Vernal: A Spring Photo Project (Day One through Day Ten)

Last summer I decided to do a photography project that took the entire season to complete.  Beginning on the Summer Equinox, I photographed something every day through the Fall Solstice.  In all I recorded over 10,000 photographs, but only ninety-four of them counted - one for each day of summer.  It's a new season and here is my next photography project.  Vernal means "of, relating to, or occurring in the spring". 


Day 1 (20 March 2019) - Skunk Cabbage

This image of Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) was photographed in a cedar swamp at Mission Creek Woodland Park in Mt. Pleasant.  Skunk Cabbage is my favorite wildflower.  It's the first flower to bloom each spring, often flowering while there is still ice and snow on the ground.  This species generates enough metabolic heat that it will sometimes melt its way through the ice. 

Day 2 (21 March 2019) - Woodland Mallard

The combination of spring rains and melting snow and ice caused the Chippewa River to overflow its banks in Mid-March.  A week later parts of the floodplain remained under water, especially at Chipp-A-Waters Park in Mt. Pleasant.  This Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) drake would not normally be found in the woods, but was taking advantage of the flood to forage in an old river channel.


Day 3 (22 March 2019) - Maple Buds

This image of swollen buds on a Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) was taken from my front yard in Alma.  Silver and Red Maples are among the first local tree species to bud each spring.  I chose this image for the simplicity of the limbs and buds silhouetted against the blue sky.


Day 4 (23 March 2019) -  Awake

On March 23rd I led a hike at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Sylvan Solace Preserve.  The goal of the hike was to search for early signs of spring.  Other than a group photograph I didn't ake any images during the hike, but I did take several pictures of an active mound ant (Formica sp.) nest before the hike began.  There are a number of these mounds at Sylvan Solace Preserve, but only those in direct sunlight had warmed enough for the ants to be active.

Day 5 (24 March 2019) - Willow Catkins

This image of willow catkins (flowers) was taken at Mill Pond Park in Mt. Pleasant.  I went to the park with the goal of photographing Red-winged Blackbirds in the large cattail marsh.  I never did get a blackbird image that I was happy with, but did photograph several Black-capped Chickadees as they foraged among the cattails.  But the image that said "SPRING!" was this one.  I like how everything in this image is fuzzy - the catkins, the budscales, the branch itself, and the cattail seeds that have affixed themselves to the willow.


Day 6 (25 March 2019) - Floodplain Geese

March 25th found me back at Chipp-A-Waters Park.  This pair of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) was photographed along the edge of the oxbow pond located near the back of the park.  An oxbow is a section of river meander that has been cut off from the main flow of the river as it has changed course over time.  This oxbow holds water year round, but is only connected to the main river a few weeks each year as the river tops its current banks.  This image has been cropped to a widescreen (16:9) format to remove some of the clutter at the top and bottom.


Day 7 (26 March 2019) - Deep in Thought

This picture of  a Red-winged Blackbird was taken in the cattail marsh at Mill Pond Park.  I removed the left 1/3 of this picture to crop to a square - this helps emphasize space on the right of the picture, giving more "space" for the bird to gaze into.   The result is that bird appears to be thinking intently or waiting for something to appear.  The blurring in the picture is due to shooting through cattails. 

Day 8 (27 March 2019) - Woodland Robin

For many people the first sign of spring is the appearance of the first American Robin (Turdus migratorius).  While some robins remain in mid-Michigan throughout the year, the numbers do increase when spring nears.  This photo was taken at Forest Hill Nature Area.

Day 9 (28 March 2019) - Western Chorus Frog

This picture was taken in a shrub swamp/season wetland near the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways.  I stopped at the Ziibiwing Center in hopes that that there may be bluebirds checking out the nest boxes.  Instead I rolled down my windows to the sound of Western Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris triseriata).   Fortunately I had my neoprene boots in the back of my truck.  I could hear dozens of frogs calling as I approached the wetland.  In typical frog fashion, they all went silent as soon as they say me.  After about ten minutes of standing silently, several nearby frogs started calling again.  They are difficult to spot - the one in the picture is about as big as my thumb from the tip to the first knuckle.  I hope that as the weather warms back up this week I will be able to return and get a few more pictures.  I need to remember to take my binoculars this time - maybe they will make it easier to spot the frogs!

Day 10 (29 March 2019) - Sunburst

The final image was taken in the Canopy Walk at the Whiting Forest in Midland, MI.   We went to Midland to visit the Butterflies in Bloom exhibit at Dow Gardens.  Unbeknownst to us, you have to reserve a time slot to enter the exhibit - this is a new policy this year!  We didn't want to wait two hours to get in so we decided to check out the Canopy Walk instead.  This is a new feature of Whiting Forest (which is part of Dow Gardens), completed in 2018.  During peak times, you also need to reserve a time to go on the canopy walk but we were able to walk right up. 

Happy National Reading Month 2019 (just a little late)!

March is National Reading Month!

Shara (Mrs. LeValley) and I love to read!  There are books everywhere in our home. Our goal every year is to each read a minimum of fifty-two books - one for each week of the year.  Not only do we read lots of books, but we each record them in a journal.  I don't write anything about the book; just title, author, number of pages, and where the book came from (my personal library, public library, borrowed book).  I have a record of every book I have read since January 2005, with one major exception - we moved to our current home in 2011 and I didn't record anything from we packed up and moved in March of that year until January 2012.  I'm bummed that I don't have any records from that time...  Even with that missing nine months, I have records of over eight hundred books, including thirteen so far in 2019.

What do I read?  A little of everything - biography, history, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, and more.  I especially read books about science, nature, and the outdoors (including hiking, fishing, and hunting stories).

Here is my nearly complete list of the science, nature, and outdoor books that I have read since 2005 (minus the missing months of 2011 - plus I think I may have forgotten to write down a few others).  These books have been grouped into rough categories in no particular order.  Many books could easily fit in more than one category.  Books that have been boldfaced are either ones that I particularly liked or thought were important.

Alaska/Canada

• One Man's Wilderness by Sam Kieth and Richard Proenneke
• Alaska's Wolf Man:  The 1915-55 Wilderness Adventures of Frank Glaser by Jim Rearden
• Shopping for Porcupine:  A Life In Arctic Alaska by Seth Kantner
• Standing Ground:  Alaska Stories, Police Tales, and Things I'd Rather Not Talk About by Alan L. White
• Fifty Miles from Tomorrow:  A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iggiaruk Hensley
• Tide, Feather, Snow:  A Life in Alaska by Miranda Weiss
• First Wilderness:  My Quest in the Territory of Alaska by Sam Keith 
• Yukon Alone:  The World's Toughest Adventure Race by John Balzar
• Winterdance:  The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen
• Red Summer:  The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village by Bill Carter
• Braving It:  A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild by James Campbell
• Death on the Barrens:  A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic by George James Grinnell
• The Alaskan Retreater's Notebook:  One Man's Journey into the Alaskan Wilderness by Ray Ordonica
• Disappointment River:  Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage by Brian Castner

Arctic/Antarctica

• Being Caribou:  Five Months on Foot With an Arctic Herd by Karsten Heuer 
• South With the Sun:  Roald Amundsen, His Polar Exploration and the Quest for Discovery by Lynn Cox 
• The Last Light Breaking:  Living Among Alaska's Inupiat Eskimos by Nick Jans
• Roald Amundsen by Tor Bomann-Larsen
• White Eskimo:  Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic by Stephen R. Brown
• The Last Imaginary Place:  A Human History of the Arctic World by Robert McGhee

The North Country

• Open Horizons by Sigurd F. Olson 
• Woman of the Boundary Waters:  Canoeing, Guiding, Mushing, and Surviving by Justine Kerfoot
• The Grand Portage by Walter O'Meara
• The Long-shadowed Forest by Helen Hoover 
• We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich
• At Home in the Woods:  Living the Life of Thoreau Today by Bradford Angier and Vera Angier 
• The Meaning of Wilderness by Sigurd F. Olson
• Chips from a Wilderness Log by Calvin Rutstrum

Birds/Birdwatching

• To See Every Bird on Earth:  A Father, A Son and a Lifelong Obsession by Dan Koeppel 
• The Ardent Birder:  On the Craft of Birdwatching by Todd Newberry and Gene Holtan
• The Ghost With Trembling Wings:  Science, Wishful Thinking, and the Search for Lost Species by Scott Weidensaul
• Out of the Woods:  A Bird Watcher's Year by Ora E. Anderson
• Of a Feather:  A Brief History of American Birding by Scott Weidensaul
• All Things Reconsidered:  My Birding Adventures by Roger Tory Peterson
• Hope is the Thing With Feathers:  A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds by Christopher Cokinos
• Wesley the Owl:  The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien
• The Verb 'To Bird': Sightings of an Avid Birder by Peter Cashwell
• A Supremely Bad Idea:  Three Mad Birders and Their Quest To See It All by Luke Dempsey
• Birdology:  Adventures With a Pack of Hens, a Peck of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, and One Murderously Big Living Dinosaur by Sy Montgomery
• Crow Planet:  Essential Wisdom From the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
• Gifts of the Crow:  How Perception, Emotion and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans by John Marzluff and Tony Angell 
• Feathers:  The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson
• Life Birds by George Levine
• H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald 
• Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich
• Falcon Fever:  A Falconer in the Twenty-first Century by Tim Gallagher
• The Final Frontiersman:  Heimo Korth and His Family Alone in Alaska's Arctic Wilderness by James Campbell
• One Wild Bird at a Time:  Portraits of Individual Lives by Bernd Heinrich 
• The Most Perfect Thing:  Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg by Tim Birkhead
• Lost Among the Birds:  Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year by Neil Hayward

Nature/Ecology/Natural History

• Swampwalker's Journal:  A Wetlands Year by David M. Carroll
• Natural Coincidence:  The Trip from Kalamazoo by Bil Gilbert
• Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison edited by Hampton Sides
• Wintering by Diana Kappel-Smith
• Teaching a Stone to Talk:  Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard
• Return to Wild America:  A Yearlong Search For the Continent's Natural Soul by Scott Weidensaul
• Northwoods Wildlife:  A Watcher's Guide to Habitats by Janine M. Benyus
• Last Child in the Woods:  Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
• It's Raining Frogs and Fishes:  Four Seasons of Natural Phenomena and Oddities of the Sky by Jerry Dennis
• The Eternal Frontier:  An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery
• Wilderness Ethics:  Preserving the Spirit of Wildness by Guy Waterman and Laura Waterman
• My Story as Told by Water:  Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-watching, Fish-stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, From Living Rivers, In the Age of the Industrial Dark by David James Duncan
• Squirrels at My Window:  Life with a Remarkable Gange of Urban Squirrels by Grace Marmor Spruch
• Life Counts:  Cataloguing Life on Earth by Michael Gleich, Dirk Maxeiner, et al
• A Trail Through Leaves:  The Journal as a Path to Place by Hannah Hinchman
• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
• The Animal Dialogues:  Uncommon Encounters in the Wild by Craig Childs
• Looking for Hickories:  The Forgotten Wildness of the Rural Midwest by Tom Springer
• Ecology of A Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray 
• Life in the Soil:  A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners by James B Nardi
• The Search for a Sense of Wildness by Michael P. Ausema
• Stalking the Plumed Serpent and Other Adventures in Herpetology by D. Bruce Means
• Where the Wild Things Were:  Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg
• The Snake Charmer:  A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge by Jamie James
• The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane
• Watchers at the Pond by Franklin Russell
• Dry Storeroom No. 1:  The Secret life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey
• A Year in the Maine Woods by Bernd Heinrich
• One Square Inch of Silence:  One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World by Gordon Hempton ans John Grossman
• Mean and Lowly Things:  Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo by Kate Jackson
• The Book of Yaak by Rick Bass
• Summer World:  A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich
• Every Creeping Thing:  True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife by Richard Conniff
• The Founding Fish by John McPhee
• A Reenchanted World:  The Quest for a New Kinship With Nature by James William Gibson
• Wilderness Warrior:  Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
• Footnotes on Nature by John Kieran
• Why We Run:  A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich
• The Path:  A One-mile Walk Through the Universe by Chet Raymo
• The Wild Marsh:  Four Seasons at Home in Montana by Rick Bass
• Water:  A Natural History by Alice Outwater
• The Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul
• The Mountains Next Door by Janice Emily Bowers
• Still Life:  Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgram
• The Snoring Bird:  My Family's Journey Through A Century of Biology by Bernd Heinrich
• Why I Came West by Rick Bass
• Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat:  Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog
• The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey
• Kingdom Under Glass:  A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals by Jay Kirk
• Wading For Bugs:  Exploring Streams With the Experts edited by Judith L. Li and Michael T. Barbour
• The Big Swamp:  A Wildlife Biologist's Lifetime of Adventures by Raymond D. Schofield
• Life Everlasting:  The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich
• Time and Tide in Acadia:  Seasons on Mount Desert Island by Christopher Camuto
• Rambunctious Garden:  Saving Nature in a Post-wild World by Emma Marris
• The Forest Unseen:  A Year's Watch in Nature by David George Haskell
• Dirt Work:  An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl
• Eating Dirt:  Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill
• The Endangered Species Road Trip:  A Summer's Worth of Dingy Motels, Poison Oak, Ravenous Insects, and the Rarest Species in North America by Cameron MacDonald
• Fire Season:  Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors
• A Sand County Almanac:  With Essays on Conservation from Round River by Aldo Leopold
• Beyond Walden:  The Hidden History of America's Kettle Lakes and Ponds by Robert M. Thorson
• Keith County Journal by John Janovy Jr.
• Island Year by Hazel Heckman
• A Sting in the Tale:  My Adventures with Bumblebees by Dave Goulson
• A Buzz in the Meadow:  The Natural History of a French Farm by Dave Goulson
•  The Prophet of Dry Hill:  Lessons From a Life in Nature by David Gessner
•  Theodore Roosevelt in the Field by Michael R. Canfield
• The Urban Bestiary:  Encountering the Everyday Wild by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
• Once They Were Hats:  In Search of the Mighty Beaver by Frances Backhouse
• Under the Stars:  How America Fell in Love with Camping by Dan White
• The Carry Home:  Lessons From the American Wilderness by Gary Ferguson
• Bog tender:  Coming Home to Nature and Memory by George Szanto
• The Eternal Frontier:  An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery
• The Home Place:  Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham
• Hawk's Rest:  A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone by Gary Ferguson
• Gathering Moss:  A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Pine Barrens by John McPhee
• Becoming Teddy Roosevelt:  How a Maine Guide Inspired America's 26th President by Andrew Vietze
• The Lost Species:  Great Expeditions in the Collection of Natural History Museums by Christopher Kemp
• The Snow Tourist:  A Search for the World's Purest, Deepest Snowfall by Charles English
• Citizen Scientist:  Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction by Mary Ellen Hannibal
• Hiking Naked:  A Quaker Woman's Search for Balance by Iris Graville
• Saving Tarboo Creek:  One Family's Quest to Heal the Land by Scott Freeman
• The Nature Fix:  Why Nature Makes Us Happier Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams
• The Power of a Plant:  A Teacher's Odyssey to grow Healthy Minds and Schools by Stephen Ritz
• The Naturalist at Large by Bernd Heinrich
• The Art of Naming by Michael Ohl
• Buzz:  The Nature and Necessity of Bees by Thor Hanson
• The Feather Thief:  Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson
• Apocalyptic Planet:  Field Guide to the Everending Earth by Craig Childs
• The Ninemile Wolves by Rick Bass
• Nature Wars:  The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards Into Battlegrounds by Jim Sterba

Trees/Plants/Gardens

• Beautiful Madness:  One Man's Journey Through Other People's Gardens by James Dodson
• The Trees in My Forest by Bernd Heinrich
• The Wild Trees:  A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston 
• People With Dirty Hands:  The Passion for Gardening by Robert Chotzinoff
• American Chestnut:  The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree by Susan Freinkel
• The Man Who Planted Trees:  A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins 
• Wood:  Craft, Culture, History by Harvey Green 
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Unearthed:  Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden by Alexandra Risen
• Nature's Temples:  The Complex World of Old-Growth Forests by Joan Maloof
• The Hidden Life of Trees:  What They Feel, How They Communicate:  Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
• Urban Forests:  A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape by Jill Jonnes
• The Wood for the Trees:  One Man's Long View of Nature by Richard Fortey
• Witness Tree:  Seasons of Change with a Century-old Oak by Lynda V. Mapes
• The Ghost Orchard:  The Hidden History of the Apple in North America by Helen Humphreys
• The Man Who Climbs Trees by James Aldred
• The Long, Long Lif of Trees by Fiona Stafford

Geology/Geography

• On the Map:  A Mind-expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon Garfield
• Rising From the Plains by John McPhee
• Coming Into the Country by John McPhee
• Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
• The Ground Beneath Us:  From the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt tells Us About Who We Are by Paul Bogard
• Stories in Stone:  Travels Through Urban Geology by David B Williams
• The Map That Changed The World:  William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester

Farming/Rural Life

•  A Country Year:  Living the Questions by Sue Hubbell
• The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
• See You in a Hundred Years:  Four Seasons in Forgotten America by Logan Ward 
• Clearing Land:  Legacies of the American Farm by Jane Brox
• Heirloom:  Notes From and Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark
• Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass by Gary Paulsen
• It's a Long Road to a Tomato:  Tales of an organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life by Keith Stewart
• Ripe:  The Search for the Perfect Tomato by Arthur Allen
• Claiming Ground:  A Memoir by Laura Bell
• Wisdom of the Last Farmer:  Harvesting Legacies From the Land by David Mas Masumoto 
• Mostly in Clover:  Growing Up in Rural Ontario. A Boy Now a Man Recounts His Memories by Harry J. Boyle
• Little Heathens:  Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish 
• Folks, This Ain't Normal:  A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World by Joel Salatin
• Cabin:  Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine by Leo Ureneck 
• Triple Ridge Farm by Ruth Fouts Pochmann
• Battlefield:  Farming a Civil War Battleground by Peter Svenson
• The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks
• More Scenes From the Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg
• Farm:  A Year in the Life of an American Farmer by Richard Rhodes
• Cabin Lessons:  A Nail-by-Nail Tale:  Building Our Dream Cottage from 2x4s, Blisters, and Love by Spike Carlsen 
• Growing A Revolution:  Bringing Our Soil Back to Life by David R. Montgomery
• Craeft:  An Inguiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands
• The Dirty Life:  A Memoir of Farming, Foods, and Love by Kristin Kimball

Logging

• Hard Maple, Hard Work by John Gagnon 
• McTaggart's Red Keg:  Logging From A-Z on the Tittabawassee in Michigan by Irene M. Hargreaves and Harold M. Foehl
• "Daylight in the Swamp":  Lumberjacking in the Late 19th Century by Robert W. Wells
• Timber!  The Bygone Life of the Northwoods Lumberjacks by John C. Frohlicher

Food

• In Defense of Food:  An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
• The Earth Knows My Name:  Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans by Patricia Klindienst
• Empires of Food:  Feast Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Evand D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas
• The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:  A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Third Plate:  Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber
• The Mushroom Hunters:  On the Trail of an Underground America by Langdon Cook
• A Really Big Lunch:  The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison
• 100 Million Years of Food:  What Our Ancestors Ate and Why it Matters Today by Stephen Le
• American Terroir:  Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields by Rowan Jacobsen
• The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steven Rinella
• The Traveling Feast:  On the Road and at the Table With My Heros by Rick Bass

Mountaineering/Adventure

• Tracks:  A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson
• Foot by Foot Through the USA by Winfield H. Line and Francis R. Line 
• Seaworthy:  Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting by T.R. Pearson
• A Sense of the World:  How A Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts
• Touching My Father's Soul:  A Sherpa's Journey to the Top of Everest by Jamling Tenzing Norgay w/ Broughton Coburn
• Halfway to Heaven:  My White-knuckled - And Knuckleheaded - Quest for the Rocky Mountain High by Mark Obmascik
• A Splendid Savage:  The Restless Life of Fredrick Russell Burnham by Steve Kemper
• Breaking Trail:  A Climbing Life by Arlene Blum

Paddling/Canoeing/Rafting

• Canyon Solitude:  A Woman's Solo River Journey Through Grand Canyon by Patricia C. McCairen 
• From a Wooden Canoe:  Reflections on Canoeing, Camping, and Classic Equipment by Jerry Dennis
• An Adirondack Passage:  The Cruise of the Canoe Sairy Gamp by Christine Jerome
• Canoeing With the Cree by Eric Severeid 
• One Incredible Journey by Clayton Klein and Verlen Kruger
• The Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee
• Cold Summer Wind by Clayton Klein
• Portage Into the Past:  By Canoe Along the Minnesota-Ontario Boundary Waters by J. Arnold Bolz 
• The Last Voyageurs:  Retracing LaSalle's Journey Across America:  Sixteen Teenagers on the Adventure of a Lifetime by Lorraine Boissoneault
• Waterwalk:  A Passage of Ghosts by Steven Faulkner
• Hidden Nature:  A Voyage of Discovery by Alys Fowler

Hiking/Walking

• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson 
• A Season on the Appalachian Trail by Lynn Setzer 
• Walking My Dog, Jane:  From Valdez to Prudhoe Bay Along the Trans Alaska Pipeline by Ned Rozell
• The Marches:  A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland by Rory Stewart
• AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller
• Alone Together:  My Adventure on the Appalachian Trail by Wally Miars

Paleontology/Archaeology

• Before the Dawn:  Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade
• Atlas of a Lost World:  Travels in Ice Age America by Craig Childs
• Finders Keepers:  A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession by Craig Childs
• My European Family:  The First 54,000 Years by Karin Bojs
• The Lost World of the Old Ones:  Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest by David Roberts

Michigan/Great Lakes

• Walking to Mackinac by David E. Bonior
• The Superior Peninsula:  Seasons in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan by Lon L. Emerick
• The Living Great Lakes:  Searching For the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis
• The Fourth Coast:  Exploring the Great lakes Coastline From the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota by Mary Blocksma
• Graced by the Seasons:  Fall and Winter in the Northwoods by John Bates
• Great Lakes Nature:  An Outdoor Year by Mary Blocksma 
• River of Iron by David Lee
• The Wolves of Isle Royale:  A Broken Balance by Rolf O. Peterson
• Lake Country:  A Series of Journeys by Kathleen Stocking
• An Uncrowded Place:  The Delights and Dilemmas of Life Up North and a Young Man's Search for Home by Bob Butz
• Great Lakes Country by Russell McKee
• The Turn in the Trail:  Northwoods Tales of the Upper Great Lakes by Walt Sandburg

Native American

• Rez Life by David Treuer
• Holding Our World Together:  Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community by Brenda J. Child
• Braiding Sweetgrass:  Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
•  Masters of Empire:  Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America by Michael A. McDonnell
• Wilderness Empire by Allan W. Eckert

Hunting/Fishing/Trapping

• Ghosts of Tsavo:  Stalking the Mystery Lions of East Africa by Philip Caputo
• Fly-fishing the 41st:  Around the World on the 41st Parallel by James Prosek
• Trout Madness by John D. Voelker (Robert Traver)
• On The Run:  An Angler's Journey Down The Striper Coast by David DiBenedetto
• Trout Eyes:  True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fly Fishing by William G. Tapply
• Kerplunk! by Patrick F. McManus
• The River Home:  An Angler's Explorations by Jerry Dennis
• The Fish's Eye:  Essays About Angling and the Outdoors by Ian Frazier
• A Place on the Water:  An Angler's Reflections on Home by Jerry Dennis
• Hunting From Home:  A Year Afield in the Blue Ridge Mountains by Christopher Camuto
• American Buffalo  In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella
• West With the Rise:  Fly-fishing Across America by James Barilla
• The Sporting Road:  Travels Across America in An Airstream Trailer - With Fly Rod, Shotgun, and a Yellow Lab Named Sweetzer by Jim Fergus
• Colter:  The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had by Rick Bass
• Fur, Fortune, and Empire:  The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America by Eric Jay Dolan
• Fool's Paradise by John Gierach
  
• The Everlasting Stream:  A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family by Walt Harrington
• At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman by John Gierach
• Still Life With Brook Trout by John Gierach
• Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders:  A John Gierach Treasury by John Gierach
• The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark
• Remembrances of Rivers Past by Ernest Schwiebert
• The Fragrance of Grass by Guy de la Valdene
• Meat Eater:  Adventures From the Life of an American Hunter by Steven Rinella
• Afield:  American Writers on Bird Dogs edited by Robert DeMott and Dave Smith
• Upland Autumn:  Birds, Dogs, and Shotgun Shells by William G. Tapply
• Fishing the River of Time by Tony Taylor 
• Use Enough Gun:  Ruark on Hunting Big Game by Robert Ruark
• Every Day Was Special:  A Fly Fisher's Lifelong Passion by William G. Tapply
• Charley Waterman's Tales of Fly-fishing, Wing-shooting, and the Great Outdoors by Charley Waterman
• On the Water:  A Fishing Memoir by Guy de la Valdene
• Red Stag:  A Novel by Guy de la Valdene
• Brown Feathers:  Waterfowling Tales an Upland Dreams by Steven J. Mulak
• The Longest Silence:  A Life in Fishing by Thomas McGuane 
• Outdoor Chronicles:  True Tales of a Lifetime of Hunting and Fishing by Jerry Hamza
• A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge by Christopher Camuto
• Midwest Meanders by Tom Huggler
• This Reckless Breed of Men:  The Trappers and Fur Traders of the Southwest by Robert Glass Cleland
• The Ghosts of Autumn:  A Season of Hunting Stories by Joel Spring
• A Fly Rod of Your Own by John Gierach
• Jill and I and the Salmon by Jack Russell
• Moose in the Water Bamboo on the Bench:  A Journal and a Journey by Kathy Scott
• What the River Knows:  An Angler in Midstream by Wayne Fields
• Salmon On A Fly:  The Essential Wisdom and Lore from a Lifetime of Salmon Fishing by Lee Wulff
• A Rough-shooting Dog:  Reflections From Thick and Uncivil Sorts of Places by Charles Fergus
• A Hunter's Fireside Book:  Tales of Dogs, Ducks, Birds & Guns by Gene Hill
• My Secret Fishing Life by Nick Lyons
• Covered Waters:  Tempests of a Nomadic Trouter by Joseph Heywood

Spring is...

Spring is the season of my favorite wildflower.

Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is the first wildflower of the year in Mid-Michigan.  This species is so insistent on blooming that it has the ability to melt through snow and ice!  I often find this species blooming in seeps and swamps as early as the first week of March, but regardless of when I find it I know that spring will soon be here. 

My first sighting of Skunk Cabbage for 2019 coincided with the Vernal Equinox - so for this year at least Skunk Cabbage truly was a sign of spring!

Spring!

Spring may be two days away on the calendar, but according to the birds it's already here!  The surest sign of spring to me is the return of the Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus).  I saw my first blackbird of the year about ten days ago; now they are everywhere in Mid-Michigan. 

Chippewa River Floods (March 2019 Edition)

Over the past few days warm temperatures and rain have caused most of the snow around Mt. Pleasant to melt.  Unfortunately the ground remained largely frozen so none of the water could filter into the ground.  The water had to go somewhere - it pooled on the surface and where it could flow downhill entered the local waterways.  Enough water entered the streams that flood warnings were issued for the Chippewa River and several other local streams.  Today I stopped at several parks in the Mt. Pleasant to check on the state of the flooding - here are some photos.

My first stop was Chipp-A-Waters Park.  The river here is well over its banks and flowing over the Riverwalk Trail.  I waded in to the top of my boots but could not get down the trail without getting my feet wet.

Looking upriver near the canoe landing - the Riverwalk Trail is on the right.

Water over the trail

Great Blue Heron resting on a stump in the woods.

Pedestrian bridge across the Chippewa River - the bridge abutment to the left normally sits several feet above the river level.

Mallard ducks swimming over what is normally dry land.

Those ducks should have been on a leash!

This tree is in what would normally be the main channel of the river.

My second stop was at Mill Pond Park.  The Riverwalk trail continues through Mill Pond Park, but several sections are flooded over.

Looking upstream from an island at the Leaton St. parking lot.

The flow under a pedestrian bridge at Leaton St.

Water flows over weirs creating standing waves.

Looking downstream from the pedestrian bridge - the glide in the center is the spillway of the first of five weirs with tree trunks hung up on the second weir in the background.

A small footbridge is mostly underwater on the far side of the river.

My final stop was at Pickens Field.  From there I crossed a pedestrian bridge to the north end of Island Park.  Pickens Field is the northern terminus of the Riverwalk Trail

Flooded ballfield at Pickens Field

The Michigan Vietnam Memorial is surrounded by floodwaters

A kayaker paddles down the road at Island Park

Water levels were up to the bottom of the bridge connecting Pickens Field and Island Park

This is not the worst spring flooding Mt. pleasant has experienced in the past decade.  2014 saw approximately the same water levels and the spring floods of 2013 were higher.  If you type "flood" in the search box to the right you can find pictures from several more years.

Pi Day 2019

Happy "Pi Day"!  Not pie the pastry, but pi the number.  

The number pi is symbolized by the Greek letter π . We use pi to figure the circumference and area of circles and the volume of spheres and cylinders. The circumference of any circle is its diameter times pi.  The area of any circle is its radius squared time pi.  So what does that have to do with today?

Today is the 14th of March.  Otherwise expressed as 3/14 or 3.14.   Just like the number pi!  But, pi doesn't end at 3.14.  The number is thought to be infinite and non-repeating - no one has found the last digit of pi (currently at over one trillion digits and counting) and there is no sequence of numbers that repeats itself within pi!  Written to 100 decimal points pi is...

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230
78164062862089986280348253421170679...

In celebration of Pi Day, I bought two pies (the pastry) to share at work.  One blueberry pie

and one apple pie.

We are eating pie for mathematics!  This is not just because pi(e) is delicious!

Look at all that math!

Now for a little Pie (pi) related math.  The diameter (the distance across a circle from one side to the opposite side, passing through the center of the circle) of each of these pies is 8.5 inches.  To calculate the circumference (the distance around the perimeter of a circle) we just need to multiply 8.5 inches by pi (3.14).

                  Circumference  = π x diameter

                  Circumference = 3.14 x 8.5 inches

                  Circumference =  26.69 inches

I eat this pie in the name of mathematics!

To calculate the area of the pie we need to know the radius.  Radius is the distance from the center of a circle to the edge of the circle.  This number is one half of the diameter - so if the diameter of these pies is 8.5 inches, the radius would be 8.5 inches divided by 2, which equals 4.25 inches.  The formula for calculating the area of a circle is Area = pi times the radius squared (the radius times the radius). Expressed as a mathematical formula this is A= πr².

                 Area = πr²
           
                 Area = π x (radius x radius)

                 Area = 3.14 x (4.25 inches x 4.25 inches)

                 Area = 3.14 x (18.0625 inches²)

                 Area = 56.71625 inches²

That's 56.71625 square inches of delicious per pie!

If I eat 1/6th of the blueberry pie I am eating 9.4527 square inches of pie (56.71625 x 1/6 = 9.4527 inches²)!  

Math can be delicious!

Remember!  This is for the cause of furthering mathematical knowledge!