World_Population_8B

Return for the Swifts

Two years ago (Fire Swifts, 3 July 2020) I wrote about enjoying the flight of Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) while I sat on my back patio. In summer mornings and evenings I could see a flight of ten to twenty Swifts gliding above my house and over the close-at-hand stand of trees as they sought and caught flying insects that lived in the trees, under the leaves, on the branches and trunks. The Swifts also gobbled up the mosquitoes that liked to breed in the ponds along the stream beneath the trees.

But now the Swifts are mostly gone. Sometimes when I am working in my yard I might hear twittering in he sky. I look up and might see three to five Swifts overhead.

Have I noticed a change in the number of insects I have to swat or other troublesome flying insects? Not so much, but maybe there are more gnats this year than in others.

Where did the Swifts go? I have no idea. But I hope they found a place to their liking and have not just become part of the 5 billion songbirds that we lost since 1970. That comes to a false number average of 60 million birds lost in each of those years. If we were to think of birds as people that is Nine Times the population of the United States lost each year. Now it sounds like a big number.

There are numerous factors that are leading to a decline in the number of songbirds in the United States. These factors include: tall buildings – birds crash into them during their migrations; feral cats – put out of the house at night kill millions of song birds each year; diseases – some of which are suspected of becoming more prevalent due to the warming climate; and habitat destruction – when our towns and cities and suburbs are changed to accommodate our expanding population.

I believe the main reason that I do not see my Chimney Swifts wheeling overhead in the early morning and at twilight is because of habitat destruction.

Was there some forest that was cut down in my neighborhood? No; the last large tract of timbered grazing area in my town was destroyed and filled with houses in the 1990s. Swifts might live in hollowed out trees that happened to stand in an old forest.

Audubon tells a story of when we was cataloguing and painting the birds of North America of finding a tall, hollowed out sycamore tree in Kentucky. He stepped inside and found it filled with Chimney Swifts which had made nests on the interior walls of their “chimney”.

My Swifts had no such palatial home as I believe they nested in an old brick chimney of a boiler/heater for a small hotel on the highway near my house. When the motel was torn down to make way for a gas station and store, the chimney was torn down. This was the same time that my Swifts disappeared. I have made the assumption that the Swifts nested in the old chimney.

Is there a way to bring the Swifts back to the area of my neighborhood?

I think there is.

A quick search of the internet (searching “Swift Tower”) turns up initiatives by individuals, groups and communities to maintain a healthy and helpful population of the insect-eating Swifts. The individuals and groups do not build free standing brick chimneys. They build stand alone “Swift Towers”. Several State Audubon societies have articles on building Swift Towers on both private and public lands. There are links on these pages to other organizations as well, including designs for the towers. As one article states, if you are asked what you are building, just tell them it’s a bird house.

And what of my small population of Swifts. I will approach the company that is building the gas station, and tell them the story of my neighborhood Swifts. And I will ask them if they would build a Swift Tower to replace the old chimney.

And for my City I plan to attend a council meeting and ask that they consider requesting that any companies that are tearing down old establishments that have chimneys to replace that chimney with a Swift Tower.

I think the twittering I hear in the mornings and evenings is worth that little bit of effort.

Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP) is supporting Chimney Swift protection through a variety of approaches. We have installed nearly 150 Chimney Swift towers to provide breeding habitats for these birds. Audubon’s Chimney Swift Tower Program | Audubon Society of Western PA (aswp.org)

John James Audubon’s experience in visiting a large dead sycamore tree filled with the nests of Chimney Swifts is provided at American Swift | John James Audubon’s Birds of America. He estimated their number to be 9,000.

To read more information about the decline of our songbird population see the 2019 study as published in Science magazine. It may be found at – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone | Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Where Have the Songbirds Gone? | NASA Applied Sciences

Fighting Climate Change

“Give me a fast ship, because I intend to go into harm’s way.” John Paul Jones

In this decade, the nations of the world must come together to protect our Earth from the effects of our industries of the last several hundred years.

Our vessel must be worthy, if it is not, we will not succeed.

The 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be the starting point of these Stone Fig Climate Change postings. The IPCC is a body of the United Nations tasked to assess the science related to climate change. Created in 1988, the objective of the IPCC is to provide all levels of government with scientific information that can be utilized in developing climate policy.

Its website may be found at IPCC — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC not only provides information to the nations of the world but to each of us as well. It is appropriate that we should understand the reports by the IPCC. Our nation and other nations will use this 2021 Report, and the reports that follow, to establish climate change policy and regulations.

To support our country, we the people, must have a basic understanding of the chemical and physical processes within our Earth’s climate. We should be able to understand and have a reasoned opinion on the actions developed to combat climate change. The basic principles and ideas of climate processes can be easily found, and refreshed through numerous sites on the internet.

When we read the reports and the proposed laws and regulations it is appropriate for us to use our personal skills of critical thinking to determine whether the proposed regulations are supported by the science. The regulations passed and the support we give to the enforcement of those regulations will determine whether we have a “worthy vessel” and whether or not we will, in the end, succeed.

I will focus my Climate Change postings on reading the documents published by the IPCC. I will start with the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) from the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Report. The SPM may be found at IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf.

The SPM begins with an assessment of “The Current State of the Climate”. In this assessment reference is made to “AR5” which is the IPCC 5^th Assessment Report (AR5). The SPM states that since AR5 was released in 2013 improvements have been made in recording the geologic records of ancient paleoclimate. These ancient records are reached by taking core samples of glaciers, tree rings, and sediments from the ocean floors. These core samples can provide us with climate records that reach back long before the early industrial age of the 1700s and 1800s. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) the study of Paleoclimate provides an essential perspective for assessing the potential impacts of future climate on “natural systems and the people who rely on them”. Scientists use the geologic evidence of past climate changes to understand the rates and patterns of Earth systems’ responses to a broad range of climate and landscape changes. When integrated into climate models these paleoclimate data provide a means to improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change.

When we review just the last 100 years, we can see the beginning of a significant increase in average global temperature. This is shown in Figure SPM.1 of the SPM. The graph is shown below.

In my view, after the Second World War (1945) the nations of the world, led by historically industrialized nations and nations with the resources to become industrialized nations, began a significant increase in activity These activities reinforced the change from farm-based/agrarian activities as primary human-activity to that of industrial-labor activities which had begun in the 1800s. To support these industrial-labor activities our collective power requirements for light, energy, transport, and transportation increased apace with this change.

This increase can be seen in the graph above.

It can be seen from the graph that in the last 50 years the average global surface temperature has increased at a average rate of 0.018 degrees Celsius (C) per year. This is an increase of 0.9 degrees C in 50 years. The upward angle of the graph will likely continue to rise if something is not done. What is “something”? It is action by each person, by every nation, to reduce the effect of human-activities that contribute to the increases in average global temperature.

To borrow a phrase from the movie Jaws, “We are going to need a bigger boat.”

We are in need of a revolution against our own past.

I am not saying the past was wrong or evil. Those activities built a standard of living for the people of the industrialized world who should now help raise the standard of living in the non-industrialized world.

We are on the threshold of a new age. We will step through; but what will we find?

If we do not address the rising global temperature and the changes to the climate it is causing, the poorer will suffer even more, and the rich will become poor and suffer as well. If we address the issues of climate change we can likely maintain a standard of living and can raise up those who do not yet have it.

In the pictures below of heroes of the American Revolution we see the spirit of the men and women who chose to fight to bring change to their way of government. Would they be ruled, or would they govern themselves?

We have to fight again, but this time against ourselves. We must use our individual critical skills to determine what actions each of us can take and should take. Then we must act!

The future does not belong to the timid.

We are all called. These pictures of John Paul Jones and Molly Pitcher (Mary Hays/McCauly) call to mind the fight that is ahead and the determination with which we must face it.

Their fight was for a new nation in a new world. Our fight is one to save the world for ourselves, for our descendants, and for all of life on the planet.

Picture “Captain John Paul Jones” 1938, by N.C.Wyeth

Figure SPM.1 copied from Summary for Policy Makers, 2021 United Nations Climate Change Report

Picture “Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth ” 1912, by C. Y. Turner

Three Photographs

What do three photographs have to do with each other. These three have no people in them, at least none that you can see. But in each of these photographs I can see multitudes of friends and fellow travelers. I want to rehabilitate that term. It a good phrase in which to capture the idea of someone well-met while you are on the road.

The term, fellow travelers, in its best use is when I apply it to the young and old, and the men and women I met while backpacking in Europe and when driving across America around the time I took these three pictures.

In Europe most of our travel was by train and we would meet and link up with a small group of people, two others, maybe four, and travel with them for a day or two or maybe a week. They were our traveling companions. They might not be going to our ultimate destination, but for the moment – or for the week – we were thrown together in a train car or in a City – and we talked and planned and laughed as the woods and houses and fields flashed by or as we strolled in a city park.

And if they were well-met, they were lively and jovial, and we wanted also to be a “Hail-fellow, Well-met”. You would share your lunch of tomatoes and cheese and bread, and they would add sausage and at the end perhaps a cigarette. You might go drinking together at night, and later stand on a street corner and rather loudly sing some song you just learned. You may sit up the night in a train compartment talking of places you’ve been and places you intend to go. And they would rise and fall with their own ideas, and the next day with a hearty handshake and a slap on the back or maybe a kiss you would part never to see each other again. But later, telling the story of that train ride you remember your adventures, and wonder when you will have a chance to smoke the cigar they had given you.

It was someone with whom to spend some time when you were on a trip abroad, alone. Cigarettes play a role in this picture, but I will say there is no more deadly habit. If you smoke, stop now and never take it up again. Ask me why I had 5 bypasses. I will tell you it was the cigarettes. It was part of my old life. It is not part of my new life. And it does not need to be part of yours.

These three pictures represent the time when I was driving across country as a young man to go to Vietnam. I was not in the jungle, I served off the coast in the Navy. Later I would go and wander across northern and eastern Europe for a Summer. The pictures are before that time when I was driving West across the Untied States. The middle picture shows that, an open road. I probably took that somewhere in Oklahoma when there were hills in the distance and places that I had never been and would only pass through this once. I stopped and went to a small diner and had corned beef on rye, and I wrote about it.

The old “farm” house back home was torn down and rebuilt closer to the River. That’s on the right. Times there are not forgotten. Christmases. Trees with tinsel. Fruit baskets. Summers spent crabbing and rowing on the River. And we would wade out through the now gone fields of ell-grass, and swim.

The picture on the left is Hawaii when my ship passed through. I had time to see Hanauma Bay before it was crowded with other people who wanted to see that bit of paradise. I wonder if the Parrotfish I followed knew this or if its descendants know it now. I swam out on a calm afternoon over the reef and looked down the far side where dwell the Octopus and the needle toothed Shark. And I swam back with the image of the darkness where the light did not penetrate.

So go out. Travel, and rejoice in your adventures with the people that you will meet.

Young Man/Old Man

The tree has stood here for generations. Its wrinkled features speak of Springs and hot Summers and Winter storms and Fall Hurricanes rolling out of the Sea.

Yet here it stands. Right where the mountain man had stopped over 300 years before, and leaning on his staff he paused to look out to the Sea beyond the valley – and he has stayed here – still thinking. His hand clutches the shaft of his staff. You can see his fingertips curling around from the back of the shaft as he rests his temple against his hand. His hair is blown upwards and back as he stares stonily out towards the distant Sea.

The years have washed soil and stones and leaves out of the hills above so that the man’s shoulders and torso and hips and legs are now buried deep below. Yet still he stands and looks outward and wonders. When he decides, will he rise up and tear his roots from deep within the earth and walk these hills again?

These are tales of the deep woods.

The young man pushed out by his tribe,

Walked toward the sound of the Sea.

He crossed mountain peak and fast glacial stream.

He forded broad rivers.

He climbed stones as if they were steps to the top of the ridge.

And from his new vantage point he could see the great Sea before him.

He leaned his head on his staff and he wept, because he had found Ocean, his mother.

What would he say to her when she saw him and rose up? Would she be in a fury? Would she rejoice that he had found his way back to her?

He leaned on his staff, for a year, and another, and another ten and then a hundred and then more.

He stands there still wondering how he will be greeted when he reaches the rolling wave and the murmur of shale rolling in the retreating wave.

What will he say that he has accomplished? Who will he say that he has helped? Has he made his path a better place? Has the world benefited from his life?

He leaps up and leaves his body behind, still, standing, staring.

His spirit goes out and back along his path to correct what he has damaged.

When he sees a tired person sitting next to the road, the wind blows down and refreshes the weary. The rain falls upon the parched . The sun shines on the lonely.

The young man in the wind and rain and sunshine is rebuilding his story.

And he will smile.

One day he will return to this tree and shake loose the binding roots and finish his walk to the Sea and be greeted with joy.

This is one of the trees that I remember. There are many others. These are the trees I see while I am in the woods. They speak to me as the warm spring rains patter down on their budding branches. When the Summer storm whips the limbs and branches, they howl with strength. When the Winter winds bring snow and ice that crackles on the branches when the sun returns and when I cross the snowy field to visit them, they moan and creak like an old gate on rusted hinges.. The trees are always with me, they are everywhere. They are of many ages, and they always welcome me to the deep forest and woods by the lane.

Some have forgotten how to leaf and bud and leaf, but still stand as a home for birds and squirrels and the members of the fourth kingdom, the fungus that returns the tree to the soil. Some have fallen in the wind. Some have fallen to the ax. But they all live on in my memory and in the memory of all who visited them and touched their bark, or played in their shade, or picked up their Fall leaf form the ground. Or watched a bird fly among its branches.

They are our friends. Each has its story. You must listen to hear it being told.

Birds Range of the Home

In 2017 I was conducting bird surveys as a volunteer at the Manassas Battlefield National Park. I was helping to catalogue the presence of two species, The Northern Bob White Quail and the Henslow’s Sparrow. The Park Wildlife Management personnel and I were interested in seeking out the birds in selected areas of the Park

I would go out to the Bob White areas in the early morning hours so I could be there in time for sunrise. I usually went out earlier than necessary, and I walked well-known paths to be at the listening point while it was still dark. I would pack-out a folding chair and a thermos of coffee. When I got the listening point, I would sit and watch the stars in their motion across the night sky and see them fade as night turned into Dawn. At Dawn I opened my coffee thermos, and poured a cup, and toasted the new day.

The survey was conducted in the Spring and we would listen for the daybreak calls of the coveys of quail we hope to hear. There were twenty of these sites scattered around the Park. The Park personnel and I divided the sites up so we could cover all of them during scope of the annual survey.

The sky might be clear when I went out in the early morning before dawn, but on the ground it was dark. If I had not had several decades of experience in walking the Park, I might have gotten turned around. I wrote about my experience in an article titled Frosty Morning and published on this site on 15 November 2018.

The Park personnel and I would often talk about the birds of the Park and how we thought that they would be affected by climate change, especially as the average temperatures warmed in the more northern parts of the species’ range.

In order to develop a better understanding of the potential impact of climate change on bird species, I searched for related articles. A good one I found regarding bird species and changes in their range due to climate changes, was based on surveys of numerous species in Finland between 1974 and 2010.

The results are basically that yes, the ranges do change due to changes in climate. The ranges of the various bird species change with an expansion at the northern/top/cold edge. But the southern edge is not moving northward/poleward. Part of this is that a species would have to lose their niche, basically become extinct, in the southern regions in order to say that they are no longer using the southern/warm edge.

I had initially thought of a bird’s range as a box that would move north as the climate warmed. However, that does not appear to be the case. As it turns out the box stretches and gets bigger as the range extends to the North. The range expands northward with the increasing temperature and the birds take advantage of more range.

Climate change may affect a bird species physiologically in that its old range may become too hot or too wet for the bird species to thrive. They have to change or move. But these conditions, even if they do not directly affect the birds, may cause a portion of the bird’s range to become unusable at the level of the current population if a food source dies out due to the change in the overall climate, or if the food source moves out to a more acceptable range, or if the food source becomes unavailable at a time that it is need for the bird’s reproduction and life cycle. An example of this latter was published in Science New in 2006.

The first article I read about the impact of climate change on bird species was a 2006 article in Science News concerning the timing of the arrival of the European Pied Flycatcher in their nesting area. The article pointed out that the birds migrate based on the length of daylight in their wintering area in Africa. But the appearance of the caterpillars, the major food source at their nesting area for feeding their chicks, was based on temperature. With the northern temperatures warming earlier, by the time the birds arrived, the caterpillars had reached the next stage in their life cycle and are no longer available for the birds and their nesting brood. The numbers of the Flycatchers in some of their historic breeding areas had fallen by 90%. The study found “a correlation between declining Flycatcher numbers and the timing of the peak food for their chicks.”

I recently ran across a journal article concerning birds of China and the effect of climate change on their range. The article pointed out that the extension of a bird’s range may meet an obstacle that it cannot pass through. This might be a range of high mountains or an open ocean. The birds at that point have reached the limit of their range. The birds may well have to make a change in their diet or risk being unable to maintain the new range that they have colonized. For the birds to succeed in the new region they must find fruiting plants or insect or other food stuff available in an abundance on which the species colonizing the area can survive. This is especially hard if the new range is populated by a species that already relies on a limited supply of that food. The picture at the top of this article is a version of some of the charts from the article showing potential movement of species.

What about the Quail and Henslow’s Sparrow at Manassas? Will they have to move? So much of a bird’s ability to use a region is predicated on their ability to find suitable habitat. Destruction of habitat will force out a population. However, as the climate grows hotter and more humid over the next several decades these bird’s ranges may expand, but it is different for each species. The southern edge of the Quail’s range is well below us, extending into Mexico. I do not believe we will see a change in the population of Quail due to climate change. However, for Henslow’s Sparrow, here in the Mid-Atlantic region, we are between the breeding (northern) and the non-breeding (southern) range. We may lose our small, but for me dynamic, local population. There may be issues for the Henslow’s Sparrows in the southern reaches of their breeding range where we are located. as it becomes hotter and wetter. Only time will tell.

Article regarding study in Finland, The breeding ranges of Central European and Arctic bird species move poleward. may be found at: http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/3447813

Science News article (only available to subscribers to Science News) on European Pied Flycatcher may be found at: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/no-early-birds-migrators-cant-catch-advancing-caterpillars.

Article regarding range shift of Chinese birds under the potential of climate change: (PDF) Shifts in bird ranges and conservation priorities in China under climate change (researchgate.net)

Forbidden Planet

I remember the flashing lights on the screen of the darkened movie theater and the actors’ screams that I did not understand.

But yesterday when I happened to see on my television the movie that had so frightened me as a child, it was like seeing an old friend.

I was four years old when I went with my older brother to see The Forbidden Planet, a science-fiction movie that he and all his friends wanted to see. I had probably begged to go along with him, and since it was a rainy day my father decided that he would come as well. The three of us, who more often were found on an Autumn afternoon out hiking along the seashore or playing ball in the yard, were walking into the only movie theatre in town.

When I got scared my father had to walk me out and let me sit in the lobby. He watched the end of the movie through the door to the theatre. I had nightmares after the movie, and I did not like to have the lights turned out in the room I shared with my brother.

I have always remembered going to that movie and my reactions later at home. But I have always cherished the memory. When I pass the theater, which is still in operation in downtown Newport, RI, I think to myself of the time that I went there with my father and my brother, now both gone. And I smile. I smile not because of my childhood fears, but because I was with my father and my brother and they looked out for me. So my adult memories of the movie are happy memories.

But what about the movie itself?

As I watched it the other day, I recalled the scenes of the underground civilization, of “Robbie the Robot”, and the encampment of the space men outside their ship. But I also saw other things that I could not have seen then. I saw the amazing color of the old film, now digitally restored. I saw scenes that I recognized as being repeated in Star Trek and Star Wars. I watched a plot unfold, not of discovery, but of finding terror inside one’s self.

The premise of the movie is that twenty years prior the spaceship Bellerophon had left Earth to explore the fourth planet orbiting the star Altair. Altair is the 12th brightest star in the night sky. It is part of the Constellation Aquilla, the Eagle. The star is also part of an astronomical asterism (pattern of stars) known as the Summer Triangle. The other stars in the triangle are the star Deneb (19th brightest in the night sky) in the constellation Deneb (the Swan), and the star Vega (5th brightest star in the night sky) in the constellation Lyra (the Lyre).

In the plot there had been no signals from the planet for twenty years. The United Planets Cruiser “C57-D” was sent out to Altair to determine if there were any survivors. As it turned out there were two survivors, Dr. Morbius and his daughter, Altaira, played by Walter Pigeon and Anne Francis. The Commander of the C57-D, J.J. Adams, was played by Leslie Neilson.

Millions of year ago the planet had been the home of an advanced race, the Krell. They had developed their science and technologies to the point that the negative thoughts of their subconscious had taken the shape of a beast. The Best ravished their civilization and killed all Krell. All the scientists and crew of the Bellerophon, except Dr. Morbius and his daughter, were also killed by this electrostatic, but invisible, beast.

Dr. Mobius has not yet determined the cause of the beast, which returns as his thoughts turn against the crew of the C57-D and his daughter, who plans to leave with them.

So much of science fiction is about the initial exploration of space, and exploration and exploitation of the planets and civilizations that are discovered. The movie is an exploration of the human mind and how it can become lost in its prejudices and dislikes. His thoughts became a beast that destroys all.

If there is a moral to this story, it is that dwelling on the negative will be destructive. Forgiveness may provide a way out of unbearable troubles. If Morbius had not distrusted the crew of the arriving space cruiser, would the beast have reappeared and destroyed him?

This was a film that forecasts future developments in the science fiction genre. Its premise and its questions are echoed in the Star Wars trilogy, as are its flowing introductory script and some of the visual aspects of the Krell’s home world.

In the night, the beast we hear is often of our own making.

All pictures and images are taken from MGM stills and posters related to the movie, Forbidden Planet.

The IMDb site related to the movie Forbidden Plant may be found at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/ .

Petroglyph Trail

It was 1993. We went out west to see the land and the National Parks. We traveled in the arc of the states of the Four Corners; New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona.

Our first stop was Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. We wanted to see the magnificent remains of the cliff houses built by Native Americans centuries before.

But 700 years after they built the cliff house, they left them. The community was not destroyed by fire or earthquake, but something happened, and the People left. Other People known as the Pueblo Indians came hundreds of years after the original inhabitants had left. The Pueblo Indians called the builders of the cliff houses the Ancient Ones, the Anasazi.

The Anasazi had lived on these mesas for nearly a thousand years, from approximately 600 C.E. (Common Era, after the birth of Christ) to 1300 C.E.). Then, suddenly, they had left their homes, their places of ceremony, their work, their pottery, and they had gone. It is surmised that perhaps the cause was a change in the climate that made the crops fail. Several theories have arisen, but it is generally felt that their descendants are the modern day Pueblo Indians.

When we visited the ruins of the cliff houses, we had a fascinating experience. We were able to tour some of the ancient homes and see their construction. We climbed ladders. We entered rebuilt pit houses. We hiked trails. But it always seemed that we were with a rather sizable group. And we did not see much in the way of wildlife. I would see some Mule Deer when I would go out in the early morning for a walk at sunrise. But other than that and the occasional bird heard up in the trees, it seemed as if we humans were alone on Mesa Verde.

My son, a young outdoorsman, felt the same way. He and I wanted to get on a trail that was not so heavily traveled so we might see what we might see. His interest lay in snakes. Mine did not.

We stopped at the Visitors’ Center and asked the Ranger where we might go for a hike where it was not so crowded. We thought perhaps in the forests along the rim of the mesa. We were told that at that time of day the Petroglyph Trail was usually not crowded.

We made sure we had water with us. And as always, I carried a trail map so we would know where we were. And we set off.

We quickly moved from the trail head into the pine forest that then covered much of the park. It was a well-marked trail. There were some tight spaces and steep climbs up hewn stone steps, but it was very enjoyable. The trail was about 700 feet above the canyon floor.

The trail wandered along the side of the mesa about 100 feet below its top. From our map I could tell that we had covered a good part of the trail and were approaching an area that looked out over the lower portions of the park. Near the end of the mesa, the canyon widened to meet another canyon. We would have a good view out across the canyons.

The trail had been rocky, and as we neared this point I was focused on the trail in front of me. If it hadn’t been for the sign, we might have walked right past the petroglyph panel. The sign said, “Do Not Touch”.

Touch what I thought? But it caused me to stop and look up. The petroglyphs we were looking for were high above the sign, well above the level of my head. The Petroglyphs were inscribed in the sheet of stone that formed the side of the mesa. The Petroglyphs were in good condition.

The height of the inscribed figures above the trail has doubtlessly protected the panel from damage as they are out of the reach of curious hands. The Petroglyphs were plain to see and included animals, hand prints, human shapes, and geometric designs. However, their meaning, implied by the ancient carvers, is lost in time. One circle did catch my eye as the possible cycle of the moon with the new moon hidden from view behind a mesa jutting high into the night sky.

As we walked back, we talked of the possible meaning of the glyphs and why and when they might have been carved. We talked of how some of the mysterious glyphs may have been carved by an ancient man who walked out to the point of the mesa with his son to read the messages left from before his time. Perhaps they carved a message of their own.

Our return trail crossed the top of the mesa. Before we reached the trailhead, we saw a whip-tail lizard dart across the surface of the rocks. Perhaps he was looking a bug for his dinner. He was in a hurry, so he did not become dinner for a watchful hawk.

And on this hike, no snakes.

Information on Mesa Verde National Park including trail maps can be found at https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm .

Grainy, but not Old

Thirty years ago, when I began going to Battery Heights to hike, 35mm film cameras were used by, I would guess, the majority (>50%) of the adult population. Even as that trend changed towards digital cameras, I continued to use my old Canon camera. This grainy picture, of a tree and the slope beyond to a tree line and a sinister cannon, is the last picture I took with that camera which carried me through three decades.

My first camera had been a Kodak Brownie camera (Starflash). I used that camera for 15 years, dutifully carrying my film to a photo counter to have it developed. In a week or so I could go and pick up the pictures and see the results of my last two months of photography.

Those pictures that I deemed worth keeping, I am glad to say the majority of them, I placed in a photograph album using little gummed corners which held the pictures in place. How many years, if not decades, has it been since I licked the dry gum of a corner and placed it, with three of its brothers to hold my picture securely on the page. Now nearly 70 years later I can look back at pictures of my friends and family and relive those moments with them. I can see pictures of the dogs of my youth with whom I ran fields and roamed swamps. I hope to be reunited with all of them at the end of my days on Earth.

I bought my Canon while my ship was marooned in Japan. It replaced my Brownie which no longer functioned after I had wrapped it in plastic to try my hand at underwater photography. The bag leaked. All but one picture on the roll was destroyed by the salt water.

I liked those cameras from which, when I heard a resounding click of the mechanical shutter, I knew I had captured the image I saw through my view finder. There was no automatic system to adjust the color or to focus on a distant unimportant object when what I wanted was to capture the seeded-head of a tall stem of field grass that stood before me. I was suspicious of the capability of the digital cameras to take the pictures I wanted. I wanted mechanics, not electronics. I wanted to be responsible for the quality of the picture. But I ran into the problem of where to buy film, and then where to get my film developed.

One day when I came back from an outing to the battlefield, I picked up my daughter’s old digital camera. She had a new one, and I decided to try using the new technology. So, I put down my trusted camera.

I put my Canon in the trunk of my car. I had carried that camera on many miles of muddy roads and frozen trails, taking countless wonderful pictures. It sat in my car, hidden, for 15 years, through the heat of summer and the bone chilling storms of winter, until I realized that its time had come, again.

Now I feel a new age has dawned for my photography. I can buy the film I want. I can mail the film to be developed in a photo lab with clean chemicals and who respects my time as a photographer, even if my pictures make no sense to them, or are grainy, or out of focus because I thought that was a snake I heard moving through the grass, or the light wasn’t just right but the content was.

I sent the old roll of film off to see if the new mail-in lab was any good. And now I have this grainy photograph of a tree and a cannon before me. When I look at it, I know where I was, and I know I was glad to be there. I am pleased. It’s a simple snapshot, worn by the effect of heat and cold on its chemical content, but I was there, I heard the click, I wound the film, I replaced the cap. It was the complete experience.

These days I am not going out on hikes. However, I will start using my trusty Canon around the back yard, pursuing flowers and their insects. And I will take up my old lenses, and my old eye-piece. I will dust off my old wood tripod on which I mounted a wooden device, from a friend’s sketch that enabled me to track the stars. I am again ready to capture the world around me on film.

And I know that Battery Heights, and the tree, the creek and the bridge, and the woods with deer and owls, and the stars beyond, are waiting out there for my return.

A New Hike

This week I did not go out to the hills of Virginia for a hike.

I didn’t go out the week before either.

Instead I went for a morning walk to a nearby city park.

Why the shift? Social distancing. Closure of state parks. The Corona Virus.

This virus is changing our lives.

I miss my hikes into the deep woods. But my walks in the neighborhood give me a new appreciation of the work my neighbors put into their yards. I’m not talking about grass being green. I am talking about the joy of standing on a sidewalk and looking at the arrays of azaleas that have burst open in their vibrant colors. I am talking about the vegetables gardens that peek around from the back of their houses or more prominently placed in the side or front yards in order to get better sun. I am talking about the joy I see in my neighbors’ faces as they see the joy in my own face at the beauty provided by their labor.

Let’s be real. A rough-barked Persimmon tree growing on the margin of a field of uncut hay has a stark beauty all its own. I know of the fruit I may find there in the Fall. There is wonder in the ancient Pear tree growing on the edge of a parking lot where a house stood 200 years ago. The tree may only have a few seasons left but in the Spring it blossoms, and in the Fall it still produces several hard, sweet pears. In summer the Chinaberry trees that line the old lanes provide their sweet fruit for me and the birds that usually get them first.

But here in our neighborhood, my pleasure in being outside is immediate. I see the daffodils growing nearly wild in more than one yard. I know that they will be gone soon, but they will be replaced by the later blooms of the flowering trees. I would see many of these same trees deep in the woods on my walks in past Springs. I have written about the pale green blossoms of the small Dogwoods that turn to a blazing white deep in the soon-to-be-shadowed depths of the hardwood forest.

These old places where I walk are like old friends. I know them well in all seasons. And likewise they know me. But now the sidewalks in my neighborhood are becoming my friends again. I had walked them when I was recovering from an illness two decades ago. I know the slender, twisted branches of the Quince bushes with their delicate pink blooms. There are several of these along my walk up to the park. I know the shade of Linden trees that are planted in the park at the end of these urban paths.

These places, the present and the past, all have a place in my mind. I derive pleasure in thinking about the old, and from walking the new. And when I get back home, I can relive those walks in the forest paths of years ago by telling tales of those paths. And the tales of today’s walk in the neighborhood? I can tell those stories as well, as together we build a sense of place for these, our shared sidewalks.

And there are the birds as well.

Beetles in the Fog

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers.

I can only imagine that it is a curious sight. The first curious image is fog rolling onto and across a desert. A second, desert beetles facing into whatever breeze might be pushing the fog, with their beetle heads down and their beetle rears lifted upward so the fog, water laden, is pushed along its back.

These curious beetles are the Namib Desert Beetle (Stenocara gracilip) which face the breeze from the ocean and expose the wing-cases along their backs to the incoming fog and collect water from the fog that is condensed on its wing cases. Then due to the beetle’s curious posture the water droplets flow downward to the beetle’s mouth.

In the arid Namib desert on the south west coast of Africa, plants and animals must find a means to get water to survive. This is also true of many people around the world. Using methods similar to those of the beetle, devices have been constructed so some people in arid regions can harvest water from the moisture in fog. A project in Morocco has been under development since 2005. The project won a United Nations Climate Change award for the supplying villages with water from new water taps and supply line, and also for alleviating the burden on women who had to spend hours a day in drawing and hauling water from wells to supply their homes. Similar projects have been used in other arid locales that are close to an ocean.

More recently two papers were given at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in Seattle Washington which took place earlier this month (November 2019). One was on the capability of gathering water characteristics of a single wire in a study related to the collection capabilities of designed projects. The other paper was based on a study conducted by Hunter King, of the University of Akron in Ohio, and colleagues which investigated how the Namib Desert Beetle collects water along its back. The abstracts of these two papers may be found at http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD19/Session/Q25.7 and http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD19/Session/Q30.1, respectively.

For the beetle the study shows how microscopic ridges, bumps and pits along the beetle’s hard wing case allow it to achieve an improved rate of water collection from the fog. The study included the development of 3D printed spheres with manufactured ridges, bumps, and pits of different configuration for testing in a wind tunnel. These test showed that the microscopic texture of the surface influences the behavior of the collected water droplets. In the case of the beetle these differences in the roughness and smoothness of the surface of the hard shell wing-case on the beetle’s back influenced the movement of the water droplets to the beetle’s mouth. The beetle is able to gather and consume water to enhance its survival in the arid desert. And it must be a wondrous sight to see.

It is through the investigation of different technologies that we, the people, will be able to find solutions to alleviate thirst, hunger, and illness around the world.

We, the fortunate few who have the most, should express or thanks always for what we have. We should also seek out ways to help our brothers and sisters who do not have the resources that we so often take for granted.

Art work above is a modification of picture borrowed from http://morawatersystems.com/biomimicry-the-namib-desert-beetle-a-source-of-inspiration/

Other articles include: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3949572/The-fog-catchers-Sahara-make-water-AIR-hundreds-people.html ; https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/09/197525/moroccan-fog-water-harvesting-project-wins-united-nations-award/ ; https://www.wired.com/2012/11/namib-beetle-bottle/ ; https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20465982