Early afternoon return to the Woods on a mildly cool, overcast day in late January. Entering via the Northwest Pond, I wanted to see more of the dramatic changes in the Woods from this winter's storms of ice and wind.
Only a hundred feet down the trail, I heard a sudden, sharp rustle in the dried leaves, and looked up slope to see a fast-scuttling armadillo, alarmed by my arrival, making an escape run. The escape was hilariously short, maybe 20-25 feet, and then the armadillo seemed to have put enough additional distance between us so that I was out-of-sight and out-of-mind. I watched through binoculars closeup as it foraged with its back to me, pink brown ears stuck up in the air. After a moment or two, it paused and put its head up with its long pink snout and sensitive nose to sniff the air and see if there was danger nearby. I had not moved, and was still close by. Never mind. Reassured, it resumed busily foraging for grubs, worms, snails and any other tasty invertebrates that might be found under the dry oak leaves.
Eventually, it moved out of sight up slope, and I remembered the undisturbed dead opossum located thirty feet away a few weeks ago. I looked, and found only a slight depression in the leaves and the old smell of carrion returning to the soil.
I walked on down the trail, beyond the first big pecan, and enjoyed the feeling of being wrapped in the Woods again, sheltered from sight and sound.
At the wetland swamp before the NW Pond, there were bright green new saucer-sized rafts of FLAB (floating algal biomass), a sign of some warmer days over the past month, enough to power some fresh growth. At the pond (depth today 2.54 ft) there was a golden skim of juniper pollen, swirled in open contours curved by the prevailing west wind.
A small patrol of crows was producing a racket just ahead and I looked up in time to see a barred owl fly silently from its perch on a broken elm tree, around the top of the slope and out of sight, pursued by three crows. Two crows stayed back to warn that I was coming down the trail, but thought better of it, and quit after only a minute or two more.
A hundred feet farther along I departed the trail to investigate a shiny white piece of metal rubbish and then decided to keep going off trail. Going slowly off trail I always see more new things. I pay closer attention. I love that I can still get 'lost' in the Woods doing this, so that it takes me a minute or two to figure out where I am.
The Woods in the low-lying, west central area is quite wet, despite the lack of significant rain for three weeks. Shallow, bathtub-sized depressions are well-filled and ready for new batches of frog or salamander eggs. Written accounts from forty years ago describe hundreds of tiger salamanders, maturing in these pools and moving out of the Woods into surrounding farm fields. Today the Woods is cut off from surrounding fields by moderate traffic passing along paved roads, and on the south, by city utility buildings cutting access to the wilder river floodplain of the Canadian. The saturated west central soil and standing water in the basins represents a healthy, higher water table. However the water threatens to drown the forest of 50 year old small diameter ash trees. I noticed again the swelling of the base of these trees in response to too much water around the roots. I also noticed the swollen bases of the small group of a half dozen catalpa trees just west of the East Pond (depth today 2.28 ft). Half of the catalpas had cozy-looking hollows burrowed at the base that likely provided good shelter from winter cold.
In the SE corner of the Woods, some sandier soil is filled with early green, Allium wild leeks, Stellaria chickweed and early fescue(?) grasses, good snacks for nocturnal foraging of mice, deer and other grazers. No flowers, that I observed. The low green carpet of beginning growth reminded me of a recent favorite line I read in another blog, a quote from the mid 20th century Irish poet Edna O'Brien "Winter is the real spring". Now, in early mid winter, changes are beginning that will burst forth in the green growth of spring.
Walking out to leave the Woods, I noticed the open sky northeast of the East Pond where large canopy branches of pecan, elm and others had been ripped down by huge ice weight. The destruction of the late October ice storm adds to the feeling of a
Woods in transition. Like the US population of aging baby boomers, the
once dominant generation of the canopy trees have sustained enough
damage and mortality over the years, to be opening up and producing a
more heterogeneous forest. The roots and resources of the older survivors are deep.
Their crowns have been shaped by years of winter storms and spring
growth. Many of the older generation have been blown down, tilted, broken, drowned or crushed and now provide a richer
variable architecture to the Woods. Their damage and destruction has
allowed a varied under story of younger and middle age trees to grow and
diversify the Woods. The open canopy and extra light will fill a new part of the forest floor with spring growth, and become a sunning place for spring butterflies.
