In this month’s entry:

A Little Lake’s Community Makes History

Hurray for Flowerful, Fruitful June!

Local Blackberries in the June Kitchen (and More)

Visiting Historic St. Mary’s and Point Lookout

The June 2023 Photo/Video Gallery

 

Our Little Lake Makes History Day by Day

Every day in a place brings small changes that add to its developing history. It’s never static. As I’ve tried to pay close attention to this new lakeside home over the past year, I’m building a pretty rich sense of how amazingly beautiful our little lake community is and a couple reasons why.

Reason One: Everyone who makes up the community is a hard, consistent worker. The beaver in the photo above symbolizes that busyness, of course, but the beavers can’t outwork the many, many small birds, from song sparrows and house sparrows, to starlings, gray catbirds, red-winged blackbirds, wrens, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, and more, who seem always on the go, darting from tree to tree, seeking seeds, insects, and bits of greenery for their nests, and calling to the others of their species–and to anyone else in hearing range–from dawn and on into the night. Theirs is an adventurous and fretful life, and we humans, if we can help preserve for them a productive environment, benefit from all they give.

Indeed, I can only be aware of a tiny fraction of the life-giving work that goes on with little let up among all our species. For example, though I live beside a lake, I’m only dimly and sporadically aware of all that goes on beneath its surface.  Our turtles pop up whenever it’s warm enough, but they live most of their long lives beneath the surface and in the mud. Only rarely do we become aware of the bass, carp, and small fish who live in these dimly-lit waters.

Just recently did I see for the first time the few snapping turtles, like the one in the photo above, that like to swim just beneath the surface and spy on the many creatures that share the border between water and air, like the geese, ducks, and cormorants. Just two days ago, as Jean and I ventured below the lake’s north end dam, we were surprised by a pair of the fierce-looking snappers, floating quietly in the small outlet stream that flows into Sugarland Run. Fortunately I had my camera, because this is what we saw:

Was this courting? Competing? We are not sure, because snappers do both, but we were left wondering how these large creatures came to be in this shallow rivulet a hundred feet below the lake…and where do they go from here?

Reason Two: Plants. The steadily expanding number of animal species of which we become aware in our lakeside community, like this green heron that we first saw in May, only exist here because of the varied plant life that has been allowed by our fellow humans to thrive in this small refuge within a dense suburban environment of highways, housing, and commerce.

Every month of the year shows how the great variety of trees, bushes, vines, reeds, rushes, and grasses along the lake are home to the animals that need them in order to thrive. One of those needful species is we humans, who only survive through the oxygen the plants produce and through the plants’ silent resilience that gives us hope, even if we don’t give them credit.

 Hurray for Flowerful, Fruitful June! 

While the first wildflowers appear here in April, June is the month of our greatest first explosion of blooms, as you’ll see just above and in the mini-gallery below. Now, as we walk around the lake, each day gives us new gems:

Local Blackberries in the June Kitchen (and More)

So did you notice those Allegheny blackberries among the photos?  This week, June 19-25, the vines of Allegheny blackberries that dominate so much of the northeast side and the north end of the lake are ripening fast–and we’ve been picking ’em. If you know blackberries, you know that once they start ripening on the wild vines, there’s a narrow window before the ripe fruit dries out in the summer sun. So get ’em while you can.  

On June 21 and 23 we picked over a hundred of the black beauties to use in a recipe for sticky buns that Jean adapted from Bobby Flay, Stephanie Banyas, and Sally Jackson’s Brunch@Bobby’s (Potter, 2015), pp. 158-159. Feel free to use your own bun recipe, or follow Bobby’s, but what makes these sticky buns special is the cup or more of fresh berries you use, mashed so that you get the juice and discard the solids. The blackberry juice, with granulated and brown sugar to taste, plus some lemon juice for extra tang, gives these buns their unique flavor and texture.

Melt butter into a saucepan, and cook the juice/sugar mixture over medium heat until the mix is slightly thick, about 5 minutes. Pour the syrupy mix into each cup of a standard muffin tin. Distribute 3/4 cup of chopped hazelnuts among the muffin tin cups. 

Your buns will bake on top of the syrupy, nutty mixture, for about 30 minutes at 375 F. Let the baked buns sit for 5 minutes outside the oven.  Then EITHER carefully turn the tin upside down onto a platter so the finished buns come out with the nutty syrup on top (as in the photo of the finished bun above). OR don’t turn the tin upside down and instead scoop out each finished bun onto separate plates. If excess syrup stays in the cups, spoon it out onto the tops. Never too much of a good thing! 

These sticky buns were a highlight of a family birthday brunch we held this weekend, along with Jean’s potato puff, cheesy, egg hot dish (pictured below). 

We used 8 eggs whisked with a cup of milk, and about 3 cups of potato puffs (AKA tater tots!).  The egg mixture bakes as the middle layer in your baking dish or skillet, with the potato puffs on top.

So what goes in the bottom layer? Step one is to stir fry in your large skillet a cup or two of ground sausage of your choice (veggie is fine, too!) with onions, garlic, chopped red and green peppers, and your favorite spice mix. When the meat is browned and the onions translucent, spoon on the egg mixture and grate a layer of your favorite cheese (we used medium cheddar). Then cover it all with the potato puffs, and if you wish, add another layer of grated cheese.  Bake it all at 350F for about an hour.

It serves 6-8, and its savory spice complements so well the luscious sticky buns!

Visiting Historic St. Mary’s and Point Lookout

In 1634, two small English ships, the Ark and the Dove, arrived in Chesapeake Bay and then sailed into the Potomac River estuary until eventually dropping anchor in a broad cove later called the St. Mary’s River. The more than 200 people the boats carried in utterly crowded conditions for the 8 weeks of the journey across the Atlantic were mostly Catholics, religious refugees from their strife-torn homeland. 

They were the first European settlers in the Potomac Valley and in the colony called Maryland. Like their earlier counterparts in Virginia (1607) and Massachusetts (1620), this small contingent of European immigrants could not have survived even one year in their strange destination without the generous, peaceful help of the indigenous peoples who welcomed them. In their case, those natives were the Yaocomico, an Algonkian-speaking tribe who had been continually threatened and raided by the Susquehannocks from farther north. The Yaocomico saw the settlers as perhaps helping them withstand the Susquehannocks, and so the two groups co-existed peacefully, with the tribe helping the Europeans plant crops and learn the ways of the region. But within a few years, most of the Yaocomico had either left the area or succumbed to European diseases, and so disappeared by about 1660. The all-too-common story for Native peoples in the East.

Docent Jen at the Park’s Native Woodland Village demonstrates a tool, the bullroarer, constructed by the Yaocomico to ward off predators and call for help.

The Historic St. Mary’s Park, supported by the state of Maryland, contains models of original buildings and the actual archeological site (below) of the first public meeting house, enclosed within a modern museum.

We visited St. Mary’s on June 6-7 as part of our ongoing exploration of Potomac Valley sites, these visits also illuminating more of Jean’s family ancestry. One of these ancestors is John Nevill, who sailed on the Ark in 1634 and so was one of the first settlers. During our stay, we lodged at the Inn at Brome Howard, built in the early 1800s and then moved to its present location in the 1990’s when it was discovered to have been built on the foundation of one of the 1634 houses in St. Mary’s.

Also moved to the present location were outbuildings from the Brome Howard property, including quarters that housed enslaved persons until Emancipation. This house then belonged to the Milburn family for many years.

Visiting Point Lookout. We also used the opportunity to visit Point Lookout, ten miles southeast of St. Mary’s and the point at which the miles-wide estuary of the tidal Potomac joins Chesapeake Bay.  The 19th century lighthouse marks the point.

I walked through the reeds by the Lighthouse to the actual point. I keep thinking of all the history that has passed this point, and the many hundreds of miles of waterway of the Potomac and its tributaries that lie west and north of this meeting of the waters.

The Civil War Prison. Point Lookout also has a gruesome history. Just north of the point itself was the largest Union prison camp for Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. From 1863 to 1865, some 50,000 prisoners spent time in this wretched, swampy, disease-ridden place, as many as 20,000 at one time. More than 3500 died in these miserable conditions, as well as 1000 or more Union soldiers and freed enslaved people who tried to live here during those years.

The June 2023 Photo/Video Gallery: Smoky Skies, Fledgling Geese, Performing Avians, and Even a Fox

Our new feeder above the lake attracts more birds as the word gets around.

Three Mallard babies and Mom swim toward the north end of the lake.

Male red-winged blackbird talks and struts on the dam outlet structure, June 20

Great blue heron plucks a morsel then stalks along the north end

And on to July, with further adventures…

In this month’s entry:

Our First Mother’s Day in Our New Home

Saving the Colorado: Water Deal in the West

More Potomac Valley Travels Back in Time

May 2023 Photo/Video Gallery

Our First Mother’s Day in Our New Home

Three Canada geese babies snuggle with Mom on lakeside path 

Jean and I celebrated our first Mother’s Day in our Virginia home not so much on the day itself, but through the opportunities we have so often now to be with our grandchildren and our East Coast children.  We made a week-long visit to our children and grandchildren in Georgia this month, and we have regular visits with our 2 children and 2 grandchildren here in Northern Virginia. One of our New York children also made the visit to Georgia when we were there, so that was an added bonus.

Because May also marks the time of year when so many new young animals are born, we also have the joy of witnessing Mother- and Father-hood during our daily trips around the lake.  This month’s blog entry features pics and videos of the most evident of those celebrations of new birth. It seems as if every time Jean or I goes around the lake we discover something different, surprising, and often heartwarming. 

A Walk around the Lake on a Crisp May Morning

For example, on a mid-May early morning, I’m on my walk–but without my camera–and as I come over a slight ridge on the east side path, I’m surprised to see looking right at me, no more than 20 feet away, Mr. Red Fox, who is looking as startled as I am. And then he looks slightly annoyed.  As I stand still, watching, he then gives me a resigned look, and casually ambles off the path into the cover of spring wildflowers along the lake. I continue on my walk and as I get to the point where he turned off the path, I look over into the greenery and there he is, just ambling ever so leisurely deeper into the cover. No anxiety, but just not wanting to be sociable.  I understand his antipathy. After all, even though I am the top predator in this situation, he can tell I’m not much of a threat, so his body language is trying to tell me that he still rules the roost around here. But of course he knows that’s not true, not with all the cars and trucks roaring along the highway no more than 200 hundred yards away.  We could have a nice body language conversation about being stuck together in this annoying urban maelstrom, but that’s not gonna happen. Oh well. 

I just keep ambling on in my own leisurely way, practicing my whistling to the birds, who zip on by and keep giving me lessons in whistling and singing that I’ll never come close to matching, but it’s a load of fun for me, and I hope they get a laugh out of it, too.

Then, as I come around the north end of the lake and go into the deep shade of maples, oaks, and red cedars along the west side, I’m happy to come upon one of the young families of Canada geese, who’ve been dominating lakeside culture over the past two weeks. I bet mom and dad know that Mr. Fox is out and about on the other side of the lake. The six little ones, still in their yellow fuzzy coats, are huddled together between their parents, who are ever alert scanning the lake and trees. I’m glad I don’t bother them as I stroll slowly past, not more than four feet away, saying quietly, “Don’t worry, friends, I won’t bother you. I hope you’re doing well this beautiful morning.”  Dad doesn’t even turn to look toward me, as he scans the distant shore. He spies a great blue heron flying past the trees headed for another hoped-for meal.

As the new family continues its business along the path,  I’m back to strolling toward home and practicing my whistling, imagining I’m Mozart or Vivaldi trying to imitate the birdsong and laughably failing.  

Saving the Colorado: Water Deal in the West

When Jean and I traveled from California to Arizona and then home across Nevada in March 2021, we were shocked by the steep decline in water in Lake Mead, the massive reservoir created by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Lake Mead provides water and electricity to many millions across the southwest, including glittering, expanding metropolitan Las Vegas only a few miles north of the dam. Decades of worsening drought, coupled with steadily growing human demand, have now brought Lake Mead, Arizona’s Lake Powell, and the entire length of the Colorado toward becoming a “deadpool”: separated bodies of water too low even to flow. As climate change intensifies, the need for radical change in how much water is used and how it is used has become critical for all seven states through which the river or its tributaries still flow, as well as northern Mexico and the tribal lands owned by indigenous peoples in the Southwest.

As with most other environmental questions, “How to save the Colorado?” has been debated and argued over by competing politicians for years, with no real action. All seven states need to reduce their use of the river water; no one wants to give an inch. California is the oldest and largest user of the Colorado water, primarily to sustain the huge farms of the Imperial Valley, which provides produce for much of the nation in winter months. California’s negotiators have said for years that the original pact among the states, going back to 1922, still guarantees primary “water rights” to California, but that was long before state populations and industries grew to their present size and complexity, and before anyone could imagine a water crisis like today’s.

Clearly the time has come to face facts, and in early May the Biden administration stepped in to give an ultimatum and a promise: reduce water usage significantly over the next 3 years, and in exchange we’ll provide federal funds as partial compensation. After two weeks of deliberation, lo and behold, a deal has finally been reached, as announced May 24, 2023, in the Washington Post: 

“The Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada agreed to conserve 3 million acre-feet of water over the next three years — amounting to 13 percent of their total apportionment — with the administration compensating them for three-quarters of the savings. This would total about $1.2 billion in federal grants from the Inflation Reduction Act.”

Of course, the devil is in the details, and all we can hope is that the state governments, local governments, the many special interests, and we citizens can actually work together with the federal government to make the sacrifices to save the water supply. Whether massive agribusiness can for once do something other than yell, sue, and stamp their feet remains to be seen. The same goes for the politicians who are lavishly gifted by those special interests. Can they for once do the right thing for us and the planet? The world will be watching for a miracle.  

More Potomac Valley Travels Back in Time

On Saturday, May 20, we visited another Potomac Valley city, Hagerstown, Maryland, which is named for one of its first European settlers, Jonathan Hager, a German blacksmith, furrier, and jack-of-all-trades. Hager emigrated in 1736 and built the settlement’s first substantial house in 1739 for his wife, Elizabeth. The house was restored in the 1940s and today includes a museum that attracts visitors fascinated by 18th century Maryland history. Hagerstown lies along Antietam Creek, a mere 13 miles north of the Antietam Civil War Battlefield Park, which we visited in December.

Linking the Hager House to Antietam Creek is the stream that actually flows beneath the house, and which then flows into Marsh Run, a tributary of the Antietam. That vital water source made the Hagers’ entrepreneurial lives as farmers and craftspeople possible, as it did the lives of all the early settlers.

 It is no coincidence that running just past the Hager House is the ancient road now known as the Great Indian Warrior/Trading Path. For thousands of years, this path linked the indigenous nations of the Northeast with those of the Southeast for trade and the flow of ideas. Inevitably–and catastrophically for the Native peoples–after European settlement, treaties between the tribes and the settlers allowed the path to become an even more crucial link for trade and travel. It eventually became one of the United States’ early highways, Route 11, which parallels today’s Interstate 81. The early path had the great advantage of being located between two dependable waterways, Antietam Creek and Conococheague Creek, both of which flow into the Potomac from the north, not far from where the Potomac’s most important tributary, the Shenandoah, flows into it from the south. 

May 2023 Photo/Video Gallery: Our Lake and Travels

One of our beavers drags a branch into west side lodge

This cottontail hops along the north end path and then meets three other walkers

A catbird sings out from a dead tree in the north end woods

On our Georgia trip, blue jays mob this red-shouldered hawk as our family looks on

Swan swims in Hagerstown City Park lake

One of our many members of the song sparrow choir sings “Onward to June!”

In this month’s entry:

How about Earth Day Every Day?

This Earth Day: Our One-Year Anniversary in the Potomac Valley

Cali Wildflowers and Butterfly Swarms

April 2023 Gallery: Nesting and Arriving

As climate change intensifies, it begs the question, “Why do we devote just one day a year to celebrating our planet?” Of course, every human should be consciously trying every day to do their little bit to minimize the debilitating effects of fossil fuels on our atmosphere, in whatever way is available to us. Especially we who live in the richest nation on Earth, with the greatest, by far, per capita wasting of food and fouling of air and water: we should honor the Earth each day by limiting our consumption.

Each day I strive to be aware of how I might use a bit less, waste a bit less, pollute a bit less. Do I need to drive today, or can I walk to my nearby destination? Can I use less water in the bathroom, kitchen, and outside? Can I eat the leftover food I’m privileged to have rather than shopping for more and heating up the gas stove to make more? Can I put up with a few degrees less or more in heating or cooling, so that I use less fossil fuel in the production of indoor climate control?

Notice that all these questions I ask are questions asked of the privileged. I own a car to drive; I have appliances for cooking, refrigerating, heating, cooling; I have nearby stores with plentifully stocked shelves, and I have money to purchase a wildly varied array of foods. So I have many, many choices. I can choose to use less or more. Most of Earth’s people are not so privileged. Using less is necessity, not choice. It’s no wonder that most countries in the world produce far, far less waste and pollution than we do, though that gap is closing.

But in our Culture of Plentiful Choices, we are pressured each day to consume even more. And not only more, but more and different. To taste new foods, to buy new and different clothes, to buy new toys, new drugs, new experiences. Each day, rather than be encouraged to use less, I am bombarded with pleas for greater and more colorfully varied consumption. Each day, I receive more uninvited mail offering more food choices, clothing choices, housing choices, travel choices, all of these offers wasting paper and multiple chemicals, and so wasting more and more natural resources of all kinds.

Even the pleas I receive to donate funds to charities–even to the fight against climate change!–come in thick envelopes with offers of magazines, t-shirts, calendars, maps, and on and on. These advertisers assume that I will not, cannot, give unless I receive more and different stuff. Are they right? Do they know me so well?

I cannot escape this pressure. If I turn to the digital world of my computer or my phone/computer, the bombardment is even more incessant. Almost every site is paid for by advertisers preaching the gospel of more, and ads pop up everywhere to thwart the annoyance of readers trying to escape the onslaught. But resistance is futile!

Avoidance, however, is somewhat possible. I can read books without ads. I can write my blog. I can walk around the lake and glory in the birdsong, the change of seasons, the constant creative work of local animals and plants to survive and share beauty. My greatest privilege is to be able to share our hopeful striving for simplicity with Jean and with our children and grandchildren, who, fortunate for me, in so many ways know how to achieve an Earth-saving lifestyle better than I do.

This Earth Day: Our One-Year Anniversary in the Potomac Valley

Last April, 2022, we began our move from California to Virginia, in order to be closer to our East Coast children and our grandchildren. Over this year, we have been blessed to have been visited by much of our family, and to have traveled the fewer miles to visit more family members. While we miss our California friends and the daily beauties and creative energy of our Sacramento Valley, we have become gradually reacquainted with the historical wonders of the Potomac Valley and found new wonders here as well, as documented through the blog entries since July.

On this Earth Day, we drove into Washington, DC, to visit once again the National Museum of the American Indian for a program devoted to traditional, planet-healthy agricultural and aquacultural practices across North America. The photos of Zuni (A:shiwi) farming (above) and those (below) of Hawai’ian native fishponds and of produce farmed south of Mexico City represent some of the presentations.

Last weekend, April 16, we visited a local and very different kind of farm in another Potomac Valley town, Nokesville: the Burnside Tulip Farm. The farm sits on Kettle Run, which flows southeast into Occoquan Run and on into the Potomac. Burnside’s glorious April display draws thousands of visitors from the region. (See the photo at the top of this entry.) Visitors are invited at a reasonable price ($1 per plant) to pick the tulips and even the bulbs for planting in their own home gardens. Kids are especially welcome. We joined two of our grandkids and their mom in the adventure.

Cali Wildflowers and Butterfly Swarms

The massive rains of this water year in California have produced–besides exceptional snowfall and now floods–a “superbloom” of spring wildflowers not seen for four years. So while deep snow still covers the Sierra, down below the poppies and other wildflowers have brought bursts of color in the valleys and flatlands. Reminds me of the poppy explosion in my Sacramento Valley garden last March (https://garden2kitchen.net/2022/03/25/march-2022-an-ocean-of-orange/), but magnified a million times!

With this superabundance of wildflowers have come swarms of our fondly-remembered Painted Lady butterflies, perhaps a billion of them, covering the flower fields and even swarming highways. The last such swarm was after the heavy rains in 2019, before the three-year drought that this winter’s rains have helped to mitigate. Everyone is hoping that this year’s butterfly return will not be as short-lived as the last one.

April 2023 Gallery: Nesting and Arriving

This month’s gallery features some of our regular citizens getting ready for new arrivals, some others who have already arrived, and still others just seeing, well, to their own survival. It’s April, after all.

In this month’s blog entry:

An Upside Down Virginia Winter

DC Tidal Basin and Its Marvelous Trees: In Danger

California Upheaval

March 2023 Gallery: Birds Exult, Turtles Emerge–Songs and Sightings

An Upside Down Virginia Winter

As I noted last month, the National Park Service predicted that the cherry blossoms along the Potomac Tidal Basin in DC would bloom early, and so they have, as have the blooms in our own small community (photo, above). So winter came and went with no measurable snow, and now, still in March, spring is busting out all over.

The high temps this week have reached the 70s, and nothing in the forecast sees us getting back down to freezing. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying the warmth and the explosion of blooms. That’s a big upside. The birds are ecstatic, as you’ll see and hear later in the entry. But the downside is that this pattern fits just too nicely into the gradual warming that betokens the changing climate, and I fear that our happiness now here in Northern Virginia keeps us blissfully uncaring about the years-long drought plaguing much of the Western US and so much of the developing world. Not to mention the melting polar icecaps causing sea level rise along coasts and around islands everywhere.

Even more troubling is that this spring-y DC region is the home of the US government, which should be moving hard and fast to take us away from the fossil fuels that are the main contributors to global warming. But with our local weather so perfectly balanced between sun, sufficient rainshowers, and magnificent blossoms, the fragile, embryonic commitment to defeat climate change can seem pretty abstract and far from urgent to legislators who are themselves basking in this colorful, fresh late winter display.

Yes, it’s mighty hard to combat short-term thinking and the power of the status quo, especially if your status quo is a gorgeous late March.

Still, science keeps trying to fight the stick-in-the-mud thinkers. Check out what NASA hopes is a convincing video chart: the climate spiral, which shows dramatically how the average temperature of the planet has increased faster and faster in the past forty years.

DC Tidal Basin and Its Marvelous Trees: In Danger

Having heard last week on the news that the cherry blossoms in DC were in bloom, and wanting to beat the crowds who would descend on the Tidal Basin of the Potomac to see them, we drove in early on Sunday, March 19, to find close-in parking. We succeeded in arriving before 8 AM, and exited the car into a stiff, cold wind that seemed anything but springlike. But a short walk took us to the Basin, which spreads out in front of the Jefferson Memorial and provides a great view of the Washington Monument (photo above) no more than a mile away.

The 3000 trees in the area of the Basin are mainly of the Yoshino variety and were a gift to President Taft and First Lady Helen Herron Taft in 1912 from the city of Tokyo. There is an intriguing history surrounding this gift and about later events in this history, including what came to be known as the “Cherry Tree Rebellion” in 1938, the year the Jefferson Memorial was built. But as a student of the Potomac Valley, I was more intrigued by the Tidal Basin itself and how it came to be.

Building the Tidal Basin, 1880s. Seventy-five miles from its outlet into the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac at Washington, DC, is a tidal river, its flow and depth heavily influenced by daily tides. At high tide, Potomac waters used to spread out into mudflats that, intensified by silt from farm runoff and city sewage, became famous to 19th century visitors to the Nation’s Capital for its summer stench and flying insects. In the 1880s, the Tidal Basin was constructed to be deep enough (10 feet) to capture the tidal flow in its 107 acres and then, at low tide, to send the waters back down the adjacent Washington Channel and into the Anacostia River, which then entered the Potomac south of the city. A key feature of the Tidal Basin is its inlet gates, which open as the tide rises and then close when the tide turns low.

Threats from Climate Change: Today, the Basin is an internationally famous tourist destination because of its cherry trees, many monuments to national heroes, and splendid walks. But it, too, is not immune to the effects of climate change. A sign along the walk alerts visitors: “Due to sea level rise and the settling seawall, the Tidal Basin and East Potomac Park are flooding regularly. Many cherry trees have died…and the sinking seawalls pose a danger to visitors walking on them.” So reconstruction has begun and parts of the Park are closed. And the threats to the Park are just one symptom of the overall threat to the Nation’s Capital from the increasingly wet weather brought about by global warming. See this Washington Post article from Dec. 2023.

California Upheaval

It has been 6 years since the 3-mile wide Yolo Bypass, the massive engineered floodplain of the Sacramento River, was this full. That was in water year 2016-17, when some 45 inches of rain fell over six months, ending the 5-year drought from 2011-16.  The Bypass, 41 miles long and covering 59,000 acres, was created by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 1930s, and became the prime growing area for California rice, which is shipped worldwide. It’s also a wonderful bird sanctuary, a prime stop on the Pacific Flyway. Jean and I birded there occasionally during our 16 California years.

But its primary purpose is flood control, and the Sac Valley is so lucky to have it now, in this upside-down season of unexpected atmospheric rivers and record Sierra snowfalls. Other areas of California have not been as well prepared, including the vital agricultural regions near Salinas and Watsonville in the Salinas and San Benito valleys, where recent flooding has forced evacuations and destroyed farms and homes, especially in the town of Pajaro (see below), home to many farm workers.

Also hard hit are Tulare and Kings counties in the Kings, St. John’s, and Tule river valleys, among the richest agricultural areas in the world. Tulare is named for Lake Tulare, which flourished for thousands of years during the annual cycles of flood and dry, and provided sustenance for the native Yokut people.

But when white settlers came in the later 1800s and began diverting water through dams and levees for their commercial crops, the lake slowly disappeared, along with the Yokut communities. Tulare had been the largest fresh water lake west of the Mississippi, four times larger than Lake Tahoe, but when I first heard of it in 2007, I thought of it only as a ghost from long ago. Meanwhile, in California’s many years of drought beginning in 2011, not only was the lake a ghost, but so was much of the aquifer below the lakebed, as the thirsty fruit trees, which had been planted over more and more acres, required ever-increased pumping with ever deeper wells–and the ground slowly sank as the water level fell.

Well, now the lake has returned, can we say with a vengeance?

19,000 acres are already underwater, and with months of snow runoff to come, the new Lake Tulare may reach its former size of over 70,000 acres. Now the greedy growers are struggling to find out how to rid themselves of this troublesome ghost. How tragic that they and their previous few generations of owners had thought themselves impervious to catastrophe, and so had made so many workers and consumers dependent on their manipulations of land and water.

March 2023 Gallery: Birds Exult, Turtles Emerge–Songs and Sightings

Sometimes I feel like the rabbit, above, in the thicket at the north end of the lake: hidden but reasonably safe in our little lakeside sanctuary, as the traffic speeds by outside our community. The birds fly in and out, sometimes stay for a long while, and so do our other citizens, human and non-human.  It’s a magical, musical place.  (As always, run the cursor over each photo to see the caption.)

Some days the birds are hard to see, but the choir is rarely silent (silent only if a hawk is around!). Day after day, the choir is in full throat, as in this clip:

The songbirds always make their presence felt, but other citizens are permanent residents or occasional visitors:

Definite harbingers of spring are our many Northern red-bellied cooters (what a great name!), who only come above water from their homes in the bank beneath the lake when the temps rise into the 60s and above. Oh how they love the sun! And a hearty welcome to the babies!

To sing the finale to our March entry, here are three of our favorite choir members performing solos.

And on to April!

In the blog this month:

Videos: Life Ends, Life Begins, Life Swims on in Our Little Lake

No Snow. Early Spring? On the Lookout

Meanwhile in California…

Going Back in Time in the Potomac Valley

February 2023 Gallery: The Great Backyard Bird Count

Videos: Life Ends, Life Begins, Life Swims on in Our Little Lake

This month was a bonanza for dramatic videos of life in our little Lake Cameron. Then again, every time we walk around the lake with camera in hand, something vividly audio/visual happens, and sometimes I’m fortunate enough to capture it. The first video shows a few moments in the life of two of our community members, one of our great blue herons and one of our small fish who populate the lake. Be patient as you watch this 3:23 movie:

Video 2 shows a rare sighting of one of our members who lives amphibiously on the west side of the lake. We know that these neighbors are present and working because of their effects on some of the lakeside trees, but we rarely see them. I just happened to be there for a sighting last week.

Video 3 shows a different stage of the life cycle of the lake, performed by community members who, unlike the beaver, are very public and love to make their presence known through their voices, their loud arrivals and departing flights, their strutting through the community, and their sheer numbers, often more than 30. They even put on a show of events that some of us might consider TMI. But, hey, life goes on and theirs is a celebration of life.

And here are two more brief snippets of Canada geese exuberance:

Life on Lake Cameron is never boring. The bird choir is always in tune, and there’s lots to see when you walk and watch.

No Snow. Early Spring? It’s Coming

The signs of an early spring here by Lake Cameron are clear enough. CNN reported today (Feb. 25) that according to the National Weather Service this year’s spring blooms may be the earliest on record in the Eastern US–part of a warming (warning?) trend that has been slowly happening for decades. In the era of human-induced climate change, this should not be news, but to this returnee to Virginia it is sort of a shock. After all, we were hoping for at least some snow, but the most we got in January was a nice little coverlet on our trees and cars on the 31st, just enough for a few homey pics before it disappeared in the warm afternoon sun.

I had been remembering the snows of yesteryear in my young Virginia adulthood, when I had to trudge through 4-foot snowdrifts to get to a store for milk for a toddler because the roads were closed, and when, as the kids grew, we built igloos into the 7-foot piles of fresh snow that we shoveled from the driveways and sidewalks. Oh, and the sledding on the neighborhood hills and the snowball fights and…oh well. At least we have those memories. 

Meanwhile, if I can set aside my worries about droughts, floods, sea-level rise, and the melting polar icecaps, I can look forward to the pastel color burst and intoxicating fragrances of our first spring here by Lake Cameron. Then we can drive into DC to revel in the cherry blossoms by the Tidal Basin that we always looked forward to when we lived here before our move to California. The blossoms should be appearing here earlier than ever this year.

Meanwhile in California…

After a mostly rainless February, the winter storms returned with a vengeance this week, shocking most Californians. As I write this on Feb. 26, the Golden State is experiencing record rains and snowfalls, including in places that almost never have seen snow, not to mention “graupel,” which meteorologists describe as snowflakes coated in slushy ice. Communities in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, already reeling from floods in December and January, are now dealing with new threats.  And the forecast for new snow in the already snow-heavy Sierra predicts as much as 1-3 more feet. Our daughters who live in coastal Long Beach, in Los Angeles County, will be keeping us informed about the effects there as the strange weather continues to pound the state.

Going Back in Time in the Potomac Valley

Last Saturday, we continued our exploration of the Potomac Valley in Western Maryland–and then across the border into Pennsylvania.  This is territory where Jean’s 18th century ancestors settled and some of her distant cousins, who are dairy farmers, still call home. The peaceful scene shown above obscures the horrific events of September 1862 that occurred some 8 miles southwest of here near the village of Sharpsburg–the Civil War battle of Antietam. Moreover, in the aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg the following July, this very site could have been the scene of another battle between North and South, had the Union generals chosen to attack the retreating Confederate forces, who crossed the creek here on their way back to relative safety in Virginia. 

Our main destination last weekend was farther up the Potomac Valley, to the towns of Williamsport, MD, and Welsh Run, PA, both of which grew up along another Potomac tributary, Conococheague Creek, named by the Lenape people, who lived in this region for thousands of years before being decimated and eventually driven out by the settlers from Germany and Great Britain.

Eighty years later, and fifty years beyond the settlers’ war of independence from Great Britain, Williamsport became another stop along the Chesapeake&Ohio Canal, which was built along the often treacherous Potomac River as a placid shipping artery into the continent from Washington, DC. At Williamsport, the canal crosses the Conococheague via a novel aqueduct over the creek. So a 19th-century waterway crosses above the ancient waterway used by the Lenape and other native peoples.

In Welsh Run, PA, some 20 miles north of Williamsport along the Conococheague, refugees from Wales established a tiny community in the mid 18th century. Remaining from that time is a cemetery, which has been restored.

In the midst of the current-day rural farming culture in this region along the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, the Conococheague Institute, a foundation dedicated to preserving the memory of those turbulent times in US history, is restoring some 18th-century structures in Welsh Run and holds weekly events involving artifacts and records from the 1700s. We visited the Institute last weekend and spoke with members of the volunteer and professional staff.

  February 2023 Gallery: The Great Backyard Bird Count

Last weekend the annual Great Backyard Bird Count also took place. This year’s event saw a half million birders from 200 countries sending in their lists of the birds they observed during at least 15 minutes between Feb. 17 and 20. Sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Audubon Society, and Birds Canada/Oiseaux Canada, the GBBC is the largest citizen science event each year. This was my fifth year participating, and the first since moving back to Virginia. This month’s gallery includes photos of birds I observed on Sunday and Monday, the 19th and 20th.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on we spring to March!

In the blog this month:

Do the California Floods Mean Anything for the Drought?

Exploring More of the Potomac Valley

January 2023 Gallery: Old Friends, New Visitors

What do the six atmospheric rivers mean for the California drought?

Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Too early to tell.

It was weird for me to try to follow from 2500 miles away the weather reports from the National Weather Service as the six “atmospheric rivers” blasted across California from late December to mid January. Before we moved back to Virginia last spring and summer, we were always in the middle of the weather tumult that is California. I was always fretting about the state of the plants in the garden, and bemoaning the increasingly obvious impacts of climate change, namely the record drought and the steadily rising average temperature. But now my garden is a fond memory, and all I can do is watch from afar, and wonder if the screaming headlines about floods and devastation match what is true on the ground in the very different parts of the state.

As a Californian, I never assumed that the weather in one place in the state would be the same as in others. California is a huge state; it spans 800 miles of the Pacific Coast and almost 300 miles from ocean to mountain peaks. It has as many or more micro-climates as counties (58). On the same summer day, the high temp in Davis could be a sun-baked105 and the high temp in Oakland, 70 miles away, could be 51, blustery, and cloud-covered.

So it was disorienting to read national headlines day after day proclaiming the devastating floods “across California,” as if the effects were the same everywhere.  So I did what I would have done had I still been there: I checked the National Weather Service for the rain totals for different parts of the state, and, sure enough, found big differences. Yes, the coast in the far north, Humboldt County, received close to 50 inches of rain, truly alarming. Coastal sites farther south, including Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara, received a way-above-average 25 inches since the start of the “water season,” which is measured beginning October 1.

In contrast, my region, around Sacramento, and the LA/LongBeach region, where our daughters live, had almost 14 inches, more than average by January, but not remarkable–except that the previous three water seasons produced less than half of average! Even more sobering is that Fresno, in the heart of the agriculture-intensive Central Valley, has received only 9.3 inches this water season, about average.

So what will the rain totals mean for beating the drought? Well, the state water authority has already gone out on a limb by allocating to agricultural producers 30% of all the water it projects will be in the state’s reservoirs this year. That’s a huge increase over the 0-5% it has allocated the past two years as reservoir stocks have steadily fallen.

This year’s rosy projection is based on hope that the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada–which is now more than 200% of average in January–will not disappear by late spring, which it did last year, when a rainy October and December 2021 were followed by 9 straight months of no rain. Of course, the water authority always hedges its bets by saying that this year’s allocation could change, if no more substantial rainstorms arrive.

So, the bottom line? Despite the screaming headlines and dramatic photos, most of the state is and will still be in a drought, unless more atmospheric rivers come out of the Pacific from February to April.

Meanwhile, we sit comfy and cozy in our Northern Virginia winter, where it rains moderately once or twice a week, and hasn’t yet snowed at all. But that’s another climate change story for another time.

Exploring More of the Potomac Valley

After last month’s anniversary visit to the Potomac River towns of Harper’s Ferry and Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and to the Antietam National Battlefield on the Maryland side of the Potomac, we ventured early this month to a few other towns in the Maryland part of the Potomac Valley. Once you get beyond the sprawling, highly-developed suburbs west of Washington, DC, such as the town in which we now live, and whose fast-paced lifestyle I described in September’s entry, you will find life in that part of the Potomac Valley that is thoroughly rural.

Well, maybe not that rural.  If you drive the two-lane highway between tiny Point of Rocks, Maryland, and completely suburbanized Leesburg, Virginia, the traffic jams don’t say country, nor does winding Highway 9 west of Leesburg to tiny Hillsboro during commuting hours. Nor does Interstate 70 in Maryland, which for 60+ years now has been steadily transforming the widening swath of its route through the western part of the state into a loud, fuming, fast-fed creature that will run over anything in its path. (Well, maybe I’m being too dramatic, but I doubt it.)

But if you slowly explore the tranquil, curvy oblong of country between Poolesville, Maryland, on the southeast; Williamsport, Maryland, on the northwest; the Potomac River on the southwest, and Interstates 70 and 270 on the northeast, you’ll be treated to some of the most beautiful country you can imagine. That’s because you’ll have to slow down on old roads that conform to the shapes of the hills and water-carved valleys, and because there is lots more open or forested land than there are buildings or people.

On the most recent day we visited, we followed the Potomac to Lovettsville, Virginia, where we crossed the river to Brunswick, Maryland, then eased up the narrow highway to little Burkittsville, where we stopped for the photo, above, across the harvested cornfield to the 18th century crossroads.

Our destination was farther up the road toward Middletown, where we took twisty sideroads to the Hawker dairy farm and its Moo Cow Creamery, where we conversed with the co-owner and purchased some of their home-crafted cheeses.

From Middletown, we proceeded along old U.S. Route 40, on the roadbed of the first National Road, which had been authorized by Congress in 1802 and completed from Baltimore to Wheeling, Virginia, in 1818. We passed through Boonsboro, then on to Funkstown, and finally into the 18th century town, now city, of Hagerstown, which celebrates its historic downtown, though Hagerstown’s being on the Interstate 70 path means that its character has changed dramatically in the past century. Part of the attraction of this region for us is that Jean has traced some of her ancestors back to the 18th century in the Hagerstown area and nearby Pennsylvania, so we especially appreciate how this land has retained so much of its character from that time.

January 2023 Gallery: Old Friends, New Visitors

Run the cursor over the photos to see the description.

This month’s gallery features a few experiments with color and light, as well as typical attempts at realism. Kudos to the subjects for their cooperation, but I also appreciate their making me struggle. Kudos also to my Nikon P950 with the 83X Optical Zoom.

Launching into February and new adventures…

I bundled up in my old blue Gortex parka to film the sudden snow squall on Dec. 22, which you witness above. That parka had just hung unused in our closet the past 16 years we spent in California. December in our Sacramento Valley meant that the oranges and lemons in our garden were ripe, ready for picking. Here in our tiny bit of the Potomac Valley, December means that real winter takes hold, and I’m glad to have that parka when I go out along our lake, and then hustle back into the warmth inside. Our oranges now are from the store, and we’re lucky to have them.

In This Month’s Blog:

Celebrating Our Anniversary

Amid the Freeze, the Birds Along the Lake

A Bit of “Blue Zone” Cookery

 

Our Anniversary

December for Jean and me means not only the Christmas season but also our wedding anniversary (Dec. 15th), for which we always take an overnight trip. This December, our trip meant another chance to rediscover favorite places from our years ago in this region. We chose one of our favorite anniversary hideaways, the Bavarian Inn in nearby Shepherdstown, West Virginia, which just happens to overlook the forest-bordered Potomac River, about sixty miles-and maybe three centuries–from where we live. 

 

Shepherdstown sits atop a bluff above an easy ford of the Potomac, which Native peoples such as the Mingo, Shawnee, and Tuscarora used for thousands of years as they farmed, hunted, and traveled through the area.  The town was chartered by English settlers in 1762 and took its name from Thomas Shepherd, the principal landowner. The name replaced Mecklenburg, the name given the settlement by German settlers who came from Pennsylvania and crossed the ford in the early 18th century.

 

Shepherdstown lies just 20 miles upriver from Harper’s Ferry, where two of the great rivers of Eastern North America, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, meet. We have visited Harper’s Ferry many times over the years, largely because of its importance in the American Civil War, but this time was the first since I’ve begun focusing on the river valleys themselves. I walked across the Potomac on the old railroad bridge, which is now part of the Appalachian Trail, and snapped several pictures at parts of the crossing. As one of the pictures shows, the rivers have been bridged several times over the past two centuries, later than when Robert Harper built the ferry that gave the town its name. But the town became strategically important in the 19th century because of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers themselves, and because of the valleys they carved out between the mountain ranges over millions of years.

The Potomac (originally the Algonkian Patawomeck) penetrates through ridges of the Alleghenies, and so formed a natural highway from 400 miles deep in the continent to the Chesapeake Bay and into the Atlantic Ocean. It was a Native trade route before it became a trade route for European settlers in the 17th century.  Its valley then became the setting for the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in the 1830s, and for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the same decade. 

The Potomac also provided the reason why Harper’s Ferry became a strategic military site in the new United States: water power. The land on which those geese peacefully forage today in the photo above was the site for a huge iron forge, armory, and arsenal for the U.S. Army in the early to mid-1800s. Part of the river was diverted into a canal, whose rushing water provided all the power for the forge and the munitions-making factories.

By 1860, little Harper’s Ferry and its military-industrial might became a prime target for the nascent Confederacy, and when war broke out in 1861, Southern troops immediately rushed to the town to try to take over the forge and armory. The Union defenders tried to thwart the plan by setting fire to the facility. The Confederates saved much of the arsenal stock and the industrial machinery, which they shipped south into Virginia to a more secure location.

Still, Harper’s Ferry remained a coveted prize for both sides throughout the war because of its pivotal location at the confluence of river valleys on the border between North and South. It changed hands 11 times as the winds of war shifted.

Antietam: Today’s Serene Beauty Hides a Horrific Past

Whenever we visit Shepherdstown, we always drive across the bridge into Maryland to visit the quiet little town of Sharpsburg, just two miles from the Potomac. Then we continue just beyond the village to the National Battlefield Park at Antietam. We do this because the setting is so peaceful, so rich in wildlife, and so well cared for. But we also do it to keep fresh in our minds the unspeakable horror of the war that came to this quiet place on September 17, 1862: the day on which more Americans died in battle than in any other day in U. S. history. Twenty-three thousand perished in that single day, and well more than that were wounded.

Visiting Antietam always makes us confront the awful contradiction at the heart of American history: the love of magnificent beauty and peace vs. generation upon generation of violence and cruelty toward our fellow humans. As we walked between the split rail fences that mark the most ghastly scene of the battle–the Sunken Road now better known as Bloody Lane–we struggle to keep simultaneously in mind the birdsong and brisk breezes of today versus the ear-splitting din of battle and the hopeless cries of the stricken. Both seem oddly present as we walk and watch.

 

Amid the Freeze, the Birds Along the Lake

On Dec. 19, and then again on Christmas Eve morning, as the 7 degree temp challenged my face and fingers, I went out to see how the birds were faring around the partly-frozen lake.  Here is the best of what I was able to capture of these elusive critters in about an hour each of those days.  Also here are a few shots taken on Dec. 1 at the nearby Riverbend Park on the Potomac.

 

 

A Bit of “Blue Zone” Cookery

The winter holiday season may not be the most typical time to experiment with moving away from the meat-and-sweets-heavy diet that tempts most of us. And no doubt we’ll be falling prey this Christmas to lots of the oh-so-tasty bad stuff. Then again, there’s probably no better time than now to vary our diets with dishes as colorful, delicious, and healthful as those inspired by Dan Buettner’s book The Blue Zones Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100, which he summarizes in a National Geographic article this month.

For this holiday season, one “blue zones” inspired dish we make is our version of “three sisters stew,” named for the corn (maise), squash, and beans mixtures of native American cultures, such as the Wampanoag of New England, whom Buettner celebrates. These three foods create complete protein, and you can combine them with other ingredients to suit your preferred flavor and color palettes.

In our version of the “three sisters stew,” I sauteed in vegetable oil in a large skillet half a large onion and some fresh garlic, then used canned golden corn, one chopped whole zucchini, one can of black beans, and one can of pintos as the base mixture. To this I mixed in a can of diced tomatoes, some chopped cherry tomatoes, a half cup of medium tomato salsa, a dozen chopped medium green olives,  and a quarter cup of red wine. For spice, I added a dollop of sriracha  and a shake or two of red pepper flakes. I salted to taste as the heady mixture cooked on low heat, and also threw in some chopped basil and ground thyme. The great thing about a slow-cooking concoction like this is that you can adjust the level of spice and herbs as the beat goes on for an hour or more. I made enough for a dozen hearty servings that lasted us for half a week.

“Three Sisters” Chili

If you want to add meat and some slightly different flavors to the “Three Sisters” stew idea, you might try a version of the “Three Sisters” Chili that we enjoy. Most of the ingredients are the same, but we cook in for five minutes a pound of ground turkey after the onion and garlic have sauteed and before we add in the “three sisters” and the rest of the ingredients. For our latest rendition, we left out the green olives (we might also substitute chopped black olives), we used red kidney beans instead of black beans, and we added a few hearty shakes of chili powder.  We also amped up a bit the sriracha, the tomato salsa, and the red chili flakes, but how much you add depends on who’s eating. Remember, what really counts is your tasting as you go, and not being afraid to add in what you think might work.

Here’s to a Happy, Loving Holiday Season! On to January 2023!

In this month’s blog:

The First Thanksgiving vs. Our First

The Day After Thanksgiving? Making It Better Than “Black Friday”

November Gallery: Hearty Birds, Naked Trees, and a Pumpkin Moon

Our “First” Thanksgiving

November is a month of giving thanks. The month begins with All Hallows (the day after Halloween) and Dia de Los Muertos, when people celebrate the lives of their loved ones who have gone before. Thanksgiving caps the month, as friends and family members gather to celebrate all that we do for one another, and to express our happiness in being with one another. Thankfulness is at the heart of these celebrations.

This Thursday, November 24, was our first Thanksgiving since moving back to Virginia. We have spent this week doing what we came back here to do: getting together with family members whom we have not shared meals and hugs with in several years, and, in the case of new family members, getting to know them for the first time in person. We got to know our youngest granddaughter, just turned 2, who came with her family from New York, and her brother, now 4, whom we’d not seen since he’d just begun toddling in 2019. We enjoyed parts of 3 days with 3 of our grandkids from Georgia, who are growing up so fast that the oldest is already a high school senior. All told, over Thanksgiving week, we’ve enjoyed meals and games and seeing local sights with 18 family members from three generations and up and down the Atlantic coast.

The First Thanksgiving

“First Thanksgiving” also puts me in mind of the mythic day 400 years ago, in 1621, when, as the story goes, the English pilgrims, who had come to find religious freedom on the cold, rocky shores of North America the year before, enjoyed the bounty of their first harvest in their new home by sharing with new friends, members of the nearby Wampanoag people, who had helped them survive that bitter first year. A very happy vision of hope. Picture Squanto and Massosoit breaking bread and savoring roast turkey with John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, and the whole legendary crew. Or so the story goes, as prettied up from the 19th into the 20th centuries.

Certainly, Native Americans and 21st century historians don’t see the vision that way, as Emily Martin recounts in National Geographic and Claire Bugos writes in The Smithsonian Magazine. A feast of some kind did occur that fall, but it was at best a mere moment of awkward peace in a long and always tragic relationship, which culminated 56 years later with the virtual annihilation of all the Indian peoples in New England and total loss of native land. See David Silverman’s essay in National Geographic for more on the gradual process in the 1600s of English settlers’ enslavemant of native peoples, false alliances, and warfare to bring this destruction about.

So I’d hope that families this week can just enjoy the beautiful opportunity to get together in their own thankfulness, friendship, and sharing, in the knowledge that many millions of others are also celebrating one another. We have no need to imagine that any of us are carrying on a “tradition” that began in colonial days, because we have built our own tradition based on true friendship. That colonial horror is certainly not worth holding on to, but remains a tragic truth that we must acknowledge–not hide by pretending–and that we must and can move beyond.

The Day After Thanksgiving? It Can Be A Lot Better Than “Black Friday”

Do you know that since 2008, by act of Congress, the day after Thanksgiving is named Native American Heritage Day? Not to be confused with National Indigenous People’s Day on the second Monday in October (celebrated in 2022 on October 10, when we visited the National Museum of the American Indian in DC.)

In many parts of the U.S., National Indigenous People’s Day has replaced Columbus Day on the holiday calendar. Columbus Day deserves to be erased as a holiday because of the explorer’s decimation of the native Taino people in the Caribbean.

In stark contrast, Indigenous People’s Day, founded in 1992, deserves our attention as an international day of mourning for the millions of indigenous people around the world robbed of their ancestral lands and massacred by European and American colonizers over hundreds of years.

But Indigenous People’s Day is also a celebration of the indomitable spirit of the survivors of those devastations and the will  of their descendants and their allies to keep traditional cultures alive. The Day also is meant to build public support for these descendants to receive suitable reparations for the centuries of theft, murder, and abuse.  Native American Heritage Day, the focal day within Native American Heritage Month (as proclaimed by President George W. Bush in 1990), celebrates the profound achievements of native cultures not only in past centuries but also today and in our building a better, more responsible future for humans and for the Earth.

So, amid the incessant clamor of Black Friday promoters to get out there and shop till we drop, maybe we can spare a bit of time to enter into Native American Heritage Day and find the real gifts. For me, the greatest gift of native traditions is the profound belief in humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth, as expressed in the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, below.

Native American Gift: Stewardship vs. Exploitation of the Earth

“We all need to ask ourselves not what we can take from Mother Earth, but what we can give back. The Earth is not a commodity for taking, but rather our Mother and our sustainer.”

—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants

Of particular importance to me, as a gardener and as student of the Earth and its creatures, is the stewardship of Earth by native civilizations over at least 13 millennia. Note, if you will, the state of nature in this hemisphere over the 13,000 years or more during which native peoples gently humanized the land, air, and water through sustainable farming practices and fruitful coexistence with natural forces and our fellow creatures. Then compare that record with what has occurred in the mere four hundred years through which we of European origin have acted as the tyrants of the Western Hemisphere, with unlimited ambition to possess and exploit–as well as to dispossess and attempt to annihilate those humans (and other species) who had flourished here before.

In all those 130 centuries of native stewardship, the Earth thrived in this hemisphere, so that when Europeans came, they mistakenly saw nature as “pristine and unspoiled,” because what they encountered possessed beauty, lushness, and fertility beyond anything in their experience in Europe. It’s too bad for all humans and for the Earth that these invaders could not, would not, credit native peoples for the natural riches they encountered, nor would they learn from the natives how to honor their Mother and keep her and all of us, her children, strong. But, like thieves before an unimaginable treasure, they began steady rape and pillage that have led to where we are now.  Even though we in the United States know that the time left for Earth is dwindling because of our incessant pollution of the air and water, most of us remain too sunk in our accustomed ways to do anything but continue on our deadly path. The U.S. remains by far the greatest per capita contributor to pollution and global warming, and powerful corporate forces in the country want to keep it that way.

As long as the thing that most bothers us is the price of gasoline, the Earth will have no chance of survival, nor shall we. We know what needs to be done to counteract the planet’s destruction–primarily moving away from fossil fuels–but will we and our governments have the courage to do more than make vague promises?

November Gallery: Hearty Birds, Naked Trees, and a Pumpkin Moon

This November we are happy in our new Virginia home, though missing the California we had grown to love. We are thankful to live beside the small lake, surrounded by wildflowers and woods, which provides a small sanctuary for wildlife who have been enabled to thrive here. As I watched the leaves fall from the multicolored trees of October, I thought about the poem by the late John Updike (below), which celebrates this month of austere beauty. Here, even as winter approaches, the birds still come.   

November

The striped and shapely
Maple grieves
The loss of her
Departed leaves

The ground is hard
As hard as stone.
The year is old.
The birds are flown.

And yet the world,
Nevertheless,
Displays a certain loveliness–

The beauty of
The bone. Tall God
Must see our souls
This way, and nod.

Give thanks: we do,
Each in his place
Around the table
During grace.

–John Updike, from A Child’s Calendar, 1965

Verses about an early morning miracle on November 8:

Beside the tiny lake, we snap the changing moon:

Baby Luna safe in Mama Terra’s arms.

She glows–a happy pumpkin!–

in smiles from Papa Sol.

So much for which to give thanks! On to December in hope and joy.

 

In returning to Virginia’s Potomac Valley, we were looking forward to a return to four distinct seasons–including a clearly observable autumn–with the turning of green leaves to brilliant reds, purples, oranges, and yellows as temps plummeted toward freezing with an icy winter ahead.  That’s why I’m glorying in views like the ones (above and below) just beyond our door along Lake Cameron. This blog entry may bore you with lots of such views. But I can’t help snapping them!

Effects of Climate Change: “Let’s enjoy the beauty while we still can.”

I first called this entry “Relearning Autumn,” since we were returning to the colder, rainier East with its exquisitely colorful fall. However, according to many studies summarized in National Geographic this month, the gradual, steady warming of the planet is delaying the turning of colors of foliage, and even more alarming, disrupting the natural cycle of trees’ changing of chemical production that brings about the changes we glory in with our eyes every fall. Warming means that fall happens later and spring happens sooner, so the growth and rejuvenation cycle that trees depend on over the winter just grows shorter. So “Learning the New Autumn” seems a better title. I guess our mantra should be, “Let’s enjoy it while we still can.” 

Is there autumn in the Sacramento Valley?

The very different Sacramento Valley’s virtually year-round warmth, with perhaps a few January days just below 32 F, means a preponderance of trees whose leaves never fall. And, oh yes, full on spring comes in February, which always fully delighted this camera-happy gardener.

Now that’s not to say that Californians don’t enjoy a sort of fall in the Sac Valley.  Just last December, 2021, this blog catalogued the annual schedule of leaf falls among our fruit and flowering trees in an entry titled The Holiday Gift of Fallen Leaves.  The entry describes the ongoing power of fallen leaves in the garden’s nutrition and growth. Two of the trees noted in the entry were the wisteria and the cherry plum, whose leaves painted the ground in December:

“Up the Hill” from the Sacramento Valley

For more of a traditional October autumn familiar to Easterners, you need to go “up the hill” from the Sac Valley toward the Sierra Nevada and into El Dorado County. Just north of the town of Placerville lie the orchards, farms, and vineyards of Apple Hill, named for the annual apple harvest festival in September and October. In our California years, we made many visits to Apple Hill and its many close-together and beautifully-organized farms. 

A particularly memorable trip was in late September 2019, when three of our grandkids, their parents, and one of our daughters and her husband joined us there.

“Up the hill” in Virginia: Skyline Drive

From Skyline Drive, we look east across the Blue Ridge Mountains toward Washington, DC.

Here in Northern Virginia, the most iconic destination for those wanting to bask in autumn colors is Shenandoah National Park, where the Skyline Drive, built in the 1930s, winds its way through the Blue Ridge Mountains.  As we strive to rediscover the region, we drove the 70 miles to the park this week and spent the day in near-freezing temps to marvel at the views, do a bit of hiking, and enjoy a good meal at the Skyland Lodge, which has been serving travelers since the 1890s. Skyline Drive provides numerous “overlooks”  (California calls its highway viewing spots “vista points”), at which drivers stop to be dazzled by the autumn scenery.

Seeing the Shenandoah Valley

Westward from Skyline Drive is the famous Shenandoah Valley, which spreads 35 miles wide from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Allegheny Mountains. In the photo above, the Alleghenies are the two most distant light blue ridges. The closest blue ridge is Massanutten Mountain, which separates the two branches (or “forks”) of the Shenandoah River. For this blog, the Shenandoah River is significant because it is the largest tributary of the Potomac River. So everything that you see in the photo, including the mountain ranges, is part of the Potomac Valley watershed.

Geologists estimate that these mountains formed between 1.1 billion and 250 million years ago, making them far older than the much taller Rocky and Sierra chains in the West. The Shenandoah River has been working for hundreds of millions of years to form the broad valley of low hills and flatland that its two forks flow through, while wind and water over those same eons have leveled the mountains down to the 2000-3500 feet typical in Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Even the tops of these mountains are covered in the deciduous trees that give us the colors that proclaim autumn in Virginia each October. 

The October 2022 Gallery

Most of these photos come from our tours around the small lake next to which we now live. Every time we walk the path that surrounds the lake, we make fresh encounters with plants and animals. Earlier this month, we experienced three days of rain that came from Hurricane Ian, which devastated much of Florida, then moved up the Atlantic coast and also affected areas inland. Though most of what you’ll see in these photos is typical of this time of year in Virginia, Ian not only raised our lake’s level several inches, but on two days dramatically influenced the flow of water into the lake, as you’ll see in the video that concludes the gallery.

Storm waters from Ian rush into our little lake.

Happy Halloween and all good wishes for November adventures!

Where we live now is, geographically, a river valley. The Potomac River is only about 8 miles from here, and the little lake just beyond our windows is part of a creek system, Sugarland Run, that winds its way into the Potomac; so, yes, we live in the Potomac Valley. But ask people who live around here if they live in a river valley, and most will look at you as if you just asked them if they live on the moon.  

Why? Because Northern Virginia is a dizzying maze of roadways, housing developments, office parks, schools, hospitals, and shopping hubs, all reached by the speeding (or crawling) cars that careen among them. The drivers are focused–and must be–on their destinations of the moment, or they risk losing precious minutes out of their finely calibrated schedules. All of this hyper busyness takes place–an apt metaphor–amid a green landscape of watered hills that would be covered everywhere with trees if we would only let it be. But that’s beside the point. After all, wherever there are cities, you’ll find the same exquisitely-tuned frenzy that happens regardless of the geography. It’s no wonder that most people here don’t think of themselves as living in a river valley, because their minute-to-minute priorities don’t allow them to see the connection between the Potomac, the streams that flow into it, and themselves.

Why should they see it? How could they? When I look out my window at the shimmering small lake, I luxuriate in its mirrorglass finish, the birdsong, the trees, and the wildflowers it provides, but it’s easy for me to miss that it’s really a reservoir created by a branch of Sugarland Run, which many years ago was dammed at its north end about 100 feet above the stream bed: a stream which a person cannot see from the lake path, so cannot know that it exists. The branch itself was diverted 2 decades ago to build the local segment of the 6-lane Fairfax County Parkway, on which thousands of cars per day zip by on their necessary errands behind high walls that spare surrounding communities from the roar of passing vehicles.

Meanwhile, at the south end of our little lake/reservoir stands a cute, vine-covered bridge, which itself covers four broad pipes that carry the silent waters of Sugarland Run into the lake.  The invisible pipes lie deep under a small community park and, beyond that, under a six-lane boulevard whose thousands of zipping drivers per day would never be aware that a vital stream flows beneath them.

In contrast, everyone in the Sacramento Valley knows that they live in a river valley.

Not only is the Sacramento River and its miles-broad floodplain the most dominant feature of the landscape, but much of what people see as they drive the highways are the treeless fields planted in the crops that the river makes possible.  Most obvious, the lack of water is the no. 1 obsession for most Northern Californians, so the Valley and the Sacramento and American rivers that have carved it are pretty much always on people’s minds. 

I suspect that if drought were to strike the verdant Northern Virginia in which we now live, and if water needed to be rationed here as it is in California, then there would be here a much sharper valley consciousness in this land of the Potomac. If the waters no longer came from pipes like those under that cute little bridge, and if lake levels fell so that the waters looked like Northern California’s Folsom Lake (below) did last year, certainly Northern Virginians would become not only more aware of how the river shapes their lives, but they would also begin to focus their imaginations on solving the crisis, as Californians do.

Similarly, if the rains were to come in astounding profusion, as they have been coming–via climate change–to the Indus valleys in Pakistan and to the river valleys in nearby states like Kentucky (below), then valley consciousness would bloom here, too. If the Fairfax County Parkway were to be suddenly blocked by a flood of Sugarland Run, so that the cars could not move, then we’d all see a connection between the Potomac, the streams that flow into it, and ourselves.

But since we don’t yet have these shocks to give us a valley consciousness, we tend not to see that the bountiful water we have for all our needs, as well as for our lush green landscape, comes fully from our living in the valley of the Potomac and its tributary streams.

A September Lakeside and Riverside Gallery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much beauty in the Valley of the Potomac, and October is on the way. We can’t wait!