Circling the Pond

That oppressive heat is on its way out. Cool, fresh air is pouring in my open windows tonight, and this afternoon seemed bearable enough for an honest-to-goodness hike around Mud Pond at Moreau. My friend Sue had told me about finding some Checkered Rattlesnake Plantain (Goodyera tesselata) right along the path there, and today she took me to see it for myself. She knew exactly where this relatively uncommon Goodyera was growing, she said, and she was right. Eventually.

We did have some trouble finding it today. When Sue had seen it over a week ago, it had been in full bloom, its spikes of greenish-white flowers standing visibly tall against the leaf litter and pine needles. Well, by today those flowers had turned a dull dead-leaf brown very hard to pick out from the background. My camera sure couldn't see them. It absolutely refused to focus on them.

Until I covered the leaf litter with my hat.

Sue has such excellent eyesight, and I such poor, she always finds far more fascinating stuff than I ever would. For example, I thought this black and white thing on the ground was a shriveled leaf, but Sue immediately saw that it was a moth. A Haploa clymene moth, I later found out by searching the web. Again, my camera refused to focus clearly, and I can't understand why, when the subject was as vividly colored as this. Just as I clicked the photo, the moth parted its upper wings to reveal the sulphur-yellow of its underwings and abdomen. I love its furry orange topknot.

From underneath, the moth is all sulphur-yellow, and here you can see just a part of the big black dot that adorns its underwings when it opens them to fly.

Here's another beautiful creature that Sue saw first (and my camera wouldn't see clearly): a Goldenrod Crab Spider that had changed the color of its stripes to perfectly match the pretty pink of this Water Smartweed bloom.

We found that Water Smartweed growing on mud flats in a low-lying area of Mud Pond. Normally, this area would be underwater and that smartweed floating on the water's surface, but today we could walk around on the mud without even getting our feet wet.

That gave me a chance to get a really good gander at Common Bladderwort, which normally floats unrooted in shallow water far too mucky for wading. But here we found many plants that had been stranded on the mud when the water receded. At first, I thought it was Horned Bladderwort, which does grow out of damp mud or sand, but the lower spur of these flowers was much too short to be that of Horned Bladderwort.

I wanted to wander this mud flat specifically to see if I could find the liverwort Ricciocarpus natans, which had carpeted the area late last fall with chubby little cat's paws. (Click here to see what they looked like last November.) I think this tiny green growth must be the baby version of that liverwort. You can tell how small it is by comparing its size to that of the hickory-nut shell close by. If this IS R. natans, it will eventually swell to several times that size and stay rooted in the mud until next spring, when it will float free in the rising waters.

Sweltery Day Diversions

Another sweltery day. Too hot and muggy to spend much time outdoors at midday, but I was eager to see if the Goodyera pubescens was blooming along the Bog Meadow Trail just outside Saratoga. Not quite yet, it turned out, but lots of other orchids were blooming today, although it was one that some folks disdain because it isn't a native: Helleborine.

From a standing height, it's not much to look at, but it's worth the trouble to stoop down and take a closer look at its pretty pinky-green blooms.

Here's another flower that's easy to overlook, since it's small and spindly and tends to disappear against the shady forest floor. This is Naked-flower Tick-trefoil, so called because its flowers grow on a stalk separate from its leaves.

Bog Meadow, with wetlands on either side of the trail, is a great place for many different sedges. I love the warm brown color and spiky little bunched heads of this one (name unknown).

Swamp Milkweed was in its glory today, and I came to a halt real quick when I saw this flower head all covered in yellow. At first I thought it might be a fungus or rust, but a closer look revealed that the plant was covered in tiny yellow aphids.

YELLOW aphids! Hmmm . . . . Since this is nothing I'd ever seen before, I searched the web when I got home and discovered that these are Oleander Aphids, a fascinating critter, indeed. See those little black spikes sticking out of their butts? Those are called "cornicles," and they are used to excrete a sweet substance called honeydew, which attracts ants, who protect the aphids against such parasitizing predators as wasps. Other predators would be warned off by the aphids' vivid yellow-orange color, which signals that the aphids have taken up the toxic glycosides of their host plants (milkweeds and oleanders) and thus share that toxicity.

But wait, there's more, and this is really amazing: every one of these aphids is a female -- a female capable of reproducing itself without the participation of a male aphid, through a process called parthenogenesis. Virgin birth! I even found a photo of a big one giving birth to a tiny clone of itself, which you can see by clicking here.

Well, after all that excitement, I was really in a sweat when I got home. My husband took pity on me and offered to take me up to Lake Luzerne for dinner at the Upriver Cafe, a delightful little cafe with a deck overlooking the Hudson River at Rockwell Falls.

After dinner we took a stroll along the river through a pretty little park, with chairs set out for enjoying the river view.

I wanted to check out this little island, where in previous years I have found as many as 20 Smaller Purple-fringed Orchids growing quite happily. Until some fool mowed them all down.

They've never returned to that kind of profusion, but I do find a few each year since then.

I couldn't see any orchids while I was standing on the bridge, so I decided to wade out and search among the grasses. I had almost given up when I spied this lovely specimen right next to the water.

And isn't it a beauty!

Paddling With Ed

Ugh! That "heat dome" tormenting most of the country has covered Saratoga County with air so oppressive it's almost impossible to breath. But I didn't know that until mid-afternoon when I returned from a Hudson River paddle with my good friend Ed. On the river, the breeze was brisk and cooled by the water, so we hardly felt the heat out there, even while paddling hard in Ed's tandem canoe.

I'd invited Ed to join me today on a quest to find Purple Fringed Orchis and Great St. Johnswort, but of course we had to take note of other plants along the way. Here, Ed is examining an aquatic plant that he thinks might be a quillwort.

We'd found a number of them floating in a little bay, so it was easy to pick one up to examine it closely. (I see another aquatic plant called Water Starwort down there, too.)

The distinctive hollow translucent leaves that widen at the base into a bulb-like cluster convinced Ed that this was indeed a quillwort, a "fern ally" that is one of the planet's oldest vascular plants. Different species of quillwort can be told apart by microscopic examination, but we didn't have a microscope with us.

Passing through a quiet marsh, we were delighted by the profusion of Pickerelweed.

When we came to the island where Great St. Johnswort grows, we beached the canoe and came ashore to hunt for it. My plan was to collect a specimen for the state herbarium, but since the ones we found were only in bud, I will come back in several days to obtain a plant in full flower. To date, there is no record of this flower growing in Saratoga County, and it's also a plant that is threatened or endangered in many surrounding states.

The Purple Fringed Orchis we were seeking had started to bloom, although many of the buds on its stalk were yet to open.

We have two species of Purple Fringed Orchis, and this is the Smaller PFO. If you had the two species side-by-side, the difference in size of the blossoms would be evident, but another diagnostic feature is the shape of the hollow opening at the throat of the blossom. In the Larger PFO, this opening is perfectly round, but in the one we found today, the opening is slightly flattened, occluded by a ridge on the lower lip.

Our flower hunt successfully completed, Ed and I next headed for the little island just off the boat launch. After struggling back upstream against a white-cap-whipping wind, we were eager to ditch our sweaty clothing and dive into the clear cold water for a swim.

Doesn't this look inviting? Wish I could spend the rest of this heatwave out here.

An Island of Relief From the Heat

When it's too hot for a sweat-soaked, bug-ridden hike through the woods, that's when I head to the Hudson. There's a little island there that offers a perfect place for a swim, and it's just off the boat launch on Spier Falls Road, so I don't even have a long carry or hard paddle to reach my destination of cool watery relief. Five minutes from when I park my car, I'm up to my neck in the river. Bliss!

The island has certainly recovered from the ravaging spring floods. I was afraid that the flowers that normally adorn it would have been washed away, but now the blooms are bursting forth as beautifully as ever. Here's Steeplebush, firmly rooted along the island's rocky shore.

Big spikes of bright-purple Pickerelweed emerge from the warm sandy shallows at one end of the island.

All these low areas are now carpeted with Golden Pert, making the riverbank look as if it were lit from within.

Masses of Pale St. Johnswort add to the golden glow.

The showiest of all showy wildflowers, Cardinal Flower is just beginning to open its blooms, of such a super-saturated hue, no camera can adequately capture its vivid red.

This minute little bedstraw, named (appropriately) Small Bedstraw, occupies the opposite end of the spectrum of showiness. Unlike most other bedstraws, this one has three-lobed flowers instead of the usual four lobes. It was so small I had to blow up my photo to make sure it had three-lobed blooms.

All arrowheads have three-lobed flowers, including this one, which is Grass-leaved Arrowhead.

Buttonbush balls look like they have literally "burst" into bloom, but that explosive appearance certainly hasn't frightened away the bees, whose eager numbers set the whole bush to buzzing and bobbing.

I don't know of any monkeys with faces that look like this, although that's supposedly how Monkeyflower got its common name.

This wee little Marsh Speedwell was hiding under the leaves of other plants, and it took a diligent search to find it where I remembered it growing a year ago.

The plants of Marsh St. Johnswort are easy to spot, with their clumps of burgundy buds and with leaves outlined in wine. But to catch them in bloom is another story. I think they may open their pretty pink flowers for maybe fifteen minutes a day. This was my lucky day.

Taking the scenic route home, I spied another pretty pink flower along an old stone wall. This is Queen-of-the-Prairie, and as its name suggests, it is native to grasslands further west than New York State. Brought east as a garden plant, it has since escaped from cultivation to make its way to meadows nearer my home.

A Place of Peaceful Retreat

For those who try to imagine a world at peace, I can think of no better place to contemplate this vision than Pyramid Life Center, a spiritual retreat center on Pyramid Lake in the heart of the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness in the Adirondacks. Far from the noise and noxiousness of human greed and violence, here we can experience the world much as God made it, and acknowledge that world as sheer gift. What could we possibly have done to deserve this magnificence? All we have to do here is open our eyes and ears and hearts and minds, and we are struck dumb with wonder and joy and gratitude. Thank you, dear Creator and Sustainer, for the gift of life in this beautiful world!

I've been coming to Pyramid Life Center for 20 years now, beginning in 1991 at the start of the first Gulf War, fleeing the cheers and flag-waving enthusiasm for war my fellow Americans were exulting in. Let's see now, how many wars ago was that? Nothing much has changed in our world so addicted to violence and greed, despite all the sit-ins and rallies and demonstrations and jail terms we peaceniks have engaged in, and yet we persevere. Why don't we just give up? Sometimes we do, growing cynical and despondent and very, very weary. And that's when we need to gather in retreats like this, to share stories of hope and courage, and above all, to immerse ourselves in the life of our greatest hero and fellow disdainer of military power, Jesus. He, too, grew weary and frightened, and for darned good reason. The Roman army killed him in just about the most terrible way a man can die. But we who would follow him remember who had the last word. And so we go on.

We were Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, and other seekers. Many were long-time activists who have served on the front lines of the anti-war, anti-empire movement for many years. (Dorothy Day's granddaughter was one of those who joined us.) Some of us seek to bring about peace in smaller communities than the world stage, through teaching, social work, addiction counseling, hospitality to the homeless, anger management and conflict resolution in schools, and many other areas including my own, which is hospice caregiving. Our overriding cause, whatever our occupation, is to try to ease the suffering of the world.

It's certainly easier to imagine a world without war when we come to a place as peaceful -- and affordable -- as this. The accommodations are simple -- rustic, even -- but who needs more than a quiet bed and good food and loving companionship? Why would we strive and struggle (even kill!) for more than we need?

What billionaire could hoard for himself a more majestic view than this?

Everywhere you look, some lovely work of nature greets your eye. This thriving clump of Hedge Nettle had found a foothold along a rushing stream.

Orchids are likely to pop up anywhere, such as these Green Wood Orchids nestled against a moss-covered log . . .

. . . or Rose Pogonia, still blooming in profusion in a marsh.

These mushrooms and Clintonia leaves just seem to know how beautiful they appear together.

A jumble of boulders tumbled from the mountain above creates a fascinating shoreline, where minks can hide from the paddler who spied them, and giant fishing spiders hang above the water teeming with minnows.

Multicolored lichens have covered the rocks with beautiful colors and textures.

Paddling by fallen logs that were carpeted with Round-leaved Sundew, I liberated this Bluet damselfly whose wings were caught by the sticky fringe of the sundew's leaves.

This little bur-reed, Sparganium natans, is one of New York's rare plants, but here at Pyramid Lake it has found a happy home and thrives by the hundreds.

After sunset, I stood and watched the lake exchange its colors with the sky. As the twilight darkened into night, the firelight from a lakeside campfire glittered on the water.

The sight of this caused me to think of a lovely song called "Little Fire" from Patty Griffin's album Downtown Church: "All that I need is one who knows me, a kind hand upon my face when I weep. And I'd give back all these things I know are meaningless, for a little fire beside me when I sleep." Patty would love it here.

What could make a mountain lakeside weekend even more close to perfect than beautiful weather and delightful companions? How about a big moon coming up over the mountain and casting a silvery path across the water?

Or a perfect moonset dawn, with a pink sky tinting the drifting mist that was rising from the warm water?

That mist flowed about my body as I set out to paddle around the lake, and I felt the very air embracing me in warmth on this chilly morning. Soon, the sun cleared the mountain top and lit the trees on the near island.

Slanting shafts of sunlight picked out the fluffy pine boughs against the dark shadowed forest.

Here's that rising sun peeking through the boughs of the pines on a tiny island.

The mare's tails flinging their veils across a blue, blue sky promised fine weather the rest of the weekend. And their prediction was right.

I had heard the loons calling all weekend, but it wasn't until Sunday morning that I finally saw the whole family: Mom, Dad, and their two downy chicks.

Mom and Dad Loon soon dived, and I took that opportunity to draw nearer to the chicks.

While Mom and Dad were underwater, the babies would stick their heads under the water, too, and go snorkeling along. I wonder if they were watching their parents catch fish down there.

Soon Mom (or was it Dad? I can't tell) emerged with breakfast, and the little ones swam to greet her.

Open wide, little one!

"Hey you, you're getting too close to my babies!" I think that's what she was telling me by rising up and beating the water with her wings while hooting loudly.

Okay, Mom. I will leave you and your family in peace. That's why I came here this weekend. To try to live, and to help others live, in peace.