Day 250, Post #500: The Road Has Become My Eyeglasses

 Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 072014
 

Today marks at once both the 250th day of the Piney Woods Church Project and, by sheer happenstance, the 500th post on the Commonplace Nature blog.  I confess that I felt a great burden as I set off on a morning ramble down the road today; what could I possibly find that would justify the status of 250th day and 500th post?  What new image could even attempt to capture the journey I have taken this year, the wonders I have encountered on a seemingly nondescript bit of gravel track?  I did see (and photograph) an insect I had not previously encountered, which will become post 501.  But it was only when I returned to the intersection with Rico Rd. that I at last saw my muse:  a pair of broken eyeglasses, attached to a stop sign post.  I noticed them for the first time; ironically, in talking later with my wife, I learned that they had been hanging there for a couple of months.  Walking the dogs one day, she had found them in the dirt, scuffed up and one lens missing, and had put them there for the owner, perhaps, to find.  She hadn’t noticed them since, and neither had I.  Until now.

The road has become my eyeglasses.  I put them on when I reach the intersection with Rico Road, wear them gladly as I make my way to Hutcheson Ferry Road, and take them off again as I turn back at last onto Rico Road for the short stroll home.  In-between, I encounter seemingly endless visions and wonders through their gravel frames.  It is not all bouncing bunnies and frolicking calves — though I have seen those, too.  There is also predation and death.  There are moments of stillness, contained within drops of water or suspended from spiders’ threads.  There are encounters with the unknown — insects unlike anything I have seen before, blossoms of flowers I have hurried home to identify in my field guides.  The Sun illuminates leaves, which blaze in brilliant shades of yellow-green and orange-red.  There is still a sense of wonder about what might await me around the next bend.

One-hundred-fifteen days to go.  I begin to plan my next journey, one that will embrace all of Chattahoochee Hills.  And, meanwhile, I continue my apprenticeship as a Dirt Road Pilgrim.

 

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Day 249: The White Calf

 Agriculture and Husbandry, Golden Hour, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 062014
 

On Day 249, for Blog Post #499, here is this evening’s photograph of a white calf in a pasture along Piney Woods Church Road.  He watched me for a minute or so as I beckoned him to approach. His caution eventually overrode his curiosity, and he hurried off to join the rest of his herd grading placidly beside the road.

 

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Day 247: Creeping Lespedeza

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 042014
 

This time of year, there are precious few flowers coming into bloom along Piney Woods Church Road.  I was elated to encounter diminutive pea-like blossoms in a small gully beside a neighbor’s driveway during my walk earlier this afternoon.  I am fairly confident that the quarter-inch blooms belong to Creeping Lespedeza, also known as Smooth Creeping Bush Clover (Lespedeza repens).  Like all members of the Pea Family (Fabaceae), this perennial, common to open woods and roadsides throughout the Eastern United States, enhances soil quality by fixing nitrogen.  Plus, it adds lovely tiny splashes of pinkish-purple to the roadside that I can enjoy on my daily walks during the hot and humid days of early September in Georgia.

 

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Day 246: Four Moments of Stillness: Water and Light

 Backyard Nature, Geometry and Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 032014
 

On my way to Atlanta on an errand, almost as an afterthought I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road this morning to take a few photographs.  The dew was still heavy on the grass everywhere, and it had rained heavily overnight, too.  As is so often the case, I found myself gravitating toward droplets of water.  Along the way, I also photographed a pair of reddish-brown leaves (probably pin cherry) at the end of a naked branch.  The result is these four photographs, and I simply couldn’t choose one picture among them to single out above the rest.  I find delight in the watery marble on a grass blade in the first image; the reflected sunlight in the drop of water on the tip of a sassafras leaf in the second (is that actually a heart I see?); the brilliantly backlit red-brown of the pair of dead leaves against the forest background in the third; and the elegance of the grapevine tendril necklace and with its watery pendant in the fourth.  I was blessed four times today, with such moments of stillness and delight.

(As an addendum, I did, in a sense, pay later for my morning.  Arriving home from Atlanta with ankles burning, I removed my shoes and socks to find chiggers everywhere!  They may have been lodging in my shoes (which I have since run through the washing machine) or they were waiting in the short grass just beside the road this morning to dive onto my feet.  Either way, I am beginning to get a bit terrified of the local chigger population this year.)

 

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Day 245: Adorable Butterfly

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 022014
 

I was thrilled to be able to get quite close to this Little Wood Satyyr (Megisto cymela) on my Piney Woods Church Road walk earlier this afternoon.  I suspect its “beard” is what gives it the name of satyr, though I wasn’t able to find that in any of my field guides or favored websites.  Along the way, I did find out that satyrs tend to fly close to the forest floor, travelling with a quick, bobbing motion and occasionally landing on low vegetation, like this grapevine leaf.  Satyrs do not pollinate butterflies, but instead consume the sap of trees, as well as bits of dung, fermenting fruit, and rotting fungi.

 

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Day 244: Pour-off

 Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 012014
 

This image of water clinging to the tip of a leaf along Piney Woods Church Road (after an afternoon rain) reminds me for some reason of pour-offs out West:  places where water flowing down a gully after a rainstorm drops abruptly down a vertical face into a canyon — a temporary waterfall, lasting only until the flow subsides again.  At the base of this leaf the water pools and waits to fall down onto the waiting gravel far below.

 

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Day 243: Terror on Piney Woods Church Road

 Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 312014
 

With an hour to spare before leaving for an afternoon workshop in Atlanta on Radical Mycology, I decided to set out for a late-morning stroll down Piney Woods Church Road.  I had not ventured far when I came upon the web of the most immense spider I have yet encountered on my walks:  a female Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia), easily two inches in length.  She is one of the most lovely of spiders, and I gratefully took a number of photographs of her.  Then I noticed a new wildflower blooming from an adjacent vine, and I bent down to take several shots of the small, purplish-white blooms.  It was then that I noticed my hands.

Both of them were covered, from fingertip to wrist, with tiny moving specks.  They weren’t biting — yet.  And they were so small that I could barely feel them on my skin.  I was seized with terror:  could these be chiggers?  There are few things I am terrified of in the Georgia forest — there is lightning, certainly, but otherwise, chiggers top my list.  I frantically rubbed my hands together , trying to free them from me before they could clamber higher up my arms.  Even now, as I type this, having sprayed my hands with bleach and rinsed them with soapy water, I still noticed a couple of the tiny specks on the move.

What is strange is that I am not clear how so many got onto my hands so quickly.  I did not place my hands in anything — so they must have fallen from the trees above or jumped collectively from a particular spot. Were they chiggers?  I suspect that I will learn that soon enough.

The spider is beautiful, and quite harmless, unless you are an insect that happens into her web.

 

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Day 241: At Home in the Cosmic Web

 Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 292014
 

A White Micrathena spider (Micrathena mitrata) rests at the center of her web like a grand architect of the Cosmos, amidst the endless play of matter and light.  For but a moment, the backdrop of Piney Woods Church Road slips away to reveal the vast universe just beyond my doorstep.

 

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