keely – Page 32 – State of Wilderness

Pundt Park: What I Love About Forests

There’s a certain way the light falls in a forest that just makes my heart tremble with excitement. It’s a spill of sunlight across a swath of leaves gathered at the edge of a fallen tree, or the emerald green of moss creeping up a tree base. It’s rounding a bend in a trail and seeing a path, bright and warm with sun. It’s the mix of shadows and light playing across pine needles and forest debris.

Pundt Park offered all this and more last Saturday. This 380 acre park in Spring is part of the Spring Creek Greenway system, and offers a large system of multi-use and dedicated trails. That means equestrians, bikers, hikers and geocachers are all out there together on some trails, but not on all of them. Some of the trails go all the way to Jesse Jones Park from here. There are two pavilions and a playground, and plenty of forest to explore.

If you like Jesse Jones Park, you’ll like Pundt Park. The terrain is very similar. We want to go to Jesse Jones again next, but I want to come back to Pundt and explore. I spent most of my time talking to others in our group and playing trivia, and only spent about an hour out on the trail. What I saw was just a tease; a tease of what looks like a really great forest.

CRNT #5: Wonders of Nature

Well, I’ve been back to my favorite spot; by hike and by bike, alone and with family, not with the dogs since the last time I wrote about it but maybe sometime this week.

These are some of the things we’ve seen along the way. Above, a Loggerhead Shrike looks over his kingdom. Cottontails show very little fear of humans as they hop around foraging for food. I’ve seen about a dozen this week, around trees and along the culverts, sitting right along the trail next to fences.

A pair of Mallards floating side by side on the edge of this pond area. They were not a breeding pair – actually were two males, interestingly enough. Haven’t seen mallards all year, then I see them out of town and get all excited, only to come home and find some in my “big backyard”.

Along my walks and rides out in this area, I have contemplated how much this area has changed. We were out here in September of 2010, before we moved in together. We had borrowed my parent’s canoe for a paddling event, and took it out to the water here to make a find on the island in the middle of the lake. At the time, there was nothing out here. I was having trouble even placing where we parked and entered the water. I thought it was at a school, but I am guessing now it was actually the Lakehouse, a neighborhood clubhouse nearby where my son is taking art lessons now.

It is funny how things change. It makes me think about how everything changes like this; if you look back on your first impressions of something, and then compare it to what you know now, you can feel that sense of change. Like the progression of a relationship with a person, my relationship with this place has changed over time. I am so much happier with it now than when I first “met” it.

Michigan moments

I had been in Texas in the morning, Georgia midday, Illinois early afternoon, then driven through Indiana to here, near Kalamazoo, Michigan.

I was on a mission; I have been trying to fill in my calendar on gc.com of days I have found a cache, and this was a day I needed. Finally I had a minute to take a short walk in the evening and see what I could find.

I came upon a herd of deer, about a dozen altogether. They were grazing in a field about five hundred feet from the hotel, just across the street from where I needed to look for the cache. A couple of young ones in the herd were curious about what I was doing, and turned to watch me. One couldn’t stand it, and finally had to cross the street and make attempts to graze at the grass near me, watching me. I tried to see if he would let me approach him (foolish girl – but he didn’t have antlers with which to gore me, and I was curious how close he would let me get), but this only resulted in the whole herd taking off for the safety of the woods, as if I meant to hurt them.

I didn’t find that cache, but I did find one on the other side of the hotel. I saw several Canadian Geese (#86) honking in the grass along the way, and the morning I saw them again in the back of the hotel.

This is the view from the back of the hotel in Portage. I didn’t get to explore much because I was sort of at the mercy of the sales guys, who had the car. I spent some time here, though, armed with binoculars to see what I could see. Most of what I saw were the same birds I had been seeing in Texas, except for a pair or two of Mallards (#87) that flew low near the trees on their way to some other water source. There were blackbirds, robins, and sparrows out there, others too that I can’t think of right now.

In the drive through Indiana, though, I had looked over and seen a glorious site of several sandhill cranes covering a field of beaten down golden stalks of some crop, probably corn. I also saw cliff swallows (#88) that had made a mud nest along the front of the building of the client we had come to visit. I thought I would have a chance for more wildlife observations when we returned to Chicago, but we stayed in an area full of tall buildings, and clubs and restaurants.

As much as it is nice to get away, it was also really nice to come home, return to my boys and my bike and the gorgeous spring we are having this year.

Katy Park Fly-Over

It’s become a Tuesday night ritual for the dogs and I – bringing their boy to the park for soccer practice, then walking the perimeter. I watch the sky, they sniff the ground. We are the guardians of earth and air.
These places don’t belong to us, though. The sky is ruled by the birds, migrant and permanent residents of oak and elm. The earth is ruled by soccer cleats and lawnmowers, little rodents and squirrels. Other dogs try to lay liquid claim to it, like mine, but they all know the temporary nature of such claims.
A wide swath of grass is cut to open up to the rainwater treatment, a riparian oasis. Red winged blackbirds sit singly at tops of small trees, making their pip-pip-pip scree call. A pair of Carolina Wrens fly up and down, in and out of the long grass at the water’s edge looking for food. Mockingbirds fight each other for territory in the trees, screeching at each other in downward dives with outstretched feet.
It’s the black bellied whistling ducks that reign supreme these days, though. Flashes of white undersides of wings mark small flocks of three or four flying overhead, making their distinctive whistle calls that have earned them their name. Seven of them line up along a roof of a nearby house, scooting over by inches to make even spaces between them.
The best part of the fly-overs at the park, though, are the short and frenetic flights of the scissortails. There is a handful of them that have terrible arguments over perching spots in the elm trees closest to the soccer practice. It is easier to hear them than it is to see them, but sometimes a few of them fly out in fierce rages and circle right back around, long forked tails snaking against the sky.

I was so proud of my little son last weekend when he pointed at one of these perched on a wire above a stoplight and correctly identified it. Even this night at the park, a man stopped me to ask me what kind of bird that was, and thought it was very interesting. I explained that they were just starting to come around here. They’ll be here until the fall, as you can see from this occurence range map here:

Last night, we rode our bikes out to the secret place of ducky delight. When I pointed out that my favorite bird was there, my older son said, “that pink flamingo thing?”, and the little one corrected him and said, “No, it’s a spoonbill!” Even though he still thinks he sees hummingbirds everywhere and is not quite sure what a white winged dove is, he’s getting good at the birding thing. He wants to find “legendary” birds, so now we have to look up what birds are the most rare and where they live.

For now, the dogs and I will watch to see what flies over Katy Park this soccer season, and invest more time at the CRNT.