(Maybe that’s what you’re seeing whenever you see a little swirling updraft of debris in the city: someone’s panic taking shape, someone’s death setting out to find their body.)
—Ben Lerner, “Café Loup”
Author: David Gorsline
Procyon lotor
The fox, raccoon, opossum, squirrel, mole, rat, and mouse have adapted themselves to civilization…. Protective laws have saved the raccoon from extinction….
Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion (1940, 1947, 1992), p. 20
Abingdon 2022: 3
On my dilatory way home, I swung south into Ashe County, North Carolina and a visit to Bluff Mountain Preserve. Bluff Mountain is but one of the ridgelines protected by the Nature Conservancy in this area. According to my guide Susan, the mountain offers a rare high-elevation mafic bedrock, with an endemic reindeer lichen species on the outcrops. In addition, ten acres of wetland comprise a fen; there’s an Eastern Hemlock woods; and a rather nice meadow. The New River provides drainage, so I had crossed back from the Tennessee River basin to the Ohio.
We spent just a quarter of an hour or so at the fen, but I zeroed in on something unusual that turned out to be Sticky False Asphodel (Triantha glutinosa), a species of conservation concern. Nearby, Susan pointed out Canada Burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis) and Smooth Yellow False Foxglove (Aureolaria flava). We found lots of interesting mushrooms popping up along the trail (it had rained recently), but with only three hours up on top of the mountain, we didn’t have much time to dawdle.
Logistics for this tour were a little unsettled until the day, and there was more climbing from the parking lot than we had planned on, but it was a good hike. Next time I’ll wave my “I’m a donor” flag more loudly; we crossed paths with a donors’ tour on our way up the mountain.
Ti in VA
Fun fact from Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion, compiled by workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia: Virginia, as of the 1903s, was the leading producer of titanium in the country (p. 110). And apparently it still is, along with Nevada and Utah, although most titanium is now imported.
Abingdon 2022: 2
Southeast from my base of operations in Abingdon, two walks in Grayson Highlands State Park.
From the visitor center, the Twin Pinnacles Trail is maybe only 55 meters of elevation change, but there’s a fair amount of up and down. The scramble down from Big Pinnacle was a bit tricky.
I liked the shelter/rest stations along the way, at least two of them marked as scout projects. Thank you, scouts!
Spruces at the skyline show some flagging.
The walk was a little easier going down, 2:20 for the loop.
I found patches of Appalachian White Snakeroot (Ageratina roanensis or A. altissima var. roanensis, depending on your authority), a mystery goldenrod at the Little Pinnacle summit, a mystery whorled composite, and a mystery bryophyte.
A younger me would have tried the walk from Big Pinnacle to Massie Gap, but the prudent present me drove back to Massie Gap for an afternoon loop that used about 3/4 mile of the Appalachian Trail along Wilburn RIdge. I walked the Maine-bound direction; I wasn’t overtaken by any spry through-hikers, but there were some folks to say hello to going the other direction. The AT here is fairly level, a rhododendron thicket with random unmarked side trails and more spruce.
Some fairly large vaccinium shrubs. About 85 meters of elevation change, 2:20 for the loop.
Abingdon 2022: 1
My base of operations for this year’s birthday romp was Abingdon, Virginia.
First up was Clinch River State Park, newly elevated to state park status and therefore a little lean on amenities. The lazy river doesn’t mind.
Best critter for the entire trip was a Lace-winged Roadside-Skipper (Amblyscirtes aesculapius) just a bit outside its range in the guidebooks, nectaring on Bear’s Foot (Smallanthus uvedalia).
Rain mid-day curtailed plans to hit another state park, but later in the afternoon I walked a bit of the Virginia Creeper Trail, one of the first rails-to-trails conversions. This trail crosses numerous stream gorges via wooden trestles—quite dramatic. The watershed here is the Holston.
This view down into Berry Creek is from trestle #3. From trestle #4 in Watauga you’re eye level with the top of a substantial American Sycamore.
Clifton Institute bioblitz August 2022
I took part in a Clifton Institute bioblitz on the property of an institute sponsor. I didn’t know quite what to expect, or what to focus on, so I walked along with the group, recording observations of what looked interesting to me, some of which I had to key out at home.
The woods have been logged over recently, and show evidence of disturbance: a fair amount of non-native invasives, as well as Indian Tobacco (Lobelia inflata), about which the Flora of Virginia says, “In a wide variety of mesic to dry forests and woodlands, depression wetlands, flood-scoured shores and bars, clearings, fields, roadsides, and other disturbed habitats.”
There seemed to be some disagreement among the group about this Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor). I’m not sure why. Seems obvious to me.
Flipping rocks, the group found three Eastern Wormsnakes (Carphophis amoenus amoenus). White and White write, “This snake does not bite when handled but will try to escape by probing its head and tail into the captor’s hand searching for a way out,” which is just what this li’l fellow is doing in Ben’s hand.
At the lights, most of the group focused on moths and caddisflies. I’m just getting started with moths—I’ve never before seen moth eyeshine—so I spent more time getting to know some beetles on the groundcloth, like this handsome darkling beetle, Alobates sp.
Rea was giddy when she found this late-instar Regal Moth (Citheronia regalis). The larvae have the common name Hickory Horned Devil.
I took the opportunity to practice using my audio recorder. Need to work on setting levels and generally using it more before I splurge on field headphones and a shotgun mic.
Observations are still coming in.
Experimental geology
Mini vacation project
Shazbot, why did a recent WordPress/PHP upgrade drop all my HTML embed sidebar widgets and warp the encoding of my Japanese language tag?
Star trap
[[User:Adam_Cuerden]] gives a quick backstage tour.
NABA Butterfly Count 2022
Back to the area around the Clifton Institute for my first NABA Butterfly Count. We visited an extensive pollinator garden on private property (thanks to Shane’s Signs), a gravelled patch of Thoroughfare Road adjacent to a wetland mitigation project (photo), and a private horse farm. In the pollinator garden I made my first acquaintance of one of our hummingbird moth species (Hemaris thysbe) who were going gangbusters—not on our checklist, but still. I found the first of a few Sleepy Oranges (Abaeis nicippe) and Juniper Hairstreaks (Callophrys gryneus) that we tallied, and was finally able to twitch Peck’s Skipper (Polites peckius). Stephanie Mason pointed out this critter to me ages ago (“Peck’s have checks”) but that was before I started listing butterflies. But dang, skippers burn me out fast. We saw so many Sachems (Atalopedes campestris) in all their variability that the mental key began, “Is this skipper not a Sachem?”
No lie, it was hot. We started at 08:00 and I began to flag at 11:00. I am finding that a few hours of heat tends to make my feet swell in the waterproof light hikers that I usually wear. I was grateful for the jug of lemonade at the tally rally back at Clifton.
The other inflation solution
Greatest Generation Dept.: Meaghan Kacmarcik reminds us “What Was It Like to Ration in DC during World War II?” Feeding a family of three meant eating lots of fish, renting time on a pressure cooker, and pretending Ritz crackers could make an apple pie.
Because it is the beginning of the month, you still have nearly all your ration points left, except for the three blue produce stamps you spent on the bag of potatoes. In the last few months, you have rarely seen these starchy balls of goodness anywhere in DC. So, when you spotted a sign in the window of a store advertising potatoes in stock, you quickly ran home to grab your ration books before others bought them all up.
Can’t find my favorite frozen pizza at Safeway this week? I got nothing.
Not one of our better moments
Paul Shore’s sharp criticisms of a recent Throughline episode are a bit sniffy, but on target: “Language is not script and script is not language, part 2.” The unfortunate episode constitutes a précis of a recent book by Jing Tsu, and presents her thoughts uncritically, leading to muddy thinking uncharacteristic of NPR.
In fairness, it’d be excessive to expect the Throughline production team to have learned about the science of linguistics and created a respectable linguistics-oriented podcast/broadcast in the relatively short time they presumably had available;… [if] the team wanted to do an episode on this general subject they’d want to devote an unusually large amount of preproduction, production, and postproduction time to it, in order to get things right within what for most people is a pretty obscure field.
When notices about Jing Tsu’s book came out earlier this year, I thought, “Wait — what? Simplifying its writing system had something to do with modernizing the natural language? How does that work? When did that happen?” The episode left me none the more enlightened.
Clifton Institute dragonfly/damselfly count 2022
As usual, that’s me in the back, the last one to get on whatever we’re looking at. (Thanks to photographer Marie!) But well equipped.
No luck getting good images of the two common saddlebags species, but I did snap some reasonable images of Twelve-spotted Skimmer (Libellula pulchella) and what turned out to be Citrine Forktail (Ischnura hastata). Dang, those pond damsels are tricky. The best spot in our sector for pond damsels was again the pond behind The Farm Brewery at Broad Run. You know, the place with the axe-throwing barn.
Last Sunday was plenty hot, and we pooped out by 15:00 except for leader Larry. His pro tip for finding Wandering Glider (Pantala flavescens) is to check the parking lot: the critter has a tendency to mistake a car roof for a puddle.
Who blue?
Lantana strigocamara, sometimes cultivated as a street planting, is only the sixth plant known to produce blue fruits through structural color, rather than pigment.