the trail's tinier residents: as you can see from the size reference of my dirty fingernail, the inchworm would have fit inside the mouth of the wee frog from the previous day's hike; then there was the little pinkish spider that I almost didn't see because its body was just a few millimeters long. On the other hand, I ran across what I think is the tallest mullein I've ever seen; as you can see from the picture, it's about nine feet tall.

A short hike with the young'uns

2008-07-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

For more shots from this hike see the Picasaweb album.

Thrilled that my four-year-old nephew Dylan was anxious for more hiking with me, and that my sixteen-(going on thirty)-year old daughter Morgan was happy to join us, I hiked in with them from Ingalls Corners Road. They were both in shorts and sandals, so we were quite careful about identifying the plants growing over the trail throughout the hedgerow. To the best of my knowledge there was no poison ivy.

With a little help from me the sandalled youngsters enjoyed the climb down the stone stairs. Then the real fun began. A flash of motion drew my eye to the tiniest frog I've ever seen, but I lost it. While searching for it my eye caught a moving speck of white. It turned out to be an egg sac on the back of a spider that was smaller than a peppercorn. I lost her while utterly failing to find the frog. But then we saw a snail, and after that we couldn't stop seeing snails. They were vigorously foraging about in the rain-dampened leaf clutter. Dylan enjoyed allowing a few of them to explore his hand while I told him about the snail's foot and the way it uses its protective slime to move around safely.

My goal was to show Dylan the quarry because, like most four-year-olds, he's almost terminally fascinated with construction equipment and anything associated with them. I held Dylan on my shoulders so that he could get a better view of the quarry, while Morgan took some pictures with my camera. She favors black and white photography, and she thought the tree and the old concrete structure made a good composition. I have to admit that it wasn't until I saw the shot in black and white that I saw exactly what she meant.

On the way back I once again saw movement, and this time I didn't take my eyes off the wee frog. It was quite energetic in its sincere desire to be nowhere near us, and I fear we upset it quite a bit trying to corral it for a good shot. You be the judge of whether it was worth it.

On the way back along the hedgerow I got several more chances to explain things to my delightfully receptive nephew. I told him about the woodchucks that made the holes he was so curious about, and told Morgan about what good eatin' those woodchucks are. The raindrops highlighting the contours of funneled spider web gave me the perfect chance to tell my nephew how the spider hides in the tunnel until a bug lands in the web, and then jumps out, paralyzes it, and wraps it up in its web so that it can eat it later. And when we walked through the bloodroot patch I told how native Americans used the red sap of the roots for dyeing - and how I wasn't showing it to them because the plant is rare and protected.

I count myself blessed to have such opportunities to share the wonders of the natural world - a phrase that shouldn't sound like such a cliché - with two generations.

You want the short version or the long one?

2008-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Oh, this is just ridiculous. It's been two weeks since my latest hike and I've spent at least twice as long trying to write about it than I spent on the hike itself. So here goes.

Short version:
I walked from Nelson Road to Cottons Road and had a great time taking lots of closeup pictures of plants and insects and arachnids and such. I put my favorite shots in a Picasaweb album here.

Long version:
On my previous hike I covered thirty miles partly because I wasn't encumbered with a camera. On this hike I took over nine hundred digital photos but never got more than a mile from my car. Apparently I need to get the extremes out of the way before I can find a happy medium. I fall into the first extreme easily enough, losing myself in the ryhthm of pumping legs and heart as I strive for distance. It's harder for me to remember my need for hikes like this that are short on walking and long on looking - where I lose myself in tiny things. The camera helps.

I parked at the Nelson Road trailhead and walked west. The trail was full of bittersweet signs of seasonal change, reminding me that summer is old news and fall is around the corner. Late blossoms bloomed. Seed pods swelled where earlier blossoms had withered and fallen. Riots of vines twined around every standing plant, many giving up their strength to their reddening berries.

I'd intended to get five or ten miles of brisk hiking in, only stopping occasionally for some quick photos. Within ten minutes that plan had already gotten shaky. After failing to get a good shot of the dragonflies flitting about, I found a much more willing subject: a ladybug poised on a sumac leaf. Ten minutes later I got entranced by a weevil gathering nectar from a daisy fleabane blossom, and it was clear that the plan was in serious danger. Ten minutes after that the wheels came off the plan entirely. I'd already worked up a sweat trying to keep the camera steady while chasing and snapping away at the bees pollinating the white sweet clover. When my eye caught the snails climbing up those same plants - apparently to get to the choice leaves - I gave up on the idea of a long hike. I didn't mind too much. To explain why, I have to go back about fifteen years.

After college I spent lots of time walking along roadsides and through fields with my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. At first I just wanted to see some pretty flowers, increase my knowledge, and have a full journal to show for it. To identify a flower, though, I had to focus all my attention on it, and with that shift in focus came a shift in perception. One oxeye daisy stopped being one more white splotch among ten thousand other white splotches and became something singularly complex and beautiful. One moth mullein became a breathtaking dance of color, texture and form. One more periwinkle blossom became the first first periwinkle blossom I'd ever seen; after all, how could I say I'd seen it if I hadn't noticed that graceful spiral in the petals? In bringing my senses to bear totally on something outside myself I was bringing me outside myself: for a moment not everything was about me. I was seeing, and it was changing me.

Sometimes when I go on a walk I get lost in the act of finding and photographing subjects. After this last one I realized that it brings me the same sense of peace that wildflower identification brought me fifteen years ago. To take decent pictures I first have to slow down and look around for a good subject, so right off the bat I'm seeing my surroundings in a way I usually don't. Then in order to make the shot anything more than decent I have to figure out from what angle I want to view the subject, how I want to frame it, how the light falls on it and whether the lens barrel is shading it. Finally I have to hold my breath and pay extremely close attention to a detail on the subject as I turn the focus ring so that I can get the focus I want right down to the millimeter. Just like the act of identifying something, taking a good picture of something forces you to give it your complete attention. And I've come to understand that complete attention is not separable from love.

I moved on past the surprisingly acrobatic snails and came to another sign of the changing season. Two weeks earlier the small cluster of mullein had not begun to blossom, and the moth mullein right next to it were in late bloom. Now the yellow mullein blossoms were popping out of the stems and attracting ants, and the moth mullein blossoms had withered and all but fallen off while their seed pods had swelled and begun to split.

By this point I was beginning to think that good photo subjects were everywhere - if I looked closely enough at most any interesting plant I'd probably find some sort of interesting creature on it. I don't know whether I was right or I just got very lucky, but within moments I looked at some photogenically ripening berries and saw a daddy longlegs on the leaves right next to them. I'm afraid I aggravated it quite a bit, trying to coax it into position with my hand. Once I got my shots I left it in peace.

I moved on between the shrubs and vines, getting some nice shots of a fetching little bee I've not identified yet. Then I got the big payoff. If I hadn't spent the entire hike soaking up the tiny details of the trail I never would have spotted the fantastically well camouflaged moth that I just identified as a Virginia creeper sphinx.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to remember the joys of taking a long time for a short hike. I won't always have the chance to look so closely, but the next time I go on a thirty mile hike I'll have a better sense of the wonders filling every inch of those thirty miles.

Well, it looked like a bird's foot to me.

2008-06-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I called my sister and she told me about the conversation she'd had with my four year old nephew about "butter and eggs". That's what people around Oneida call the brilliant yellow wildflower that runs rampant in the hills where we grew up. He had told her "I think it's got another name," but what he said next seemed highly unlikely to her. She put him on the phone to repeat it and - in his adorable, hushed, four-year-old phone voice - said "birdfoot trefoil". I practically shouted "That's exactly right!" I was so proud to have taught him that during our hike on Saturday. It makes me happy that he's enjoying our hikes together enough to absorb information such as the story of how birdfoot trefoil got its name.

But here's the thing. It turns out that I didn't actually know how birdfoot trefoil got its name! I remember going on my wildflower walks in 1993, carrying my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers along roadsides and through fields, and could have sworn that it said the name came from the angles of the leaf branching. When I Googled it just now, though, I found out that the name came from the appearance of the seed pods. Heck, I've never even looked at the seed pods - at least not that I remember. Now that I have, I can see the resemblance. But those leaf stalks still look like birds' feet to me! If you don't believe me, hold one up in your hand, look at the angle where the stalk divides into three, and think of the crook in a bird's leg.

...

No? Ah well. In any event, I'm teaching my nephew good stuff on our hikes.

Ewwwwwwww!

2008-06-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

I consider myself to be near the low end of the squeamishness spectrum. I grew up on a farm, and spent a few years in the nineties working in homes for developmentally disabled adults. Not only can I deal with the host of fluids that people and other creatures discharge, but in most cases I could do so with one hand while spooning Swiss Miss vanilla pudding into my mouth with the other. So when something makes me say "Ewwwwwwww!" it's noteworthy. Now you're probably thinking that this already sounds like a disgusting topic for a blog post, but I figure it's worth warning folks about the importance of adequately preparing one's feet for a very long hike. Hey, be thankful I'm not enough of a freak to include a photo.

My toenails had gotten longish by Saturday, and I suspected that was one of the main reasons for the pain in the big toe of my left foot after the hike. The farther the nail sticks out, the more of a moment arm it presents to any upward forces exerted on it, and that means more torque at the nail/cuticle boundary. I had made a mental note not only to cut my nails before I do any more hiking this weekend, but to always check their length - and, if necessary, trim them - before a hike.

So this morning I had a few minutes to spare, and I looked down and said "Hey, gotta trim those." I grabbed the clippers, grasped the toe in question, and started wondering again whether I might lose the nail. The pain had subsided since Saturday night, but it was still tender. There was a slight reddishness to the flesh beneath, like it was bruised. I began trimming. I nicked the cuticle and... there were fluids. No pain, just... fluids. Let's just leave it at that.

Again, this is not an self-indulgent exercise in being disgusting. Maybe this warning will keep you from losing a nail on a long hike. Or maybe you have much more experience than I, and can give me suggestions for preventing wear and tear on the toes. I didn't mind the full-body ache or the burning from the stinging nettles or the blisters, because I knew they'd fade in a few days. I'm going to lose at least part of this toenail, though, and that presents a more long-term inconvenience.

So, what can I do next time to treat my toes better? As I mentioned in the entry for that hike, I made the huge mistake of wearing only one pair of socks. Two or three pairs would have certainly mitigated the problem, but would they have solved it? I doubt it because I didn't have a problem with the big toe on my right foot. That means there's an asymmetry to my gait, because it stands to reason that my left foot is doing something that my right foot isn't. I need to correct that asymmetry if I'm to hike without damaging myself further. Luckily my fiancée, she gots th' mad physical therapy skillz, so she'll be able to set me straight - literally.

There and Back Again - Canastota to Cazenovia and Back!

2008-06-15T15:09:00.001-07:00

This image comes from my Google Map of the fifteen miles of trail between Canastota and Cazenovia. I hiked back and forth along that red line yesterday. But first, a word about why I was foolish enough not to get a good night's sleep before a thirty mile hike.

A dear friend of mine who joined the Air Force in December arrived back home in Oneida on Friday. This was his first leave, so I made a point to be there for the homecoming. I drove from New Jersey after work, so I didn't reach Oneida until around 11:30. I sat and talked with my friend and his family until a suspicious illumination spread on the horizon. I checked the time. It was nearly 5:00 AM - which is when I had intended to get up for my hike. I drove home, got two hours of sleep, got up, filled the water pouch of my new backpack, threw a few other things into it, grabbed a takeout breakfast at the Knotty Pine, and hit the trail at 8:40 AM.

The first interesting thing I saw that made me wish I'd brought my camera was a small carcass I found near the trail. There was nothing left but the head and the rear skin, as though the predator had intended to make a muskrat skin rug. The strange thing, though, was the webwork of glistening strands¹ that covered the carcass and radiated outward onto the dirt for several inches. If my head was more easily turned by the horror movies I've seen recently I would have thought that a giant spider had spun a web over it before devouring it.

Focused on maintaining a brisk pace, I crossed Nelson Road at 9:19, Cottons Road at 9:35, and Quarry Road at 10:10. By then my legs were burning and red - presumably I'd walked through some stinging nettles and/or poison ivy. Note to self: wear long pants next time.

I reached Ingalls Corners Road at 10:33, the Freber/Hodge Road trailhead at 11:28, and Carrys Hill Road at 11:54. Before reaching Emhoff Road at 12:09 I had further cause to rue my decision not to burden myself with a camera: as I reached the fence just past the ravine with the staircase, I saw a doe and her small fawn a hundred yards to the west. The fawn was circling and nuzzling the mother, exploring its small world in a way that Samuel Pepys would surely have called "...the prettiest thing that ever I saw." I snapped away with my substandard phone camera, but even the best shots yielded little more than a blur. Oh, for that 12X zoom lens...

Between Bingley Road and Cazenovia I saw two peculiar insect mating rituals I'd never encountered before: the first pair, some species unkown to me², were "face-to-face" but only touching by the tips of their abdomens. Then I noticed a pair of bumblebees, facing away from each other on a leaf, but also touching the tips of their abdomens.

I reached Route 20 in Cazenovia at 1:06. I had worked up quite an appetite, and was wondering where I should eat. Like an answer to my prayers, I saw signs advertising the chicken barbecue at the Methodist church. I made a beeline - well, the line a bee who has to ask directions makes, at any rate - and chowed down on a half chicken, a roll, salt potatoes, baked beans with just about the right amount of too much brown sugar, a brownie, and a cup of tea. Thoroughly refreshed, I hit the trail again at 2:03.

I had arranged with my sister to take my four year old nephew on part of my hike, so she dropped him off on Emhoff. He made it all the way to the Hodge Road trailhead under his own steam, although by then I'd gotten quite irritable, and I feel a little bad about that. See, I was already exhausted, and having to walk very slowly made it much worse. Under normal circumstances I'd enjoy his desire to stop, ask questions about everything he sees, and poke at things with sticks. Nearly falling asleep on my feet, though, I was not quite the patient teacher I wish to be. Still, I controlled myself well enough to tell him a bit about erosion and railroads, and begin inculcating him with the names of flowers such as oxeye daisy, birdfoot trefoil, musk mallow, and cow vetch. The slow pace added about an hour to my overall time.

On Hodge Road while pointing out musk mallow to my nephew I saw yet another pair of insects - another species we hadn't seen before - mating abdomen-to-abdomen on a leaf. Of course I had to go and tell him that they were mating, and of course he asked "What's 'mating'?". I hemmed and hawed and wondered what I might tell him that his mother might approve of, and settled on "They get together and make babies." That seemed to satisfy him. Whew.

By the time my sister met us on Hodge Road I had already done some serious thinking about cutting the hike short; my feet were aching, my back was stiff, and my head was reeling from exhaustion. But still, when she offered to give me a ride, I said "No, I want to finish this on my own steam." Thus began the struggle between my stubborn desire to follow through with my plan of making the whole hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and back, and my desire to rest the blistering stumps at the ends of my legs.

On Seibenbaum Road I experienced the most bitter missed photo opportunity of all. I saw a flash of color in the tall grass at the roadside, walked over, and saw one of the most fantastic compositions I've ever witnessed. Lurking beneath and behind a brilliant purple raceme of cow vetch was a striking white spider³. Hanging from the spider's jaws was an orange moth like so many I'd seen throughout the hike. The dramatic vignette, coupled with the purple-on-white-on-orange color scheme, made me nearly gnash my teeth in an impotent wish to have my camera in my hands.

By the time I reached Cottons Road the battle between that part of me that wanted to call my sister back for a pickup, and the part that would be damned if it gave up this close to the end, grew more and more furious. The two went back and forth, but the latter came out on top slightly more often. I had also realized that I'd forgotten one of my old cardinal rules: for long hikes, never wear less than two pairs of socks. For a thirty mile hike it should have been no less than three - the more planes of slippage between foot and shoe, the less friction between innermost sock and foot, yes? Or at least that's how I've always explained to myself the indisputably glad results of wearing multiple pairs. Unfortunately it had been so long since I'd taken such a long hike that I utterly forgot the rule this morning. Oh, will I be paying for that in the days to come. At one point I jumped up onto a log and felt such pain that I thought I'd torn a blister open. I took a look and discovered that I hadn't, so I doggedly continued.

By the time I plodded back over the well-known route between Nelson Road and the cemetery I was so stiff, and my feet were so sore, that I came to assume a gait that was positively arthritic. I reached my car at about 8:20. Nearly delirious with joy, I creaked my way slowly down into the driver's seat and got ready to exercise my newfound bragging rights.

The first thing I did when I got home - after inhaling a few slices of the pizza my sister thankfully had left over - was to wash all exposed skin with rubbing alcohol to remove any poison ivy oils. Until then I hadn't considered the possibility that one could get a high - and an unpleasant one at that - from rubbing alcohol fumes.

That night I rejoined my friend and his family, but it was difficult to relax amidst my personal constellation of discomfort. Of all the stiff joints, complaining muscles and throbbing pains the most worrisome was the big toe on my left foot - I began to wonder if I might lose the nail. Today it feels better, so I'm no longer worried. Also, the redness on my legs has not developed into a rash or blisters, so apparently the itching and burning was more from stinging nettles than poison ivy. I'm very satisfied with how the hike turned out, and eager to do it again. After my blisters heal and my muscles stop yelling at me. With long pants. And oh, so very many pairs of socks.

¹This morning I told my sister about the glistening "web" covering the muskrat carcass and she brought up the possibility that it might have been made by slugs. I think she was right, because the strands did have the look of slime trails. I did a bit of Googling and found out that some snails feed on animal carcasses as well as plant material. Evidently there's a species in the Canastota area that loves carcasses.

²I didn't get a shot of them, but going from memory I think they may have been parasitic flat bark beetles.

³I identified it later as a female goldenrod spider.