tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56316919273370746402024-03-13T06:33:23.816-04:00Chattahoochee Chorographyexploring sense of place in georgia's chattahoochee hill countryDr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-64106894409097226732009-08-06T15:00:00.003-04:002009-08-06T15:30:09.194-04:00Fall Field Trip Outings from the SE Institute for Place-Based EducationThe following programs are currently available. All of them last between three and four hours (including a break for lunch) and are limited to twelve students. Larger groups can be accommodated by offering the same program over several days if desired. Most programs can be modified for the academic and developmental needs of any student group, from K through 12. There is a requested donation of $5 per student for these outings.<br /><br />All outings are led or co-led by Clifford Blizard, Ph.D. Dr. Blizard holds degrees in environmental science and geology, as well as an Elementary teaching credential from the American Montessori Society. He has taught elementary and middle school as well as courses at the community college and university levels. He has also offered adult education programs in sense of place, and has led numerous outings for students ages 5 through 85. He is versed in, and enthusiastic about, all facets of natural history, including ecology, geology, entomology, botany, etc. He is also fascinated by cultural history and prehistory, and intrigued by landscape and story.<br /><br />If there is some other facet of local natural or cultural history that particularly interests you, just let Clifford know, and he will be glad to tailor a program to fit your topic interests. There will be an additional one-time requested donation of $30 for developing a specially-designed program.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Rockin’ with Lichens</strong> <em>(K-12) </em><br /><br />This program will meet at Hutcheson Ferry Park on Hutcheson Ferry Road, in Chattahoochee Hills (directions to be provided). We will spend three hours exploring the park and learning about lichens and viewing other cultural and natural features at the park. The park includes a rock outcrop with old cedar trees, the remains of a rock quarry, woods, fields, and a lake.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Reading the River: An Introduction to Adopt-a-Stream</strong> <em>(grades 3 and up)</em><br /><br />This program will meet at a trailhead into Cochran Mill Park on Cochran Mill Road in Chattahoochee Hills (directions to be provided). We will spend three hours along Bear Creek, learning about chemical and biological stream monitoring, assessing the stream’s water quality and looking for “bugs” living there. This outing is intended as an introduction to Georgia’s Adopt-a-Stream program; should there be sufficient interest, Dr. Blizard plans to form a local group that would meet monthly to collect data at one or two streams in the area.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Creative Nature Study at The Cabin Path</strong> <em>(K-12) </em><br /><em><br /></em>This outing will introduce students to The Cabin Path, an amazing privately-owned nature center in South Fulton (directions to be provided). The center is operated by Sarah Crutchfield, an enthusiastic and creative environmental educator. She will give students a tour of her woodlands and lakes, including a stone labyrinth and original pioneer log cabin. Then we will participate in one or more creative projects with Sarah, such as building outdoor fairy homes or crafting insects out of found natural materials. This outing is intended as an introduction to The Cabin Path and opportunities for doing natural history study and creative environmental art there; should there be sufficient interest, Dr. Blizard will be collaborating with Sarah to offer a monthly (or possibly weekly) nature study program there. You can read about The Cabin Path at <a href="http://www.thecabinpath.com/">http://www.thecabinpath.com/</a>.<br /><br /><br /><strong>The Natural World Close-Up: Insects and Other Small Wonders</strong> (K-12)<br /><br />This outing will take place at The Cabin Path, a private nature center in South Fulton (directions to be provided). The center is operated by Sarah Crutchfield, an enthusiastic and creative environmental educator. She will give students a tour of her woodlands and lakes, including a stone labyrinth and original pioneer log cabin. On our walk, we will explore the diversity of local insects and their habitats, including dragonflies, butterflies, and beetles. Valerie Hayes, a nature photographer, will accompany us on our walk, and will share some of her close-up insect photography with the students. (Check out The Cabin Path at <a href="http://www.thecabinpath.com/">http://www.thecabinpath.com/</a>, and Valerie’s artwork at <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/67363961@N00/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/67363961@N00/</a>.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Georgia Archaeology</strong> <em>(grades 3 and above) </em><br /><em><br /></em>On this outing, we will hike through the woods to the ruins of a couple of 19th century agricultural buildings and an abandoned family cemetery. While there, we will learn about how an archaeologist might conduct an excavation in order to learn more about the past from the site. This outing is intended as an introduction to archaeology; should there be sufficient interest, Dr. Blizard intends to offer a hands-on archaeological excavation opportunity for interested and dedicated students. That program would meet once a week for about three months, and would involve actually conducting a small-scale excavation, most likely one investigating prehistoric remains in the region. Our goal would be to document what we find, and report it to the state of Georgia for their database (see <a href="http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/GASF/site_pamphlet.html">http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/GASF/site_pamphlet.html</a>).<br /><br /><br /><strong>If you are interested in arranging one or more of these outing opportunities for your students (minimum of four participants and maximum of twelve, please), contact Dr. Clifford Blizard at <a href="mailto:senseofplacese@gmail.com">senseofplacese@gmail.com</a> or feel free to call him at (770)-463-2887.</strong>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-7134310946449484872008-11-18T11:20:00.004-05:002008-11-18T11:41:05.090-05:00Questing at Cochran Mill, Part Two: Against the GrainHere is the second of our two Cochran Mill Quests, created by middle school students at Hill Country Montessori. To my knowledge, these are the first Quests to have been created in Georgia! You can read more about Questing at <a href="http://www.vitalcommunities.org/ValleyQuest/ValleyQuest.htm">http://www.vitalcommunities.org/ValleyQuest/ValleyQuest.htm</a>. Check out the list of Online Quests for other ones in the United States. Both of these quests will be submitted for inclusion in their list.<br /><br />Against the Grain<br />Cochran Mill Park Quest #2<br /><br />To complete this quest, a field guide to trees might be helpful. Park along the south side of Cochran Mill Road, about a thousand feet southwest of the entrance to Cochran Mill Nature Center, directly opposite the ruins of a brick chimney in a fenced yard. Follow the trail over a rope barrier (now lying on the ground). After walking a few feet, turn right to parallel Cochran Mill Road. You are now on the trace of the original roadway.<br /><br />Follow the old road, continuing to be alongside the present-day one, until you see a dip in the trail. On your left, on the wooded hillside, are terraces that farmers used for growing cotton here. They are probably from the early 1900’s.<br /><br />Come to where the road cuts through some rock. Lichens and algae cover the rock in many different colors. The brightest color is __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __.<br /><br />Continue down the path to a big fat tree on your right, just beside the path. It is probably over 100 years old. It is a __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ __ __.<br /><br />The bridge that you come to crosses Bear Creek. Cross the bridge and take the path to the right. You are still on the original Cochran Mill Rd. route.<br /><br />The road soon turns completely to gravel. On the right is a star-shaped stump, and behind the stump is a big rock. The rock has long s __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ h marks on it. What do you think these are from?<br /><br />Continue down the former Cochran Mill Rd. On your right is the forested floodplain of Little Bear Creek. Continue straight down the path until you come to a bridge. The bridge is unusable because of its age. It is also part of the original trace of Cochran Mill Rd. Just beyond the bridge are the ruins of an old mill, from the late 1800’s. It is the oldest mill in the park. The only things left of the mill are a few stone walls. Standing where the mill used to be, if you face the falls, you will see a path to your left, going up the hill along the stream edge. It goes over a rock to start, and may be hard to see. Not far up the path is a rusted metal __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __.<br /><br />Continue up the hill if you want to see the mill dam, mostly destroyed by vandals in the 1970’s. When you come back down the path and back to the mill site, look to your right. Hidden by vines are a couple more mill walls.<br /><br />When you are done looking at the mill, start to go back along the trace of former Cochran Mill Rd., the way you came. You will see a path going uphill to the right. At that fork, look right. There is a __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span>.<br /><br />On the left after a hundred feet or so, you will see a cleared area. You are on the driveway of an old house. Can you find the concrete pad, hidden under the leaves, where the garage probably was? Can you trace any of the outlines of the now-demolished house? All that is left are some bricks and some sheets of metal. The house is from the early 1900’s. The mill owner probably lived there.<br /><br />Follow the steps up the steep hill. At the top is a bench, where you can stop and rest. Follow the main path down the hill. Don’t slip. When you reach the Bear Creek again, go left. A __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __-down tree makes a great bridge for squirrels to cross Little Bear Creek. When you come to a sign (in concrete, but not stuck in the ground) go left onto Loop Trail A.<br /><br />When you come to another fork, go left again. Look around while you walk. After a while, on either side of the path you will see piles of rocks in a rough line crossing the trail. This is likely the remains of a stone __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span>.<br /><br />Down the path a little further is a clump of Christmas __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span>. Their name is easy to remember, because they have leaflets that look like Santa’s boots. On the right are some more old farm terraces.<br /><br />When you come to a sign that says “Trail,” turn right and hike up the hill, along a path lined with rocks. Continue on this path until it goes downhill. Once you pass a bench and a plank bridge, take a side trail to the left. As the trail approaches Bear Creek and starts heading back up the hill, you will see a stone wall on the left, near the stream edge. Turn left on a small path to go to the ruins of small building, constructed in 1906. Water flowed over a turbine here, making electricity for the city of Palmetto in the early 1900’s. Look for a gap in the wall that holds the box with the final clue in it. Watch out for the hairy vines and three-part leaves of poison ivy, which covers some of the walls.<br /><br />Take the letters in the boxes from the answers above and rearrange them to find the answer to this question:<br />What was the oldest building in Cochran Mill Park used for?<br />It was a __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __.<br /><br />When you have found the red box, answered the final clue, and stamped your Quest book, go back down the trail the way you came, all the way to the “Trail” sign. Don’t turn left! Instead, continue straight ahead along Bear Creek, until you see the footbridge across the creek. Turn right, cross the bridge, and follow the trace of former Cochran Mill Road back to your car.Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-20149716956738995462008-11-18T10:14:00.003-05:002008-11-18T10:52:45.571-05:00Questing at Cochran Mill, Part One: A Shocking ConclusionHill Country Montessori Middle School students recently collaborated to create two Quests at a nearby nature center and park. (For the location of the nature center and information about its programs, visit it online at <a href="http://www.cochranmillnaturecenter.org/">http://www.cochranmillnaturecenter.org/</a>.) Taken together, the two Quests reveal the rich history of the Bear and Little Bear Creeks in Cochran Mill Park. The park property was the site of a couple of 19th Century grist mills, as well as an electricity generating station in the early 1900's. We based our Quest on a survey of historical structures in the Park (one that appears to exist only as a single copy in the office of the state archaeologist), along with an essay in "Early Georgia" (a periodical published by the Society for Georgia Archaeology at <a href="http://www.thesga.org/">http://www.thesga.org/</a>) about the technology behind Cochran Park's mills and dams.<br /><br />Sadly, most of the structures in the park were severely vandalized in the 1970s and 1980s. Two mills were burned by arsonist's flames, while a more recent picnic area was utterly demolished (with one picnic table currently underwater at the base of the largest waterfall in the park). I am disappointed that such a lovely place, with such rich historical significance, can have been mistreated to such an extent. Even the trail signs have been damaged. Several are missing altogether, while others have graffiti on them or have been pulled up out of the ground. Graffiti used to cover the underside of the supports to a pedestrian bridge across Bear Creek; our school scrubbed away some of it, but ghost images of the older paint still remain. I am baffled that such a rural and rather remote location has been visited by such damage. Visiting the park, I begin to wonder about the value of place-based education. If greater awareness of local "treasures" (historical or ecological) means greater visitation, doesn't that increase the likelihood, in turn, that vandalism would occur? Are fragile landscapes best left unknown and relatively hidden, or protected by park signs that are easy to ignore?<br /><br />With those thoughts in mind, here is the text of the first of our two Quests:<br /><br />A Shocking Conclusion<br />Cochran Mill Park Quest #1<br /><br />To complete this Quest, a field guide to trees might be helpful. Park in the Cochran Mill Nature Center parking lot. To get to the trailhead for this quest, walk back down the gravel entry road along the edge of the pond. Turn left and walk downhill to a trail sign. Take the wide, flat trail straight ahead of you, now known as The Waterfall Trail. This path used to be the access road to the mills along Bear Creek, whose ruins you will visit during this quest.<br /><br />As you walk down the straight trail, you will notice a pile of rocks a short distance off to the right. __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ covers many of the rocks.<br /><br />Continue on the path until it curves to the left. At the bend, you will see a large fallen pine tree that has been partially cut into logs. It is the same kind of pine that commonly grows in this part of Georgia, including along this trail. What kind of pine is it? __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ y.<br /><br />Continue for about ten minutes along the trail, passing a small rock outcrop on the left. You will come to a place where the trail leads out onto bare rock. What kind of rock is it? You can take it for __ __ __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span>.<br /><br />Follow the sound of flowing water to the remains of a large dam. You will walk past an area on the right where we did some privet removal a year ago. The privet is already on its way back, though. You will see several small evergreen trees growing among the privet. What kind of tree are they? <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ d __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c </span>s.<br /><br />Stand at the stream edge, facing the broken part of the dam where the water flows over the edge of the wall. (The dam was originally constructed sometime in the 1930s; vandals broke the dam in the early 1970s.) Notice that, when viewed from downstream, the dam face has a series of steps. In side view through the gap in the dam where the water flows, you can see that the widest part of the dam is toward the bottom, and the narrowest part is toward the top. Why do you think the dam was built that way? After pondering this, turn away from the dam and face the woods. You will see a brown trash barrel. Take the narrow trail toward it. Near the barrel, along a wide path, you will see a large tree. Look around on the ground for its leaves, which have rounded lobes to them. What kind of tree is it? __ h __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ __.<br /><br />Take the wide trail upstream until you come to a fork in the road. Look to your left, and you will see some ruins of an old house. It was built in the first decade of the 20th century, for the mill operator and later, the resident caretaker of the property.<br /><br />Continue straight up the path for several hundred feet. Be watching on your left for the ruins of a small concrete structure that once had a flat wooden top to it. What do you think that it was? A __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __. A group of bikers, the story goes, vandalized this part of the park in the 1980s.<br /><br />Continue on the trail upstream until you arrive at a second large rock outcrop that the trail crosses. Look right, and you will see the ruins of a former mill, originally constructed by Barry Cochran in the late 1800s for the grinding of grain. A wood-framed building, it was destroyed by a fire set by vandals in 1972. Amid the ruins is a large wheel made of rock that was a very important part of the mill operation. What is it? A __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span> __ __ __ __ __ __ __.<br /><br />Between the ruins and the stream is a very weedy area; however, if you feel adventurous, walk toward the stream edge, and you will find the water wheel support foundations. Look out across the stream. Until the dam upstream was broken in the 1970s, that area was a pond. Hiram Evans, who owned the park property in the 1940’s, had the lower dam constructed to create this pond, but it was never used to power a mill. Instead, Evans had a building on stilts constructed in the middle of the pond, with a causeway accessing it that ran from the mill building out into the pond. Locally known as “the fortress”, this building had a checkered history. Hiram Evans was the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; supposedly, he used the building for secret Klan gatherings. Later on, in the 1960s, parties were held there. The house burned down in 1972, in the same fire that destroyed the mill.<br /><br />Continue on the trail upstream to another dam. Along the way, you will notice several concrete structures sticking out of the rock. The larger, low ones were foundations for utility poles; the tall, narrow ones closer to the dam were pylons for a penstock that carried water from the upper millpond down to a structure you will see later on this Quest. The dam itself dates to the mid-to-late 1800s, and is built of local stones without mortar. Sections of it were replaced by volunteers in the late 1970s. There is a pipe sticking out of the dam. How many layers of stone can you count above the pipe? __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span>.<br /><br />Turn around and start back down the wide trail downstream. You will arrive at a fork in the path, with a large pine tree straight ahead. Take the left fork. Once you reach the rock face, go slightly left, and follow a path leading down to Bear Creek, past several clumps of star moss. The trail continues along the stream edge. Look across the stream, and you will see a small rock-and-cement structure. This building was a generator house, constructed in 1906. Stand at the edge of the stream in a location directly opposite from the near corner of that structure. There should be two slender trees near the stream bank that make a “doorway” through which you can view the generator house. Turn around and walk away from the stream edge. Walk until you cross a gully/path, counting the number of steps it takes you to get there. Round that number of steps to the nearest ten, and write it here: __ __ __ __ <span style="font-family:webdings;">c</span>.<br /><br />Continue to walk in the direction you were going when you reached the path/gully, taking about the same number of steps that you wrote above. Look for a box with the stamp pad and book for this Quest.<br /><br />Finally, arrange the letters inside the boxes in each answer above, to find the answer to this question: "The generator house is the newest structure along one of the streams in Cochran Mill Park. From 1906 until 1918, it was used to produce something for the City of Palmetto. What did the generator house make?"<br />__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __.Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-15221603222008340602008-10-21T20:26:00.013-04:002008-11-05T10:25:57.652-05:00Canoeing the Chattahoochee<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP58m9xNNcI/AAAAAAAAAh4/tHA84BM_RVE/s1600-h/100_3547.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259778423673140674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP58m9xNNcI/AAAAAAAAAh4/tHA84BM_RVE/s400/100_3547.JPG" border="0" /></a> On the lovely but brisk autumn morning of Saturday, October 18th, fourteen of us set out down the Chattahoochee River, from near the South Fulton Parkway Bridge southwest down to the Whitesburg Bridge. Amongst our group was Dr. Christopher Tabit, aquatic ecologist from the University of West Georgia (<a href="http://www.westga.edu/~biology/faculty/Tabit.html">http://www.westga.edu/~biology/faculty/Tabit.html</a>), and Steve Lawrence, scientist with the US and director of the Chattahoochee River BacteriAlert program (<a href="http://ga2.er.usgs.gov/bacteria/default.cfm">http://ga2.er.usgs.gov/bacteria/default.cfm</a>). Both scientists had regaled our group with background on water quality issues along the Chattahoochee in a previous evening presentation, on Thursday, October 9th.<br /><br />My plans for the day had been shaped by an earlier run down the river. Ben Simms (outing leader) and I had completed a scouting run on a warmer but windier day a couple of weeks earlier. It had not rained in ages, and the river was quite low, with abundant rocks lurking in the shoals. We made it through without incident, though for a considerable portion of the trip we faced headwinds great enough to turn my canoe and almost push me back upstream through a stretch of rapids. It took us five hours to run the approximately ten miles. Ben, accomplished river runner, glimpsed all sorts of wildlife, including an otter; I contented myself with several great blue herons (or was it the same heron that we kept chasing downstream?).<br /><br />Anyway, Saturday's run was different. It had rained all day the previous day, and the river had risen over a foot from our earlier trip. The wind had abated, and we raced downstream with very little effort. The few morning clouds quickly lifted, and the sun shone brilliantly in a clear blue sky.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP55JRTURFI/AAAAAAAAAho/hZGyNFgv0Qg/s1600-h/100_3557.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259774614985524306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP55JRTURFI/AAAAAAAAAho/hZGyNFgv0Qg/s400/100_3557.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP53CM_zxaI/AAAAAAAAAhg/1BDvwKQ7JAo/s1600-h/100_3562.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259772294547621282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP53CM_zxaI/AAAAAAAAAhg/1BDvwKQ7JAo/s400/100_3562.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP52nl_sDcI/AAAAAAAAAhY/-rpVGBON54M/s1600-h/100_3563.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259771837401533890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP52nl_sDcI/AAAAAAAAAhY/-rpVGBON54M/s400/100_3563.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />We zipped downstream, quickly (and unknowingly) passing the spot where we had planned to pull out for lunch. We were so early in the day that it had not yet been flagged for us -- we later calculated that the flagging must have been put up within five or ten minutes of our passage. Meanwhile, I kept my canoe as close to the Fulton County bank as I could -- balancing that against my wife Valerie's requests from the front of the canoe that we keep to the sunnier middle of the river. As we glided along, we passed by a dramatic example of bank collapse, in which a huge chunk of riverbank, trees and all, had sluffed off into the river. It made me think of our current economic woes and other failing banks....</div><div><br /><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP52Svqi4FI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/L5PhJZgW1R8/s1600-h/100_3565.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259771479219953746" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP52Svqi4FI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/L5PhJZgW1R8/s400/100_3565.JPG" border="0" /></a> Eventually I came to the unavoidable conclusion that we had missed our lunch stop, though it was scarcely eleven in the morning at that point. I also realized that I had neglected to bring the cell phone number of the person who had generously offered to provide lunch at his own land along the river. I remembered, though, that the cell phone number was in an email; but how to access my Hotmail account midstream? I called my in-laws in Westchester, New York, figuring they would probably be inside at the computer. While my father-in-law went online and looked for the right post, my mother-in-law chatted with me, remarking that she did not think she had ever spoken on the telephone with someone in a canoe before. Finally, my father-in-law located the number and relieved, I dialed it quickly. It rang and rang. What to do? </div><div> </div><div></div><div>Meanwhile, the moments raced by, and we arrived at the first bridge. The old Whitesburg bridge had been closed, and local residents had robbed the bridge of much of its material. The remaining I-beams were in various states of disrepair. Several of them dangled midair above the river, warranting the alternative name of "eye-beams". We kept to the other side of the central concrete pylon. I paused the canoe while Valerie photographed the dilapidated bridge, which evoked a massive modern art sculpture by its size and the precariousness of its dangling steel beams.<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP51kAMwRgI/AAAAAAAAAhI/U-jlxh-5wBY/s1600-h/100_3575.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259770676204553730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP51kAMwRgI/AAAAAAAAAhI/U-jlxh-5wBY/s400/100_3575.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><div><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP51NgPNP9I/AAAAAAAAAhA/8JmuT_S-VnI/s1600-h/100_3577.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259770289667784658" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP51NgPNP9I/AAAAAAAAAhA/8JmuT_S-VnI/s400/100_3577.JPG" border="0" /></a> Shortly before noon, we arrived at the pull-out point alongside the Whitesburg Bridge. We took out the canoes, then drove in caravan to the access road to the spot where we were going to have lunch. In 4-wheel-drive vehicles, we travelled a series of rutted jeep trails to the stream edge, where tables draped with white tablecloths awaited us. Our host, who had recently turned his cell phone on and received my message, was elated to see our group. We had a marvelous and very filling meal of sandwiches and potato salad and chocolate-chip cookies. Afterwards, we strolled the cleared riverbank, admiring the view.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP5z1cL64FI/AAAAAAAAAg4/807NrBx3A34/s1600-h/Last+River+Shot.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259768776751767634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SP5z1cL64FI/AAAAAAAAAg4/807NrBx3A34/s400/Last+River+Shot.jpg" border="0" /></a></div></div></div></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-80472412373724905072008-09-24T00:39:00.013-04:002008-09-24T02:07:22.217-04:00Reading the Hill Country's Agricultural Landscape, Part Two<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnIjdUdpfI/AAAAAAAAAYE/zvKo6eCsbXA/s1600-h/Paige+Talks.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249447352168457714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnIjdUdpfI/AAAAAAAAAYE/zvKo6eCsbXA/s400/Paige+Talks.jpg" border="0" /></a> Our Saturday outing this month was held on September 20th, two days after I spoke at The Studio at Serenbe about reading the local landscape. After pointing out remnants of past agriculture in the area in my talk, the obvious next step was to take a trip to see current-day farm projects in the Hill Country. We visited two farms: Serenbe Farms (<a href="http://www.serenbefarms.com/">http://www.serenbefarms.com/</a>) and Wayne Stradling's cattle operation and orchard. We began our morning at Serenbe Farms, an organic CSA farm (to which I happen to belong, I freely and joyfully admit) managed by Paige Witherington. Paige led the five of us on a tour of her farm, sharing stories of her own background, tales of the challenge of farming the red Georgia clay, and a variety of her experiences with various vegetables. (Okra and basil are easy, eggplant is abundant no matter how few the farm has grown, and winter squash have been particularly difficult lately.) Farming is an art of balancing dozens of variables at several scales, from market demand and interest (yes to red peppers, no to gladiola bouquets) to soil chemistry parameters. At one point, she showed us a patch of fallow ground between a farm plot on one side and the Hill Country Montessori Herb Garden on the other. She explained that they will probably never grow vegetables there (unless in raised beds) because there had previously been a house on that site, and the soil was very poor. The land remembers, holding onto traces of the past that shape its present use.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnIPrZMOLI/AAAAAAAAAX8/ocofY0vWGPs/s1600-h/SF+Vista.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249447012348999858" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnIPrZMOLI/AAAAAAAAAX8/ocofY0vWGPs/s400/SF+Vista.jpg" border="0" /></a> After regaling us with memories of her days in the oh-so-fertile flat fields of the Hudson River Valley, and taking us past her farm machinery collection, including her pride and joy John Deere tractor, she led us into her new greenhouse (to the left in the photo above). It felt so spacious after the humble accomodations her former (and now unused) small greenhouse had afforded. Then we followed the main farm road uphill, past the HCM Herb Garden (the brick structure just right of the farm road in the photograph above), to a sequence of garden beds, each with their own stories -- pasts of failure and success, futures carefully scripted (a mix of different families of plants from year to year, with many fallow spaces in-between). The farm has bee hives, egg-laying chickens, and dozens of varieties of vegetables -- including three kinds of okra! I took the photograph below of one of the okra plants in bloom, a promise (or, after several weeks of okra, perhaps more of a veiled threat) of okra-yet-to-be. The plant is lovely -- a southern belle (bell?). But I cannot eat the pods fast enough. This week, Leonard Presberg offerd me his share of the okra harvest for the week -- a half pound. I am thankful, yes, but also looking forward to a weekend trip to Delaware, and four days without okra!</div><div><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnHaYSpC_I/AAAAAAAAAX0/uOMh-8XHIqU/s1600-h/Tomorow%27s+Okra.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249446096688188402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnHaYSpC_I/AAAAAAAAAX0/uOMh-8XHIqU/s400/Tomorow%27s+Okra.jpg" border="0" /></a> We all had a marvelous hour learning from Paige. I most appreciate her enthusiasm for learning new things, and her recognition that each year and each field and even each plant will express itself in ways that differ from others around it. We stopped, for instance, at a couple of rows of hops Paige is working on trying to grow for an Atlanta microbrewery. There, she pointed out how most of the plants are doing poorly, yet one variety of hops has overgrown its trellis and is climbing a trellis pole toward the sky.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnG_M_nFCI/AAAAAAAAAXs/Xzq9PmzqfJI/s1600-h/Stradling+Shuttle.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249445629799109666" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnG_M_nFCI/AAAAAAAAAXs/Xzq9PmzqfJI/s400/Stradling+Shuttle.jpg" border="0" /></a> After an hour with Paige, we took off down Hutcheson Ferry Rd. toward Palmetto, to tour Wayne Stradling's retirement estate, complete with lots and lots of cattle and old apple and peach trees. He met us with his shuttle arrangements above -- tractor pulling trailer with wooden boards for seats -- assuming that I was bringing a group of children. But the five of us were "young at heart", as the cliche goes, and we had a grand time on a sort of a hayride, up paths and through uncleared meadows. Wayne told of his farming experiences, as his tractor roared along and exhaust fumes filled the air. He talked about trying to obtain more water during the drought, and about which kinds of grass are best. </div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnGKw7C3tI/AAAAAAAAAXk/LCFSoQ6vPJU/s1600-h/Wayne+Portrait.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249444728910569170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnGKw7C3tI/AAAAAAAAAXk/LCFSoQ6vPJU/s400/Wayne+Portrait.jpg" border="0" /></a> After talking with us, Wayne proudly showed us some of his cattle, including the two specimens below. He shared some groundfall Granny Smith apples with the herd, but they were rather reluctant to oblige with a show of devouring them. They sure were cute, though, particularly the young calves! At the same time, I will admit that, throughout my visit, I kept thinking of the forbidden pleasures of organic hamburgers.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnF64r6P9I/AAAAAAAAAXc/NnbdB4dt7mA/s1600-h/Big+Bovine.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249444456116666322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnF64r6P9I/AAAAAAAAAXc/NnbdB4dt7mA/s400/Big+Bovine.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnFfxkc9SI/AAAAAAAAAXU/dxEJEEq9mws/s1600-h/Smaller+Bovine.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249443990349870370" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnFfxkc9SI/AAAAAAAAAXU/dxEJEEq9mws/s400/Smaller+Bovine.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />At last, as we bumped along the road (of sorts), I reflected upon how the wonders of the Hill Country's rural landscape become particuarly noteworthy when one gets off the roadways. Then, for instance, I can feel renewed amazement for being able to experience such bucolic farm scenes as the one below (looking past a pasture oak and toward Wayne's farmstand off Hutcheson Ferry Rd.), yet live only a dozen miles from the City of Atlanta.</div><div><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnFKndUXWI/AAAAAAAAAXM/Uxoy3MnYfHE/s1600-h/Stradling+Pastoral+Scene.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249443626858339682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNnFKndUXWI/AAAAAAAAAXM/Uxoy3MnYfHE/s400/Stradling+Pastoral+Scene.jpg" border="0" /></a> At last, the Stradling Shuttle delivered us back to where our cars were parked. Toward the end of our trip, Wayne admitted that he farms because he loves doing so (not for the money, because his operation just breaks even -- yet he keeps his hundred head of cattle on over a thousand acres, most of which are owned by neighbors). He continues to add acreage to his cattle operation, despite being currently 77 years old! I commented to him that many people his age have opted for retirement villas and golf instead of an active farm life, and he responded that he knew several friends who did that, and they are all dead now. I was very much amazed to find he was that many years old, since I had always assumed he was 65, at most. Maybe when I retire, I'll keep cattle, too....</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-71696148425934445102008-09-23T21:09:00.008-04:002008-09-24T00:29:16.236-04:00Reading the Hill Country's Agricultural Landscape, Part One<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNmTg_1v9_I/AAAAAAAAAW8/rccKtwHN9IQ/s1600-h/Goodes+1938.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249389035778996210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNmTg_1v9_I/AAAAAAAAAW8/rccKtwHN9IQ/s400/Goodes+1938.jpg" border="0" /></a> I inhabit a landscape of loss. I recall Shelby Foote, writer and historian of the Civil War, remarking (on Ken Burns' Civil War program) that the South is unusual in the country because it has had the experience of losing a war. But that is not all that it has lost. It has also lost the A horizon of its soil -- a layer of organic-rich "topsoil". Up to a foot of black earth once covered its red clay heart, the now-exposed iron- and clay-rich B horizon. All that is gone -- lost to King Cotton, and afterwards, lost to mismanagement as fields were abandoned during the Great Depression. Maybe, in a few thousand years, a new A horizon will develop. But for now, I am haunted by the sense of absence, an incomplete soil. And all around me, inscribed into the landscape, the gullies that once flowed with a slurry of soil and water, and the upland terraces where the cotton once grew. Looking closer, I see old fencelines with barbed wire, and Coca-Cola bottles from the 1920s (I discovered two across the road from my house), and rusting farm machinery of mysterious form and purpose. And I think about what once grew here, and the cattle that once roamed fields now grown to forests (and still roam other nearby fields).<br /><br /><br />Mostly, though, I think about the soil. There is a new soil survey for Fulton County -- 2008 -- and and older one (and more intriguing, for its age), from 1958. The soil names have all been changed in the interim, and the aerial photograph used as a base is correspondingly newer, too.<br /><br /><br />Nonetheless, my favorite local aerial photograph is the one above. It shows the crossroads of Goodes, southwest Fulton County, as it appeared from an airplane sometime in 1938 -- back when a lot of the erosion was still going on, when the topsoil was still on the move. Goodes is more noticeable on an aerial photograph or map than it is from the ground -- the roads come together in a distinctive pattern that lends character to what otherwise would be just any other highway intersection in what passes for "country" outside Atlanta. From the ground, Goodes is just a sign like an old-time gas station kind, easily overlooked.<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249425104683366274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SNm0Ue-rd4I/AAAAAAAAAXE/UMPFLTno0j8/s400/Goodes+Sign.jpg" border="0" />But in the aerial photograph, I can spot Goodes among dozens of other highway crossroads. Rico residents may have the old schoolhouse that is now City Hall, Police Station, Community Center, and Library all rolled into one (and they may have the volunteer firehouse, too), but we have that strange crossing of roads where the north-south Atlanta Newnan Road is offset, with Rico angling northwest in-between its two sections. A geologist, examining the crossroads, would declare Hutcheson Ferry Road a fault line, and pronounce the movement right lateral.<br /><p>Hutcheson Ferry is hardly a plate tectonic boundary -- we are fully in the United States, deep in the heartland, as the soundly Republican tone to the political signs on homeowners' lawns remindes me. But it <strong>is </strong>a boundary of another sort -- a drainage divide, separating small subbasins within the Chattahoochee River Watershed. To the north, along Rico Road and in the woods just across the street from my house, a brook flows in a narrow but deeply-incised channel, eventually joining another stream, flowing into Longino Creek and then at last into White Oak Creek, and thence into the Chattahoochee River. To the south, the water flows into ephemeral gullies, like the one behind Hill Country Montessori School, and then into Cedar Creek, which briefly serves as county line between Fulton and Coweta Counties. </p><p>All this shows that, if not the center of the universe, Goodes is a fascinating place to be. But, as Brian Swimme the theoretical cosmologist reminds us (to go from the crossroads to the cosmic for a moment), we are in an expanding universe where every point is a center of expansion. So every place is the center of the universe. Goodes is as good an axis mundi as any other one, and perhaps a bit more distinctive when viewed from above (or nowadays, from Google Earth). But other spots are intriguing in their own way, if you slow down enough to read them -- to study their chorography. That, I suppose, is the irony of being a proponent of reading the landscape -- I become proficient at reading stories in the immediate earth where I live, but I do so with the hope of encouraging others to do the same in their own places. </p><p>The stories are different, perhaps, though too many are, I fear, variations on a theme of loss. After all, no places on this continent will feel again the whirlwind force of a visit by a sky-darkening flock of passenger pigeons, and no tree will shake with the tropical chatterings of a flock of Carolina parakeets. The elm tree is gone, apart from a large specimen I found along a trail at Etowah State Historic Site. And the chestnut is gone, too, apart from a few tentative saplings that die young and diseased (awaiting a naturalist equivalent of A. E. Housman to celebrate them), and a dozen that made National Public Radio news last year for lingering into adulthood on the slopes of Pine Mountain, well south of here. </p><p>I was the speaker in our Sense of Place Series this month, though I did not cover anything I wrote above (except the lost topsoil part). I drew upon the work of an ecologist at the University of West Georgia, Joe Hendricks, presenting one of his Terrestrial Ecology PowerPoint presentations to offer the half-dozen audience members a sense of the landscape history of this region. Then I showed the Goodes aerial photograph from 1938 -- a travel back in time to when terraces were still bare -- covering parts of the land with patterns akin to suminagashi, the inky swirls of Japanese marbled paper. Then I showed them images from a walk in the woods I took last year, with scenes evoking stories in the landscape. </p><p>Above is what I wanted to say, or begin to say, or struggle to make sense of -- the mysterious force that compels me to find new stories in the land, the way I have become so taken with the crossing of roads I walk every day, the way I thrill to the discovery of another trace of abandoned fenceline, the sorrow I feel when I look across a gully at a white oak over a hundred years old, once a pasture tree and now, roots exposed, holding for life onto a mound of soil. And I think of the distance between that oak and me, a distance once filled with earth, now not capable of being bridged. It is a distance in space, of course, but also in time, back to a time when the soil was black not red, and the forests were composed of oak and hickory, not these weeds of loblolly and sweetgum I now find cropping up wherever I leave the lawn unmowed. We cannot go back -- Georgia will never again be the wilderness that William Bartram explored, or where, centuries earlier, Hernando DeSoto first encountered the remnants of the Mississippian civilizations (once called "The Moundbuilders"). The gullies are largely stable now, except perhaps after a heavy rainstorm. Then, briefly, the water may trace out with muddy fingers the gullies' former paths, leaving behind a thin blanket of silt in its passage over pine needles and sweetgum leaves and branches and bare earth.</p>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-24756178617735001142008-08-24T21:42:00.011-04:002008-08-25T12:23:28.383-04:00Birds and Butterflies of the Chattahoochee Hill Country: Part TwoOn Saturday, August 16th, a group of us met at Hill Country Montessori School for our monthly Sense of Place Outing. We were bleary-eyed and clutching cups of coffee, because it was only 7 in the morning. (Ironically, the early start time was intended so that we would enhance the likelihood of seeing a variety of birds. Yet, apart from a brief glimpse of a couple of great crested flycatchers (Tara identified them -- I saw only a blur of movement.), we saw practically no birds during the entire outing. We heard quite a few, including a number of catbirds, and we also briefly glimpsed a ruby-throated hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower on the other side of Cedar Creek. But otherwise, our trip would be a trove of insects. Tara's consolation prize, though, was a number of insects that took rides on her shirt throughout the morning, including a dragonfly that stayed with her for an hour, and a butterfly that landed on her shoulder toward the end of the morning.)<br /><br />We caravanned to Dunaway Gardens just south of the Fulton County Line in Coweta County, where the gate was opened for our entourage to enter. The gardens, otherwise closed for the weekend, were opened just for our group. Throughout our visit, we relished the experience of being on our own in the gardens, in contrast to our visit earlier this year, when our trip coincided with several large garden tours and an afternoon wedding. Garden maps in hand, we hurried downslope to the edge of Cedar Creek. Although the path was well-mowed, my feet were still quickly drenched by the early morning dew.<br /><br />Gosh, did we see a lot of insects, though! Greg, sporting an insect net, was full of glee, snatching up all sorts of treasures in his net. It was still cool enough in the early morning that the dragonflies were motionless atop plant stems, and an easy catch. The first one we found, a slaty skimmer, is pictured below. This is the dragonfly that subsequently befriended Tara for much of our morning.<br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238275409976578530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIXu1dRUeI/AAAAAAAAAWc/wkxgXqffAeI/s400/DragonflyHand1.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238274844386427666" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIXN6eEgxI/AAAAAAAAAWU/AuBdEZCZNRM/s400/DragonflyHand2.jpg" border="0" />A few minutes later, Greg was using his net to try to catch some aquatic denizens of a small pond adjacent to the creek. He quickly found a water scorpion -- an insect belonging to the order Hempitera, or the "true bugs". Related to the terrestrial "walking stick" insect, water scorpions are air-breathing predators that feed on smaller insects, such as mayfly and stonefly nymphs. <br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238273906962287362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIWXWSvSwI/AAAAAAAAAWM/aXioKBI9UUE/s400/WaterScorpionHand3.jpg" border="0" />In another few minutes, Greg had located a "tent" belonging to a cluster of tent caterpillars in a shrub along the streambank. Based upon their size, the larvae appeared to be almost ready to pupate, emerging afterwards as small, reddish-brown moths.</p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238273499211264354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIV_nTUcWI/AAAAAAAAAWE/j_QNL0HIfUI/s400/TentCaterpillars4.jpg" border="0" />Continuing along the riverbank, we saw another dragonfly, perched calmly on a blade of grass. I snapped its photo before it flew away. <br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238272669799027762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIVPVgCFDI/AAAAAAAAAV8/DGufwe-lGiI/s400/Dragonfly6.jpg" border="0" />We continued along the creek's edge, stopping to scan the far bank for birds, but to no avail. <br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238270371426960514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLITJjZbhII/AAAAAAAAAV0/0mI5d1Lclcc/s400/LookingforBirds7.jpg" border="0" />The prize find of the day, in my opinion, was a sleek green tree frog that I noticed on a cattail reed, blending in almost perfectly with the stalk. A moment later, a green dragonfly (possibly a pond hawk) landed on a nearby reed and perched there for a group photo.<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238268685246814450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIRnZ4wWPI/AAAAAAAAAVs/Dx00PMrJ3qk/s400/FrogandDragonfly8.jpg" border="0" /><br />I returned to the site a few minutes later, and the dragonfly had flown away. I did get a splendid closeup of the green tree frog, though, who remained motionless there, against the backdrop of Cedar Creek.</p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238265068350463314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIOU35d3VI/AAAAAAAAAVk/ZmKdk3RJXbU/s400/LoneFrog9.jpg" border="0" />At last we wended our way up through the gardens, finding quite a few butterflies but only a couple of birds. We heard a woodpecker's call through the trees, and briefly saw a cardinal who scolded us from a shrub along the path. Tara, Greg, Valerie and I inspected another set of shallow ponds (Arrowhead Pools) that had been constructed as part of the gardens. Tara found an intact snakeskin in the shallows, but the birds (including a heron known to haunt the area, feeding on the pond's goldfish stock) continued to elude us.</p>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-70705867447632341502008-08-24T21:36:00.005-04:002008-08-25T11:07:15.718-04:00Chattahoochee Hill Country Birds and Butterflies: Part OneOn Thursday, August 7th, eight participants joined us for overviews of the birds and winged insects (butterflies and dragonflies/damselflies) of the Chattahoochee Hill Country area. Tara Mostowy, biology graduate student at the University of West Georgia, began with a splendid overview of bird identification. She then shared with us both photographs and brief descriptions of the range of local birds we might see on our trip to Cedar Creek wetlands, later in August. <br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238264555379135970" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIN3A7kleI/AAAAAAAAAVc/xkh9fkWkY6k/s400/TaraTalk.jpg" border="0" />After her talk, Dr. Greg Payne, entomologist at the University of West Georgia, walked us through an array of butterflies and dragonflies. In a marvelous conjunction of terms, our <strong><em>entomologist</em></strong> speaker also regaled us with extensive <em><strong>etymological</strong> </em>information about the origins of many of the complicated terms used for classifying insects.<br /><br /><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238263669970717074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLINDehwSZI/AAAAAAAAAVU/KC0H2SLNvgw/s400/GregTalk.jpg" border="0" /><br />Not visible in the photograph above, off to the right, was a row of tables full of fascinating bits of natural history. Greg brought in wood and glass boxes full of mounted insect specimens, several dissecting microscopes, and a number of live caterpillars. I couldn't wait to see some of the mounted butterflies in flight on our Saturday outing!Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-10749529945626301572008-08-24T21:26:00.013-04:002008-08-25T10:37:16.363-04:00Turtles and Toads of the Chattahoochee Hill Country: Part Two<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLK99YzqmPI/AAAAAAAAAW0/TaNbCm7roXg/s1600-h/Picture2.gif"></a>Twenty people joined us for our Saturday "Turtles and Toads" outing, including a dozen children, mostly age six through twelve. We all met up at Cochran Mill Nature Center at 9:30 am on Saturday, July 19th. Valerie Hayes began the day with an abbreviated reprise of her overview of local frogs, toads, and turtles. After her talk, Rick gave participants a chance to explore the herp collection at Cochran Mill Nature Center, including bringing out a snake that we could touch.<br /><br /><div align="left"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIMTVTbTgI/AAAAAAAAAVM/TU_Dmsb48Zc/s1600-h/CatfishFrenzyA.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238262842860981762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 322px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 257px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="279" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIMTVTbTgI/AAAAAAAAAVM/TU_Dmsb48Zc/s400/CatfishFrenzyA.JPG" width="352" border="0" /></a> As we set out to look for local herps, I admit to feeling skeptical that, with such a large lively group of participants, we would actually find any. But all it took was some fish food sprinkled on the water of the small pond outside the nature center building, and first the catfish showed up for a feeding frenzy... </div><div align="left"><br /><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238262513838742178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 322px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 261px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="273" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLIMALmaWqI/AAAAAAAAAVE/iCQErwafess/s400/SliderFeeding.JPG" width="342" border="0" /> ...and then a couple of slider turtles arrived to claim the bits of food that landed on the mud at the pond's edge. After having our fill of catfish and slider turtles, we left the lovely new deck area around the pond, and began turning over nearby logs and stones. One of the children found an Eastern fence lizard, which lost the end of its tail while being captured by a young participant. (The tail will grow back over time; lizards "drop" their tails as a means of distracting predators, giving them a chance to escape while their abandoned tail continues to wiggle.)</div><div align="left"><br /></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238457299300625138" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLK9KL_dqvI/AAAAAAAAAWs/fV75WJJcqKc/s400/Picture1.gif" border="0" />We continued up the hill, off a trail and into the woods. Chigger Country, I was later to discover. Several participants, including myself, ended up with an unintended memento of our trip: a vast number of chigger bites around the ankles. The wooded area had many large rocks, but few creatures living under them, apart from the occasional ant colony. We returned to a grassy area near the nature center building, to visit with the resident sulcata tortoise. We gathered around his enclosure to watch him chowing down on various vegetables. Then we disbanded -- it was practically noon, and I had a long week of chigger-bite-scratching ahead of me....<br /><br /><div align="center"><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLILtZueGXI/AAAAAAAAAU8/SUKR8p-2qfI/s1600-h/TankEating.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238262191213123954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 321px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 235px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="250" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SLILtZueGXI/AAAAAAAAAU8/SUKR8p-2qfI/s400/TankEating.JPG" width="337" border="0" /></a></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-55933812176477194412008-08-07T01:54:00.011-04:002008-08-25T09:55:07.772-04:00Turtles and Toads of the Chattahoochee Hill Country: Part One<p align="justify"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SJvWVasxyrI/AAAAAAAAAUo/7H895q24zao/s1600-h/RickPBE1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232011055553694386" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="196" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SJvWVasxyrI/AAAAAAAAAUo/7H895q24zao/s320/RickPBE1.jpg" width="263" border="0" /></a></p><p><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SJvWVasxyrI/AAAAAAAAAUo/7H895q24zao/s1600-h/RickPBE1.jpg"></a>On Thursday, July 10th 2008, Rick McCarthy ("Reptile Rick") and Valerie Hayes gave a presentation on "Turtles and Toads" -- a shortcut for herps ( a word that refers to both amphibians and reptiles). Rick (on the left) gave a splendid talk about snakes and lizards in the area; Valerie followed with a fascinating look at local frogs and toads (complete with recordings of their calls) as well as (of course!) turtles....</p><p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SJvV_ZSbcOI/AAAAAAAAAUg/mqnrbdWU5xo/s1600-h/ValeriePBE1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232010677217620194" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 278px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px" height="198" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SJvV_ZSbcOI/AAAAAAAAAUg/mqnrbdWU5xo/s320/ValeriePBE1.jpg" width="276" border="0" /></a>The talks were highly informative, and Rick also brought several caged live snakes (venomous and nonvenomous) found in the Hill Country. Attendance was light, but the four participants who joined us indicated that they enjoyed the presentations very much. Both speakers gave their talks again a few weeks later, during Snake Day festivities at Cochran Mill Nature Center(Saturday, August 23rd). </p>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-21531880176246463842008-06-26T16:25:00.011-04:002008-07-03T02:36:58.604-04:00Hill Country Trees and Lichens: Part TwoOur Saturday outing for "Trees and Lichens" on June 21st began most inauspiciously. First I was awakened by a thunderstorm, followed by steady rain that only ended an hour before the scheduled start of the outing -- in time to leave the lichens and mosses "fat, happy, and green." Then, Sean called to leave a message that he was ill and could not join us, but was sending Malcolm Hodges in his stead. Malcolm is a renowned lichenologist in his own right, who has apprenticed with Sean and now "lichenizes" free-lance, when not birding or doing general ecological studies for The Nature Conservancy. Malcolm and David both met up with us at Hill Country Montessori School, joining us for the caravan down the road to Hutcheson Ferry Park. I remarked that it was a pity Sean was ill, only to learn from Malcolm that Sean had been struck with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, obtained from a tick that no doubt hitched a ride during one of his previous lichen outings! (I am delighted to add that he has since recovered fully.) Indeed, as Valerie has discovered doing fieldwork and as other longer-term residents of the area have noted, this summer has marked a banner year for all sorts of ticks in Georgia.<br /><br />We (Malcolm, Sean, myself and my wife Valerie, and the four "regulars") got out of our cars and strode across the manicured (or at least well-mowed) park lawn toward a ridge and the rock outcrop habitat that lies a short distance beyond it. In seconds, Malcolm had found a tree branch covered in lichen and fungi, and was holding it aloft for all to examine. Time to break out the hand lenses, and enter a miniature yet amazing world of strange forms and colors.<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216293978724143522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP_vI3ckaI/AAAAAAAAATg/GoLnuhkz-c8/s400/LichenLog1.jpg" border="0" /><br /><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP_dXx91QI/AAAAAAAAATY/JitOxHVZcXY/s1600-h/AmongtheLichens2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216293673490044162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP_dXx91QI/AAAAAAAAATY/JitOxHVZcXY/s400/AmongtheLichens2.jpg" border="0" /></a> Malcolm, who had never been to Hutcheson Ferry Park before, was visibly excited when we arrived at the outcrop. His enthusiasm was contagious. Within minutes, we were down on our knees in wonder at the patterns and colors of mosses and lichens and flowering plants.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP_H0hNGFI/AAAAAAAAATQ/PCA30TdmVjs/s1600-h/LichenWorld3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216293303247247442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP_H0hNGFI/AAAAAAAAATQ/PCA30TdmVjs/s400/LichenWorld3.jpg" border="0" /></a> Every branch was full of Dr. Suess-like shapes, including a number of lichens in the genus Cladonia, which includes the British soldier lichen. I recall from my childhood finding a "batallion" of the red-headed British soldier lichen apothecia (fruiting bodies) atop a next-door neighbor's fencepost. On Saturday's outing, we found only a few, but discovered many other specimens, including one that was quite common on the outcrop, but which Malcolm had never seen before.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP-q50qX9I/AAAAAAAAATI/scXOzORoq1k/s1600-h/CladoniaCloseUp4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216292806454829010" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP-q50qX9I/AAAAAAAAATI/scXOzORoq1k/s400/CladoniaCloseUp4.jpg" border="0" /></a> Above is a close-up of a few of the British soldier lichens we saw, intermixed with another Cladonia species that was gray-green and branched.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP-RzJe_MI/AAAAAAAAATA/oLe_aDivvlo/s1600-h/LichenStories5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216292375166385346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP-RzJe_MI/AAAAAAAAATA/oLe_aDivvlo/s400/LichenStories5.jpg" border="0" /></a> In another hand gesture that has become enigmatical with the passage of time (i.e., I forget what he was indicating in this photograph), Malcolm kneels on the outcrop, adjacent a small pool of water remaining from the rain that had fallen earlier that morning. Note his look of enthused delight. It was shared by all who attended the outing.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP8_uE2f0I/AAAAAAAAAS4/TLZx_DZGgs4/s1600-h/FloodplainForest6.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216290965055504194" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP8_uE2f0I/AAAAAAAAAS4/TLZx_DZGgs4/s400/FloodplainForest6.jpg" border="0" /></a> At last we headed downhill from the outcroanp d into the forest, to try our hand at floodplain forest tree identification. Alas, the most noteworthy vegetation to catch our eyes at first was a very healthy stand of Microstigium viminium, also called Japanese stilt-grass, an invasive plant that tends to choke out all the native vegetation. Apart from trees and shrubs, the only other plants we saw in abundance were Japanese honeysuckle, which seemed to coexist pleasantly enough with the Japanese stilt-grass, while at the same time slowly choking the life out of every sapling they encountered. Still, the forest was lovely and green, and the Microstigium made the walking fairly easy, too. </div><div><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP8GHjh9rI/AAAAAAAAASw/1NxHVYzbI0s/s1600-h/LeadersinWoods.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289975462655666" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP8GHjh9rI/AAAAAAAAASw/1NxHVYzbI0s/s400/LeadersinWoods.jpg" border="0" /></a> Above is another entry in my photo series of uncertain hand gestures. Looking at the photograph now, it almost looks like a sort of woodland low-impact martial arts could be underway. I include the photobecause somehow it is the only one I took that shows both David Morgan as well. Down in the forest, he was in his element, an expert in identifying tree types by bark and leaf, as well as sharing his reflections on the ecology of the woodland.<br /><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289254671117634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP7cKZb7UI/AAAAAAAAASo/P5agjn0lQcE/s400/CountingTurtleRings7.jpg" border="0" /> Unlike the toad photograph from Part One this month, this photograph does relate directly to our outing. Shortly after leaving the outcrop for the forest, Valerie encountered this beautiful male box turtle lurking under a shrub. Caught without her extensive collection of field equipment for box turtle studies, she "borrowed" this specimen in order to take some measurements (such as mass, body width, etc.), then carefully returned him to the very spot where we had found him, none the worse for his experience. In this photo, Valerie counts the rings on his carapace (upper shell) in order to obtain an estimate of his age. I was delighted that we chanced upon him, as his photo provides yet another opportunity to make a plug for our July Sense of Place workshop on Turtles and Toads. Co-led by "Reptile Rick" from Cochran Mill Nature Center and Valerie Hayes, herpetology grad student at the University of West Georgia, the event will include an evening talk at The Studio on Thursday, July 10th, plus a Saturday outing to Cochran Mill Nature Center on Saturday, July 19th. For more information, contact Clifford at <a href="mailto:senseofplace@southeastpbe.org">senseofplace@southeastpbe.org</a>.</div></div></div></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-23784843963928248302008-06-26T16:06:00.004-04:002008-07-04T21:28:31.732-04:00Hill Country Trees and Lichens: Part OneOn Thursday, June 12th, renowned Georgia lichenologist Sean Beeching, along with University of West Georgia botany professor David Morgan, gave a presentation to SOP Workshop participants in The Studio at Serenbe Community. Sean regaled the half-dozen of us (myself, my wife Valerie, and four "regulars") with a speech on the nature of lichens, liberally augmented with a sampling of his collected field specimens. Afterwards, Dr. David Morgan talked about the trees of the Georgia Piedmont. He brought sample branches from each of the twenty trees, walking us through the process of telling them apart. I had a marvelous time, and learned a great deal more Southern trees that had previously been unfamiliar to me, such as sourwood and red maple. I'm not sure how I would do on a tree identification quiz, though....<br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287816549349122" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP6Ic-fNwI/AAAAAAAAASg/GjhOi9aqviQ/s400/SeanTalksLichens1.jpg" border="0" /> </p><p>Above, Sean waxes lyrical about lichens...</p><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP5s-3eoZI/AAAAAAAAASY/apXOoADinEU/s1600-h/CliffordPlaysVanna2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287344610419090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP5s-3eoZI/AAAAAAAAASY/apXOoADinEU/s400/CliffordPlaysVanna2.jpg" border="0" /></a> ...and then later in the talk, I played the role of Vanna White, holding up a diagram of the classification of lichenized fungi for the audience. In this photo, I think Sean is explaining the difference between basidiomycetes and ascomycetes, or maybe he is simply attempting to demonstrate the Vulcan "Live long and prosper" gesture from Star Trek?<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP4E3S_egI/AAAAAAAAASQ/c2w6fzyW-Pc/s1600-h/DaveAmongTreeSpecimens4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216285555871939074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP4E3S_egI/AAAAAAAAASQ/c2w6fzyW-Pc/s400/DaveAmongTreeSpecimens4.jpg" border="0" /></a> After the talk by Sean, and a brief introductory speech by David, out came all the tree branch specimens, and our work for the evening got underway. So many leaves, so little time....<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP3mieeaFI/AAAAAAAAASI/Og1fDekdGd8/s1600-h/DaveTalksPines5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216285034886883410" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP3mieeaFI/AAAAAAAAASI/Og1fDekdGd8/s400/DaveTalksPines5.jpg" border="0" /></a> Here, David is explaining how to distinguish a loblolly pine from a slash pine from a red cedar from a red maple from a black cherry....<br /><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216284643603024722" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SGP3Pw1Ii1I/AAAAAAAAASA/i4SlvPOW498/s400/ToadasDizzyGilespie6.jpg" border="0" /> This photograph has nothing to do with the evening's presentations, except for the fact that it was taken by my wife Valerie the same evening, shortly after our return home from The Studio. This Cope's Gray Tree Frog was captured mid-song, and serves as an advertisement of sorts, or foreshadowing maybe, of the July Sense of Place workshop, entitled "Turtles and Toads". The talk is scheduled for Thursday the 10th of July at 6:30 pm, and the outing will take place at Cochran Mill Park at 9:00 am on Saturday, July 19th. (For further information, contact Clifford at <a href="mailto:senseofplace@southeastpbe.org">senseofplace@southeastpbe.org</a>.)</div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-60559853173723368922008-05-18T21:37:00.008-04:002008-05-18T22:17:44.836-04:00Hill Country Gardens, Part Three<a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDaO4kgJXI/AAAAAAAAARA/mG-OlBKzx2o/s1600-h/ElizabethMagnolia11.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201897518851433842" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDaO4kgJXI/AAAAAAAAARA/mG-OlBKzx2o/s400/ElizabethMagnolia11.jpg" border="0" /></a> After a picnic lunch at tables with white tablecloths amid the splendor of Dunaway Gardens, we caravanned north on Route 70 then east on the South Fulton Parkway to <a href="http://www.hydrangea.com/">Wilkerson Mill Gardens</a>, owned by Elizabeth (shown above) and Gene Griffith. Wilkerson Mill is a nursery open to the public, specializing in hydrangeas. Elizebeth joined us for an hour, talking about the history of her developing sense of place on the thirty acres where she and her husband live and work in the Chattahoochee Hill Country. She began by leading us into a sheltered corner of her garden sales area, to talk with us about creating inviting living spaces with plants.<br /><div><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201899524601161090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDcDokgJYI/AAAAAAAAARI/JXx95N09DTs/s400/WilkersonOutdoorRoom10.jpg" border="0" /> Then she led us on a ramble along some of the mown paths on her property. We wandered past a host of intriguing shrubs, some in bloom, others with fascinating leaves or patterns of growth.<br /><div></div><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201901672084809106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDeAokgJZI/AAAAAAAAARQ/6lTl8Q2KFxg/s400/WilkersonPaths12.jpg" border="0" /> Elizabeth told us how she and her husband, around twenty years ago, first acquired the land and decided to move there to establish an orchard. As the land was cleared for planting, she began to feel terrible about all the destruction that was involved. She was told by a mentor that she should find the most stunning tree on the property, go to that tree, and ask for forgiveness for the desecration by pouring all the energy of the loss into that tree. She explained that one tree stood out by far as the one she had to visit. It was a white oak hundreds of years old, probably even older than the grist mill on the property that dates from the 1860s. Just the day before, she shared with us, the tree had fallen abruptly in a strong wind. The loss was not entirely surprising -- after the stress of severe drought last year, the storms of spring have done a tremendous amount of damage to trees, especially elder ones, in and around the Hill Country. Still, she explained, she feels the oak's demise deeply. Connection to place carries with it a susceptibility to the anguish of loss.<br /><br /><div>We came, at length, to where the great tree lay. The oak leaves were still green and fluttering in the light breeze. Amazingly enough, the tree fell in such a way as to block access to the mill, yet did not damage the historic structure in any way. It did relatively little damage in its fall, she explained, apart from flattening a pop-up camper belonging to a visitor who was doing some work on the property (who was not in it at the time, of course). We paused to admire the mill itself, with footings carefully shored up a few years back, by an Amish family from Michigan. Alongside the structure, the overshot wheel still stands in the millrace. This mill is the last of its kind, the only mill still standing relatively intact within the Chattahoochee Hill Country. </div><div></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201903643474797986" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDfzYkgJaI/AAAAAAAAARY/I51PgX7Xzos/s400/AttheMill13.jpg" border="0" />Our forward advance thwarted by the fallen oak, we retraced our path to some stone steps back up into the garden sales area. From there the group dispersed. Valerie and I were distracted by possible plants for our own three acres. We carried home in the back of our car a red buckeye, some Japanese painted ferns, and a Franklinia -- an understory tree that Valerie had been craving since our arrival in Georgia, named by William Bartram in honor of Benjamin Franklin, discovered in southern Georgia on his travels there, but now thought to be extinct in the wild. But that is another story, one that Mike Cunningham had shared with us nine days before....</div><div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-7639722324727723122008-05-18T19:20:00.013-04:002008-05-18T20:16:29.829-04:00Hill Country Gardens, Part Two<div><div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDC_v4kgJNI/AAAAAAAAAPw/3LTlQkgHVAU/s1600-h/FirstWaterGarden2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201868398973166802" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDC_v4kgJNI/AAAAAAAAAPw/3LTlQkgHVAU/s400/FirstWaterGarden2.jpg" border="0" /></a>It was quite possibly perfect weather: temperature somewhere in the upper 60s, cloudless sky, gentle breeze. The date was Saturday, May 17th, the day of our outing to two local gardens: Dunaway and Wilkerson Mill. Eleven of us met at Hill Country Montessori School at 10 am to carpool to <a href="http://www.dunawaygardens.com/">Dunaway Gardens</a>, about fifteen minutes west and south of the school. To my surprise, I later learned that the Gardens are in the same watershed as our school: Cedar Creek, tributary to the Chattahoochee River. (The site borders on a spectacular 65 acre wetland, which I plan to visit again on our August outing featuring birds and flying insects.) Our tour guide was Josh, son of Jennifer Rae Bingham, garden owner. A realtor by profession, Josh spoke reverently and enthusiastically of the site, and told us many times about ongoing efforts to protect adjacent parcels of land from development.<br /><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>In turn, I shared with Josh some of the "inside stories" I had learned from a member of our workshop group who was unable to attend our garden odyssey. He had sent me an email earlier that morning, sharing some of his memories of the historic gardens (particularly during its hayday in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s when it was a theatrical training center operated by Hetty Jane Dunaway and her husband, Wayne Sewell). Here are some of those stories:</div><br /><div><em>"...as a child, from the age of 11 to about 14 or 15, I used to go to Dunnaway and help Ms. Hatchett cut back the hedges from the paths, mow the grass, and other things every summer, just so I could have access to the gardens, and spend time with Ms. Hatchett. She was the "beloved neice" that is pictured on the Dunnaway Gardens web site to which the gardens were left after the Sewells passed away. Being a teacher, she did not have the money to maintain the gardens in the way they should have been. However, she did have a wealth of memories she always shared with me. The gardens were originally designed as a series of outdoor rooms, with huge hedges seperating the view from one area to another, so going up a set of steps, or around a corner, always brought a new surprise. There were sculpture in the Roman gardens from one of the local art guilds, paintings in many of the buildings from other art guilds, etc. I think there were three or more art guilds showing their works in the gardens at one time, if my memory serves me correctly, so it was more than just a garden. It was the local center for all the arts, performace art, painting, sculpture, music, etc. Walking through the gardens, you would always see original art, hear live music being played in the background, smell steak and other meals being prepared in the different resturants, etc. (In addition to the Tea House, there was a steak house resturant in the bottom of the Honeymoon house...). There was also a series of cabins at the back of the property where the visiting actors and actresses would stay. </em></div><br /><div><em>Some of the more humorous, and somewhat scandalous, memories Ms. Hatchett shared were tales about the rock mason who laid most of the garden walls and steps. Evidently he was somewhat of a lush, and Hetty Jane would often find him passed out on the job, or asleep somewhere in the gardens, as she was hosting guest or events. He did good work, and Ms. Dunaway would always forgive him. </em></div><br /><div><em>Another reason the gardens were once more popular than they are now, according to Ms. Hatchett, was the Japanese Tea House. She showed me a menu once, explaining to me the significance of many of the items. It seems, especially during the Prohibition, that the socially elite ladies of Newnan would come to the gardens on a daily basis for "theraputic teas". It was a daily thing, much as the English have their tea time. The difference was that there was a tea for neuralsia, which included coca extract (cocaine). Another for body aches and pains which had a bit of morphine in it. On for "dropsy", or depression, which had extract of cannabis, etc. All of these medications were over the counter at the time. Ms. Hatchett told me that it was a hoot for her as a young lady to see all these socialites come together in their gowns, white gloves, and lace hats, get their "tea on" (as she called it), the entire time complaining about their h usbands attending the local speakeasies or catching their husbands bringing in the latest batch of shine from the local moonshiner, etc."</em></div><br /><div>I appreciate tales like these for the window they offer on how the gardens truly were -- not simply the picture-postcard views of smiling movie stars amid flowing pools and blooming roses. </div><br /><div>Below are a number of photographs from our walk. I was taken, in particular, with all the shady pools and channels of flowing water edged with ferns and mosses. We stopped at a number of large pools, some murky and others with tadpoles or small fish swimming in the shallows. At the base of the Great Pool, under the shade of an enormous beech tree, Josh told us another marvelous story. That stony terrace, which overlooks the wetlands of Cedar Creek, was a favorite haunt of a local fortuneteller who made a living as a soothsayer. She had one good eye, with the other made of red marble, and she dressed in military clothes. Ms. Dunaway's son wanted her to leave; before she left, she told him his fortune, mentioning that he would wreck his Model T Ford by accidentally driving it into the creek; that very thing happened two weeks later. Shortly afterward, the fortuneteller returned to ply her trade at the Great Pool. Another favorite spot of mine was the Wedding Tree, a white oak approximately 200 to 250 years old. Finally, the geologist in me was taken with Little Stone Mountain, an exposure of gneiss that, according to the Dunaway Gardens brochure, was "often described as the favorite campsite of Chief William McIntosh." In my mind, I travel full-circle, to January's field trip to McIntosh Reserve. The more I learn of this region's stories, the more I am haunted by them.<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201868995973620962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDASokgJOI/AAAAAAAAAP4/fJnvWTUELHo/s400/ContemplatingStoneWall3.jpg" border="0" /> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201870494917207282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDBp4kgJPI/AAAAAAAAAQA/xYp9dyP1mrA/s400/WetlandOverlook4.jpg" border="0" /> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201871079032759554" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDCL4kgJQI/AAAAAAAAAQI/2L8YiTsUU90/s400/HealingRock5.jpg" border="0" /></div></div></div></div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201871568659031314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDCoYkgJRI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/KU6X3G-SMU4/s400/QuietRoundPool6.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201872114119877922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDDIIkgJSI/AAAAAAAAAQY/5AHAczr5dVU/s400/GreatPoolFortuneteller7.jpg" border="0" /> </div></div></div></div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201875464194368850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDGLIkgJVI/AAAAAAAAAQw/m8o_74nbjTs/s400/AmongtheRoses8.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201875799201817954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDDGeokgJWI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/eZmdfPLVHxU/s400/TheWeddingTree9.jpg" border="0" />Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-44608784991753041942008-05-18T18:58:00.004-04:002008-05-18T19:19:28.824-04:00Hill Country Gardens, Part One<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201856463259051170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDC05IkgJKI/AAAAAAAAAPY/Qq9qM9ZwzD0/s400/MikeSpeakingOther.jpg" border="0" />For the month of May, our Sense of Place workshop theme was gardens and gardening in the Chattahoochee Hill Country. The Thursday evening talk was given by Mike Cunningham, co-owner (along with his wife, Judy) of <a href="http://www.countrygardensfarm.com/index.php?pr=Home_Page">Country Gardens Nursery</a> in Newnan, Georgia. Meeting in The Studio, a new space in Serenbe Community with doors opening into a courtyard with a fountain and lovely plantings. Eight of us attended the talk, in which Mike shared information on about thirty native plants, including histories of their discovery in the wild, uses by wild animals, and site characteristics for optimum growth. Mike also brought along several of the plants he was discussing, including a stately red buckeye (in bloom), sweet shrub, and native wisteria. I am grateful for Mike's advocacy of growing native plants; I welcome the prospect that a homeowner could enhance conditions for wildlife, particularly birds and pollinator insects. Mike himself is an exceedingly kind and considerate person, who not only agreed readily to speak in our workshop series, but also showed up at Hill Country Montessori on short notice (and feeling unwell) to consult with the school on a garden grant application. His depth of knowledge is stunning. As fate would have it, our car was in the shop, so Mike drove Valerie and me back to our house. We took advantage of his stop to ask a few questions about planting native species on our property (particularly with an eye toward replacing the boxwoods and nandina that I abhor). I bought one of his "demonstration plants", a native wisteria, and planted it the next day in front of a decorative well house in our front yard. I can't wait for it to cover the structure in a late-spring blanket of sweet purple blooms a few years from now.<br /><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201860921435104434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SDC48okgJLI/AAAAAAAAAPg/hrsjQ2kUkGY/s400/PlantedWisteria.jpg" border="0" />Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-5655556585162887502008-04-23T16:27:00.009-04:002008-04-23T16:48:15.032-04:00Art in the Hill Country, Part Five: Panola Mountain Landscapes<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192543911282477506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-fLRCcCcI/AAAAAAAAAPA/WrUqgNc9Eu4/s400/Landscape+Patterns+Two.jpg" border="0" /><br />Finally, I arrive at a series of photographs I took once the novelty of hand lens photography diminished somewhat. After looking closely at individual plants and even parts of plants, I began to wander around the hilltop, noticing patterns made by the alternating colors and textures of various plants, against the background of the Panola Granite. Everywhere I turned, a new and glorious tapestry beckoned; carpets of moss and diamorpha, or an "island" of diamorpha and sand bounded by the edge of a large, shallow depression in the rock surface.<br /><br />Despite the hour-long drive to Panola Mountain State Park, I am confident that we will return there someday in a future Sense of Place Workshop series, perhaps in 2010. Although the site is not strictly in the Chattahoochee Hill Country (it lies within the Ocmulgee River watershed), I would gladly to extend my bioregional horizons to include the entire Georgia Piedmont, just so that I could consider Panola Mountain as part of my home place.<br /><br /><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-fZxCcCdI/AAAAAAAAAPI/nLUhwnyLj8g/s1600-h/Landscape+Patterns+One.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192544160390580690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-fZxCcCdI/AAAAAAAAAPI/nLUhwnyLj8g/s400/Landscape+Patterns+One.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-e5RCcCbI/AAAAAAAAAO4/20AFO0gJls4/s1600-h/Landscape+Patterns+Three.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192543602044832178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-e5RCcCbI/AAAAAAAAAO4/20AFO0gJls4/s400/Landscape+Patterns+Three.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-ephCcCaI/AAAAAAAAAOw/EVjPLdrhIr0/s1600-h/Landscape+Patterns+Four.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192543331461892514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-ephCcCaI/AAAAAAAAAOw/EVjPLdrhIr0/s400/Landscape+Patterns+Four.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-djxCcCZI/AAAAAAAAAOo/h6dm-tdtl1U/s1600-h/Landscape+Patterns+Five.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192542133166016914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-djxCcCZI/AAAAAAAAAOo/h6dm-tdtl1U/s400/Landscape+Patterns+Five.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-dQRCcCYI/AAAAAAAAAOg/HPXXXyCHogE/s1600-h/Landscape+Patterns+Six.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192541798158567810" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-dQRCcCYI/AAAAAAAAAOg/HPXXXyCHogE/s400/Landscape+Patterns+Six.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-dAxCcCXI/AAAAAAAAAOY/67s7MY93SmM/s1600-h/Landscape+Patterns+Seven.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192541531870595442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-dAxCcCXI/AAAAAAAAAOY/67s7MY93SmM/s400/Landscape+Patterns+Seven.jpg" border="0" /></a></div></div></div></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-23970902855561269242008-04-23T15:58:00.009-04:002008-04-23T16:26:51.294-04:00Art in the Hill Country, Part Four: Panola Mountain through a Hand Lens<a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-YWRCcCWI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/6KpE1xge3ac/s1600-h/ArtistsAtWork+Two.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192536403679644002" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-YWRCcCWI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/6KpE1xge3ac/s400/ArtistsAtWork+Two.jpg" border="0" /></a> As I wrote in an earlier installment in this series, once we stopped to sketch I worked for a while on a crossvine drawing, then wandered away from the group, drawn by thousands of possible subjects to photograph. After I had taken a few quick close-ups at the "flower" setting on my Kodak EasyShare, Brian (our park guide) suddenly asked if I had considered trying to take photographs through a magnifying lens. He remarked that he had never done such a thing, but didn't see any reason why it wouldn't work.<br /><br />I am astonished to say that the results were beyond expectation. Armed only with a Belomo Triplet 10X and a basic Kodak camera, I was able to get some impressive detail and clarity in photographs of flowers, lichens, and even male pinecones. I held the hand lens as flat as I could against the digital camera lens, set the lens for the close-up ("flower") setting, and tried to focus the image. If it focused, I depressed the button fully and took the photo; if not, I moved the camera-and-lens closer to or farther from the subject, and tried again. I felt like a young child with a new, exciting game to play, as I frolicked about the face of Panola Mountain, looking for new subjects. Before long, Brian borrowed a second lens from me, and joined in the game. (He appears in the picture above, hunched over a specimen with his camera and magnifier, on the right side of the photograph.)<br /><br />My favorite "captures" are shown below. The first three flowers are, in order from top to bottom: sandwort (<em>Arabis laevigata</em>); sunnybell (<em>Schoenolirion croccum</em>); and diamorpha (<em>Diamorpha smallii</em>). Below that is an unidentified lichen in the genus <em>Cladonia</em>, and male cones, likely belonging to a loblolly pine (<em>Pinus taeda</em>).<br /><br /><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-X0BCcCVI/AAAAAAAAAOI/s4aHzerpXCY/s1600-h/Mag+Flower+One.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192535815269124434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-X0BCcCVI/AAAAAAAAAOI/s4aHzerpXCY/s400/Mag+Flower+One.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-XPBCcCUI/AAAAAAAAAOA/3zKZf55-eDQ/s1600-h/Mag+Flower+Two.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192535179613964610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-XPBCcCUI/AAAAAAAAAOA/3zKZf55-eDQ/s400/Mag+Flower+Two.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-W0RCcCTI/AAAAAAAAAN4/qfZ7bQkumCs/s1600-h/Mag+Flower+Three.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192534720052463922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-W0RCcCTI/AAAAAAAAAN4/qfZ7bQkumCs/s400/Mag+Flower+Three.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-VMxCcCSI/AAAAAAAAANw/PC-hGUMXkZU/s1600-h/Mag+Lichen+One.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192532941936003362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-VMxCcCSI/AAAAAAAAANw/PC-hGUMXkZU/s400/Mag+Lichen+One.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-VBxCcCRI/AAAAAAAAANo/YwXU8Euj-RI/s1600-h/Mag+Male+Cone+ONe.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192532752957442322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-VBxCcCRI/AAAAAAAAANo/YwXU8Euj-RI/s400/Mag+Male+Cone+ONe.jpg" border="0" /></a></div></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-11116967637914644962008-04-23T15:20:00.015-04:002008-04-25T21:55:06.106-04:00Art in the Hill Country, Part Three: Artistic Visions atop Panola Mountain<div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-QMRCcCQI/AAAAAAAAANg/8dnMoPXFU9U/s1600-h/Sketching+Site+Two+Too.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192527435787929858" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-QMRCcCQI/AAAAAAAAANg/8dnMoPXFU9U/s400/Sketching+Site+Two+Too.jpg" border="0" /></a> Several fine sketches (along with many photographs, as well) emerged from our time atop Panola Mountain. Below are a few of them: a pine branch in pencil by one of the participants, and a flowering crossvine, atamasco lily, and diamorpha by Valerie Hayes.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-P7xCcCPI/AAAAAAAAANY/t99_yowKpMU/s1600-h/Drawn+Pine+Branch.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192527152320088306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-P7xCcCPI/AAAAAAAAANY/t99_yowKpMU/s400/Drawn+Pine+Branch.jpg" border="0" /></a> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5193366230015936994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SBKLEhCcCeI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/9T8j1jcRhHI/s400/Drawn%2BCross%2BVine.jpg" border="0" /> <div><div> </div><div><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-PNhCcCNI/AAAAAAAAANI/-HRzQ4_XwaA/s1600-h/Drawn+Atamasco+Lily.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192526357751138514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-PNhCcCNI/AAAAAAAAANI/-HRzQ4_XwaA/s400/Drawn+Atamasco+Lily.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-O_hCcCMI/AAAAAAAAANA/GKGOuqu8-aA/s1600-h/Drawn+Diamorpha.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192526117232969922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-O_hCcCMI/AAAAAAAAANA/GKGOuqu8-aA/s400/Drawn+Diamorpha.jpg" border="0" /></a>Below are a several of the plants I saw blooming during our visit, as captured by a basic point and shoot Kodak EasyShare digital camera. The first two are crossvine <em>(Bignonia capreolata</em>)<em>;</em> the next two are atamasco lily <em>(Zephyranthes atamasco</em>)<em>;</em> the deep yellow flower is yellow jessamine <em>(Gelsemium sempervirens</em>)<em>;</em> below that is the Ohio spiderwort ("officially" known in the vernacular as bluejacket, or more officially as <em>Tradescantia ohiensis</em>)<em>;</em> and the bottom photograph shows the fringe tree in flower <em>(Chionanthus virginicus</em>)<em>.</em> </div><div><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-OuxCcCLI/AAAAAAAAAM4/qunEp6Hvj0w/s1600-h/Photo+Cross+Vine.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192525829470161074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-OuxCcCLI/AAAAAAAAAM4/qunEp6Hvj0w/s400/Photo+Cross+Vine.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-OShCcCKI/AAAAAAAAAMw/OfWUomtVAKo/s1600-h/Cross+Vine+Two.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192525344138856610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-OShCcCKI/AAAAAAAAAMw/OfWUomtVAKo/s400/Cross+Vine+Two.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-OAxCcCJI/AAAAAAAAAMo/89KsEQCOyzo/s1600-h/Photo+Atamasco+One.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192525039196178578" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-OAxCcCJI/AAAAAAAAAMo/89KsEQCOyzo/s400/Photo+Atamasco+One.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-NwxCcCII/AAAAAAAAAMg/L_WMFyYdhvk/s1600-h/Atamasco+Two.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192524764318271618" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-NwxCcCII/AAAAAAAAAMg/L_WMFyYdhvk/s400/Atamasco+Two.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-M-xCcCHI/AAAAAAAAAMY/uc69lWg9PL0/s1600-h/Jasmine+Flower.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192523905324812402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-M-xCcCHI/AAAAAAAAAMY/uc69lWg9PL0/s400/Jasmine+Flower.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-MrRCcCGI/AAAAAAAAAMQ/XJ1WqbNJYFQ/s1600-h/Spiderwort+Photo.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192523570317363298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-MrRCcCGI/AAAAAAAAAMQ/XJ1WqbNJYFQ/s400/Spiderwort+Photo.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-MaRCcCFI/AAAAAAAAAMI/ulWyTmWNpus/s1600-h/Unident+Blooming+Shrub.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192523278259587154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA-MaRCcCFI/AAAAAAAAAMI/ulWyTmWNpus/s400/Unident+Blooming+Shrub.jpg" border="0" /></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-58056979606359207012008-04-23T07:56:00.008-04:002008-04-23T08:25:54.732-04:00Art in the Hill Country, Part Two: Sketching at Panola Mountain<div><div><div><div><div><div><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8kPhCcB-I/AAAAAAAAALQ/d_pkUXADGHs/s1600-h/Valerie+Sketching+Site+Two.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192408744366704610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8kPhCcB-I/AAAAAAAAALQ/d_pkUXADGHs/s400/Valerie+Sketching+Site+Two.jpg" border="0" /></a> Our Saturday outing in April was a trip to Panola Mountain State Park, and a rare opportunity to engage in field sketching and photography atop the monolith. The granite hill is off limits to visitors, except when accompanied by a park guide on the once-monthly hike or by special arrangement. I was thrilled to be there at this time in the spring, when so many flowers -- including the diamorpha, endemic to such outcrop environments -- were in bloom. I was also grateful to have my wife, Valerie Hayes, along as field sketching instructor. </div><div></div><br /><div>After we parked the cars along rarely-used dirt access road (beside a lovely stone-edged lake), Valerie shared with the group a number of helpful books on keeping a field journal and doing natural history illustration. Then Brian, a naturalist who has worked at the park for a couple of years, led the six of us along a half-mile trail from an access road uphill to the "peak" (perhaps 200 feet of vertical ascent?). The morning rain had vanished as predicted, and it was a pleasant, mostly sunny day. We established two "base camps" for artwork. We spent perhaps an hour and a half at the first, and about forty-five minutes at the second. Below are photographs from the two locations:</div><div></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192411205382965234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8mexCcB_I/AAAAAAAAALY/6J1-Pk5PNUI/s400/ArtistsAtWork+One.jpg" border="0" /> </div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192411544685381634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8myhCcCAI/AAAAAAAAALg/RvAcTVwLiNU/s400/Sketching+Site+Two.jpg" border="0" />At the first site, I completed a sketch of a cross-vine in flower, then wandered off, drawn by the rich textures and patterns of the landscape and all the flowers in bloom. I took a number of fairly conventional photographs, then Brian remarked to me that I might consider trying to take photographs through a hand lens. He commented that the idea had come to him just then as he saw me using the lens, and simultaneously recalled a photo he had taken through binoculars. The results turned out to be amazing for such a low-tech, slapdash approach. Soon Brian, too, had borrowed a second hand lens for me, and was photographing flowers and lichens. These photographs merit a separate part in this blog, to be continued.</div></div></div><br /><p>Meanwhile, here are three photographs from the top of Panola. Everything is entrancing -- the juxtapositioning of colors and forms (there will be a separate blog part just on patterns, too), the Japanese-rock-garden-quality of close-up views, and the more distant prospects, whether of granite and pine, or the distant face of Stone Mountain. </p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192413640629422098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8oshCcCBI/AAAAAAAAALo/vWbEOivKui0/s400/Panola+Mtn+Landscape+Large.jpg" border="0" /></p></div><p></p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192414027176478754" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8pDBCcCCI/AAAAAAAAALw/_cmDDLNRB4s/s400/Panola+Mtn+Landscape+Small.jpg" border="0" /> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192414430903404594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8pahCcCDI/AAAAAAAAAL4/iXkalE1lqbs/s400/Stone+Mountain+View.jpg" border="0" />Even as we were packing up to leave, I discovered an enormous bush full of white, feathery blooms, and had to dash off to photograph it. There is so much there to encounter -- it is quite simply one of the most spectacular places I have visited in Georgia. At last, though, we all reluctantly gathered our gear, and strode off down the mountain for home.</div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192415259832092738" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA8qKxCcCEI/AAAAAAAAAMA/emxstStI7F4/s400/Going+Home.jpg" border="0" />Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-90738497144405722692008-04-23T01:24:00.010-04:002008-04-23T02:22:46.437-04:00Art in the Hill Country, Part One: StudioSwanIt was a lovely evening for a walk, and I hurried on my way from Hill Country Montessori, down Atlanta Newnan Road to Selburne Lane and into Serenbe. I traversed the mile quickly, eager to be to the gallery before any participants arrived.<br /><br />April was an exciting month for the Sense of Place Workshop Series. After three fairly successful months housed in Rico Center, Thursday evening gatherings moved to Serenbe, beginning with an evening visiting <a href="http://www.studioswan.com/html/information.asp">StudioSwan Gallery</a>, owned by Tom Swanston and Gail Foster. In the future, we will meet in The Studio, an inviting new wood-floored, white-walled room off of the courtyard in Selburne Hamlet.<br /><br />I was excited at the opportunity to tour the gallery and studio spaces with Tom. I cannot recall any other times I have had the opportunity to tour the working studio of a renowned artist. I was thrilled that Tom had readily consented to share his work with our workshop group.<br /><br />Ultimately there were nearly a dozen of us, gathered in something approaching an oval in StudioSwan gallery. Around us, the walls were covered with images on plywood of human beings with animal faces, engaging in everyday activities such as riding bicycles. The works were all part of an exhibition called "Astral Images", by emerging Atlanta artist, Meta Gary. Tom quietly welcomed us, explaining that Mina (who manages the gallery) couldn't join us, and that both he and his wife had been stricken with bad colds while they were in New Orleans the previous weekend, at an opening of Gail's work. I could empathize, as I broke into a few rounds of sneezes and felt my throat begin to get scratchy. I only wished I could have an exciting story such as a New Orleans trip as background for my emerging cold.<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192309741075564498" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7KMxCcB9I/AAAAAAAAALI/2Se58DCCsA0/s400/SwanOne.jpg" border="0" /> Tom talked to us for nearly an hour, there in the gallery. He told us about his background, from meeting his wife in art school and eventually opening a gallery of others' work in Atlanta, to his move out of the city and many years spent living in rural isolation along the Chattahoochee River at the western edge of the Hill Country. He told of being drawn into Steve Nygren's vision for Serenbe, until he was finally owning and operating the first (of what he hopes will be many) gallery there. His picture of gallery efforts included an honest assessment of financial realities -- including the enormous costs involved in opening (especially publicizing) a gallery exhibit, even in such a small space as the one room of StudioSwan. I appreciated how much an artist must also be (or have access to individuals who are) financially savvy, able to market their own work vigorously and relentlessly. As he described it, the key was to get an interested buyer to accept artwork "on loan", so that they could check out how it went with their living spaces. It sounded as if, at times, it could be more a matter of color and pattern agreement than simply liking a picture and wanting it to hang in the livingroom. Meanwhile, Tom patiently answered questions about art marketing, plans for the gallery, and former installations there. At last, he invited us to come upstairs and into his studio space.<br /><br />Climbing the steps, even through my head congestion I could make out the marvelous warm scent of beeswax, one of the three components of encaustic art (more to follow). Tom lead us first to his "ideas table", a simple surface covered with all manner of works in progress. He explained that he is fond of rugs, and had been involved in a number of projects designing them of late. Enthusiastically sharing with us dozens of sketches and drawings of carpet patterns, he radiated a sense of joy -- of fun -- in his art. I felt the surging delight of creativity for the delight it can offer -- the kind of creative ventures in which one explores new designs and new possibilities in a dialogue with various materials and themes. Along the way, there is no room for regret over mistakes. Tom explained to us that there aren't accidents to him, but that anything that might be considered an accident (such as a few unintended drops of paint) were simply incorporated into his work. I felt a growing sense of envy. How marvelous it must be to while away the hours on a weekday afternoon in such a sunny space (windows were everywhere), dreaming up new possibilities and "playing" with acryllic paints and encaustics. Maybe I would like to be an artist, when I grow up.<br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192309427542951874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7J6hCcB8I/AAAAAAAAALA/fH2FWPECmIw/s400/SwanTwo.jpg" border="0" /></p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192309156960012210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7JqxCcB7I/AAAAAAAAAK4/mHLEb9fk8bU/s400/SwanThree.jpg" border="0" />Then he led us into the other part of his studio, where he actually completes his projects. He introduced us to encaustic work, which is done on either thick plywood or else a special metal that also comprised some component of the space shuttle (docking bays?). The medium requires three ingredients: a pigment, beeswax, and resin. He showed us pieces of the resin, whcih closely (and not surprisingly) resembled amber. Or was it rock candy? One of the participants asked, and he responded right away that it tasted horrible. We didn't ask for details. The resulting encaustic pigments were kept in muffin tins until ready to melt on a stove for use in his artwork, such as the piece he has been working with, below.</p><div><div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192308736053217186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7JSRCcB6I/AAAAAAAAAKw/i61STLad5E8/s400/SwanFour.jpg" border="0" /> </div><div></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192308297966552978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7I4xCcB5I/AAAAAAAAAKo/NPKtT6bYvHI/s400/SwanFive.jpg" border="0" /></div><div>The surface felt cool and satiny-smooth, inviting a touch or even a caress. The colors were rich, bold, vibrant. The amazing thing about encaustic is that it can grow and grow, by adding new colors and patterns over the old ones, until the first explorations are long buried under resin and beeswax. He showed us another board that he had used for practicing for quite a while. A variety of colors (particularly reds and blues) were simmering in old saucepans, with old brushes sitting atop them. Tom invited us to get started -- to pick a color and explore with it. One of the fascinating qualities of encaustic is that there is also an element of letting go, of letting a work become what it will become. The means of blending a new layer into the rest of the work requires either a blow torch or a hairdryer; as the blending takes place, some patterns become more blurry while others become more refined. </div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div>The evening wound down, as some participants had to leave and as I felt the sore throat settling in. Before we concluded, Tom also led us upstairs to the third floor, to view his wife's much tidier gallery space. Many of the walls were empty -- the result of the show in New Orleans. But one painting intended for the show still hung on the studio wall. It includes a single four-letter word, one that had actually been spoken by woman whose life the painting celebrated. Several of us expressed gratitude at the rejection, as we could enjoy it ourselves as a result. Indeed, I felt so thankful for the entire evening, for the opportunity to spend it with so creative, thoughtful, and kind a person as Tom. The future of art in the Hill County is in excellent hands.<br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192307898534594434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7IhhCcB4I/AAAAAAAAAKg/mMpfRwClgHI/s400/SwanSix.jpg" border="0" /></div></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-51941407433392806562008-04-21T22:36:00.008-04:002008-04-21T23:10:41.866-04:00An Aside: Sound Mapping at The Cabin PathOn the last day of March and the first day of the fourth quarter at Hill Country Montessori School, the Elementary students all went to <a href="http://www.thecabinpath.com/">The Cabin Path</a>. The Cabin Path is a lovely 50-acre island of forested paths that embraces, at its center, a tranquil lake. The site is named for an historic log cabin that had been carefully dismantled from its original site and rebuilt there, near the shore. The property includes a medicine wheel site, a labyrinth, and even a few longleaf pines. More about this entrancing spot in the future (indeed, I am planning one or two outings there as part of the 2009 workshop series). For now, I am writing about one particular experience there.<br /><br />The older elementary students had finished an art project and were unfocused, maybe even a bit crazy. To help them slow down, I asked them to go off into the woods by themselves, find a comfortable place to sit for about half an hour, and <em>listen</em>. With plain white paper and a number two pencil, they were to make a "Sound Map" -- a map of all the sounds that they heard from that one spot, with the relative locations of each. I was amazed at how they were actually able to slow down and notice things, and I was equally stunned by all the sounds they experienced all around them. What a marvelous meditation -- a grounding in one's home place! I plan to assign this exercise in one of the Sense of Place workshops someday. Meanwhile, here are three of the maps that they drew:<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191896178674632498" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA1SERCcBzI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/Z3UlVjxMNPY/s400/Sounds+Mapping+One.jpg" border="0" /> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191896517977048898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA1SYBCcB0I/AAAAAAAAAKA/3nMHnrCxbVo/s400/Sounds+Mapping+Two.jpg" border="0" /> <p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191896964653647698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA1SyBCcB1I/AAAAAAAAAKI/YO_8NAiICGo/s400/Sounds+Mapping+Three.jpg" border="0" />Did this project make the students more calm and focused? Results there were far more equivocal, I'm afraid. Here is a picture of one of the boys in the group, shortly after he completed this exercise:<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191900392037549922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA1V5hCcB2I/AAAAAAAAAKQ/EwIcrAl3eTs/s400/After+Map.jpg" border="0" /></p>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-42235073399409188002008-04-21T17:28:00.016-04:002008-04-21T22:16:11.133-04:00An Aside: North to Cherokee Country, Part Two (New Echota)<a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0HuTJFZhI/AAAAAAAAAIY/LkyVWd4SPFM/s1600-h/Printing+Press.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191814437421803026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0HuTJFZhI/AAAAAAAAAIY/LkyVWd4SPFM/s400/Printing+Press.jpg" border="0" /></a> Above is a picture of a printing press similar to the one once used by the Cherokee Phoenix, the newspaper edited by Elias Boudinot and published at New Echota. Like the Cherokees themselves, the newspaper straddled worlds; half the page was in Sequoyah's Cherokee Syllabary, the other half an English translation. The press now sits in a reconstruction of the original printing shop, on the grounds of New Echota State Historic Site.<br /><br /><div><div><div>Our New Echota visit began with a tour of the home and outbuildings belonging to a Cherokee farm (worked by a "moderately wealthy" family) -- original buildings that had been brought to New Echota to evoke the buildings that had once been there. The students wandered among the various outbuildings, including a smokehouse, corn crib, and barns, which offered windows into how the Cherokees would have lived and farmed about 180 years ago.... <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191819874850399778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0MqzJFZiI/AAAAAAAAAIg/pBChPKelgGE/s400/Echota+Outbuilding.jpg" border="0" /></div><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191820184088045106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0M8zJFZjI/AAAAAAAAAIo/uymHJO5N5Zo/s400/Looking+In.jpg" border="0" />Then the tour guide, an experienced storyteller with a rich lore to share and a revisionist slant to his outlook, led us into the Cherokee homestead attached to the farm. For maybe half an hour, he shared stories about everyday life on a Cherokee farmstead, and demonstrated a host of unusual tools, from a device for cutting shingles to a 19th century butter churn. When not taking photographs, I sat and listened and daydreamed of living back then, in the days before the Trail....<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191822151183066690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0OvTJFZkI/AAAAAAAAAIw/y9HPJDA5IbQ/s400/Butter+Churn.jpg" border="0" /></p><p>He opened the cabin door at last and let in the welcome sunshine of an early Spring day. Then we followed him on a tour of the grounds of New Echota. Most all of the buildings are reconstructions, and only the most significant structures were rebuilt, so the effect is one of walking onto an enormous chess board rather late in the game. Most of the "town" is comprised of open field interspersed with stately trees and interrupted here an there by a 19th century Cherokee building that emerges mushroom-like from the rural landscape. I cannot imagine the community as bustling; it is difficult, indeed, not to imagine the Cherokees living in a sort of bucolic utopia, in a city with almost no buildings except the most important ones. We wandered into each of them in turn, beginning with the Cherokee Supreme Court. The building was clearly IMPORTANT, as indicated by the interpretive signs setting it apart from the surrounding landscape of oak and close-trimmed turf. <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191824560659719778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0Q7jJFZmI/AAAAAAAAAJA/rzdC3VEw0Fg/s400/Other+Supreme.jpg" border="0" />Once inside, our storyteller regaled us with more tales of Cherokee culture, particularly the way the justice system worked. Then we continued on, visiting the Cherokee Council Hall (a building with an exterior quite reminiscent of the Supreme Court building, but with different-colored shutters), then passing another cabin and outbuilding collection (also brought in from other places), and then down a trail through the woods. Our guide proudly showed off the stretch of open woodland that used to be choked with privet, all cleared out recently by convict labor. At last, we arrived at the former home of Moravian missionary Samuel Worcester. We paused at the door to listen to more stories, about how Worcester was dragged off to prison for refusing to obey an unjust law requiring all whites working with the Cherokee to get a license. I took a photo as evidence of the students listening well (or, at least, leaning against one).<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191856643500672738" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0uHBCcBuI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/zPIswJT9IEU/s400/Listening+Well.jpg" border="0" />We explored the various rooms (and looms) of the house.<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191859950625490674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0xHhCcBvI/AAAAAAAAAJY/NgjFNmWHabY/s400/loom.jpg" border="0" />I paused on a stairway to take the photograph below. It struck me as a powerful visual statement of what "voluntary simplicity" is all about. I could have stood there and gazed for hours, or better yet, sat at the table with the light streaming in, rapt in thought....<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191860693654832898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA0xyxCcBwI/AAAAAAAAAJg/3G1WQwbd9oc/s400/Simplicity.jpg" border="0" />We walked back down the trail to another relocated building, this time the Vann tavern. It was built by James Vann in 1805, and is a marvelously rambling structure. It once stood near Gainesville, along the Federal Road that ran across Cherokee land. Students were particularly entranced by the "drive-thru" window in the back, which enabled those who were not allowed to set foot in the tavern (such as slaves) to buy alcohol and other items. <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191864030844421906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA001BCcBxI/AAAAAAAAAJo/V_xjsVzzcuA/s400/Back+Window.jpg" border="0" />From the inn, we continued to the reconstructed printing office for the Cherokee Phoenix, then wandered over to one of the few structures not rebuilt: the foundation stones outlining the home of Elias Boudinot, where the Treaty of New Echota was signed by Boudinot, Major Ridge, and John Ridge (among others) on December 29, 1835. Soon after the Trail of Tears, all three were murdered in one day of violence and retribution, as had befallen William McIntosh. But the Treaty Party that signed the document did not receive the perks that McIntosh did, and it is far more difficult to see their deaths as justifiable. They saw the only alternative to the treaty being violent (and ultimately futile) conflict, and came to terms with it. The three strike me as tragic figures, acting out a destiny largely beyond their control. As Major Ridge declared afterwards, "I have signed my death warrant."</p><p>Our guide gathered us together once more, out on the green grass of the once-village, to regale us with a few more bits of information and answer our questions. Then it was time to take the journey back south, across the Chattahoochee River, into the former homeland of the Muscogee Creeks.<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191886158515930914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA1I9BCcByI/AAAAAAAAAJw/VoQ-y7qHVYA/s400/NewEchStories.jpg" border="0" /></p></div></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-32929859119905948252008-04-21T15:24:00.016-04:002008-04-23T01:15:04.369-04:00An Aside: North to Cherokee Country, Part One (The Vann House)<div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SAzvEjJFZcI/AAAAAAAAAHw/oKHwVKcZ9Ns/s1600-h/Trail+Gourd.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191787331883197890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SAzvEjJFZcI/AAAAAAAAAHw/oKHwVKcZ9Ns/s400/Trail+Gourd.jpg" border="0" /></a> I was preparing to put together an entry for April's Sense of Place workshop events on Art in the Hill Country, when I encountered a series of photographs downloading from my camera that had been taken the day after my previous blog entry, while I was on a Hill Country Montessori field trip to sites associated with the Cherokee Trail of Tears. I felt inspired, perhaps even obligated, to share a few words about our journey on March 13th. After all, the Chattahoochee River which bounds the Hill Country was once a treaty line, with the Creeks living on the south side and the Cherokees across the river. Indeed, I can easily imagine many Cherokee traders passing through the Hill Country, on their way to trade in the Creek villages.<br /><div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>I am only an armchair historian, but I am intrigued by the experiences of the Creeks and Cherokees. Next year, our Sense of Place Workshops will include further exploration of the Creek Trail of Tears -- an event precipitiated by Chief William McIntosh. As I described in a January blog entry, McIntosh signed off on the cession of remaining Creek lands in Georgia at the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825. Short-term, his signature earned him ownership of a one square-mile reserve (the park we visited in January); longer-term, it earned him a much smaller bit of land sumounted by a stone shaped somewhat like a turtle, now lichen-encrusted. He was assassinated (or executed, depending upon one's point of view) by furious Creeks who had no intention of giving up their lands to the Georgians. (At one point, McIntosh, working on behalf of the US government, had even tried to bribe Cherokee leaders to agree to a similar treaty. As a result, McIntosh had been sent on his way south in disgrace, with a warning never to return to the Cherokee lands.)</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>While the Creeks (particularly the Upper Creeks, living in Alabama) were keen to maintain their traditional ways, the Cherokees adopted the accoutrements of Western culture. On the eve of the Trail of Tears, most Cherokees were living in agricultural communities, living in cabins or even mansions (with black slaves), had developed their own system of writing, and had even drafted a constitution modeled upon that of the United States, with a capital at New Echota. On our school trip, we visited New Echota (where a number of structures have been reconstructed, including a print shop and the Cherokee legislative and judicial buildings). But first, in the morning, we visited Spring Place, the former home of Chief James Vann (and afterwards, his son, John Vann).</div><div></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191793800103945682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SAz09DJFZdI/AAAAAAAAAH4/OtxCukPT1pg/s400/Vann+House.jpg" border="0" />At the time of his death in 1809, Chief Vann was the wealthiest of the Cherokee aristocracy. He lived in a fine brick mansion, ran an extensive cotton plantation worked by slaves, drank heavily, and on more than one occasion is known to have beaten one of his wives. What is equally problemmatic, to me, is that his house carries practically no traces of his Cherokee origins and culture. Only in the symbolism of the yellow sunflowers decorating the panels over the fireplace mantle can his native roots be read in the architecture.<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191795694184523234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SAz2rTJFZeI/AAAAAAAAAIA/DE_ea2Jxz48/s400/Mantle+Sunflowers.jpg" border="0" /> Elsewhere, the house layout, woodwork, and furnishings (there to evoke original pieces that might have been there) all bespeak a wealthy Southern planter. There is even a compressed block of tea from China (eyed curiously by students in the photo below), which would have been a great luxury indeed in the first decade of the 1800s in Georgia.<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191802239714682354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SAz8oTJFZfI/AAAAAAAAAII/38k3j6qsc60/s400/TeaTime.jpg" border="0" />There is even a stunning "floating staircase" that graces the central hallway....<br /></div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191803863212320258" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SAz-GzJFZgI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/PVQKo9G7ooI/s400/Staircase.jpg" border="0" />But on the stairway landing, between the first and second floors, there is a mark burned into the wood back in 1838. It is a reminder that the owners of that house were, ultimately, just so many savages to be sent out West. The house was given away to a white Georgian in a land lottery, and he showed up to claim "his" home. A member of the Georgia Guard threw a burning log onto the staircase in order to "smoke out" the occupants. John Vann and his family were permitted to take their things with them, but they had to give up their plantation home and take the Trail of Tears, too. </div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192304612884612978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/SA7FiRCcB3I/AAAAAAAAAKY/Rf9NsOzem0E/s400/StairLog.jpg" border="0" />After touring the house with a well-meaning novice tour guide, we wandered the property. Outbuildings included examples of how moderately well-off and "poor" Cherokees would have lived at the time. The students ran around for a while to burn off excess energy built up on the long drive from the Hill Country, dashing off to the area around a spring house ruin, then starting up a game of tag. Then we got back in the van (Vann?) for the half-hour drive to New Echota.</div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-51658713628734364632008-03-12T18:46:00.006-04:002008-03-12T19:46:15.658-04:00Hill Country Geology, Part Six<a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hde53UmRI/AAAAAAAAAHY/yzE8r6WWY7Y/s1600-h/Geo+Trip+9.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176990557172701458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hde53UmRI/AAAAAAAAAHY/yzE8r6WWY7Y/s400/Geo+Trip+9.jpg" border="0" /></a>Continuing up the trail beyond the first granite pavement outcrop, we came upon the ruins of one of the mills that give Cochran Mill Park its name. The mill building itself was made of wood, and burned as a result of arson in the 1970s, though it had been starting to fall apart before then. The mill operated into the 1950s -- I have read accounts by local residents of trips to the mill to get their wheat ground into flour. One of the mill stones still remains on the site, partly covered by mosses, grasses, and fallen leaves. The stone itself is Panola granite -- we could tell right away from the large feldspar crystals dotting its surface. Local stone, it might even have been quarried right there in the park. I appreciated seeing that stone, carved meticulously out of 350-million-year-old rock, shaped into a tool for human beings to make their bread. I thought of all the ways that granite traveled through the environment -- as exposed outcrop, as soil, as home for potter's wasps, and now here, as human technology centuries old.<br /><br /><div>We clambered up onto the second outcrop; the trail was much steeper than the access to the first. In-between hunting for xenoliths, I paused to look back down at the mill ruins, picturesque against the backdrop of Bear Creek, on this blustery late winter day.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176998021825861922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hkRZ3UmSI/AAAAAAAAAHg/aVrXaunU55E/s400/Geo+Trip+12.jpg" border="0" /></div><p>Chilled by the winter wind, we started back down the trail toward the warmth of Cochran Mill Nature Center, where we would lunch in the main gathering room, amongst the various reptiles and amphibians that call the Center home. Nearly at the end of the trail (where it meets Cochran Mill Nature Center's entrance road), I found a spider's web in the branches of a shrub that had not yet leafed out. Water droplets in the web had turned to ice in the cold morning air, and hung glittering like the jewels in Indira's Net. The spider was nowhere to be seen -- I pictured her (or him?) relaxing in a miniature lounge chair, somewhere in south Florida, sipping Bloody Marys on the rocks. I took several photographs, trying to convince my auto-focus Kodak not to ignore the web in favor of the nondescript branches in which it was nestled. At last, my camera relented, and the result is below.</p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176999954561145138" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hmB53UmTI/AAAAAAAAAHo/S8ycBzlAgVY/s400/Geo+Trip+13.jpg" border="0" />That was the last photograph I took that afternoon. The trip didn't end there, of course. The eight of us (including Julie's enthusiastic future geologist son of five years, Bruce) all enjoyed lunch together at Cochran Mill Nature Center. Then we drove out the nature center access road, passing to the <strong>right</strong> <strong>side</strong> of a series of boulders of Palmetto granite on our exit. We drove maybe an eighth of a mile south, then parked and walked in on a trail that was the original route of Cochran Mill Road, in use probably until the 1950s. Walking a short way down the flat, pine-needle-covered trail, we came to a roadcut that predates the ones along the South Fulton Parkway by perhaps a century. The rock had weathered heavily, and was mostly covered with mosses, lichens, and unlichenized algae (including an abundant free-living green alga that was, strangely enough, 1970's yellow-orange instead of green). We quickly identified the rock as highly weathered gneiss, or <em>saprolite</em>. Bruce enthusiastically demonstrated the auditory quality of a saprolite: a geologic hammer striking it makes a dull thud, rather than the metallic ring of "fresh" rock. We continued down the path toward the wooden pedestrian bridge over Little Bear Creek (the location of one of our school's Adopt-a-Stream sampling sites, but that is another story, to be told in November). Along our way, Julie would stop to examine rocks along the side of the trail where the cut had been made to put in the road. A few hundred feet further along from our first saprolite encounter, we stopped at a boulder of what Julie thought would turn out to be granite. Though heavily weathered, it was still possible to discern the foliation pattern in the original rock, once it was broken open. More gneiss. </p><p>Still further down the trail, approaching the creek, we came to another rock, this time only a large cobblestone in size. Breaking this open, Julie was fairly confident that she was seeing granite instead. So the Contact was probably nearby, though it would elude us this time around. We did not examine any more rocks, and I was left feeling that my knowledge of the area's geology was patchy and inconclusive at best. I knew there were granitic rocks (the Palmetto granite) intruding into schists and gneisses (the Atlanta Group), but the story was still murky, the details nearly indiscernable with the passage of time. I could consult a geologic map -- perhaps even the new one -- but I expect that only months on the ground, walking the land, picking up rocks and peering at them with a hand lens, sampling them for microscopic thin sections and even x-ray diffraction analyses -- only all of this would help reveal more of the story. Or maybe, as I have come to suspect through my years as a geologist, all of that would simply lead to new and different questions to ponder.</p>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5631691927337074640.post-76092606264221566892008-03-12T18:28:00.004-04:002008-03-12T18:43:55.337-04:00Hill Country Geology, Part Five<div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hZU53UmPI/AAAAAAAAAHI/8AUbjdsgnx0/s1600-h/Geo+Trip+6.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176985987327498482" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hZU53UmPI/AAAAAAAAAHI/8AUbjdsgnx0/s400/Geo+Trip+6.jpg" border="0" /></a> It takes a trained eye to notice granitic xenoliths. <em>Xenoliths</em>, as I have noted elsewhere, are literally "strange stones", bits of other rock that had gotten caught up in flowing magma and managed to maintain aspects of their original character, even if (as in the case of the photo above) they had become partially absorbed into the surrounding melt. Anyway, at first, the granite at my feet looked all alike, except where the solution pits poc-marked its surface, or where the joints ran that linked the pits in a geologic connect-the-dots. But then Julie pointed out a xenolith, and we were all fascinated at the discovery. After all, xenoliths can't be that common, can they, if it had taken us so long to find one?</div><div></div><br /><div>The reality was that xenoliths of all sorts were all over both of the pavement outcrops we explored. Some were darker than the granite, and were probably true bits of the "country rock" that had been intruded, while others were lighter granitic phases. The novelty wore off, though I was still entranced by some of them -- particularly a large (maybe eight inches long) xenolith of finer grained granite that had weathered out a bit from the surrounding rock (<em>see below</em>). Julie explained to me that the xenolith, which was just downhill from a zone of finer-grained granite, was probably part of the finer-grained phase that, having cooled early in the history of the melt, somehow got ripped away from the rest and incorporated into the remaining<br /><div>magma. Now, it rises from the granite pavement surface like a miniature Stone Mountain, channelling the flow of rainwater down the rock, causing a small solution pit to form just downhill. I took several photographs of it, thinking about how small a difference in erodibility can, in turn, can cause such noteworthy topographic expression. I was beginning to appreciate the subtle nuances of granite bodies, though the relationship was strictly plutonic. </div><br /><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176989380351662338" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_WWqEAY3C_II/R9hcaZ3UmQI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/70q_Gn2wgvw/s400/Geo+Trip+11.jpg" border="0" /></div>Dr. Clifford Blizardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13910083091467155319noreply@blogger.com0