forest for the blind

Today I gave a tour to a group of vision impaired folks; they crowded into the program theatre with dogs and canes and dark glasses and I taught them about the cottonwood forest. I told them about the trees of our river valley, the amazing geographical anomaly that happens around Lethbridge where balsam, plains, and narrow-leafed cottonwoods meet (like nowhere else in the world) and hybridize to create unique and individual leaf shapes. We ran our fingers around the edges of impressions of these three leaf shapes, the ridges and oblong patterns denoting the various species.

I showed them the bark, furrowed and rough, fingers in the creases, we imagined our hands as creatures making our homes in the outer folds of the tree; we touched the chewed roadways of barkbeetles, calligraphy scrawls on the inner wood of the tree, following their carved pathways with fingertips. I spoke about the lifecycle of the cottonwood trees; they time the release of their soft air-borne seeds for the season of the floods in the rivervalley. As the snow-like seeds land in the muddy floodplain, they find the perfect conditions to root and begin to grow. I passed around a jar of these seeds so that everyone could feel the soft cotton and search for the tiny tree-potentials inside.

We walked slowly through the woods and stopped to listen for birds -- yellow warblers, balitmore orioles, american robins, northern flickers. We listened to their calls and I conducted a symphony of bird mimicry. I described the birds by colour and shape and weight and traced the size of each bird into the palm of everyones hand. Then we felt nests: the blanket-like, knotted woven strings and grass and twine of the oriole, circular weave of mud and grass of the robin, the hollowed out tree of the flicker, and the cottonseed and spiderweb lined nest of the warbler.

we went further into the woods, listened for the hum of insects, we felt honeycomb, smelling the sweet memory off our hands.

I became self-conscious of the emphasis I constantly place on my sense of sight -- even in conversational descriptions: we see, we look, we show. Then to experience the woods through texture and sound and smell heightened my awareness to rich sensory weave of the forest.

As I guided them back to the nature centre, I asked everyone to walk alone for a moment and to be very silent, listening and feeling the forest. When we got back to the building, we shared some of our descriptions of the experience; the wind moving through the silvery-green leaves was described as peaceful, as musical, and felt as if the whole forest was a set of lungs, breathing all together, capillary motion punctuated by the mystery of moving creatures in the canopy.

to bamfield; the edge of the sea

bamfield is located on the edge of barkley sound on the west coast on vancouver island at the end of an eighty-kilometer winding logging road through old growth, active cutblocks, jungle-sized salal, and moss-choked standing wildlife trees; at the beginning of the great pacific. the weather systems of the coast greet us with sheets of intermittent rain and hail and blueblue skies as we roll westward, sarah's vintage jetta lolling over stones, skidding over gravel, bouncing beneath the boughs of western hemlock, curved cedar, white-barked trembling aspen.

we are going to visit stacey, who lives at the edge of this world and works in the public education department of the bamfield marine sciences centre. she designs and directs outdoor creative experiential education programs for highschool and university students and has an amazing attention to the details and intricacies of the natural world and is a storyteller rich with inspiration and wonder.

we toured the touch-tanks in the public education building; running water filtering through little tanks of anemones, feather-dusters worms, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, sponges, and chitons. students here have the opportunity to peer closely, hold, and compare these living organisms, look carefully at their specific adaptions, and marvel at the incredible diversity found on the beaches, rocks, and below the dark waves around this treasure cove. stacey tells us about anemones that can live over two hundred years and abalone reintroduction projects and porcelain crabs losing their limbs and bat star colouration diversity.

for a moment, between hail and rain and wind and something else, the sun broke thorugh the clouds long enough to walk through the damp forest to the beach. we pick out way between outcroppings of rocks, softsoft sand dotted with smooth, wave-carved shells and bundles of fragrant kelp rafts, everything salty and fresh.

surfbirds and black turnstones chatting and feeding and hopping and flapping all over the rocks, dodging the pacific swells crashing below them, dancing up and down, moving in time with the surge.

 

we peer into tidal pools, their biological communities arranged in arcs, imprinting the story of wave breaks and water resistance patterns moving over the pool. anemones, soft bodied and green and pink and sticky, taking the inner arc, with the mussels, the giant calcified shells, feeding on the direct wave action on the outerarc of the pool. barnacles, all over, their featherfeet feeding and feeding in the rick plankton currents, the soup of saltysea.

 

there are a hundred little mouths in here, feet and tails churning the water, the crunch of a stolen shell-home and glistening seaweed. there's true magnetism in this place, a power of fresh sea air and everything so alive you can't blink for a moment.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

-- e.e.cummings, "maggie and milly and molly and may"

moose and moss

I drove over the mountains this week; coast to the Rockies. On a long but beautiful journey, Melissa and I watched the shift between biogeoclimatic provinces, pointing out the first ponderosa pine as we gained easterly elevation towards the interior of BC.

I was travelling to go backcountry skiing, to work on a fauna species identification list, to soak in the Lussier hotsprings, and to give a presentation to a group of interpreters in Banff.

I talked about mosses; their ability to amaze me with their intriguing habitat requirements, their strange and unusual distributions, and of course, their richly detailed beauty.

Pointing to a simplified and well labeled drawing of a moss structure, I differentiated between the leafy vegetative structure found running along the forest floor in carpet-like clumps, and the more obscure reproductive spore producing stalk and head capsule. mosses produce this reproductive structure when conditions and life-cycle timing is appropriate, releasing small dustlike spores when the capsule is opened or disturbed. these microscopic spores travel through the forest on little gusts of air and winds to find themselves settling on the gnarled bark of trees, the fissures in moist rocks, the surface of decomposing nurse logs.

Mosses of the genus Splachnum are, however, very choosy about where they will grow. A relatively rare moss found in the northern spruce forests of western Canada, this variety grows almost exclusivity on moose droppings. Taking advantage of the nutrients in the ungulate waste, this little plant has had to develop amazing adaptations to ensure that its little spores are successful in locating its preferred habitat.

Splachnum moss

You will notice in this picture that Splachnum's spore capsules fan outwards in the shape of miniature parasols; these are covered in sticky little moss spores. Imagining a small pile of moose droppings with these tiny parasols fanning outwards, I showed my audience an approximation of this image in the form of a pile of brownies adorned with cocktail umbrellas.

 moose poo with Splachnum

I challenged my audience to imagine their hands as large flies, attracted to the sweet-smelling nutrient potential of the moose dung. Buzzing around they may, as they try to land on the dung, find themselves brushing past these little umbrellas. Perhaps they would rest for a moment atop the moss sporophyte, inadvertently attaching small moss-spores to their fly-feet. Acting as a transportation mechanism through the forest, the next pile of moose dung that these flies are attracted to would be propagated with Splachnum spores, completing this moss' beautiful little life-cycle and adding to the commentualistic community of the forest.

the plant collection

I have been working toward documenting, collecting, and creating a personal encyclopedia of local wild plants, an ongoing project for the past several months. this week, I submitted the first installment of my plant collection to my instructors. fifty-odd plants, categorized into herbs, ferns, and introduced species were carefully (and sometimes haphazardly) collected and pressed in old textbooks, between sheets of the globe and mail, corrugated cardboard, and splintering wood, mounted on cardstock, and meticulously labeled. they were completed with scratches of detailed information on location elevations, nutrient indicator values. I poured over stories of cultural uses, wildlife relationships, associated species, and the poetry in the rhythms of the latin names: coptis asplenifolia, epilobium angustifolim, cornus canadensis, lupinus nootkatensis, athyrium filix-femina (fern-leaved goldthread, fireweed, dwarf dogwood, nootka lupine, lady fern).

the process continues, the library grows:

Nuphar polysepalum, Cypress Mountain

Xerophyllum tenax, Waterton Lakes National Park

collecting in the coulees, Lethbridge

Fauria crista-galli, Cypress Mountain

Hollyburn Peak

I am creating a library of live plants; divided and subdivided into shrubs, herbs, trees, and mosses, and then into the more detailed Liliaceae, Rosaceae, Asteraceae, Ericaceae, Cyperaceae, among many others. I go on collector walks in the forest; scissors and a specimen box keep the hiking slow and concentrated, interrupted excitement over a new discovery, a puzzling species, or a particularly bright-flowering lily or fireweed.
Yesterday we walked up Cypress mountain to Hollyburn peak. Everything had been soaked by our first autumn rainfall the day before and we were wading in dark black mud pouring down the mountain and forming in root-framed pools. Little mushrooms, browns or whites, were emerging through the thick and soaked moss. We could see our breath in the morning shadows and squinted into the sun eclipsed by the hemlock, cedar, alder. Small alpine wild blueberry shrubs kept us walking stooped and slow, like black bears, purple stains on our lips and fingertips. These are some of the plants we gathered; some of the summits we saw:

western hemlock; Tsuga heterophylla

deer fern; Blechnum spicant

clubmoss; Lycopodium ssp.

oval-leafed blueberry; Vaccinium ovalifolium

yellow pond-lily or spatterdock; Nuphar polysepalum

Hollyburn peak

the buffalo, the grasses, and the way it used to be



I took a group of new immigrant kids out to the Waterton Park Front yesterday. It was beautiful -- dry, hot, and still, the gale-force winds I had come to associate with the place where prairies meet rockies were calm, the air was holding its breath for a thunderstorm and had paused its usual screaming down the steep mountainsides. We cooled off by running fingerfulls of streamwater through our hot hair.



white evening primrose



The school bus drove around the bison paddock, a small fenced-in area purposed to educate visitors about the ecological hertiage of the landscape. Bison, not too long ago, were a massive driving sustaining force in this land. The interpretive centre at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump illustrates the story in a cultural context, telling a poignant story of the Blackfoot relationship with the beast, the key force in sustaining their way of life, an entire culture dancing around the preparations and rewards of an epic hunt.

head-smashed-in buffalo jump

 I tried to convey to the twenty five kids, mostly new Canadians from Nepal and Bosnia, that this landscape, one hundred and fifty years ago, was very different, was in constant renewal through the grazing and the running and the wallowing of the buffalo. For laughter and education, I dressed up a ten-year-old boy as rough fescue grass and explained that the root systems of native prairie grasses, rough fescue, june grass, blue gramma grass, spear grass, are dense and deep, holding the soil against the constant blowing of the winds. I talked about responsible grazing practices, the role the buffalo played in keeping the grass healthy, the root systems strong.


roots systems of rough fescue grass -- the grasses on the left are sustainably grazed, dense and hold the soil in place. the grasses on the right illustrate the effects of poorly managed grazing.



I'm so accustomed to the giant cedars of the coast, touching a grandmother tree who was alive when sea cows grazed in the thick kelp and sailboats were frightening and foreign. For me, this conservation of the little plants, the grasses that create and sustain the foundation of this ecosystem, resonates little alarm bells of worry -- to me, the soil is the ocean of the prairies, the grasses move in waves with the wind, the buffalo grazing, a baleen whale, giant, warmblooded migrations, all at once symbol and sustenance, architect of their domain.



blossoming

 It's an unusually rainy year here. I'm used to the mist and fog of the westcoast, so I assumed this was normal spring weather in Southern Alberta. While the locals complain and wait for their grasses to turn brown and gold in the summer heat, I have no problem wearing my raincoat and sliding through the mud, rolling down the coulees with the the thunder, long grasses licking my legs. I'm sure the plants are enjoying it too -- the nature reserve has become a jungle and is keeping me from feeling too homesick for my coastal rain forests.

moss phlox

little mushrooms

...

...

three flowered aven

chokecherry bush

waterton lakes national park

 An hour and a half southwest of Lethbridge is the gateway to Waterton Lakes National Park. I've been running a field trip for grade seven students to the park front, teaching them about rough fescue grasses, the transition from bison to ranching, and grassland ecosystem inhabitants. Guest speakers from Parks Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Canada reinforce a natural heritage ethic, talking to the students about sustainable grazing and managed fire. 

Introducing these city kids to their fantastic back yard can be challenging -- the ground here is soft and crawling, the wind strong, the sky frighteningly dynamic. So we make webs out of yarn mimicking relationships between the long toed salamander, cedar waxwing, creeping juniper, moss phlox, trembling aspen, moose, trumpeter swan. we draw ant hills and deer poo, we take photographs of mountains, of fungus, of lichen-covered rocks, we examine medicinal plants, we open our coats like kites and feel the wind. Yesterday, so fortunate, we watched a black bear run up a hill not too far from us and then later saw a mamma grizzly with her long legs and empty springtime belly walking her tiny golden cub across the road in front of the school bus.

these pictures were taken by Luke who is thirteen years old and enjoyed looking closely at everything growing around us.

coulee climbs

Luta and I frequent the riverside at Peenaquim Park. There are steep coulees to run up and down and she has been working on her coyote-jumping technique in mouse hunting. These pictures were taken on mostly south-facing slopes not far from the high running Oldman River.





narrow-leaved milkvetch

a member of the pea family, or the Leguminosae, producing two types of fruit, both legumes and loments. legumes, you may recall, are important contributors to healthy soil, using swollen nodules in their roots they work with bacteria to replenish the nitrogen content.





seinfoin

the species name, viciifolia, means "vetch-leaved"



sagebrush

the best way to experience this plant is to run your fingers through the soft leaves and then smell your hands.

buffalobean (also known as golden bean)

these were the first to flower en masse all over the local coulee. spring-yellows everywhere, vibrant and glowing. historically, a dye was made from the buffalobean to colour skin bags and arrows of the blackfoot tribes in the region. it is also important to note that these gorgeous little jewels are extremely poisonous and eating any part of this plant can cause respiratory paralysis.

perhaps few-flowered milkvetch

 



wormwood

an invasive species introduced in settler's gardens. this plant is used to make absinthe among other medicinal tonics. this picture is a dried-out plant from last year and these little bushes are all over the coulees.



 

 

leafy spurge

like the wormwood, leafy spurge is an invasive species brought to north america as a garden plant. it is poisonous to cows, but not sheep and goats who can help mitigate the damage by grazing it. with roots that can grow over ten meters long, it is a difficult plant to remove.

  

prairie crocus

first flowers of the season, their furry ear-like leaves poke out of the snow "listening for the first sounds of spring," as the story goes.