March 8

It’s a sunny, frigid morning in the village of Riverdale as I head southeast on the snow-covered Meijer Bike trail along the edge of Stearns Preserve, a 14-acre property owned by the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy. Today, as a volunteer for the conservancy, I’m checking out the land to make sure it’s maintaining the agency’s standards for wildlife preservation. First, I spot a few1/8 inch frozen Stoneflies on the ground and then I pause on the footbridge to watch the swiftly flowing water of the Pine River carry small chunks of ice downstream. Across the bridge, I turn more southerly and move along the snowy riverbank noticing the ebb and flow of water under a thin layer of ice.  Just ahead at my feet, I come upon a collapsed tunnel of a meadow Vole and a pair of Mallards barely visible afar as they retreat from my noisy presence. Next, I pause to hear the drumming sound of a distant woodpecker. After locating the boundary stake at the southern-most tip of the preserve, I head due north along the property line where some trees are marked with the CWC boundary marker. Along the way, I notice the fresh wood chips at the base of a tree where a Pileated Woodpecker was recently foraging. Nearing the bike trail, I spot some fecal pellets of a cottontail rabbit. Similar to mice and rats, these mammals practice coprophagy, re-ingesting their own feces to absorb more of the vitamins and nutrients contained in them. For these animals, one pass through their digestive system is not sufficient to extract everything they need from their food. Crossing the bike trail, I continue due north into a soggy, lush cedar swamp. More common in the northern lower and upper peninsula, this ecosystem is a groundwater-influenced, forested wetland dominated by northern white-cedar growing on peat-like soils. The water supply comes mainly from streams that flow over or through rocks often acquiring dissolved chemicals which raise the nutrient levels and reduce the acidity, which in turn leads to unique vegetation. As a prime source of winter food and shelter, cedar swamps are great places for deer to gather as seen by this area peppered with their scat. Coming to the northern boundary line, I turn southwesterly and cut diagonally across a frozen flood plain, transected by a gently flowing creek. Finally, I reach the footbridge again and make my way back to the car.

 

I look to the heavens

When maples are bare

A wide-open canopy

Leaflessness there

Curves and lines

Rectangles and squares

Limbs of all lengths

Capture my stares

Criss-cross branches

Blacks and grays

Nature’s geometrics

On winter days

 

D. DeGraaf