Connected At Last!

Day 131: I don't really enjoy walking on paved bike trails, but I was willing to make an exception for the new section of the Foothills Trail which runs from South Prairie north to connect with a formerly isolated portion which then takes you into Buckley. This particular stretch, roughly three miles long, has been held up in negotiation with adjacent private property owners for at least thirty years. Last year, the final permissions were granted and the trail was at long last completed. Since I was in the area today, I decided to assault it on foot. There was nothing botanically remarkable alongside the path, good or bad (I always have an eye out for invasives), except a few half-open Indian Plum flowers, but multiple bridged river crossings made for a refreshing and scenic walk. I wasn't quite sure where I was when I decided to turn around, so I marked it by GPS and mapped it when I got home. Yep, I'd stopped right where it connected with the old trail down from Buckley. I'd linked up, just as I'd hoped.

Hypogymnia Imshaugii

Day 130: The Hypogymnias are collectively known as "tube lichens" for reasons which become obvious if you look at them closely. Their lobes appear inflated and in fact are hollow. The upper surface is greyish-green, separated by a distinct dividing line from the black lower surface. The apothecia are generally large when present, making the genus fairly easy to identify in the field. Determining species gets a little trickier, but H. imshaugii (Forked Tube) has a characteristic which sets it apart from its look-alikes. If you pull one of imshaugii's slender lobes apart to examine the inside, it will reveal a white medullary ceiling, which is to say that the inside of the top side is white. H. heterophylla, H. inactiva and H. enteromorpha all have black or dark medullary ceilings. Other species of Hypogymnia may have broader lobes, pinched lobes, holes at the lobe tips. These are all features to take into consideration when trying to identify them.

Queens For A Day

Day 129: When I am out hiking, I set goals for myself, whether it's to reach the top of the next rise, make it to a specific destination point, or simply to check on the status of a plant. That's not to say I could file a detailed flight plan and indeed, I often don't know where I'm headed until my car finds its way to a parking area seemingly independently of any particular thought process on my part, and sometimes even then, I have no specific goal in mind until my feet begin striking the earth. I left home yesterday with nothing more than a desire to be Out for as many miles as chilly temperatures would allow, and I wound up at Pack Forest with visions of Snow Queens dancing in my head. That would take me three miles (one way), leaving plenty of time to be down before the sun dipped low in the sky. I wasn't even sure Synthyris reniformis would be in bloom in February, but checking on them was all the motivation I required. Enter now a handful of circumstances designed to throw a monkey wrench into the proverbial works. Less than three-quarters of a mile in, I knelt down to examine a lichen and found my first Snow Queens in an unexpected spot. Suddenly, my proposed work here was done. I'd got what I came for, so now what? I hadn't even reached the first junction where I'd could choose from a variety of new destinations. Then a second factor intruded into the plan: trail repair and a reroute. Now I was curious about what else might have been done further up toward Hugo Peak. At Hugo, I found a new side trail which begged to be explored. Once done there, more choices offered themselves: go back the way I'd come, walk down the main road to Kirkland Pass, there to go either down the 1000 Rd. to parking or take a side trip to see if the Snow Queens were in bloom where I knew they occurred. I might have rambled even longer but for the fact that I spoke at length with another hiker and then again with an old friend, so that when I arrived at the Snow Queens, the sun was already slanting sharply through the trees and taking on the gold hue of late afternoon. It was time to go home, and I beat-feeted it down, hands in mittens inside my pockets, happy that I'd achieved all my goals, even the hastily developed ones. That's how I hike. I go until I'm "halfway," and then return. That's my Plan.

A New View

Day 128: The overhead went an odd colour overnight, so I decided I needed to get closer to it to see if I could figure out what had happened. Since I can't get into the Park (the road won't be fixed until at least mid-March), the next best option was the summit of Hugo Peak. Never mind that the frost hadn't disappeared (and wouldn't do so all day). A hike was definitely in order. My first surprise came roughly three-quarters of a mile up from parking. The trail had been rerouted to make a longer, lazier ascent through what had previously been a rather unpleasant section. A little further on, I noticed more evidence that Pack Forest's trail crew had been at work. The old fence-wire clad footlogs had been removed from a particularly wet portion of the trail, gravel had been put down and a new puncheon bridge allowed passage over rechannelled runoff. By the time I got to the top of Hugo, I'd counted at least six places where the trail had been refurbished or rerouted. All the nastiest sections were gone! But an even more substantial surprise came when I turned away from the overgrown, brushy view of Eatonville a thousand feet below. A small yellow diamond bore the magic-marker legend, "Viewpoint 0.15 mi." and indicated an entirely new trail which sloped away to the east. At its end, I found this view, still somewhat obscured but a vast improvement on that offered on top of Hugo. There was one more surprise awaiting me, and it was the best of all. En route to a corner where I hoped to find Snow Queens in bloom, I ran into an old friend, my former supervisor from my Carbon River days. Our paths have crossed a few times over the years, but oddly, never on the trail. We chatted until we both started shivering in the rapidly cooling afternoon, and then went our separate ways, John and his dogs to his home, me to find the Snow Queens. I did, although the highlight of discovering them was overshadowed by the other events of the day.

Harbingers

Day 127: Almost! I think I find the snowdrops' pendent buds more pleasurable to the eye than their fully-opened flowers. They hint at the broadening of daylight and warmer breezes, the retreat of snow from the rolling foothills, and dare to suggest by their pure white that more raucous, rambunctious colour is yet to come in the garden and the alpine meadows. They are the toe in the doorway of winter, peddling the wares of a brighter and festive spring. Ahead of the grape hyacinths and daffodils by weeks, they sprint through the winner's tape unchallenged, in a clear victory over frost and cold. Cheer the humble snowdrop as it dispels grey, lumbering clouds and calls out to the sun. Hurrah for the harbingers of spring!

Five-Mile Parmelia Saxatilis

Day 126: They call it "Crottle," a word which I find delightfully contradictory in its crispness to the soft texture of Parmelia saxatilis. Also known as "Salted Shield Lichen," this Parmelia has an affinity for rock, the characteristic which caught my eye in the Five-Mile Lake parking area and caused me to say aloud, "Hmmmm, who do we have here?" I'd stopped at the park after doing some small shopping, more to conduct a survey for invasives than any other reason, and had quickly exhausted the sparse network of trails which climbed to the top (a whole twenty feet) of a forested mound. I scored an abundance of ivy, one English holly, one sturdy specimen of Scotch broom and was feeling rather disappointed as I walked back to the car. A faint childhood memory had led me to expect the park to be bigger. The whole park is 35 acres, with the lake taking up two-thirds of that space. Then I spotted our friend the Crottle, splatted without dignity on the side of a boulder. Not wanting to short myself of an important identifying characteristic, I photographed it and then carefully removed a lobe, tucking it safely into one of the test tubes I always have handy. A good thing I did, because examination of the rhizines narrowed my choices to two. Lobe width and substrate settled most of my reservations, although I'm still not 100% positive in my conclusion. I really need a lab.

Second Round

Day 125: There is almost always something in bloom at my house. Indoors, the white and yellow Christmas cacti are putting on their second flush of blooms, a little late for their customary mid-January appointment. As you may recall, I cross-pollinated the yellow one with the white in November and am now waiting for Yellow's pods to mature. So far, I have had no luck going the opposite direction. However, I have my paintbrush handy in case Yellow produces pollen (which it has not yet done). Meanwhile, White is putting on a show. Its colour drifts toward a pale shell pink when temperatures are too cool or light levels are too low. This season, conditions in my back bedroom window were pretty close to perfect, with only a faint blush evident in the blooms. I am also happy to report that I have kept my Tillandsia alive for over TWO YEARS now. Lovingly known as "Saturday" for the schedule on which I give it a light spray of water, the plant is not likely to reward me with a flower spike for my pains, but I find its three-inch array of thready foliage very gratifying. Now, if I could just get that damn Clivia to bloom...