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Poetry with Wings
There was a poetry reading yesterday at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill entitled Poetry with Wings. As part of the Garden’s Saving Our Birds programming initiative this Fall, five local poets were invited to read poems that touch on birds in some way It was a wonderful event with a wide range… Read more
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This is Nuts, Part 2
Each year insects heavily attack northern red oak acorns and destroy a large percentage of them, greatly reducing the number of acorns available to produce seedlings and feed wildlife. ~Lester P. Gibson No, this isn’t what you think…it really is a post about acorns (I need a break from the other nuttiness). It is a… Read more
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The Day After
Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. ~Desmond Tutu Be the light… Read more
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This is Nuts!
I am looking for acorns these days, to sow on the Walden lot, but can find very few sound ones…I found by trial that the last or apparently sound acorns would always sink in water, while the rotten ones would float, and I have accordingly offered five cents a quart for such as will sink.… Read more
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Ground Squirrels in Trees
There was no variation in his manner of proceeding all the time I observed him. He was alert, cautious, and exceedingly methodical. ~John Burroughs, on observing a chipmunk, 1894 On our recent mountain trip, we camped at Hickory Ridge Campground at Grayson Highlands State Park. In addition to several maple, birch and (appropriately) hickory trees,… Read more
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The Highlands of Virginia
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity. ~John Muir I think thousands of people must have read this quote last Sunday and headed to my favorite Virginia state park, Grayson Highlands. The parking lots were all packed on… Read more
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Tree Climbing
To climb a tree is for a child to discover a new world. ~Friedrich Frobel, 1826 It has been a very busy couple of weeks so you may have noticed my posts have been a bit slow in coming. Last weekend we finished celebrating our birthdays with a different sort of birthday surprise…a private tree… Read more
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Northwoods
There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past… Read more
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Surprise Endings
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars… ~Charles Darwin, 1860 So strange are the habits of certain groups of wasps that they have caused many a person to look upon them in disbelief… Read more
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A Swirl of Swifts
Their twittering notes and whizzing wings create a musical, but wild, continued roar. The twittering, whizzing roar continues to increase; the revolving circle fast assumes a funnel shape, moving downward until the point reaches the hollow in the stub, pouring its living mass therein until the last bird dropped out of sight. ~Chief Pokagon, of… Read more
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Roads End Naturalist 