The Trailhead

I was in one of "those" mental spaces the other day, feeling a little disturbed and a little inadequate, and just a bit wrong in general. So I mowed the lawn.

For someone who thinks it's a great idea to get rid of grass lawns altogether, I take way too much enjoyment from my riding lawn mower. There's just something meditative and soothing about riding around my property, almost always in the thick, golden light of a late afternoon in summer. The grass was high-ish, and I thought a mow might help me refrain from swan-diving into my discomfort and doing a full wallow.

My landscaping style is to encourage wildlife habitat with benign neglect and a few carefully planted native species. And I only mow every two to three weeks. This means that I have Queen Anne's lace sprouting all over my yard by the time I mow. These aren't native to Indiana, but they are often utilized by wildlife here. They are a host plant for black swallowtails, and native bees and other pollinators nectar on them.

I was steering my rider here and there, mowing down the upstarts, when something that looked familiar on a short sprout directly in front of me caught my eye. From there, the impression made the lightning fast trip to my brain, which then dutifully instructed me to swerve.

It was the light sea-foam green of a monarch chrysalis, and it swayed precariously in the draft the rider made on its abrupt turn. I hopped off and investigated. There it was, dangling off a short sprout of Queen Anne's lace, still lightly swaying, flecked with its gold diadem and spots. I couldn't believe it. I've had butterfly w**d and common milkw**d patches of substantial size growing for several years now, and I've seen many monarch cats -- some of them newly hatched and tiny, some of them large and fat -- but I've never been able to find a chrysalis. And here it was now, hanging delicately off a nondescript w**d in my front yard.

I photographed it immediately, and I admit that I also have been covering it with an overturned Adirondack chair during some of the storms we've had this week. When I posted the photo on an Indiana nature group, one of the members with some experience commented that they believe it was formed within 24 hours of when I first saw it.

Monarch butterfly lives are precarious in all phases. A staggering 1-2% of monarch eggs make it to adulthood. And a monarch in a chrysalis is particularly vulnerable, for obvious reasons. Parasites, rogue lawn mowers, and critters looking for a wad of protein for a snack can all obliterate the life within a chrysalis.

I've been photographing the chrysalis every afternoon at the same time, and I check on it every morning. And of course, I've been pondering the wonder of it all -- and not just the drama unfolding in my front yard, but also the one that unfolded in my own brain. I still have no idea how I saw it. It's only about an inch long, and the Queen Anne's lace on which it's affixed is only about six inches high. But I did see it, and I'm glad I did.

So for now I will hope that it stays safe, and wait for it to turn dark from the developing butterfly within. If we make it that far, I'll go on watch and try to catch the big event.

Mid-Century Field Report

My kid knocked softly on my door at 1:30 yesterday morning and asked if I wanted to see a star. As always, I accepted the invitation. He's almost 21 and won't be asking me to view stars in the middle of the night for very much longer.

I followed him through the garage and out into the driveway, still half asleep. He had his telescope set up and aimed at a star. I bent my head to take a look. He spoke. “Mom, that light you’re seeing was emitted when I was four years old.”

Not too far, as stars go.

I didn't miss the symmetry. Life is fleeting. I was standing there in the temperate night air, having taken one of a dwindling number of opportunities to do so, looking at light that dated back to a time when those opportunities seemed endless.

I realized the other day that I am the age I used to think of as "someday." My body isn't as reliable as it used to be. Now I follow physical therapists on Youtube who can tell me how to deal with my big toe problems and my spasming piriformis, the butt muscle whose name I never had to learn before now; a literal pain in the ass.

I told my sister recently that this latter part of my life feels like I'm driving a rapidly deteriorating RV at high speed down a pitted dirt road, trying to get to all the places and do all the things I have planned before it breaks down irretrievably. Parts have started flying off the vehicle, but I keep my foot on the gas anyway. This approach is what my father calls "flat out to the finish," one of his ethics I've adopted completely. I don't know how else to do it, and neither do most of the people I like. I never know when the goddamn RV is going to skid to a halt, tires screeching and dust flying, but I'm going to be on the way *somewhere* when it does. Whether I make it or not isn't really the point.

Meanwhile, I root around a lot in the plants with my macro lens, looking for the mysteries of the universe in sweat bees and night-drinking moths, and for the most part I can rest in those mysteries. The universe isn't always friendly. Still, I've learned over half a century that there’s a rhythm to it. But an inevitable part of that rhythm is the Cosmic Bitch Slap - you lose your job, your house, your health, someone close to you, or really, anything that means something to you. And when it happens, I'm caught short again. Life is so incredibly wounding; it will batter your body and soul, delivering the Slap with one hand even after the other one extended you the sweetest of joys. It will take whole chunks out of you.

I always think I'm ready for the Slap, but I'm not. But then, after the surprise wears down, the shiny green sweat bees are somehow back on the thistle, not caring about wildfire smoke or thunderstorms or any of our existential pain. They have no idea what global warming is, or the Great Extinction. They just want the nectar.

This is both enraging and reassuring. Maybe that’s what Wendell Berry meant when he talked about the peace of wild things; I don't know.

Anyway, I’m not going to solve the mystery; it’s not really possible, despite a great deal of advertising to the contrary. You can only tell yourself that you’ve solved it. That, too, is part of the rhythm. And I’m glad, because half the point of this whole enterprise is the curiosity.

So, I take the invitations to stargaze while they last, knowing that one day I will sleep through the night at the cost of missing those moments desperately. But maybe my grandchildren will ask. Or maybe the wheels of the RV will fly off before that can happen. Faced with the uncertainty, I make the closest decision available: I want to be in the driveway with my kid, sharing his own wonder at the cosmos. That's a privilege I won’t turn down.

The next day I hang out with the sweat bees. And I stretch my piriformis.

I've mentioned before that I'm doing some design work with my photographs. In that vein, I recently opened a Zazzle storefront, where I'm selling items bearing those designs.

I don't intend for this to become a place where I constantly hawk stuff. (That's the Trailhead Arts page, where people voluntarily signed up for that.) But I will post things from time to time, because 1) I'm having a lot of fun with it; and 2) it's really entwined with what I do in nature.

So please understand that you're welcome to just see the stuff I post and think "Oh, neat," or "what the hell was she thinking with that" or whatever.

Anyway, in January I started trying to figure out a notepad for my sister's February birthday. She had a particular monarch photo of mine that she liked from my trip to the overwintering grounds in California last year. I got that figured out, and then kept playing.

I made a collection out of monarch burst designs, and while I was still figuring out whether I should rearrange the butterflies another time on one of the blank books, Zazzle made it an Editor's Pick. I count that as a win.

Here's it is:

Welcome to the Monarchy Have you ever seen a monarch burst? Overwintering monarch butterflies hang out (literally) in thick clusters on tree branches. When the temperature rises and the sun hits, they fly away to look for food -- sometimes all at once. Because I never wanted to forget it, I made these designs out of digita...

Spring is tiptoeing in here in central Indiana.

This a Spring Beauty, or Claytonia virginica, and the flower is no bigger than my pinkie fingernail. They're also known as "fairy spuds," presumably because of their tuberous roots, which the Iroquois historically used for medicinal purposes. I prefer the name "fairy spud," because who wouldn't?

Despite their delicate appearance, fairy spuds are always among the first to bloom here in early spring, gamely shrugging off the lingering cold, snow, and chilly rains to provide early nectar for hungry pollinators. I do wonder how many there used to be back when indigenous people were using them for food and medicine. These days, non-native garlic mustard has moved in, blocking out the spring sun with its early sprouts, allowing fewer fairy spuds to make a living.

Do you see those lines? They're guides to show insects precisely where the nectar is located -- an arrow pointing directly to the buffet table.

The insect butt on the right belongs, I believe, to Andrena erigeniae, a kind of miner bee that specializes in dining on Claytonia virginica. One generation is produced per year, and the adults are only active for a few weeks. This explains why it looks like its bobbing for apples. Gotta get that nectar while it's available. Spring ephemerals indeed.

This is a good piece. Hopelessness and despair tend to breed apathy and surrender.

I like to keep an appropriate sense of urgency about environmental issues, balanced with remembering how effective changes can be when they do occur.

This was made clear to me in my own yard, when I shifted from the previous owners' landscaping for sterility and neatness, toward landscaping for wildlife. I don't particularly like tasking individuals with solving problems that are systemic, but you absolutely can create environmental change in your own space, even if you are planting native flowers in containers on your apartment deck. I also see it places like Goose Pond, an expansive restored wetland here in Indiana, and in well-designed constructed wetlands in Florida and elsewhere. As the author says, "[n]atural climate solutions occur when we conserve and restore ecosystems—and improve land management. It’s thrilling to see how quickly life returns when given the opportunity."

Anyway, this is a good read.

An Antidote for Environmental Despair | Hakai Magazine When it comes to conservation, hope is much more useful than gloom.

And now, a break from our regularly scheduled programming for something a little creepy.

We went on a whirlwind two-day trip to Iowa City this week to see a friend and some family. Late Wednesday afternoon, we set out for a peaceful woodland hike with our friend Fred at Hickory Hill, a lovely park in the middle of town.

As the daylight waned and the temperature dropped, we found ourselves at a large depression in the ground, located just adjacent to a large cemetery. The bottom of the depression was lined with leaves, through which peeked a few bricks.

"This is the foundation of the pest-house," Fred said.

The what?

The pest-house, it turns out, was a house used to quarantine smallpox sufferers during the early 20th century. The afflicted were tended by Frank Yavorsky, a Civil War veteran who had recovered from smallpox himself, and was therefore immune.

The house is now gone, save for the few bricks we saw peeking through the leaf litter.

"Oh yeah, you definitely want to be hanging out there in the dark," observed my college-age son when I told him about it later. "And be sure to pick up any small glass vials you might find."

Fortunately, we made it back without contracting smallpox from either ghosts or century-old glass vials.

At least so far.

(Photo of the creepy pest-house about halfway down in the linked article.)

https://www.press-citizen.com/story/entertainment/go-iowa-city/2016/11/15/pest-house-and-other-iowa-city-historical-gems/93944052/

So, Jen, what have you been up to this winter? Because we know it's not posting here. Admittedly true. Busted.

After our turtle habitat leaked into our basement, we had to scuttle a photography trip to the Texas shore and border areas. This left me a bit stumped, as it threw off most of my plans. So I fell down a different rabbit hole.

A few months ago I posted about my stepdaughter's suggestion for a line of calendars and stickers. Her birthday was late last month, so I thought I would design some of her favorite things, and give her the inaugural fugbucking items for her birthday. That turned out to be the flood that swept me away this winter.

I've been designing notepads, journals, napkins, cards, stationary, stickers, whatever. Some of them are straight photography, and some are digital manipulations of photography. There are lots of monarchs, a few bears, and a significant amount of fugbucks.

It seems like everything has its start in something I create for a specific person. My sister's birthday is also in February, so I created a monarch butterfly notepad, and that became it's own spiral. Last week I designed a kid's nature journal while thinking about my great-nephews who go on lots of hikes near their home in Colorado.

Anyway, here are the fugbucks. I find them weirdly and hilariously cute, and my entomologist stepdaughter loves them. I do understand that some people might just find them, um, weird. Still, I'm looking forward to shooting more of them in the coming warmer months. Storefronts are on the way, and I will probably share items here from time to time, in between field notes, travel notes, and dissertations about things like constructed wetlands and histrionic red-winged blackbirds. I can't wait for spring.

Create your own Spiral Photo Notebook | Zazzle on Zazzle. Personalize it with photos & text or shop existing designs!

We need to talk about these birds.

A nature-y friend of mine who frequents the same large urban park where I took this correctly noted that the Red-Winged Blackbird is unmatched in its "commitment to being antagonistic."

The males of this species are in fact what the kids would call "extra." They spend enormous portions of their time squawking and yelling, all to the end of staking out and defending their territory. Their lives are the avian equivalent of an episode of Big Love; they have, on average, 5-6 girlfriends in their territory in any given season. (One rock star specimen was clocked at an astonishing 15 females one breeding season. No report on whether he dropped immediately dead after the season was over.) Female red-winged blackbirds aren't exactly monogamous either, but their dalliances are infrequent and conducted on the sly.

Though females do the bulk of the family care, males aren't negligent fathers, their devotion to belligerence notwithstanding. They will bring food to some, but not always all, of the nests in their territory. I'll be interested to watch as the relationships among males change with the coming spring breeding season.

It's a cold February morning, and I know what you all have been thinking: "How about a piece on artificial wetlands???" Well, I am here to fulfill all of your dreary February needs.

Sweetwater Wetlands Park in Gainesville, Florida is a human-made wetland, or in the technical parlance, a “constructed wetland.” The preserve was designed and formed in the shape of an alligator’s head – an appropriate nod to one of Florida’s iconic apex predators.

The main function of Sweetwater is to use a wetland environment to treat waters being discharged onto Paynes Prairie for pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Secondarily – and happily for every nature lover in the area – the constructed wetland has come to provide additional habitat for scores of species including alligators, shorebirds, birds of prey, bobcats, river otters, and unimaginable numbers of insects and reptiles.

It's impossible to spend a morning at Sweetwater without feeling a sort of environmental hope from the sense that human beings have gotten this one right, and have started to restore things that previous human practices have gravely upended.

But it was precisely the strength of this feeling that made me question it. There's a mental shorthand I tend to employ that goes something like this: If a place sports abundant and healthy wildlife, it's probably a net good. But I recognize that formulation elides a great deal. So when I got home, I started looking into the effects of constructed wetlands, and Sweetwater in particular. The result: it’s a mixed bag overall. The good news about our subject at hand: studies have shown that Sweetwater is reducing the pollutants reaching the Alachua Sink, the giant sinkhole in the northeastern area of Paynes Prairie.

Sweetwater Branch, a creek running through Gainesville, collects stormwater runoff and discharges from power plants and water treatment facilities. Before the construction of Sweetwater Wetlands Park, the untreated water from that creek flowed through a canal directly onto the prairie and into Alachua Sink, the sinkhole on Paynes Prairie that drains into the aquifer. Now, the untreated water flows into the wetlands park. Several basins remove sediments and trash, and the wetland areas filter out the nitrogen and phosphorus.

In 2021, the utility’s supervising engineer stated that the Sweetwater wetlands had reduced nitrogen from 5 mg per liter to 1 mg per liter, a level he said is healthy for the prairie. I was able to find nothing in my research to indicate that Sweetwater is anything but an environmental success. I have no doubt that additional studies and observations will be done in the coming years, and perhaps there will even be improvements. I’ll be interested to learn about all of it.

So it seems that constructed wetlands for water treatment and wildlife habitat are working out reasonably well. The biggest such project in the nation has recently been completed in south Florida, a 6,300 acre piece designed to protect and restore the Everglades. (I’ll no doubt have to visit that.)

But these environments are not without drawbacks. Without proper management, they can be wrecked by invasive species and even assist in their spread. They are easily clogged or plugged. They require large amounts of land. Artificial wetlands are often not a suitable replacement for natural wetlands, which are being destroyed at an alarming rate. This is especially true when the artificial wetlands are slapdash affairs designed simply to get over regulatory burdens, cheaply built and poorly conceived.

But fortunately, there is much to love about the wetland someone thought to shape as an alligator head. More habitat has been added to the Paynes Prairie ecosystem, and even the wild horses have shown up there. Sheet flow has been restored to the prairie itself, and the waters are cleaner, the plants having kindly taken up our nitrogen. The aquifer and the water we take from it are cleaner.

And people (including myself) have a new place to gawk at wildlife and feel what Wendell Berry called "the peace of wild things." For that alone I'm grateful.

The Everglades get all the attention, but one of the most fascinating places in Florida is Paynes Prairie, a 21,000-acre savanna and freshwater marsh just south of Gainesville. Natural history and human history are deeply entwined here.

There is evidence of human use of Paynes Prairie going back more than 10,000 years. In the mid-1600's, what is now Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park was a Spanish cattle ranch spanning about 87 square miles. The Spanish abandoned the ranch in the 1700’s, and the Seminole utilized the area under the chief Ahaya. That chief’s son, Payne, succeeded him on his death in 1783.

Payne was killed in 1812 by Colonel Daniel Newnan in a surprise raid. Thereafter, someone thought it would be a good idea to name a nearby lake after Colonel Newnan. So now there is Newnans Lake, which is one of the principal sources of water for Paynes Prairie. History is everywhere, and the past is never really gone. (The passage of time does seem to have eliminated the apostrophes, though. Those are the correct spellings of the names.)

Paynes Prairie has a complex and fluctuating relationship with water. In the midst of the prairie is a large sinkhole called the Alachua Sink, which drains the marshy prairie into the aquifer below. In the late 1800’s, the sinkhole became blocked, and the water over the prairie reached a depth of 58 feet. The water was so deep that steamboats operated on it – that is, until the summer of 1892, when the water levels began dropping abruptly, leaving the steamers stranded, and dead fish and alligators strewn everywhere.

Humans have also messed with the hydrology of Paynes Prairie, building canals to carry water off the prairie so it could be used as pasture in the early 20th century. The state of Florida acquired the land in the 1970’s, attempting ever since to return the area to its pre-colonial hydrology. Before the area became state-owned, Interstate 75 was built across it, as well as U.S. 441. (The latter is visible on the left side of the top photo.)

In 2017, Hurricane Irma dumped several inches of rain on Paynes Prairie, flooding it for months and closing or narrowing U.S. 441 well into 2018.

Paynes Prairie is bursting with wildlife. Wild horses and free-roaming bison live there, as well as heaps of alligators, birds, and a few black bears. I’m always drawn there when I’m in Florida now, though I barely gave it a thought when I lived in Gainesville in my early 20’s. To be fair, though, it appears that the state’s efforts to return the area to its natural state have made it a far more interesting environment. I hope the efforts continue.

January in the Midwest turns me into a hermit slug -- especially when there's no snow. I've always wondered if it has something to do with the light that it brings, but a good snow perks me up. We have none of that this year, just a browned landscape looking like an underexposed image.

Last week the temperatures warmed up enough that I left the house and ventured to the huge urban park near my house. There I encountered this Downy Woodpecker (I'm pretty sure it's a downy, anyway), and I was impressed that birds will find water where they can, even in the hollow of a fence rail.

On Thanksgiving last year, my family was discussing the calendar I'd just made from the bear photos I shot at Brooks Camp last September. My stepdaughter, an entomologist working on staff at a university, mentioned that she had a suggestion for a future calendar.

"Oh?" I asked, curious. "What are you thinking?"

She paused between bites. "Bug s*x," she replied earnestly. My eyes lit up a little. "Seriously," she insisted. "I guarantee you there are tons of people I work with who would love a bug s*x calendar."

My husband spoke. "You could call it the year in Fugbucking," he offered, as if he’d been pondering this for weeks.

The idea appealed to me. So much, in fact, that I spent half a day the following week sifting through several years of imagery to determine if I had enough photos to sneak a 2023 Fugbucking calendar under the wire before the end of the year. And if it hadn't been for a tragic hard drive crash in 2015 in which I lost hundreds of images, including several of grasshoppers and other creatures getting freaky in the prairie plants, it might have happened.

But I’m pretty invested in this idea now, and so 2023 will be -- among other things, I hope – a Year of Fugbucking.

“Don’t forget stickers,” my stepdaughter added thoughtfully. Gen Z loves stickers.”

I’m working on it.

On a scale of American Alligators, how are you feeling after the holidays???

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but in the last few years I've been doing words. As the year winds down, some words will come to me that I want to be part of things in the new year. When they do, I write them down somewhere visible, and think about them regularly. This works well for me.

Last year two of my words were "venture" and "discern." Discern came to me because I knew I had some things to figure out about my future. Venture came because I'm a creature of habit, and I always need to be conscious about thinking expansively about my activities. (This is particularly true as we age.) On this last day of the year I can say that I did both discern and venture in 2022, and life was better for it. "Venture" led me to Brooks Camp and elsewhere. Discerning led me away from a job I enjoyed with very good friends, but staying would have meant giving up some things I've wanted for a long time.

My words for the coming year have been shaping up for a few weeks now. I started thinking hard recently about what I want to do with my photographs and writing. The answer was what I've always wanted for my efforts -- that they are generated from passion and are somehow...useful. So there we have two words for 2023. How that vision works will have to be fleshed out during the year. That's part of the fun of it.

No matter how you approach the end of a year and the beginning of the next, I wish all of you joy and wonder, and when those aren't present, the ability to catch the good from the difficult. I appreciate each of you who are here.

This willet found a shrimp that a fisherman was using as bait on Flagler Beach, obviously putting a cherry on top of the Bird Year.

It's about to get Floridian up in here.

I'm spending this week traveling through north Florida, hitting some of my favorite spots.

Check out this juvenile Snail Kite I found on the La Chua Trail in Paynes Prairie State Park and Preserve. This bird feeds almost exclusively on the apple snail, a freshwater mollusk found in the marshy areas of Florida.

There is a possibility that snail kites may benefit from the presence of a larger, meatier, non-native version of the apple snail.

As you can see, the snail kite's beak is perfectly adapted for escargot.

Happy Holidays from the bear whose hibernation is more likely to be haunted by three ghosts than any other....and with ears tiny enough to fit the hat.

Good luck with the Ghosts of Salmon Past, Present, and Future, 856. And may all of you have a wonderful holiday too.

We bought our house in August of 2017. It sits on a one-acre lot near Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis. The yard itself was landscaped in standard sterile suburban fashion -- except for a single common milkw**d shoot in a patch otherwise dominated by non-native ornamental grasses.

Over the last five years we did the following: 1) let the milkw**d go, resulting in about 100 plants this year; 2) engaged in a sustained game of whack-a-mole with the ornamental grasses; 3) planted a bunch of native nectar plants near the common milkw**d and in one other patch, including butterfly w**d; and 4) got lazy with the rest, allowing the butterw**d, goldenrod, jewelw**d, and boneset to come in at will. The laziness also meant that the back half of the yard went to meadow.

My yard looks a lot less neat than it did five years ago, but it's so much more interesting, and so full of life. I had almost no insects that first year. A single monarch cat arrived in 2019.

Wanting a visual of the changes, I put together collages of everything I photographed on the property for each year (except 2021 when I had a tragic hard drive crash.)

As you can see, not everything is native. Some of those things fall into the lazy landscaping aspect. But I'm still pleased with the results so far. Next year I'm hoping to tame the spread of the non-natives and the common milkw**d in favor of more native nectar plants. We had dozens of monarch cats this year, so I think we're at a good number with the milkw**d. I am thinking of planting some swamp milkw**d along the seasonal creek, and perhaps a buttonbush.

If you have 15 minutes to spare, this video would be well worth the use of the time. It's hopeful, beautiful, and a powerful demonstration of the changes that habitat-building on an individual scale can effect.

I Built a Wildlife Pond - here's what happened Eight months ago, I built a wildlife pond. Today, I share the whole story of how I turned a patch of grass, into a healthy, thriving ecosystem. Incredible tr...

We all have days where we wonder what it all means.

As I delved more deeply into the milkw**d and native plant communities this year, bee mimics really started growing on me. So it's Wannabee Day on The Trailhead today.

These are two bee mimic flies. Our friend on the left is a member of the bombylius genus, and spends its days drinking nectar in its disguise as a stinging bee when in reality, it is a harmless fuzzy fly. But the cuteness of this fly also disguises its gnarly origins. These bee flies lay their eggs in the nests of certain solitary bees, where their young feed on the bee larvae. Gross! But then they make up for it by being fuzzy and interesting adults, and big time pollinators. I photographed this one at The Nature Conservancy's Kankakee Sands Prairie Restoration in Newton County, Indiana this summer.

Our friend on the right is a Hover Fly of the insect family Syrphidae, and its juvenile diet is slightly less disturbing. Hover fly larvae dine on rotting plants and animals, and occasionally aphids, which are annoying. Syrphids are also bigwigs in the pollinator world, second only to the actual bees they cosplay. I photographed this Hover Fly in my somewhat neglected and messy backyard habitat, I am thrilled to say. (I don't even know what this plant is, but it was covered with pollinators, so I'm not getting rid of it next year.)

Once you're hipped to the fact that bee mimics exist, you start seeing them. That's how I knew the Hover Fly was not legit -- it was mixed in with a bunch of other bees, but it looked just different enough to be interesting. So I stalked it for a couple of days, photographed it, then looked it up on the suspicion that it was a counterfeit bee.

Watch for them, and you will see.