Evelyn Greene, Dear Friend and Cherished Mentor

Stunned by grief, I have found it hard to express my feelings of loss, because my dear mentor and friend, Evelyn Greene, died of cancer on May 27. I know many of my naturalist friends will also grieve her death. Her son David Greene has informed us that Evelyn remained positive, physically and mentally and socially active and relatively pain free until literally the last day of her life, when her hospice nurse helped her passing to be more comfortable. A remarkably smart, funny, generous, deeply knowledgeable, one-of-a-kind kind of gal, I am enormously grateful that she recognized a kindred nature-nut spirit in me and took me under her tutelage about all things nature: plants and birds and "holey boulders" and "frazil ice," to name just a few.  Longtime followers of this blog will recognize Evelyn from the many blogs I posted about our adventures together. My mantra about my friend was "I would follow Evelyn anywhere!" Wherever she led me, the rewards were always amazing, her companionship always delightful.

Evelyn liked this portrait (below) because she told me she was wearing her favorite hat. I wish I could remember the story behind it. Evelyn had LOTS of stories. As the daughter of Paul Schaefer, a foremost advocate for the protection of wilderness in the Adirondacks, she and her siblings were required to climb all the Adirondack high peaks as children (whether they wanted to or not). When I met her in our mutual maturity, she preferred paddling and exploring lower-altitude wild places and had no use for "mindless mountaineering and oblivious hiking." Together, we moved slowly, paid attention, and bowed often. Evelyn is pictured here on the Hudson River shore called the "Ice Meadows," an area she knew very well, becoming a true expert on the often-enormous build-up of a special kind of ice that has created the remarkable habitat along this section of the river north of Warrensburg, N.Y.

These are not snowbanks behind Evelyn, but rather that special kind of ice called "frazil."  Evelyn was known as "the queen of the Hudson River Ice Meadows" because of her expertise regarding this snowy-white ice that forms in turbulent river waters during sub-zero weather. 

Sometimes this frothy-looking (but powerful!) ice will mount up so high it will cover the riverside road to heights of 10 feet or more, pushing over trees in the riverside forest and requiring weeks for road crews to clear passage along the road. The remarkably rich botanical habitat along these shores is  caused by the effects of such massive deposits of ice. Often not melting until nearly June, the weight and freezing temperature of all that ice discourages the intrusion of invasive plant species, preserving this habitat as home to many rare plants, including some that are found nowhere else in the state.

Here, Evelyn stands before an Adirondack boulder that displays a remarkable weathering pattern that has puzzled many geologists: granitic gneiss pocked with very odd holes of different sizes, formations that even the state's chief geologist couldn't explain. 

Thanks to Evelyn's diligent efforts to learn more about them, she eventually found a name to put to them: "tafoni" rock formations. The cause of them is not simply wind or water erosion but probably some kind of weathering process involving the mineral makeup of the rock. The exact cause remains mysterious. This is just one example of Evelyn's always active mind: observations would impel her to find out not only WHAT she observed, but also WHY.

Evelyn and I met because we both had Hornbeck super-lightweight solo canoes we could carry ourselves and paddle alone at the speed most effective for observing natural wonders along waterways: slow and close to the banks, more interested in what we might see of plants and animals there, instead of seeing how fast and far we could go. (That's how we walked together, too, slow and observant of all that lay around us, not giving a hoot about reaching a mountaintop.) Whenever Evelyn invited me on an adventure, I jumped at the chance, for this life-long Adirondack explorer knew of many isolated ponds I would never find on my own. On the day pictured below, we visited three of them: Wakely Pond, Helldiver Pond, and Ice House Pond, all situated in a part of the Adirondack Park called the Moose River Plains, a vast area of state forest accessed by seriously rutted old logging roads and snowmobile trails.  Evelyn had volunteered to monitor all three for the presence of aquatic invasives. Happily, we found none.

Evelyn owned several Hornbeck canoes, which she generously would lend to friends she invited to come along on her adventures.   I believe that was her true mission in life, to share her knowledge of and love for all things natural to as many folks as she could, among those who expressed a similar interest. What a generous mentor she was to all of us! And what a fun companion, whether teaching us about frazil ice or tafoni boulders or birdsong or plants or moss or the rarest liverworts in the country! She loved welcoming neophyte nature explorers under her wing and enlarging our worlds enormously. She certainly recognized that incipient passion for nature in me, and she changed my life. I will miss her as long as I live.

This blog contains at least 40 posts about our nature explorations together, so I am comforted that I can revisit these posts to recall the many ways that Evelyn enriched my life.   These posts can all be visited by typing "Evelyn Greene" into this blog's search bar. Here's the link to just one of those posts, one that I think epitomized the kind of fun and adventure that Evelyn Greene added to my life.