Goose Pond Mountain Boardwalk, 03 March 2008

Give us a sunny, fifty degree day in March and we'll celebrate the end of cabin fever. Fifteen nature strollers hit the still snow-covered trail. Three week old Sylvana was with us on the very first nature walk of her life, and a new Nature Stroller family joined us for the first time as well, Blessing and Rylee. Considering the cold weather we'd had, I didn't expect much in terms of wildlife, but Lorin's patient eyes spotted movement on the bottom of the first pond. Reed stems seemed to have sprouted legs! Inside tubes of their own making, caddisfly larvae cruised the pond bottom looking for food.



In the second pond, it was Blessing whose careful examination of the unfrozen edge turned up two red spotted newts. One swam off, but the other was sluggish and easily lifted from the water. We examined its bright yellow belly, warning predators of its unpleasant taste, and its stout midsection before placing it back in the water.

Lorin's sharp eyes spotted a small shrub on the edge of the pond. This was seedbox, one of my favorite plants of winter. As per its name, seedbox forms exquisite little salt and pepper shaker boxes for its seeds. Lorin, an artist and potter, suggested that they would make lovely pots.

Kat pointed out the mottled yellow, red and green skunk cabbage flowers growing below the boardwalk, and we got up close and personal with some of these stinkers in the last wetland on the trail. We discussed their heat-production, a trait that helps their kin in the tropics disperse their carrion or dung like smell in order to attract flies, up north in the temperate zone, the heat production gives them a head start on flowering, a bit of a jump on the springtime season.