Bowman’s Spring, in a different year

Sunlight in Spring’s First Ephemerals

Ephemerals are the frail, rare wildflowers of spring, which can bloom only until the forest canopy leafs out.  The finest collection I know is at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, over below New Hope.  Always realize, everyone, we would not have this bounty without PRESERVATION.  Support your local land trust, wherever you are, keeping wild lands, wild creatures and wild plants nearby and healthy.

April showers kept me from today’s planned nature quest.  But, tomorrow, a friend and I will head to Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, where spring should be awaiting us.  Here’s a collection of other early trips to Bowman’s, in more cooperative weather.

I have a number of very dear friends, who are dealing with serious health issues in people near and dear to them.  I wish I could take each of you to Bowman’s with me tomorrow.  I send you apring light in leaves of yesteryear.  With love.

 

Being an amateur naturalist (never forget that the root of that adjective is love), I think the accurate name of this one is toad trillium.  Do you think that does it justice?

I think it’s real name is pinxter, and the wonder is that it is native to that site!

 

 

One of the most irresistible sights for my friend, fine art photographer Tasha O’Neill, and myself, is the fiddlehead form of ferns:

 

We have no idea what we will discover on the Violet Trail, the Medicinal Trail, Azalea Trail, Audubon Trail, Marsh Marigold Trail, tomorrow.  What we know, as NJWILDBEAUTY readers know from other blogs, there is BEAUTY to behold at Bowman’s in all seasons, even winter.

 

 

 

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“Far and Wee”… Homage to e.e. cummings, of course

Thanks to the Poetry Foundation, to e.e.-the-magnificent, and spring itself:

[in Just-]

 

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

in Just- 

spring          when the world is mud- 

luscious the little 

lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee 

and eddieandbill come 

running from marbles and 

piracies and it’s 

spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 

old balloonman whistles 

far          and             wee 

and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it’s 

spring 

and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 

far 

and 

wee

NOT ‘ROSES ARE RED’ — current poem

I know, I know.  Poets are supposed to be writing about wine and roses, the arrival of spring, zephyrs, and so forth.

My Muse isn’t the least BIT interested — this is her truth this ‘cruellest month’…  Bear with me…

 

CALL IT BLASPHEMY

 

listen, God

I’ll trade You

I’ll take those three hours, any day!

 

forget this sentence of eight entire decades

even the scourging – what was that

an hour or so?

 

when you have a cruel mother

you are afraid everywhere

even in utero

 

o.k., so there was the Via Dolorosa

mine the VIE Dolorosa

and nobody helped carry the heavy wood burdens

 

no kind person wiped tears from my face

on that foreign balcony above a sea

when I finally realized that both daughters

 

were now the property of a cult

–over thirty years ago, Lord,

longer than they were IN my life

 

ah, You say, but there was the Agony in the Garden

indeed, every seed and bulb I planted

was the attempted burial of agony

 

“Will you not watch one hour with Me?”

I have been watching eight decades, Lord

waiting for faith like a mustard seed

belief in just touching the hem of Your garment

 

believing in mercy

 

Listen, God

I’ll trade

 

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

April 12, 2018

 

 

 

 

DESPERATELY SEEKING SPRING

First Burst of Spring at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, Bucks County

Snow or no snow, chill or no chill, spring is inevitable.  There’s no gainsaying the Vernal Equinox.  Days lengthen.  Ground thaws.  Spring’s exquisite ephemerals (flowers that bloom only so long as the forest canopy is not leafed out) will soon be everywhere.

Bridge – From Winter TO WInter, Bowman’s

One of the privileges of hanging out with naturalists is that they know where to find first signs of spring.

First ‘Monk’s Cowl’ — Skunk Cabbage, Bowman’s 

One of the disadvantages is that they know the names of everything, leaving you wondering if you’ll keep the difference between twinleaf and bloodroot this year.

In early April, beech leaves pale from almost copper or caramel to the hue of palomino horses.  When they’ve turned to ivory, nearly white, they’ll fling themselves to the ground, providing acid atmosphere required for a healthy beech nut crop this year.

If you’re lucky enough to have naturalist/photographer friends, your lessons will be a merry marriage of art and science.

Toad Trillium Among Newly Dropped Beech Leaves

If not, you may use these images as a Field Guide to earliest ephemerals.  Let me know what you’re finding where YOU are.

Twinleaf Emergence, Due Any Day Now

Tiny daffodils poked through rocks and snow this week.  Closed, they looked like lemon snowdrops.  Open, they are like stars fallen into my garden.  Rescued from yet another storm, they grace tiny green glasses on my dining room table.  So fragile in appearance — but I think they’re surviving/thriving far better than I this year!

In ‘just spring’ (e.e.cummings), when Christmas fern has yet to resurrect…

Wandering almost every trail at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, below New Hope, in Bucks County, this weekend, we found lesser celandine — invasive, spiky gold ground-hugging flowers everywhere.  A few exclamation points of skunk cabbage presided beside the old pond and on Marsh Marigold Trail.  In one patch of rare sunlight, a spray of bloodroot insisted that we rejoice in spring.

I’m trying.

The next time we cross the Civilian Conservation Corps Bridge over Pidcock Stream, we should find green emergence, and even hints of yellow.

Meanwhile, the joy is in the quest, keeping all senses tuned to the slightest spring heralds.  Early spring miracles include delighting in our fellowship – that there are any number of strong friends who are willing to brave brisk winds and brown surrounds, together, seeking spring.

Marsh Marigold Trail in the Birth of Spring

Again, I ask, what are YOU finding?

 

 

 

 

 

A FEW GOOD SCENES – Recent Excursions

FINALLY! BACK TO ‘THE BRIG’ — Leed’s Eco-Trail

***

NJWILDBEAUTY readers know how important weekend adventures are to me, –the essentiality of refilling the well, emptied daily in our work, saving the Planet.

***

And Beloved Leed’s Point, (near home of the Jersey Devil, whom I long to meet!)

***

Some of you also know about February’s torn meniscus — healing enough that I’ve been back on the trails.  But p.t. takes hours daily, –some in private, some with kind, gentle, dedicated coaches.  There remains too little time for creativity with all this body-building.  The whole point of this work on “glutes, hamstrings and core” is to get back outside.  Come with me to recent restorative havens.

***

Snowy Egret in Full Breeding Plumage, in WIND, The Brig

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Visitor Center, Purple Martin Houses, Perfect Clouds – The Brig

***

Spring Mimics Autumn – Swamp Maple, Waterlilies, The Brig

***

Essence of Spring – Geese and Goslings — The Brig

***

Jeanette Hooban (Intrepid) Rights Horseshoe Crabs,

Fortescue, Delaware Bayshore

***

High Tides Upset Horseshoe Crabs, Fortescue

BEACH COBBLED WITH HORSESHOE CRABS — 2 weeks late for the Full Moon of May

***

***

SACRED EGGS OF THE HORSESHOE CRABS 

But red knots and ruddy turnstones may have come and gone, ill-nourished, to Arctic

***

Fortescue at Its Best — Late Light, Late Fishermen

“DAY IS DONE, GONE THE SUN” – Fortescue

For these scenes, these full days in the wild, all those intense hours of physical therapy, with John Walker of Princeton Orthopaedic Group; and of chiropractic with Brandon Osborne, D.C., are worth it.  Whatever it takes to give yourselves the wild, do it!

I dare to rephrase Thoreau:  “In wildness is the healing of the world.”

“Paradise enow…”: Wells Mills Preserve / Pine Barrens

It’s always a treat when someone says, “Carolyn, I have a place I’d like to take YOU to hike!”  Fay Lachmann, –British-born–, has proven her friendship in a myriad of ways.  Many of them had to do with various rescues around the hip operation, and in other challenging times.  My first post-op Thanksgiving meal…  “Carolyn, it’s not about the sheets,” as she helped this unbendable one make the bed Friday after Friady.  Last week, Fay insisted on going right back to Wells Mills together, when she had only just taken her own hiking group there the day before.

Fay’s voice held uncharacteristic wispy notes, as she tried to explain why.  Finally, she simply stated, “Well, it’s about laurel.”

 

 

I could probably end this blog post right here.  The mountain laurel is at peak in the New Jersey Pine Barrens right now.  Even though there isn’t a mountain for miles.

***

***

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep…”  Some of the other lines from Frost’s masterpiece were also true, as in “.,..miles to go before I sleep…”  Enchanted miles in a woods that comprised almost totally of Atlantic White Cedar.

This wood was everywhere in South Jersey when that land was discovered by whalers settling Cape May in the 1500s.  Other explorers were naming shore areas Egg Harbor, for example, because beaches were covered with shore bird eggs.  In the 1700s, white cedar was used for shingles — as house siding and for roofs; for fence posts; and most urgently for casks carrying the tannic Pine Barrens teak water on whaling voyages.  In cedar, teak water stayed fresh for three years.  White cedar casks also protected wild cranberries for sailors, who otherwise would have perished from scurvy.  Such usefulness doomed cedar back when we were East Jersey and West Jersey, except in Wells Mills.

***

***

Towering cedars raised their lacy greenery, inky against fresh clouds.  Frail laurel blossoms leapt for the sky.  Here and there, a rough-trunked pitch pine announced to the forest primeval just exactly whose forest this is, anyhow.  A pine cone or two on the sugar sand trails foretold the probable future.

***

***

Silent canoeists hugged the far shore, of a tranquil lake that resembled finely pleated silver lame.  Anything or anyone could’ve emerged out of it, — a mermaid or The Lady of the Lake of Arthurian days.

A single dazzling swan sailed just out of reach of the paddlers.  A family of geese included a huge pale barnyard goose in the middle of five young — a switch on the Ugly Duckling Story.

***

***

Exceedingly rare plants burgeoned at points where peatwater streamlets entered the glistening lake.  If I am understanding my Audubon Field Guide to North American Wildflowers correctly, this is (misleadingly named) Common pipewort.  “Bog or aquatic herbs with crowded head of tiny flowers and long, leafless stalk.”

***

And this is purportedly Northern Pitcher Plant:  “a carnivorous plant with a large, purplish-red flower.”  Audubon does speak of “an umbrella-like structure.”

But mountain laurel carried the day — laurel and friendship.

WHEN YOUR EASTER OUTFIT IS BIRDING GEAR…

“HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT!” – Intrepid Jeanette Hooban on Easter

Hawk Watch Platform, Cape May, New Jersey

Over the weekend, yours truly set off for New Jersey’s two birding meccas, –Cape May and ‘The Brig’/Forsythe Wildlife Refuge.  As usual, she was running away from Holidays that used to be magical, in quest of winged rarities.  This memorable journey unfolded after Intrepid Jeanette Hooban declared [some months ago], “Carolyn, Easter is YOURS!”

HAWK WATCH PLATFORM:  Support these courageous and generous donors, without whose work and words, people could still be slaughtering rare birds by the thousands, all along Sunset Boulevard.

The Climate Change that ‘doesn’t exist’ had other ideas.  Gale-winds had flags snapping almost to the tearing point.  Out of the SOUTH — the direction in which migrants need to be flying.  They may as well have faced a wall.

NOTE THOSE WIND-WHIPPED FLAGS

Jeanette and I learned that only swans, osprey and a smattering of gulls were strong enough either day to surmount the mistral-like onslaught.

MUTE SWAN INSTITUTES TERRITORIALIZING POSTURE

We were given three oystercatchers at the Meadows at Cape May — walking around, seeking the ideal spot for the scrape they consider a nest.  Territorialzing was inevitable and amazingly raucous.  Get that verb though, “walking.”  At the Brig, –on the side of the renovated road, opposite Atlantic City–,  a pair of oystercatchers walked around on the pale gravelly substrate, nesting on their minds.  These could have been the pair I watched feeding one young a summer ago, in that same place, where Sandy had devoured the road.

There were a few great egrets in stunning breeding plumage.  They, also, were walking.  Terns wheeled and plunged.  A yellowlegs (I can’t tell greater from lesser unless they’re side-by-side) and some willets also tried to feed in low water, –feed on foot, not on wings.

So, right now, your NJ WILDBEAUTY Cape May activity report is being replaced this time by this poem.  It was written when the Dodge Poetry Festival was still held at Waterloo Village.  Joy Harjo, a feisty, eloquent Native American, magnificently conveyed her splendid multi-level poem, “She Had Some Horses.”

 

“SHE SAW SOME BIRDS”

                                                           (Hearing Joy Harjo at the  Dodge Poetry Festival)

 

she saw some birds who

were little and magical

and easily mistaken

— one for the other —

warbling in underbrush

and sporting, at the last moment

a red kiss

or a brassy crown or a

gold coin on a dark

rump, — and tiny, so tiny

really almost

invisible

 

she saw some birds who

were too high on a tree-

limb or a thermal

or above slate seas

and twisting — this

way and that –, hiding

their field marks

 

they could have been

peregrine or immature golden

against the noon sun but

no one can quite

make this call

 

she saw some birds

with distinctive bellies

plastered flat against

dark trunks which they were

excavating high and deep

where no one can climb

or raid or even — at the very

least — identify

 

she heard some birds

in the wide marsh

as the sun slipped

away from her and even

worse, from her birds

 

who had concealed

themselves among sere rushes

which they exactly matched

so she could not see but only

hear their rattle or click or whine

and wonder if this was her

rail, her shy bittern

 

the ones who so skillfully lose

themselves in the sedges as

she so longs to do in such

a setting,… everywhere

 

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

 

RECUPERANT’S POEM — P.T. yet again…

Foot(e)bridge to Bull’s Island from Lumberville, Pennsylvania, in another season:

NJWILDBEAUTY readers must be wondering at my long silence in this blog.  Normally one of my most gratifying creative outlets, ==and a major part of my mission to urge people to pay attention to Nature, enjoy her, and save her–, doing a blog has been the farthest thing from my mind since February 18.

That day, a meniscus (right knee; we have four – what is the plural – menisci?) tore for no obvious reason.  Pain sharp as the venomous bite of a striking snake zoomed up and down my right leg, which then refused to work.  My chiropractor and my co-writer friend, Pat Tanner, had to meet me at my car at his office and my home, near Pat’s, to pry me out.  Or I’d be there still!

A meniscus has very little blood flow — therefore, it is prone to tearing, and not prone to healing.

***

Barnegat Bay – Birding by Kayak – Heaven on Earth

In 2011, I set foot(e) into physical therapy with Princeton Orthopaedics, to return to the world and especially to kayaking, after my brilliant hip replacement with Doctor Thomas Gutowski.  My physical therapist – which process I have since insisted is as important as the surgery — was the perfectly named John Walker.  He’s the miracle worker, who took me kayaking upon Lake Carnegie four months after the surgery.

John knew that Dr. Gutowski had asked my surgical goal – (did you know there was such a thing?–) at our first meeting.  Dr. G did not laugh when I immediately announced, “To return to the kayak.”  In fact, he discussed my paddling preferences, later inserting a kayaker’s hip.

John Walker then strengthened all those long-underutilized muscles around the new joint — through three lengthy weekly sessions for a very long time.   One spring day, I confessed, most shamefacedly, that I’d planned to kayak that weekend, but had been afraid to do it alone.

[I, who do everything alone, like move to Manhattan straight from my convent school; like managing a Test Kitchen at 21 years old at the corner of forty-second and third; liuke move to Provence so I could spend my fiftieth birthday on my balcony overlooking the Mediterranean.]  But I couldn’t face LEAVING the kayak alone, no matter how blissful my paddle may have been.

Confession led to John’s saying, “That’s because we’re to do it together.”  And we did.

There wasn’t a soul on that lake, that still April evening.  We paddled through a Tiffany landscape complete with mountains (Watchungs?) I had never seen from the towpath.

As sunset approached, a great blue heron marched toward us at the forest edge.  That normally vigilant bird was not the least disturbed by our presence, since kayakers are part of the water.

Brenda Jones — Disturbed Great Blue Heron — Trenton Marsh

***

Never, however, did I consider entering those physical therapy doors again.

Guess what — we have to heal this meniscus tear and prevent any in the other three.  I have been returned to John to work on hamstrings and glutes.  I protested this week, “Those strange names are not part of my upbringing.  I don’t want glutes!”

“Carolyn,” John explained, in his traditional avuncular manner, “You HAVE to have glutes.  Especially for hiking…”

OK.  So now I don’t even have time for yoga.  Just glutes, hamstrings and core.

I’m sharing my newly relevant protest poem from five years ago.

Yes, it’s a blessing to be back in John’s capable hands.  He and my wondrous Hopewell chiropractor, Brandon Osborne, chronicle and celebrate improvements I am too dense to perceive.  Progress is being made.  But those rooms and those contortions used to seem like being kidnapped to go on the road with a circus!

With their vigilant approval, I was back on the alluring foot(e)bridge over the Delaware to Bull’s Island twice last weekend. Pileateds and phoebes announced spring.

Next foot(e)prints – The Sourlands Trail off Greenwood Avenue.

But I do not take back my discomfiture over all those months, following those strange directions:

***

JUXTAPOSITIONS

 

in this

room full of premature blossoms

I perform exercises

on the heels of ‘total hip replacement’

 

March sun suffuses whiteness

that one day should be pears

as I am handed stretching bands,

assorted weights, one bolster

and a ball

 

here, serious playthings promise

flexibility, stamina, gait

— and possibly– kayaking

 

relentlessness conspires

with absolute lack of privacy

throughout my fitness attempts

 

outside, blossoms yearn

for pollinators’ essential arrivals

 

inside, –completing yet another

“two sets of thirty”–

I perceive flowery profusion

through a tall bright curve

of ivory spinal column

 

vertebrae and blossoms

my new reality

 

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

 

***

Dappled Sourlands Trail, off Greenwood Avenue, Hopewell

 

 

SUN-SEEKING, Literal and Metaphorical

Is it November, –or is it THIS November–, that renders sun a memory?

What images, what journeys hold light so crucial to me, ever more essential, every day?

Autumn Along the Stony Brook, 2016, November

 

Key birding buddy, Mary Wood, and I ‘hiked the day down,’ –mostly wordlessly, often birdlessly–, after the election.  November surprised us with remnant vividness.

Walk with us.  Climb with us.

 

Birding Platform Over the Wetlands

Map – Charles Rogers Refuge – off Alexander, near Princeton Canoe and Kayak Rentals

 

Likely Birds – Red-wing Heaven in Springtime

 

We owe this lovely restoration to Winnie (Hughes) and Fred Spar, and Tom Poole.  I know Winnie through U.S. 1 Poets, and Fred and Tom through D&R Greenway Land Trust, where I work.

Finding these images on this gloomy day reminds that all that matters in my life is preservation, — of nature, of beauty, of wild spaces.

Oh, yes, and freedom.  For the wildlings and for us.

Winnie and Fred, in their fine new signs, give honor to legendary birder, quintessential birdwalk leader, Lou Beck, of Washington Crossing Audubon.

We all give credit to everyone who reaches out, through whatever non-profits, to save the wild while we can.  Thoreau was right, you know:  “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

 

Restored Wetlands — Note Return of the Cattails, and Purple Martin House and Gourds

 

“September, we’ll remember…”

Upside-Down is Better than Right-Side Up

 

 

Finale, Rogers Refuge and the Stony Brook

 

“From Both Sides Now”

 

November Tapestry in the Stony Brook

Memories of this refuge especially include green herons.  Not this day, not this season — but often.  Sometimes, kayaking nearby, one spots green herons mincing along the banks of the (D&R, of course) canal, then lofting up into Refuge trees.

 

Green Heron by Brenda Jones

 

Spring Species, Rogers Refuge

 

Spring brings not only winged miracles. This refuge is yellow-flag and blue-flag Central in May.  Wild iris of the most vivid hues, The Rogers is worthy of a journey for ‘flags’ alone.

 

Blue Flags from Versicolor on Interniet

 

Invasive species had driven out cattails essential to territorializing red-winged blackbirds.

Male Redwinged Blackbird, Territorializing, by Brenda Jones

Seemingly inescapable phragmites, — bush-tailed grasses beloved of decorators–, are too frail to support the weight of males, ruffling scarlet epaulets, vocalizing welcome to females and banishment to rivals, in these woods and wetlands.

Phragmites Height from Internet

Restoration, a key facet of preservation, is visible in the final scene of Mary’s and my November walk.

Late Light in the Cattails

Sandy Hook June Scenes with Jeanette-the-Intrepid

We go to the Shore to cool off, right?  Not last Saturday!  Sandy Hook was as steamy and stifling as Manhattan, despite intense winds that had the flags in whipping/ripping full-out mode.  Nonetheless, Jeanette Hooban (the original Intrepid) and I made the most of our day there on Saturday.

You should know that The Powers That Be want to desecrate / destroy forested areas of Sandy Hook, in order to construct buildings to house vehicles.  Any chance you get to protest this travesty, take it.  Sandy Hook is a key segment of the Atlantic Flyway, essential to birds in migration in spring and autumn.  Nests of rare, threatened, endangered species are everywhere.  Write editors and congresspeople, insisting they honor habitat, for once facilitating the lives and hatchings of these spectacular birds!

 

Black Skimmer Skimming, from Internet

Star of the day was either the black skimmer skimming on the ocean side (they usually prefer bays and impoundments), or the strutting oystercatcher, also on the ocean side, so near hordes of New Yorkers screaming in the surf.

Oystercatcher Strutting, from Internet

Great Egret Landing, from Internet

The winds were so high that all water surfaces were pleated like the cotton plisse of childhood summer pajamas.  Neither the ospreys nor the egrets could see into the water to fish.  Seven egrets surrounded an oxbow pond, beside the Shrewsbury River.  It seemed that they were stabbing blindly in quest of lunch.

“Osprey Packing a Lunch” from Internet

That entire day, –and we confirmed this with other birders–, we only saw one osprey ‘packing a lunch,’ the waters were so turbulent.  This one was flying practically from the entry toll booths (it’s free to bird there!) to a nest on a chimney of the officers’ (ruined) houses, where his mate searched plaintively.  We told her, “He’s on his way.  He’s having a bad day at the office.”

Osprey Nest on Officer’s House Chimney, Sandy Hook

Ruined Officers’ Houses 2 Years Ago – they look exponentially worse now!

Prickly Pear Cactus in Bloom, June 2016, Sandy Hook

Salt Spray Rose in Bloom, June 2016, Sandy Hook

Mysterious Officer’s Mansion, Sandy Hook

Extremely Hazardous Area – Old Battery near North Beach, Sandy Hook

Sandy-Rearranged Bricks, Officers’ Houses

Jeanette Merrily Wades in the June Atlantic, Sandy Hook

Impressionist Scene, New Yorkers Streaming to, Screaming in, the Surf