40 minutes
winchell trail
66 degrees
What a beautiful morning! This year winter was a blur. It’s hard to believe that we’re only a month away from open swim season. Walked with Scott and Delia down the worn wooden steps to the winchell trail. Took the trail that winds below the mesa. Scott wondered what the trees near the 36th street parking lot were. According to his app, plum trees. He was dubious. We talked about FWA and RJP and the big changes in their lives — one graduating from college, the other moving into their first apartment. After seeing the rowers I wondered, would FWA like rowing? or canoeing? or kayaking? I think he might. Just asked him and his response: Nah. Oh well.
10 Things
- the water in the ravine was gushing — heard it first, then saw it — not drip drip dripping, but rushing out of sewer pipe
- the hillside that leads up to the trail in the oak savanna was covered in green — more of our view of above, blocked. Last week I was still able to see whole people running and biking above. Today, only the flash of movement through the trees — at first, I thought it was a bird, then I realized it was a biker
- 2 bikers on the street — one on a tall bike, the other on a fat tire
- so many new leaves on the branches — as I noticed them I thought, a slick new leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm — a line from Ada Limôn
- voices . . . a bullhorn . . . rowers! An 8 person shell + the white motorized boat with the instructor giving instructions to a new class
- the annual walk-a-thon was happening — as we ascended the 38th street steps, we saw that the road was blocked off and that there was a row of a dozen port-a-potties
- a sharp, whistled call in the savanna — what bird is that?
- a cloud of bugs right outside our front door — yuck!
- so many tulips in a front yard, causing Scott to quip, we’re living in Holland!
- in the stretch between the savanna and the 38th street steps, the chainlink fence was leaning over to the ground, buried in mulch and leaves
Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Succession
A few days ago, I encountered the concept of succession in ecology. A meadow becomes a thicket. A thicket becomes a forest. Today I noticed that one of RWK’s chapters in Gathering Moss was titled, “Binding Up the Wounds: Mosses in Ecological Succession,” so I decided to read it. RWK is discussing an area of the Adirondacks blighted by a now defunct mine and abandoned. One of her students is doing her thesis on some moss in the area and whether or not they might help seeds, then trees, establish a home in the otherwise inhospitable tailings (the waste material of a mine: sandy, dry soil, slashes of rock).
succession defined: Ecological succession is the process by which the mix of species and habitat in an area changes over time. Gradually, these communities replace one another until a “climax community”—like a mature forest—is reached, or until a disturbance, like a fire, occurs (source).
Out of the carpet of living moss came a crowd of seedlings, the next step in binding up the wounds of the land.
. . . a little grove of aspens that had somehow gotten started in this desolate place that everyone wanted to cover in garbage. We know now that these aspens originated from seeds caught on a patch of moss, and the whole island of shade began to grow from there. The trees brought birds and the birds brought berries which now blossom around us.
Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Out of the waste of an abandoned mine, moss. From moss, a seed, then a tree. With a tree, birds and berries and blossoms and shade.