A cascade of goldfinches pours from walnut to thistle and back. A beetle explores the harlequin collars of spotted beebalm. Crickets pop through tallgrasses as I pass. A garter snake and I startle each other under pines. Nine wild turkeys march single file. Severed turkey legs on a path startle me far more than did the snake, signaling the presence of coyotes.
Continue readingWith heat advisories looming, we set off on our summer road trip. A stop, first, in Erie, Pennsylvania: a ride on a paddlewheel boat across the bay. A visit to Presque Isle, a skinny peninsula sheltering the bay from the waves of the great lake. Temperatures rose as we attempted a hike to the tip of the isle. On the sweltering sand, birders flocked to see a very lost, presumably very hot, ptarmigan. Tiny toads hopped across the beach from lakeshore nursery to inland pond.
We waded into Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and then headed toward another gift of the glaciers, the long, thin Finger Lakes.
Continue readingOver thousands of years, much of what we now call Indiana was flattened by glaciers, and when they left, they buried the land’s topography under massive deposits as they gave up the earth they’d dragged under their bellies. Gradually, vegetation returned, then forests arose.
When, millennia later, settlers felled Indiana’s forests, they created the contemporary landscape, where endless farm fields stretch their monocultures to the horizon. But the land still holds surprises.
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