A Paddler's Haven

It's been so windy the past few weeks, I haven't ventured out on the river in my canoe. But today, despite a brisk breeze tossing the branches around, I decided to risk a paddle. Down through the woods at Potter's Point I went, and here was my reward: a quiet haven, where the river runs behind an island and all was lovely and calm.

There are many Black Tupelo trees along this stretch of the river, nearly every one of which has had its trunk girdled by beavers. How they continue to leaf out and set fruit each summer is a great mystery to me, but I'm very glad that they do. Their foliage in autumn is splendid to behold.

The forested banks along the river offer many charming spots to slip into the woods. One of my favorites is here on a promontory I call Bear's Bathtub. When I climb from my boat and clamber up the rocky banks, I enter a pine-scented chamber where thick green moss and centuries of pine needles cushion and quiet my every step.

Here in this sheltered sanctuary, Pale Corydalis can often be found in bloom as late as December. There were many flowers on the plants today.

Although the day was mostly overcast, the clouds parted momentarily to let bright light illumine the leaves of this baby Chestnut Oak.

Are the undersides of these leaves pubescent (downy)? Hard to tell from this photo, but my friend Ed tells me that if they are pubescent, they would be the leaves of Swamp White Oak instead of Chestnut Oak. I'll have to look more closely next time I return to the site.

Another wave of sunlight lit up this bank of Low Bush Blueberry.

Sunday Afternoon in Heaven

Could I imagine a more heavenly way to spend an autumn afternoon? Bright sun, blue sky, brilliant foliage, a beautiful lake, and a great friend to enjoy it all with. Who needs to travel the world for adventure? I've got my nearby Moreau Lake State Park and my good friend Sue, who knows how to inch her way around the lake, taking hours to do so, finding treasures along our path and sharing them all with me.

And I shared my treasures with her. For example, I called her attention to how these acorns had caught in the crotch of a baby Shadblow shrub. Now wouldn't that cause a puzzled botanizer to pause? But Sue, with her far sharper eyes, was the one who spied this little spider hiding out in that acorn cap.

It was also Sue who first saw this tiny Garter Snake, slim as a pencil, quick as a whip, and almost the same color as the sand.

We both stopped to ponder a plant on the beach, finally deciding it must be the dreaded Purple Loosestrife and we thought about pulling it out. But then we discovered this tiny black and yellow caterpillar munching away on its leaves.

Then we found another and another and another. What a great find! We had heard that this plant is a nasty invasive because it has no natural enemies. Well, these little caterpillars sure were feasting away on these.

We continued on around the lake, rejoicing in the glorious autumn color.

Of course, we had to stop to take many photos.

Witch Hazel flowers were fully unfurled on this warm afternoon, releasing their faintly citrusy scent that reminds me of clean laundry dried in the sun.

The mitten-shaped leaves of little Sassafras trees had turned their distinctive orangey red.

We even found one Sassafras that still held on to its fruit, shiny blue-black berries resting in bright-pink cup-shaped pedicels.

On the beach near those Sassafras trees, Sue found this glossy Brown Owlet caterpillar clasping a goldenrod stalk. It's amazing to think that this brilliantly colorful caterpillar will later become a mousy little brown moth.

As the day grew late, the shadows lengthened across the path, and we quickened our steps toward home.

We still had half the way around the lake to go.

I Found My Fruits!

Computers are still a great mystery to me. I've learned the basic maneuvers to publish my blog and send emails, but sometimes my iMac does very mysterious things like cause an entire folder to disappear. That happened a few weeks ago to a folder of photos I'd compiled of fall fruits and seeds, and today it just as mysteriously reappeared on my desktop. Before the gremlins return, I'm posting the photos here, even if they are a month late. They're all part of my effort to try to identify plants in every season -- plus to prove that there's still lots of cool stuff out there in the woods, even after the flowers are gone.

Wild Senna seed pods

Virginia Creeper berries

A comment from a botanist informs me that these berries are more

likely those of Woodbine, a close relative of Virginia Creeper.

Maple-leaf Viburnum berries

Umbrellawort seeds

Black Nightshade fruits

Carrionflower berries

Common Barberry berries

Pine Cone Willow Gall

While out walking today, I chose an area in Moreau Lake State Park I'd never explored before, and I came across a willow shrub whose every branch was tipped with what looked like a grey-green pine cone. "Whoa!" I said, "willows don't have cones! Must be some kind of gall." When I got home I googled "willow galls" and right away found a match. This is a Pine Cone Willow Gall, caused by a gall midge, Rhobdophaga strobiloides.

As tiny as its name is long, this midge lays its eggs in the spring at the tips of willow branches. The eggs and their resultant larvae release a chemical that causes the willow leaves to form cone-like structures that encase the larvae and protect them over the winter. At some point, the larvae pupate, and adult midges emerge the following spring. Without mouthparts to chew its way out, the midge simply pushes aside the overlapping scales of the structure as it emerges. If some other insect hasn't parasitized it first, that is. This gall is apparently famous for harboring many other insects besides the midge that produced it in the first place.

I'd heard about galls like this but had never seen one. Surprises await everywhere.

I'm now awaiting an answer from BugGuide.net regarding the identity of this little beetle that looks like it was spattered with black paint. It was crawling on one of the half-eaten leaves of the gall-infested willow. I love its reddish legs and antennae that look like strings of tiny beads.

Update: Folks at BugGuide.net have suggested that this is probably in the genus Calligrapha, possibly Calligrapha multipunctata or Common Willow Calligrapha. The name certainly fits.

Back to the Center

Morning mist on Pyramid Lake in Essex County, New York

Pyramid Lake is certainly one of the jewels of the Adirondacks. But this crystal-clear wilderness lake encircled by forested mountains means far more to me than just a pretty place to spend a holiday weekend. This lake is the home of Pyramid Life Center, a spiritual retreat center to which I fled in the summer of 1991, full of anguish over the war my nation had started against Iraq, angry and sad that my fellow Americans were so excited and proud and happy to go to war. And here, at a retreat with Jesuit priest and anti-war activist Daniel Berrigan, I found I was not alone in my feelings of alienation. And more than that, here I found heroes -- social workers, drug counselors, healthcare providers, advocates for the homeless and poor -- whose witness gave me the courage to choose for myself a more authentic way to live. I left a job that required me to be very nice to the very rich just because they were very rich, to learn how to care for the dying as a nursing assistant for Hospice -- a choice that has brought me far more joy and spiritual riches than I ever dreamed possible. So yes, my love for Pyramid Life Center runs very deep, indeed.

This love for Pyramid LIfe Center is why I return each spring and fall to help open and close the center's facilities. My usual fall job is to ready the bedrooms for winter, covering mattresses and upholstered furniture with plastic, a task that often takes a couple of days. This year I came up early so I could show my friend Sue around before I started to work. Sue is the author of the beautiful nature blog Water Lily, and she has posted an account of our day, complete with terrific photos, which my readers can visit by clicking here. Sue and I had hoped to paddle all around the lake, but a fierce wind out on the open water kept us confined to a sheltered end of the lake in the lee of the mountains. Here the lake narrows to a small stream that leads into a cedar swamp, where hummocks were covered with cranberry plants and baby trees, like this little rosy Red Maple.

I had hoped we could paddle to the other end of the lake, where rugged and monumental cliffs loom steeply over the shore. But we couldn't make it, even in our low-to-the-water boats. I managed to paddle there the next day, when the wind was a little calmer and the late afternoon sun lit up the golden birches.

Since paddling was no fun with the wind rolling whitecaps over our gunwales, Sue and I opted for a hike instead. We chose a trail that led through woods toward the next lake to the east, Eagle Lake.

Along that trail we found the biggest Amanita Muscaria I have ever seen, and one of the prettiest, too. That mushroom was as big as a birthday cake.

Our trail led to a dam that forms the outlet for Eagle Lake, where the water was rushing with great force, thanks to recent heavy rains.

Later that day, we visited another waterfall that thundered down a rocky cliff with a roar that drowned our voices. Sue has a great photo of the entire waterfall on her blog, but I managed to capture only a small -- if resoundingly energetic -- portion of it.

Except for the wind, the weather the whole weekend was spectacularly lovely, sunny and warm during the day, clear and frosty cold at night, with the Milky Way clearly visible across a moonless star-spangled sky. On Friday, when Sue and I were walking together, she pointed out this unusual cloud, with its furry edge so different from the puffy cumulous clouds around it. But it wasn't until I enlarged this photo on my computer screen that I noticed the colors at the edge. My husband has told me that this phenomenon is called a "circumhorizon arc" and is caused by sunlight passing through ice crystals in the cloud. I boosted the saturation of this photo a bit, the better to see those colors.

The foliage colors this fall are a bit disappointing, since this summer's rain shortage caused many of the maple leaves to wither before their colors turned. But here and there were bursts of vivid color, made even more intense when reflected in rippling water.

I was so enchanted by these reflected colors, I sat in my canoe and gazed at them for a long time. The word "psychedelic" comes to mind, even though I never took LSD back in the 60s.

All weekend I noticed this little brown bird with an ochre crown hopping about the sandy beach, quiet as a mouse. I guessed it was a sparrow but could not decipher the species until I got home and studied my bird books.

And I am still puzzled. My best guess is that this is a White-throated Sparrow in its fall plumage, which looks quite different from its breeding plumage. Don't White-throated Sparrows fly south for the winter? Maybe, like me, this little bird was reluctant to leave this magical place.

A Quick Trip to the Country

Rain early today, but it soon grew sunny and warm. The cats clamored to get out on the porch to soak up those rays. I longed to get outside myself, but since I'm going up to Pyramid Lake for the weekend tomorrow, I had some things to do at home, including laying in food for my husband to eat while I'm away. Thankfully, that involved driving up to Stetkar's Orchard to buy a jar of honey.

To get to Stetkar's, you have to drive up a dirt lane that runs through a thoroughbred horse farm, high in the hills above Saratoga Lake.

The apple trees were pretty as a picture. Some apples had fallen to the ground, so I picked one up to feed to a friendly horse.

Throngs of bees were massing at the entrance to their hives. Were they just enjoying the warmth of the sun after two cold rainy days? Or what?

I took the long way home, including several detours that sent me along some favorite roads, including Sweet Road, which curves down into a valley where green meadows rise to the woods against the horizon.

Another detour took me past a llama farm.

Here's where I'm off to tomorrow: Pyramid Lake in Essex County.

I'll be helping to close up the cabins at a spiritual retreat center there, but I'll also have time to do some paddling and hiking. Blogging's not possible while I'm away, since there's no internet access, but I hope to have lots of photos when I get back.

The Farmers' Market: A Cornucopia of Color

More rain! All day long. Needless to say, I did not lead that hike in the Moreau mountains today, as planned. My only outdoor venture today was a trip to the Saratoga Farmers' Market, which, happily, is just a few blocks from my home. And luckily, it's all under cover now, so vendors and shoppers can all stay dry.

Sure, the day was dark and drear, but what a cornucopia of color among the stalls! Instead of thrilling to autumn foliage and mountain vistas, I walked up and down the market, rejoicing in all the beautiful fruits and vegetables.

My favorite green-bean vendor was not at the market today, but my favorite tomato guy was there, with lots of sweet, low-acid Jet Stars. I loaded up today, since they won't be available for very much longer.

I bought some apples, too, although my favorite variety, Ida Red, is still not ready to pick. Northern Spies and Cortlands will have to do for now.

Here's the cauliflower I bought, just before cutting a portion of it for supper. Is that not a huge and handsome vegetable? Tonight, to save time, I simply steamed it and dressed it with a little browned butter. My favorite way with cauliflower is to roast it with onion and olive oil in a very hot oven, then sprinkle on parmesan cheese before serving. Yum!

Those are all the veggies I bought today, plus a chunk of some wonderful raw-milk washed-rind cheese from the Argyle Cheese Farmer. But there was plenty more there to feast on, if only with my eyes. Here's just a sampling:

Swiss Chard with rainbow-colored stalks

Indian Corn in all its beautiful colors

Patty-pan Squash, so shiny and golden

Every variety of winter squash

Bok Choy all nestled together in a pretty heap

Broccoli with florets that looked like little pagodas

Cherry tomatoes in purple and orange and red

Tomatoes of many varieties, all plump and ripe and red

And of course, lots and lots and lots of chrysanthemums