After the BBGs finally left, I wandered back down to the creek and tried my hand at stacking rocks.
I’d seen it on the Internet earlier this year and thought it must take incredible patience. It doesn’t — at least not the way I did it. It just took rocks with flat edges. Here are a few of my best efforts.
Tuesday afternoon was looking dull. I decided to walk along the creek on a horse trail. After perhaps a quarter mile, the trail crossed the creek. I debated whether to continue, then realized that 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have even hesitated. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants and waded across.
The trail followed the bluffs along the river. I walked about half a mile, then climbed down to the bank and walked along the rocks. I looked, unsuccessfully for a place where I could cross without getting my feet wet again. I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere and got to wondering how far I was from another human being. Then I looked across the river and saw a tall, fat guy standing on this bluff with a beer bottle in his hand. It was obvious he hadn’t walked far to get there. I headed back to the trail and returned to camp. When I got to the ford, I crossed without removing my shoes.
When I got back to camp, my wife said she was wondering what had happened to me. She had gone down to the river to find me but returned when she saw “a big, burly guy” walking through the woods. A few minutes later, I spotted the guy walking through the woods near our campsite. He returned and sat in his car just up the road for a while, then left. A few minutes later, he came back, walked around our campsite some more and sat in his car awhile longer. Finally, the fat guy I’d seen down the river came out of the woods and got in the car and they drove off. We began referring to them as the BBGs.
Two views of Lee Creek from the highway bridge in the park. The shot on the left is looking east. It was in the trees on the left that I saw my lifer Yellow-throated Warbler on my first visit in late April, 1997. The photo on the right is toward the west.
There’s a dam, built by the CCC, just downriver from the bridge.
glaucomys volans
Sunday, November 19, 2006 — 8:45 pm
Devil’s Den State Park, Arkansas — Campground E near Lee Creek
There was an oak tree next to our camper. I kept hearing acorns drop to the ground, which I thought was strange as there was no wind. Then I heard some high-pitched squeaking. I figured it was probably flying squirrels, and this was confirmed when my brother–n-law said he saw something fly to a branch in a pine about 20 feet from where we sat around the campfire. The next time I heard the squeaking, I walked back into the trees with a flashlight and tried to find the perpetrator. I got lucky. I just happened to point the light upwards when a squirrel glided across an open space. I got a brief, but good view of its underside, a rectangle of white fur about five inches long and four inches across with paws at each corner. For whatever reason, perhaps because it was about to land, the tail wasn’t obvious.
To make a long story short, the squirrel or squirrels were around the next two nights — squeaking and dropping acorns. On Monday night, I ran back with my flashlight every time I heard them but only got one very brief glimpse of something running along a high branch in the oak. On Tuesday night, I made a few more unsuccessful attempts, then gave up and sat by the fire. Around 9:00, my brother-in-law, who was facing our camper, suddenly yelled “Look, there it is.” I turned around in time to see a tiny grayish squirrel run along the length of a three-foot branch and disappear behind the tree. It was the same place we had seen it on Sunday night. I grabbed a flashlight and ran over, but couldn’t see or hear any sign of it. I read later that flying squirrels have the habit of running around to the backside of a tree whenever they land and scurrying up or down in case something followed their flight.
I took this picture on Monday. That’s our borrowed camper. The oak where I saw the squirrel can be seen on the right.
opheodrys vernalis
Monday, October 2, 2006 — 11:15 am
Moraine Hills State Park, Illinois
I walked about six miles, stopping only once to look at birds. Most of the time I walked fast and watched the trail because that’s where things were happening today. I saw 27 snakes, 16 Brown Snakes, four Red-bellied Snakes, six Garter Snakes and this Smooth Green Snake. Most of them were sunning on the gravel path or crawling across it. The Brown Snakes mostly laid still, then coiled and pretended to be mean. The Garter Snakes took off like blazes. The Red-bellys were all very small, like worms, but moved fast.
The Smooth Green Snake was half in the grass, half on the gravel path on the rise above where the path goes under the road. It was on the river side. It was lying motionlessly when I first saw it, but as soon as I got close it turned and dashed for the tall grass. I tried to step in front of it to stop it, but it veered off and was gone in a split second.
It was bright, light green, very slender (about the size of a pencil), with the head no thicker than the body. I didn’t see the entire thing at once, but I’d guess it was about a foot and a half long.
