Contemplation I repost
Climb down the cliff stair, 223 of them, to this quiet place.
Category: Finger Lakes Region of New York State
Little Red Maple
First to flower, first to turn
Red Maple (Acer Rubrum)
The Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) is tolerant of diverse conditions, making it a perfect choice for this spot on the short of Beebe Lake.
Maple Syrup
Even though it is not a “Sugar Maple, early spring, the sap can be boiled down to syrup.
Turning Tree
The first to flower in spring and the first to turn in autumn.
From the Top Down
This maple turns from the top down and is already bare for most top branches.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A Perfect Afternoon On Beebee Lake repost
Anticipating Our Tenth Wedding Anniversary
After work on a 2008 Friday afternoon in October we sped over to Beebee Lake on the Cornell University Campus to catch the late afternoon glow……
Click Me for the complete post with photographs.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Lib Slope Hickory
the largest and brightest yellow canopy on Libe Slope.
Libe Slope
Cornell University is on a west-facing hill above Cayuga lake. Libe Slope is between the West Campus and Quadrangle / Libraries.
Besides the exercise of walking the 18 degree incline several times each day, Cornell students and alumni remember The Slope for autumn color.
Built in 1868, McGraw Hall has the honor of having the first of Cornell’s towers. The building is built of Ithaca stone and is home to the American Studies Program, Department of History, Department of Anthropology, and Archaeology Intercollege Program. The first floor of McGraw Hall houses the McGraw Hall Museum, a collection of roughly 20,000 objects from around the globe used for teaching by the Anthropology Department.
Hickory
This is a Pignut Hickory (Carya glabra), the largest tree according to a 2009 Campus Tree Inventory (see link, below).
This hickory grows south of the Johnson Museum and among the autumn glories, it is the largest and brightest yellow canopy on Libe Slope.
Contrast
I remember this hickory for the contrast between the canopy and trunk, the way the clumps of yellow hang from dark boughs. An overcast day is the best to capture this spectacle. October 20, 2012 provided both bright sun and dark, rolling autumn clouds. I waited on the north side, sheltered from the glare of the sky, for these perfect moments.
Leaves and Nuts
The pignut hickory is native to these Eastern United States. It is known to favor moist slopes and this specimen has thrived on The Slope. The ground beneath it is thick with nuts.
One week later as Hurricane Sandy approached the east coast
Just one week later, late afternoon on a sunny Friday as hurricane Sandy approached the east coast the hickory has fewer, tawny golden leaves.
Wonderful Flow of Limbs among Gold
References
A Photo Tour of Key Buildings at Cornell University by Allen Grove
Websites
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Kame = Pile
Kettle and Kame Topography
Hard on the defunct gravel pit of the northwest side of the preserve is the deposit of glacial rocks washed to some extent by melting ice the former owners of the pit were turning over for profit with the averted result of destroying the water sources for the ecosystems of the future preserve.
The deposit is called a kame. Kames are the obverse of kettles, formed with an enormous remnant of glacial ice melts in place leaving a substantial depression. A kame is formed when earth gathers in a depression formed by meltwater running over a glacial surface. When the glacier melts (in this area the ice wash a mile high), the washed earth is left as a steeply sided pile we experience as a hill.
Water flowing beneath glaciers forms the long, ridged hills, eskers, we explored in yesterday’s post.
The forested land of this video the kame, upper left, shown in the header, an IPhone7 photograph of GoogleEarth. Also marked is a path for the primary esker, the bog formed by a kettle and another kettle that is now a pond. Click me to view a pdf file saved from GoogleEarth. It provides a clearer view of the header image.
Click me for better experience viewing the following video. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page. Note the replay icon (an arrow circling counter-clockwise.
Click Me for the first post of this series.
Thank You for visiting. Here is a recapitulation of Malloryville Preserve.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Long, Ridged Hill
A Look at an Esker
Well formed, sinuous, graded on both sides, eskers can be mistaken for man-made earthen structures, such as railroad embankments. Here is an example, nine-tenths (0.9) of a mile long substantial enough to direct the flow of Fall Creek. On entering the Malloryville esker bed the stream makes a right angle turn.
Here we are at the foot of the primary esker of Malloryville Preserve (it is marked as such on the information placard of this series first post). The slope to the right is the esker. A swamp lies to the right.
This video provides a better feeling for this esker.
Click me for better experience viewing the following video. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page. Note the replay icon (an arrow circling counter-clockwise.
Click Me for the first post of this series.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Turtle Socks
Flowers from Mars
Two kettles of the preserve represent a pond and, below, a bog. Here is a photograph from the observation platform using the IPhone 7. I brought along the Canon dslr and 100 mm “macro” lens for the stars of this show…..
….purple pitcher plants (scientific name: Sarracenia purpurea). In past years, the central observation deck cut-out, hosted healthy pitchers. Today, invading high bush blueberries from the bog margin, crowded out the pitchers and the only flowering plant were among the grasses 8 to 10 feet away. My goal was photographing the extraordinary flowers.
Each flower rises from the base on a strong stalk. Here are the pitchers, also called “turtle socks”, flooded with sunlight.
A flower unlike any I have experienced, like the carapace of an insect, the reproductive element underneath a hood.
The posterior, there are only bracts.
I have, somewhere, macro images of the pitcher, with the downward facing hairs. Brought the wrong lens to capture this at a distance.
Click Me for the first post of this series.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Flowing water
Water flowing from glacial till
Amazingly swamp, fen, bog, marsh can all be experienced during a thirty minute walk within this preserve. Here we are traversing a swamp …
…buoyed along on planking from recycled plastic.
The founders of this place, from a dairy farming family, strove for years to protect the water sources from encroachment by development, primary a duplicate of a gravel pit found on the other side of the Fall Creek valley.
This former acidic rainwater, percolating through glacial till, is buffered and chemically altered to create these multiform environments.
Water, flowing quietly, almost soundlessly, with powerful effect.
Click me for better experience viewing the following video. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page. Note the replay icon (an arrow circling counter-clockwise.
Click Me for the first post of this series.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Formed by Water
Overview
Let’s digress from our exploration of Iquique, Chile for this attraction local to the Finger Lakes Region of New York State, an environment diametrically opposed to the Atacama desert. The Preserve at Malloryville opened 1997, eleven years after we moved to our home our home on Fall Creek (see header photograph).
The correct name is the O.D. von Engeln Preserve at Malloryville. I knew this name from his Finger Lakes geology book obtained from the library and read closely in the early 1990’s. It helped me understand the landscape among which our home was set, in 5 minutes walking distance from the future location of the preserve.
The text from the above information placard at the preserve entrance says it all:“Wetland habitats are shaped by the water that supplies them: the amount, how it moves, and the minerals it carries. Malloryville’s eskers, kames and kettles control the rate of delivery of water to the surface and suffuse it with varied concentrations of minerals. As ground water bubbles to the surface at the base of these hills, distinctive wetland habitats form, each with its own unique community of plants. The preserve’s intense concentration of bog, fen, marsh and swamp habitats is the direct result of ground water moving through this unusually complex array of glacial features.
Before the preserve was opened I was familiar with the landforms described in the above placard. My son and I did his first camping on top of an esker outside our front door. We enjoyed hiking along Fall Creek.
To be continued…..
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Flight
Dried and Hardened, Ready for Flight
Clinging to my sleeve, the newly emerged Monarch wings dried. It is a process of excreting the fluids pumped into wings, crumpled from folding within the chrysalis, to expand them. The clear drips of water on my arm are this fluid. I spent the hour sitting by our pool, savoring the summer morning. The butterfly signaled readiness, wings dried and hardened, opening and closing them slowly. Offered my finger it crawled to my hand, across to the thumb and, running out of space, took off.
Click photograph for a larger view and use Ctrl-x to zoom in closer.
Pre-flight Wing Flaps
Click me for better experience viewing the following video. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page. Note the replay icon (an arrow circling counter-clockwise.
Click me for better experience viewing the following video. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page. Note the replay icon (an arrow circling counter-clockwise.
First Flight
Ninety minutes later, I returned to the tree to find the Monarch still perched on the branch. A few minutes later, gone.
I used the IPhone 7 for these views..
Thank You for visiting. Click me for the first post of this series.
