Short and Oh So Sweet!

I only had time to take my niece and nephew on a ninety minute hike. As it turned out, that was plenty of time for them to bombard me with questions, and for me to saturate their little heads with information.

I parked on Nelson Road, and moments after stepping out of the car I got my first reward: Dylan reminded me of the inchworm on my dashboard. I'd seen it when I first got into the car, and made a point to say that I'd take it out when we got to the trail so that it wouldn't die in the car. I took it out and thanked Dylan for reminding me. It's gratifying to instill in kids a respect for life.

The act of depositing the caterpillar on a plant turned out to be a conversation starter. It fell off the leaf, but then dangled in the air on a strand of silk that it must have anchored on the leaf as it skidded past. I told the kids that caterpillars spin silk like spiders spin webs, and one of the kids asked about caterpillars turning into butterflies. I told them about chrysalises, and when Abby asked if all caterpillars turn into butterflies, I said I didn't know. I must remember to follow up on that question; it's important to teach the kids a dual lesson of admitting when you don't know something, and educating yourself about what you don't know.

We started walking east, and I was pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to turn around. I hadn't been hopeful about continuing far on this section of trail, because it's usually thick with blood-sucking insects. But somehow we got lucky. I explained this to the kids, and took the opportunity to give them a sense of one small piece of the food chain: where there's water, there are insects; where there are insects, there are spiders; and where there are insects and spiders, there are birds.

As usual, the first thing I noticed along the trail was a folded leaf. After years of training my eye to see them, they leap out at me. The folding agent is usually a spider or a caterpillar, and on this trip I only saw evidence of the latter. I kept unrolling leaves and finding either a caterpillar and its feces, or just the feces.

I saw a butterfly, and Abby asked if that was the caterpillar we saw! I explained that caterpillars take months to turn into butterflies, and repeated that I don't know whether all caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Before we got far, we noticed a peculiar blanket of fluff on the trail. I didn't recognize it, so I started wondering out loud what it was. Dylan asked if it was milkweed fluff, and I told him that milkweed plants don't release their seeds until around October, so it couldn't have come from there.

Soon I found a strand of half-open seed pods on the trail. I couldn't recall seeing anything like it before. Clearly the fluff was coming from pods like these, so I took it as an opportunity to give the kids a lesson in deductive reasoning.

I told the kids that there were no other low-growing plants in sight that were releasing fluff, so I was looking higher. I saw some fluff on a small tree near the trail, and for a moment I thought that was the source. But when I compared the branching structure of the pods I found on the trail to that of the pods on the tree, I saw that they were very different. So the fluff couldn't have come from the tree either. This gave the kids a quick and dirty introduction to taxonomy.

Since the fluff didn't seem to be coming from any of the shorter trees, I had to look higher still. I saw maples, elms and poplars along the trail, and I knew that maples and elms didn't produce fluff. So I began to suspect that it was raining down from the poplars. I tried to convey this process of elimination to the kids.

A few minutes later, I found a branch on the trail that confirmed my hypothesis. It had both poplar leaves and a strand of the same fluff-bearing seed pods. Mystery solved!

As we continued east, I taught the kids about some of the flora along the trail. I showed them Jack-in-the-Pulpit and trillium, and pointed out that though the leaves look very similar, the trillium leaves are radially symmetrical but the Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves aren't. I showed them a huge vine and pointed out how high into the trees it climbed. And I showed them the light green patches on a rock, and told them about lichen.

As I kept unrolling leaves and finding only caterpillars or caterpillar leavings, Dylan asked a very good question: "Why are there no spiders?" I used this as an excuse to tell him about the spider life cycle, and how other organisms need building materials with specific qualities, just like humans do. We weren't seeing spiders for two reasons: first, they won't be laying eggs for another month or two, so they're not building shelters for their egg sacs; and second, they can't just use any leaves for their shelters, and there don't seem to be many of the berry bushes they like along this section of trail.

Before we got too far, Dylan started finding railroad spikes. He's quite fascinated by the iron artifacts from the old railroad, and I'm encouraging that fascination. So I started finding spikes for him, as well as a reinforcing plate. I made a throwaway comment to him about how one could make some strong armor from plates like these, and a bullet would just bounce off it. He got curious, asking "Why don't people make armor like that?" This led to a conversation about medieval armor, and protection vs. speed in medieval warfare. Thus I laid the groundwork for introducing him to some educational programs.

Soon after we reached the scenic slope down to Canastota Creek, a big black fly with a brilliant yellow thorax landed on my right hand. It was nearly the size of a horsefly, so I suspected it might be about to painfully draw some blood. But as I told the kids, I really wanted to get a shot of the thing. I kept my hand still and asked Dylan to grab the phone out of my pocket. I got some great shots, I didn't get bit, and I taught the kids a lesson about risking some pain for the sake of intellectual curiosity.

On the way back, one of the kids spotted a curious-looking little grey mass with two narrow tubes sticking out of it. At first I thought it was a piece of a carcass with a long worm running through it. It took us a few seconds to figure out that it was the rear end of a mouse: one end of the "worm" was the mouse's tail, and the other was a strand of its intestines. There was a slug a few inches away that appeared to have been feeding on it. Dylan said that a fox must have eaten the mouse, and I thought that sounded about right. One of the kids asked what ate the fox, and I said that there probably wasn't anything around here that eats foxes. It occurs to me that I was wrong; coyotes probably eat foxes. I'll have to look it up and follow up with the kids.

During the hike, I had several opportunities to educate Dylan about arachnids. At one point he saw a "big spider" and I came to look. It turned out to be a daddy longlegs. I told him that daddy longlegs are arachnids but not spiders, and that they are ancient, like sharks; fossils of daddy longlegs that lived hundreds of millions of years ago look like daddy longlegs of today. I also had an opportunity to show him the "boxing gloves" on a spider, and tell him that those are pedipalps, which means the spider is a male.

I saw a large insect on a low leaf, and tried to show the kids. It dropped off just before Dylan got there, but it turned out to be a lesson in following your curiosity and being open to what you find, instead of what you expected. As we looked for the insect, we found a slug, and then I saw a spider crawling right over it. I believe it was Enoplognatha ovata, the same leaf-folding species I'd been telling Dylan about!

Here are a few more tidbits I got to teach the kids: those squiggly whitish lines on the leaves are from tiny leaf miners tunneling between the layers of the thin leaf with their little mouths; we can't walk on this side trail because it's private property as opposed to public property; that slope is bare because of erosion, which means wind and rain wearing away soil; leaves with this particular shape are touch-me-nots, whose seed pods we'll be popping in a few months; and the water running in that stream fell as rain miles away a few days ago, and trickled down plants and through the ground before ending up in the stream.

All this, in an hour and twenty minutes. I'm a lucky guy to have a nephew and niece who are receptive to my enthusiasm.

Trail Maintenanance

My Section of the Link Trail

On Sunday I spent about five hours hiking my section of trail, replacing blazes that someone had torn down since my inspection around Easter, and mowing the grass with a string trimmer. The trimmer was slow, but thorough. Here's a shot of one of the salamanders that I came so close to mulching...


...and here are a few shots of the lovely sunset I saw as I drove home.

Abby's First Link Trail Hike!

Dylan and Abby were both exceptionally whiny during breakfast, so I was resigned to a not-so-fun hike. As it turned out, their behavior during the hike was diametrically opposed to their morning behavior. We started at the Canastota trailhead and made it all the way to the bridge over Canastota Creek, despite the fact that it started pouring right when we reached the top of the long staircase. Abby only whined a little bit when it started to rain, and that was it. She made it the whole way out and back under her own power, and Dylan was ever the gallant brother, making sure she safely navigated the slippery bits. What great kids!

30 Miles

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

I got into town late on Friday night, and I had made plans to have a cookout with my sister and her kids at 6:00 on Saturday night. I estimated that I had to start hiking not long after 7:00 AM in order to have time to stop for lunch and rest my feet in Cazenovia before turning around and getting back on time. This meant that I only had time for about four hours of sleep. I got up at 6:30, brewed a thermos full of tea, and hit the Canastota trailhead at 7:35.

The first thing I noticed was the forget-me-nots blossoming ten feet into the trail. White and purple-pink dame's rocket was blooming along the trail. It was a lovely day: warm and sunny. Rain had poured down the night before, so I had to be careful of slippery spots.

I don't recommend making a commitment with zero margin of error as a means of keeping yourself on schedule during a long hike. I suppose you could say that it worked for me, but I was so obsessed with finishing the hike on time that I wasn't enjoying the beginning. I don't remember too much about the first few miles.

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

A few hundred yards east of Nelson Road the trail crosses a farm path. Just west of this crossing, there's an eroded gap at the top of the slope on the northern edge of the trail. Runoff is carrying clay soil down the slope, across the trail, and into the creek on the south side. This section is rather slippery with clay, as you can see from the pictures above. It might warrant anti-erosion measures before long.

I crossed Nelson Road at 8:18 and then my feet started getting seriously wet. There's a lot of enthusiastic greenery encroaching on the trail. I was happy to see that I was wrong about the rate of erosion at a particular spot a few hundred yards west of Nelson Road: the creek hasn't eroded any more of the bank just north of the trail, as I thought it would have by now.

Between Cottons Road and the next lawn, the trail was even more overgrown. This is the section where I got soaked from the thighs down and got seeds and leaves from many plants in my shoes. It's also where I once again felt privileged to pass through the biggest grove of bloodroot I've ever seen. The ground was completely obscured by them, for ten or fifteen feet on either side of the trail, for about a hundred feet. If you took every patch of bloodroot I've seen in my life and put them together, it wouldn't equal the size of this patch.

After the bloodroot came a pleasant patch of mayapple. Then I passed across the lawn and through the woods, dodged many fresh cow pies, traversed the cow path and the railroad bed, and crossed Quarry Road at 9:17.

It must have rained with exceptional force on Friday night, because I noticed something I'd never seen before: all along the trail, every daisy fleabane blossom looked sadly bedraggled, like a fifties greaser who'd gotten his pompadour all set but then got caught in a prank with a firehose. Now I wish that I'd taken a moment to unpack my camera and get some shots, but at the time I was too invested in not breaking my pace.

I reached Ingalls Corners Road at 9:44 and stopped for a few minutes to eat a Zone Bar and drink some tea. Then I forged ahead through my least favorite portion of the trail: the two and a half miles of roadside hiking between there and the Freber Road trailhead.

By then I was having a few strong reactions: consternation that I didn't seem to be maintaining anything like the pace I kept on this same hike two years ago; sad incredulity that I seemed to be the only one taking advantage of the trail on such a lovely day; and gratitude for the lovely day itself. As I sweated my way up Seibenbaum Road under the sun that by then was blazing, a bull rose and assumed a protective stance in front of its harem.

By the time I reached the Freber Road trailhead at 10:51, I was so amazed at the time I'd made two years ago that I'd begun to wonder if I'd written it down wrong. But I knew that I'd been meticulous, so I wondered if I might actually hike from Freber to Cazenovia in a little over an hour. It seemed impossible.

I picked up the pace and made every effort not to slacken it. I crossed Carrys Hill Road at 11:15 and climbed the stairs at Bingley Road at 11:40. There was no way that I'd be in Cazenovia in twenty minutes. I prepared to be humbled by myself from two years ago.

On the trail along the falls I met a friendly bicyclist named Molly. We talked about the trail and I told her about this journal. I also had to stop and wrap my left little piggie toe for the first time. Messing around with my feet had become a real pain. Getting my socks soaked early in the hike hadn't helped them at all.

I reached Route 20 at 12:34, grabbed two slices of pizza and a Pepsi at the Sunoco station, and wolfed them down before hitting the trail at 12:48. That is correct: I will never be mistaken for a nutrition expert.

It wasn't long before I had to stop and wrap my right little piggy toe. A few weeks ago I took a twenty-five mile hike and didn't wrap that toe until it was way too late: I got a big blister and ended up losing the nail. I was not about to make the same mistake.

My feet kept giving me grief during most of the hike back. I had to stop, both to empty out my shoes and to re-wrap one toe or the other, with irritating frequency. Then, not far from Freber Road, I had the most frustrating missed photo opportunity in recent memory. I caught a small bit of motion on the trail that my eye immediately identified as a spider. I saw that it was a cute little orangish-brindle salticid* of a species I’ve not seen before. I waved my hand in front of it enough to make it freeze, and then kept my eye on it as I took my pack off.

It had barely moved by the time I got my camera bag unzipped and taken the Canon macro rig out. I glanced at the camera to turn it on and make sure that the mode dial was in the right position, and when I looked back the little bugger had disappeared. I spent a few minutes blowing on the immediate area in hopes of making it twitch, combing the leaf litter, and occasionally admonishing the spider.

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

Well, I guess that got the lion’s share of my frustration out of my system, because when I broke out of the tree cover and onto the road, and saw this sky, it felt like a reward and a benediction. There’s nothing like a sky I’ve spent a whole day walking under. It feels like I can come closest to touching it because I’ve come closest to earning it.

By this time I was about as satisfied with my foot wrapping as I was going to get for this trip. I was still kicking myself for not wearing better socks, though, and I resolved to get some good hiking socks before the next trip.

I was troubled by my slowness relative to two years ago, but pleased to find myself much less achy. I could tell that I would get serious blisters out of this hike, but not the agonizing level of achiness that I had then. All the twelve- and twenty-five-mile hikes I've taken lately have gotten me conditioned.

Nothing notable happened between the splendid expanse of sky over Seibenbaum Road, and crossing Cottons Road. I was so preoccupied with getting back to the car that I didn't linger on any of the little asides that make a hike magical. Again, this is not how I would recommend that anyone do this hike. Don't make a family commitment for the evening that leaves you zero margin for error.

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

A few months back I read an article about leaf galls in a natural history magazine. I don't know whether this primed me to notice them, or whether it's an exceptional year for galls, but I've been seeing them everywhere lately! Just past the gate where the trail crosses Cottons Road and heads toward Nelson Road, I saw a magnificent selection of grape leaf galls. I'd never noticed anything like them before. The clipping shown above is the best of the bunch.

I reached my car at the Canastota trailhead at 6:12. I was disappointed that it took me so long, but very pleased that I wasn't remotely as achy as I remember feeling two years ago. And just think of how much faster I'll move after I've dropped thirty-five pounds!

From 30-Mile Link Trail Hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and Back - June 5, 2010

Here are the socks I wore out during this hike. The final tally of injuries was: a major blister along the bottom outside rear edge of my left foot; a largeish blister one on my right piggy toe; and some smaller ones here and there. But I'm happy to report that I didn't get any grief from my toenails this time!

---

*If my memory is to be trusted, the salticid that I saw was this species. Unfortunately I don't know what the species is because it's an uncategorized entry in BugGuide!

Maintenance hike on the Irish Hill section

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

As of last November I'm the steward of the mile and a half section of trail between Irish Hill Road and Damon Road. This was my first hike of the year through the whole thing, so I was excited at the prospect of doing some trail-clearing. I parked at the crook of Irish Hill Road and hit the trail at about 5:00. The first stream crossing was vastly easier than it was in March, when the water was twice as high from the spring melt.

Carrying two axes and a machete was awkward, but I soon discovered a way to make it less so. I remembered that my cheap little worn-out day pack had a carry loop on top. I stuck both axes in there and they stayed well enough for the purposes of this hike. I need to come up with a safer and more secure arrangement, though.

Red wintergreen berries provided the first cheerful wink of color along the trail. Withering trout lily leaves testified to yellow that had passed, and cinquefoil leaves promised more yellow to come.

I could hardly believe how soon I'd passed over the stream crossing that Grace and I helped redirect on July 4th. In March, when I was gingerly making my way through, over and around mud and runoff with a six-year-old, it seemed like a much longer hike!

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

I passed out of the woods and headed south on the wider section that parallels the hedgerow. I found that part more delightful, not just because I've spent less time on it, but because of the forget-me-nots sprinkled liberally along the verges. The way they grew partially obscured among the grasses and tiny maple trees made me think of faeries.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

Along with the touch-me-nots I saw lots of dandelions, both blooming and seeding. Once again I was rewarded for taking the time to get some macro shots of a flower that I've seen hundreds of millions of times: when I looked at these pictures later, it was like seeing a dandelion for the first time.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

I stopped to take pictures of violets, apple blossoms, and a bird's nest made of mud and straw that I found just a step off the trail, about six feet off the ground in an apple tree. Now I wish I'd have taken pictures of the wild mustard that stitched the trail with yellow. What new intricacies would a closeup have revealed? I'll make a point to find out next time.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

Now that I've looked at the shots, I have to say that the most rewarding of all the photographic subjects on this hike were last year's burdock. I love the way the seeds were so clearly waiting to be shaken loose by an animal attempting to worry the burr free from its fur, and I'm fascinated by the golden yellow hooks that I never would have noticed if not for the macro shots.

Even more so than the forget-me-nots, the copses of myrtle made the trail magical. There are large patches of open, shady woods along the western edge of the trail that resemble nothing so much as a gently undulating sea of periwinkle. In one particularly dramatic spot, the remains of an old tree jut up from a mound so that the dark green sea seems to wash against a craggy island spire.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

When I saw the treefall across the trail a few hundred yards north of Damon Road, my heart rejoiced. It's been far too long since I've had the opportunity for some real trail-clearing. This one was nothing compared to some of the monster blowdowns I cleared in the Adirondacks back around the early aughts, but then again I'm not in my best shape right now, so it was a good workout.

My father's words about always clearing the ground before swinging the axe echoed in my ears as I went to work with the machete. I got the little stuff cleared away and then went to work with the axe.

It's always much more challenging to chop through logs when they're suspended over the ground like these were: the position puts you at a muscular disadvantage, and the lack of bracing means that a lot of your striking force is dissipated. So naturally I place my first cut to bring down the entire length of log that needs to be cleared.

I tend to cut up logs so that the pieces are right at the upper limit of what I can move. This always feels a bit weird because I'm minimizing the time I spend chopping, an activity that I enjoy more than almost anything. But it also makes it as difficult as possible for me to wrestle the pieces off the trail. This is exactly what I want, because it gives me the best possible full-body workout.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

So I got that big log up on the bank where it couldn't possibly jump out and bite anyone, and took some shots of my kill. I just looked back at the time stamps on the pictures, and found that fifty-nine minutes passed between the last shot of the treefall and the first shot of the cleared trail. Under an hour: not bad for someone so out of shape.

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

From Link Trail Hike, Irish Ridge Road to south of Damon Road - May 15, 2010

When I reached Damon Road there was still plenty of sunlight, so I decided to continue south for a while. This section was even more delightfully forget-me-not-ridden, but another problem soon soured the experience: it was a mud pit, and it was obvious that ATVs were the reason. I made my winding way, avoiding the mud as best I could, but still wound up with wet feet by the time I turned around, probably less than a mile in.

On the way back I met a hiker with her dogs and had a pleasant conversation about the trail. When I reached my car and headed back toward Oneida, I was shocked to see that it was 8:30. I'd sure had a lot of fun on the trail for three and a half hours to have flown by so fast!

One Last Time Capsule from Summer

Here's a third time capsule, this one from August 22nd. For more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

Dylan and I walked east from Nelson Road. It was a hot day, so when it started raining we didn't mind much. The only problem was that it kept me from taking my camera out toward the end of the hike. So I didn't get any pictures of Dylan or me, nor of the rolled leaves that I noticed at the beginning of the hike.

What I did get was some shots of a wildflower I'd never seen before. Just a minute or two into the hike I noticed that the marshy area to the south of the trail was full of magenta blossoms that I couldn't immediately identify. When I went closer, I was surprised to find that I still couldn't identify them. After years of walking all over the hills and ravines south of Oneida I didn't think there was a showy wildflower I hadn't seen. I was wrong.









I just found the flower in my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. It's hairy willow-herb (Epilobium hirsutum).

Touch-Me-Not

Here's another time capsule, this one from September 19th. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and I took Dylan and Abby on a short hike west from Nelson Road. It was Abby's first hike on the Link Trail, and the timing couldn't have been better. The touch-me-nots were ready to pop, and the kids duly popped them to their little hearts' content.

I just looked up touch-me-nots, aka jewelweed, in Wikipedia and was surprised to find that what I thought was one species is actually two: orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) and yellow jewelweed (Impatiens pallida).