Writing, Publishing and everything in-between.

A year ago I had a story rattling around inside my brain begging to be let out. The early stages were really fun because the characters were coming together like little markers on a game board. I did what anyone would normally do, and I ignored it for a while. Then one day I couldn’t take it anymore and I sat down and wrote for a few hours. Honestly, I cant remember the first thing I wrote down but I was having a great time doing it. On a whim I signed up for a community college writers workshop on fiction writing and I took my story with me. I got some great critiques and feedback and I kept chugging away, watching the words pile up on my google doc word count.

I knew right away that the novel was going to be a thriller and immediately I placed the setting aboard a ship. In college I spent two weeks on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico and it was a fantastic experience. However, there were so many things that happened that made my ears tingle or made me look over my shoulder. The boat made these creepy sounds all the time. Everything you did echoed on board and you could hear people moving around in different areas of the ship. Hours of the day became meaningless because we worked all hours of the day and night. Maybe I didn’t know right then but I had a story brewing.

Its been a year now and I have a completed manuscript that is going through a final round of edits. I took my book and my ideas to a writers conference and pitched my ideas to a few agents. I am learning how to write a query and I am sending it out there. However, this stage of the process is, well, it sucks. The writing part is awesome but the decision to get traditionally published with an agent feels like a grind. I am “in the trenches” they say.

Well if you have made it this far, I will treat you to the first two pages of my soon-to-be debut novel Undertow.

Felix woke soaking wet, his sheets damp with sweat. Instinctively, he reached for his phone and called Brigit, fumbling in the total darkness. Brigit had been his lifeline since birth. Fraternal twins often don’t share some of the same idiosyncrasies found in identical twins. However, Felix and Brigit never felt the need to follow prescribed rules. 

Brigit didn’t answer. She always answered the phone, especially when he called. They had a ringtone just for each other. Without thinking, Felix threw on a pair of running shoes with no socks and ran the four blocks to her duplex on the East side of campus. He rounded the corner cutting between two buildings and was met face to face with blue and white police lights. They flashed, reflecting off the windows of the homes like eerie stage lights in a theater production. His throat grew tight and his heart thumped uncomfortably in his chest “Please be ok,” he muttered to himself, but he knew the answer before talking to anyone. Brigit was gone. 

The police met him at the door of her room. Everything about the situation felt fake, like a scene from a movie set that he had accidentally walked in on. 

Her room was a mess, the mattress was lifted up, her papers everywhere on the floor, and her clothes were ripped from the closet. Felix immediately looked for her electronics and noticed her laptop and phone were gone, but her Apple Watch was charging on the stand. He noticed that her suitcase was also missing, and her new pair of running shoes. Maybe she had escaped before this had happened. A bus station maybe? Felix was running through the scenario in his head, and nothing added up. Brigit was a PhD student, in the middle of her senior thesis. She had a tight group of friends, a sometimes boyfriend, and a job on the weekend. People like that don’t run away. The police officer came up to Felix and asked him to leave, he was contaminating the crime scene. 

Felix sat on the edge of the sidewalk, his long legs bent at an odd angle. Nothing about this night had made sense. A large police officer came up to Felix and started asking him questions. The words seemed to fall out of the officer’s mouth through his mustache, impossible to comprehend. 

“I understand you are Brigit’s brother – Felix is it?” 

“Yes.” He answered flatly, unable to feel anything right now. 

“When was the last time you heard from her?”

“We talk every day, I talked to her yesterday about her project and graduation.”

“Did she seem ok?”

The conversation went on like that for twenty minutes. Yes she was ok, no this was not normal, no she wouldn’t run away with someone, no she was not experiencing depression, yes he would know that. On and on it went, and Felix felt more and more detached from the whole experience. When it finally finished, Felix would have no memory of this conversation; just the mustache of the police officer would remain. 

Felix tried to walk home but found that his feet wouldn’t take him. He kept making the block around her duplex, thinking that each time he rounded the corner the experience would be a dream. This time the police will be gone, he kept thinking, as he made another lap. Finally, another police officer grabbed him by the arm and shuttled him into her car. She asked him for a friend’s phone number and he blanked. Felix and Brigit had come to Harvard from Germany. All of their closest friends were in Germany and the only person he could think of was his childhood next door neighbor. Several minutes passed and he remembered his classmate Ade. Ade answered on the first ring, he had been up working on his thesis project, and the police officer relayed the information in short clinical sentences. Ade said he would be there immediately. 

Ade walked Felix back to his room and said he would spend the night. He talked for a few minutes with the officer who picked up Felix, and she told him the gist of the evening. Ade tried several times to start a conversation, but Felix was in shock and couldn't respond. Their small dorm had a sofa that sat between the two beds. Ade grabbed a blanket and a pillow and fell asleep within five minutes. Felix thought about sleeping in the same way that humans think about flying – it’s a thing that happens but will never happen to me. Felix felt for the first time since he was born, completely alone. 

Why To Save a Species

A couple weeks ago I attended a workshop at the San Diego Zoo. To say that I was (and still am) excited about the opportunity is an understatement. I have dreamed of working at a zoo since I was a little kid. While some of that glamour wore off after working as an intern in college, I still get excited at any zoo related things. The San Diego Zoo is no ordinary zoo. The park itself is more of a hotel for animals but behind the scenes is where all the activity happens. SD zoo’s primary role is to breed and research endangered species and keep them alive for future generations. Think about that for a second. The whole idea of a zoo started as rich people’s private collections. A way to flex on the other millionaires at the time. However, as the world has changed around us so have zoos. They now exist as little research hubs, educating and holding ground as species die all around us.

The workshop was at the SD safari park, about an hour outside of San Diego. The area is surrounded by scrubby hills that glow red in the sunrise. The air is light and cool, like a desert, but can turn humid when the wind blows in from the ocean. The safari park is not like any park I have ever been to. Its sprawling, guests can expect to walk at least a mile from one end to another. However, most of the park is behind the scenes. There are vast open spaces of land that house animals in mixed groups.

The species that we spent the most time talking about was the California Condor. You could say that this is the flagship species of the safari park. They spend a lot of time and energy breeding, rehabilitating and releasing condors to the wild. This is because the California Condor is hell bent on becoming extinct.

The condor is a giant vulture like species that has a wingspan of 9.5 feet. They are intimidating birds that hop around with a clumsy, half awake demeanor. They don’t talk much to each other but they prefer to live in groups. There are lots of things that make a species predisposed to extinction. Being big is one of them. You can also be slow, tasty, slow at reproducing, and clumsy. Most species with just one of these qualities are doomed to be on an ICUN red list. The California Condor has inherited all of them. In addition to the above redeeming qualities they also posses a unique sensitivity to lead which causes rapid poisoning and death at low concentrations.

Condors at one time ranged from Canada all the way to Texas west of the Mississippi River. There are fossil records to indicate that indigenous peoples hunted and collected parts of condors. They could have been prized for their gigantic feathers. There are also folk tales and songs about them. However, by the time white settlers and miners had taken up residence in California, the condor was already becoming scarce. When US fish and Wildlife started taking population numbers in the 1980’s it was very obvious that extinction was on the horizon. The cause of such a die off has been attributed to lack of food, disturbances from settlements, and lead. Lots of lead.

Yet, the more I learn about the condor the more I cant help but think that everything is stacked against them. They refuse to build nests and instead lay eggs on rocky crops where they are likely to fall and break. They must be six years old before they can mate, and they only have one egg every two years. Their diet seems easy enough to find. They eat dead anything and much like vultures will travel long distances for food. This puts them in direct contact with hunters. Condors will often eat the remaining parts of a kill, exposing themselves to lead bullets. Lead shot is now outlawed in California but its still used in hunting.

The SD zoo has worked with scientists to bring this species back from extinction. The population has grown to a somewhat sustainable level. There is still lots of active breeding going on in captivity and the zoo releases Condors back into the wild. However, their comeback has been slow going.

This brings up the question, why are we doing this? There are a lot of species that went extinct when humans expanded into cities and took over rural areas for agriculture. Many of them we never really got to know before they disappeared. Yes that’s incredibly sad. However, if it takes an army of scientists working year round to ensure that the population stays stable, what’s the point? Why the Condor? Why even try?

The first time I asked this question I was looking at a Panda for the first time. They are slow, clumsy, refuse to have babies, and eat bamboo. A diet so low in nutrients that they have to spend all day eating to get enough calories to survive. The Panda as an animal makes no sense. Its a branch of evolution that just kept going on to oblivion. Scientists have brought the Panda back from extinction by sheer will. Again, the question remains the same, why bother?

This is a question many people have been trying to answer. The science-y answer, the one they will give you at the customer service desk is this: In order to protect our planet and biodiversity we must save endangered species. That’s great of course but what if there is more. What if we do it just because we can? Of all the things to spend our money and time doing can you think of a better more gratifying project than bringing a species back from extinction? Isn’t that enough?

A group of people living in the same place

In June, fresh out of school for summer vacation, I attended a clothing swap. My invite came over text and was short and sweet. Bring any old clothes you don’t want and show up at 4:00pm. As someone who is obsessed with organizing things, I regularly go through my closet and get rid of any items I don’t use. This was a bit of a hiccup to my attendance, could I show up empty handed? I managed to find a couple of old workout leggings and a hat that had seen better days and I packed up my car and went.

I arrived to the house nervous about my lack of offerings. The door was unlocked and I went in to find many women scouring over piles of clothes in various levels of undress. There was a low hum of chatter and a cheese board laid out on a kitchen island. I scanned the room for someone I knew and didn’t find anyone. Finally a familiar face appeared, a coworker from another department. I was ushered into the fold, “lay your clothes out by category and dig in.”

How are your kids. What’s new this summer. We are moving to a new place. How’s your grandmother. Did you catch that episode last week. I dug through piles of used clothing, listening to the conversations unfold around me. I imagined what these women did in the clothes, did they go to the bank? Did they have an important doctor’s visit? Why did they decide to get rid of them? A woman approached me and asked me my shoe size. She crawled on the floor and thrust a pair of sandals at me. “Try these on.” The experience felt like being enveloped into a cocoon of womanhood. The space made sacred by our energies and presence. The clothes an excuse and the conversation the purpose.

As I picked at the dried cranberries and slices of cheddar I felt dizzy. Is this what community feels like? In a country that prides itself on the individual, what space is left for community?

One of my unpaid jobs is to manage a community trail in my neighborhood. I do this with a small (3) set of volunteers and a tiny budget from the neighborhood HOA funds. Our work is difficult and we struggle to get more help. Many of the neighbors think we can hire out most of the work, their misunderstanding of our finances is comical. Yet, we enjoy what we do. We meet up, work on the tedious task of removing invasive species. Talk about seeds, native wildflowers and butterflies. We sweat into our long sleeve protective clothing, tools sprawled out on the ground. Despite the small group and variety of ages, we connect on a deep level. We all want to see the trail thrive, and we take pride in being able to help it do that.

After sending out handfuls of emails, posting flyers and even offering free food, we still only number in the single digits. One thing I have learned is that you can’t force community. People have to opt in. They have to seek out connection with others. Lots of times I’ll meet neighbors and they will say “nothing is ever happening in the neighborhood.” I have to just sit and nod my head. It takes work to be a member of a community.

What does community look like in today’s age?

It’s the lost and found hanging on a tree in the dog park.

It’s bringing a coffee to your friend recovering from back surgery. Sitting with her as she tells you about her slow walk through healing.

It’s the pay it forward bulletin board at the local cafe.

It’s your neighbor calling to let you know your sprinkler head broke and offering to turn off your water.

It’s sending flowers to your friend on the day of her marathon, and her sending a bouquet back when you have the flu.

It’s the run club singing happy birthday at 6:45am on a Tuesday.

It’s the clothing swap, the buy nothing group, the facebook borrow requests, the lost and found pets page.

It’s everything.

A Hike in Wildbasin Will Solve All Your Problems

There is a quote from Game of Thrones that has been rattling around in my brain lately. The religious zealot has moved into the capitol and is causing a stir in the city. The young king Tommen Baratheon is visiting the zealot and slowly becoming enthralled by his lengthy speeches and charismatic leadership. The zealot says “I imagine you have worn a year of someone’s life on your back” referring to the detailed and extravagant clothing Tommen wears.

The quote came back to me sometime recently as I was watching a YouTube video about why the quality of all our furniture sucks now. High quality things take time to make and perfect. I couldn’t help but think about how many things used to take so much longer to make and how time must have seemed so different then. Moving into a house and buying furniture could have taken a few years, while you were waiting for something to be made and shipped to you. Building a house could have taken even longer. In a world where everything is now fast, is there anything at all that is still slow? Is there anything worth waiting for?

One thing that has always moved at its own pace is nature. While some trees may take a decade to produce fruit, others bloom within a few months of planting. Humans seem to have the ability to alter this rate of change. Our involvement in nature often means a rapid decline into degradation. We move in clear out anything useful and leave a trail of invasive species in our wake. However, what if that energy was put towards something productive?

In the 1970s a group of seven women sporting matching red tennis shoes and knee length skirts decided to start a conservation movement called “Now or Never”. Their legacy is a series of protected wildlife preserves that span the 360 highway up into the hill country. They had an uphill battle attempting to do something that had never been done before. Their success created Wild Basin, 227 acres of steep hills and cedar canopies. Spending a morning in Wild Basin will leave you feeling just a little bit better about the world and the potential for positive change.

When I arrived at the preserve it looks like just about every other place in the Texas Hill country. It’s rocky, full of Cedar trees, and the whole preserve is a piece of hillside that juts downward into a ravine below. Once you enter the shade of the trees you notice a greenhouse an outdoor classroom and a collection of potted plants. This outdoor classroom was part of the original plan 50ish years ago. While the preserve seems to look no different than say the greenbelt or maybe Emma Long park, the difference is in the details.

Wild Basin was intensely altered by human activity. This activity started well before the women of Now or Never started their campaign. The land has been logged for cedar to make telephone poles, it has been grazed for cattle and also burned in a fire. While some pockets still have hundred year old cedar trees, they are few and far between. When the Now or Never crew arrived it was in a sorry state. However, there is one thing that kept them motivated. This area is native habitat for the Black Capped Vireo and the Golden Cheeked Warbler. This is their nesting habitat, one of their only nesting habitat in the entire world. Without this land, those two species and many others, will disappear.

Black Capped Vireo in the Vireo/ Wild basin preserve Austin tx. Photo by me.

The task ahead of Now or Never was to preserve the land and rehabilitate it back into a habitat a young nesting female Warbler would be happy to live in. It’s hard to imagine what was going through their minds in that moment. The seven women standing on hill looking out at bare rocks. Oaks and cedars choked by drought and erosion. A completely overgrazed and degraded hillside lay before them that was doomed to become a planned neighborhood development. I am sure they were called all sorts of things, crazy, idealistic, and most of all impossible. Yet, if you attend a guided hike in Wild basin 50 years later, you can’t tell that the land was anything but wild.

If you are planning to restore an eroded bare hillside, the first thing you want to do is collect rainwater. Volunteers, students, and some paid employees have constructed rainwater collection barrels. In addition there are physical alterations to the landscape. Deep groves have been cut into the hillside to slow down rainwater and collect soil. Branches are carefully laid into brush berms to harvest every last drop of water. Plants can now be strategically planted. Areas are chosen where they have the highest chance of survival. Volunteers come diligently each week to water the saplings for two years or more. Helping the young sprouts make it through their first two summers.

Photo of the rainwater collection system and wildflower filed in the Wild Basin Preserve.

Wild basin is a testament to human caring. Those seven women saw the destructive power of development and decided that we can do better. It can take between 100-300 years for degraded landscapes to return to their natural state without human involvement. It can also take only a few months for that same landscape to be destroyed again. The Now or Never women have successors who have taken up their cause. Their project is ongoing and many people have chosen to continue with their legacy.

Special thanks to biologist for the Vireo Preserve and Wild basin Jim O. who has been organizing volunteers for many years on the project.

Map of a portion of the protected lands west of Austin. Wild Basin and the Vireo preserve are circled in red.

We are also the environment

I have lots of great conversations with students. In many teacher trainings they talk about these small moments with students and how they add up to a greater relationship. However, what I find to be more interesting is when you can literally hear the gears in their heads turning. When you have said something that makes them make a connection. I had one of those moments last week when a student asked if we should be writing about “how this affects people or the environment.” I responded “Well we are also the environment.”

I wish I could take credit for coining this phrase but I can’t. Its been making the rounds on the internet and Its been rephrased so many times that I don’t know where it came from originally. However, it has me thinking about our relationship with the other species that we interact with around us. No species exists alone, and even the most solitary requires something from someone. So what are we giving, and receiving to those around us?

Female hummingbird, photo by me 2023

The hummingbird comes to my yard and visits my flowers. She is a regular on our block and buzzes from house to house checking her regular haunts. I have a purple trumpet honeysuckle that I planted last year which she loves. As the heat thickened and the summer drags on, the purple bush stopped putting out flowers. I noticed that the humming bird would still come each day, just to check. This is when I decided to put out a feeder, for the end of season.

Within one morning she had found the feeder and began visiting more regularly. With more food came some more competition. A male arrived, his little patch of pink sticking out under his beak. She was not so keen to share and a dispute ensued. As the two fought, a third competitor approached. A second female snuck in to grab a snack while the two chased each other through the tree above. I found myself wondering what drama I had created with this massive addition of resources.

Male ruby throated hummingbird, photo by me 2023

Our most charismatic roommate here in the household is the female squirrel that lives in our oak tree. She has had two generations of children here. Though I can not be certain that she is the same female year to year, I feel that her personality is so distinct I must be able to tell her apart from others. She sits on the low hanging branch and entices my dog Mila to come outside and bark. Her chattering almost a beacon. Mila will hear her from any room in the house and come running outside. I don’t feed this squirrel intentionally but she eats about 20% of my produce from my garden annually. I grew several sunflowers and only one managed to have a decent crop of seeds. One day I came home from work with to a text from my neighbor. It was a grainy photo of the squirrel carrying the whole head of the sunflower back to her nest.

baby squirrels from last year. Photo by me.

Late Blooms

This post was primarily written and photographed in October but I didn’t get around to posting it until this weekend. Like many things, Late.

Botanical gardens in Albuquerque NM

I have become obsessed with the words Late Bloomers as if anything that blooms could ever be late. The flowers that bloom in late summer and early fall are some of the most interesting. They lack the intensity and impatience of spring. Fall blooms take their time. In addition to blooming at their own speed they stick around for a long time. Spring blooms are often battered by storms, quickly replaced when they break. Fall blooms have cooler weather, the only threat on the horizon would be an early freeze.

In northern climates the spring blooms can usher in a sigh of relief. The coldest months have past and we are now on the road to warmer weather. Further south we look to the fall blooms to let us know that the burden of summer has lifted. The rains bring rain lilies, a second round of Turks Caps, Fall Aster and Frostweed.

Fall foliage and a UFO sighting in NM

If you have ever been to a candle store its likely you have smelled sage. However, if you have ever been to the desert in the fall, its likely you have smelled sagebrush blossoms blooming. This fall flower is one of the most rugged plants in America. It grows in the harshest of climates we have to offer. Yet every fall as the weather turns cool and the small rains come in from the east, the New Mexican desert blooms yellow. This plant is a late bloomer. It waits until the shadows get long and the nights get cold. The flowers protected from the heat by the seasons change, the fragrance filling the streets and neighborhoods.

Sagebrush blossoms New Mexico

The sagebrush plant is an icon of the west. Native Americans have used it for medicinal purposes as long as time can remember. If you had to describe the smell, it would be complex. Fresh out of the ground and in your hand it is a powerful piney fragrance. As it dries the smell changes and becomes sweeter more subtle. Its a memorable scent.

Sandia Peak New Mexico

Like all fall flowers the sagebrush moves slowly. It grows incrementally in parts of an inch each year. The lack of water and oppressive heat dictate the speed. Yet, patience is a trait the sagebrush knows well. The lifespan of the plant can be up to 100 years or more. Waiting has become an art form. Leave the spring blossoms to the dogwoods and the dandelions, the fall belongs to the late bloomers.

The Edge of Summer

Much has been written about summer and its attraction. One near universal American experience is the endless summer days without school or obligations. As a teacher I get to experience these as an adult and I can report that they are just as good. As the summer begins to end there is a feeling of nostalgia that arises. We are beginning a time of rapid change. In the seasons, the weather and the media. The days of June and July are long and stagnant. With just a few hours of breathable air in in the mornings we must rush to get in our activities before the heat sets in. From 6- 10 am there is a breeze blowing through the city, warning its residents of the oppressive heat to come. By 10:30 the warm air refuses to move and the choking heat begins to rise. August is a marathon.

A Green Heron standing at the edge of a drying pond.

As we strive to make sense of our changing world I find myself wondering why humans are so resistant to change. We have evolved big brains to solve problems and build community. We have strong legs for walking, climbing or running. Our eyesight is some of the best in the animal kingdom, excellent at picking out patterns. Yet, when a minor change occurs in our life we panic. We are unable to accept that the world is capable of such drastic climate change and therefore we choose denial over action. After teaching climate change for more than six years now, students want to know how this happened. How did we let it get so bad? Why do people refuse to believe? They desperately want to have faith in their fellow humans and their ability to make the right decision.

For the past several years August has become the month of the wildfire. Its the month where the cracks in the argument begin to fail. The trees creak and scrape with dryness in the breeze. The green hue of their leaves turned yellow from the heat. The whole city is holding its breath for the next great rainstorm, hoping it will arrive before the next great fire. But all around I feel the edge of summer approaching. This is the last gasp. As our world travels, changing its tilt towards the sun ever so slightly, we are soon to get a break. We pass off the suffering to another part of the planet and we get a reprieve.

This coastal wildflower represents evolution in harsh environments. It has a prickly spine with tough leaves and even tougher seeds. Yet it still blooms a delicate white flower.

With the news of UFOs and who knows what we decided to watch “The Day the Earth Stood Still” for the nth time. I had forgotten that the film was rather openly about climate change. Yet, the professor character asked the Alien how they were able to become so advanced. The Alien responded that they were forced to evolve as their sun began to die. The professor responded that “evolution only occurs at the precipice of catastrophe.” Its true, evolution doesn’t occur in stagnant environments, without change, species can not change. Maybe this is our precipice.

A River Delta

Every drop of water that ever is, will travel to the sea. It could take a long slow meandering journey through a mud soaked river. Winding its way through the roots of trees, the mouths of fish, and drops soaking on wet grass. It separates into individual molecules of steam, gaining independence in the sunlight. Then, missing their absence, it falls back to the earth returning to its kin on the shores of a creek. This journey could take years for a small drop to see the vast stretches of ocean. Or, it could be there in an instant, a summer storm washed out to the deep. One thing however is true of all things on this planet, we have come from the sea and we long to return. Like a magnet she pulls her offspring back to her in overflowing vibrant green river deltas. Bringing with them as gifts to their mother, water takes precious nutrients and oxygen back to the sea. The first signs of these abundant gifts are the life that thrives on the edges where the two waters meet. The river delta is a place where nature exists in abundance, and visiting one always feels like returning home.

The Colorado River Delta (Texas)

As part of my chosen profession I have had now two opportunities to see large vast river deltas in person. The first was the Mississippi River delta which is only accessible by a several days boat ride from Louisiana. You can either approach it by riding down the river itself or by going around the reverse way and riding up the river from the ocean. It was a fantastic experience that I kept detailed notes about and am now motivated to re-write and publish it here on this website. This recent visit was to the Colorado River Delta in Texas not to be confused with the Colorado river which winds through the Grand Canyon and enters the Gulf of California. In contrast with its cousin, Texas is very flat and the river flows at a snails pace to the ocean. It savors each leg of the journey before entering the salty bays and seagrass beds. The Colorado river has always been a river of extremes, fierce and dangerous flooding during the fall storms and then dwindling down to a mere trickle in the summer. People have never been comfortable with the whims of nature and decided to dam the Colorado river at several points to allow for better flood control and of course water.

Unlike other rivers in Texas the Colorado brings with it large quantities of dead wood that float dangerously in the channels and canals. These wood trunks come from natural erosion along its journey and form the foundation of the ever changing marshland. The newest addition of real estate can be seen above as a new layer of logs attach themselves to the grassy edges. Over time this will accumulate debris and provide space for new grasses to grow.

Up close to one of the floating marshlands supported by dead logs

The marshy landscape is anything but permanent. A swift hurricane or a strong flood can rearrange the entire structure. So much so that fishermen may walk out one morning a not recognize the paths they previously travelled on.

A Snowy Egret on the edge of the canal.

A group of Dolphins swim in the Delta.

A Crocodile inspects our boat.

Garden Notes, the Last Week of April

The Grackles love the water, they bathe in it with an excitement and ferocity. They jump and throw the droplets over their slick backs in waves with their wings. They all drink from the birdbath, a feat I can not understand. The water always seems filled with algae and bugs. Who knows what it does to their digestive system.

A mourning dove has a nest in the tree behind me. No doubt to be near the water. It has been calling out to someone, maybe a mate or a potential mate. Its late in the season to be finding someone but maybe there is another dove that needs a partner. I wonder how they find each other in a city so large.

Other birds are also chirping, adding to the sounds of the neighborhood. They chirp in loud bursts as if sharing some important gossip or news. They never seem to stop and just begin to chirp over each other. What they have to say is more important than pausing to hear a response. Maybe they are engaging in some type of group activity. Maybe the real sound is all of them together not one alone.

With all of the rain we have been having, the greenery is lush and vibrant. As if the plants are keen on reinventing their own version of the color. I cam outside yesterday to find that my tomatoes had grown almost a foot. This is my first year companion planting and my tomatoes are the best they have ever been. They like to lean on their neighbors for support and their stems gently weave themselves between the shoots of mint and lantana. They seem to be telling me that this is how they were meant to grow all along. The mint keeps the snails away and I have yet to loose a plant this year to pests.

My cantalope is eager to bloom and has put forth numerous flowers. I have been trimming them as the plant is too young to produce fruit. Its small leaves are half the size they will be and needs to spend more time growing. It expresses the impatience of a teenager ready to be independent. Its response to my trimming is to bloom more. As if it hopes I’ll miss one and it will be allowed to fruit. Ive been eating all the blooms and they have the most wonderful delicate flavor. It tastes like cantaloupe but whispy and quiet. Where the cantaloupe is sweet and vibrant the blooms are subtle and quiet. Each tasting a little different for just seconds until the flavor disappears. By the time you have swallowed it you question if it was even there.

The garden beds in the backyard have just a few hours of sun and will likely take months for the plants to grow. The squirrels are treating the beds like their own private grocery store, chewing and digging up anything they like. One morning I noticed nearly half my plants dug up or full of bite marks. They left the mangled remains of the stems in the dirt, letting me know that these were not to their liking. In an attempt to make peace I set out sunflower seeds for them. Two days later my homemade feeder was chewed to shreds and the seeds were all over the ground. My offerings seem to be unwanted and insufficient.

The mother squirrel who nests in the knot of the tree has already said goodbye to two babies this year. They left the nest when they were small, but stuck around on the same tree. One left first, the second baby stayed for a week longer. The babies are now the same size as the mom and hard to differentiate between each other. It feels like the number of squirrels in the neighborhood has doubled in the past month. They are crawling out of every bush and tree, in the roads and sidewalks. The hawks and owls must be getting fat this spring. With all the water, the squirrels and mice have so much to eat, there is plenty to go around.

Are We Experiencing a Fungal Renaissance?

Fungus, a tasty treat on your next dish or maybe a brain altering zombie creating infection taking over the world. No matter how you see fungi, they seem to be taking over our popular media. This begs the question, what is it about fungi that have us so enraptured?

photo of Pleated Inkcap mushroom from my raised bed garden. We have had a lot of rain lately which has increased the number of mushrooms.

A depiction of the Mycelial space network from Star Trek Discovery

The recent release of Star Trek Discovery takes a new crew of space explorers on a journey through the space mycelium. Most all fungi on earth have a mycelium, its the connection of fibers underground. The largest mycelium ever recorded spans for miles under a famous pacific northwest city. The true size of it is unknown, because its underground and hard to record. These mycelium spread nutrients, information and who knows what else between plants, itself, and other fungal species. The introduction of a space mycelium with an infinite number of connections that can be harnessed as a tool for space travel was inspired by the real mycelium which exists under our soil. With so much unknown about space itself, maybe a space mycelium isn't too far off from reality.

Movie cover of Netflix’s Fantastic Fungi

If space fungus isn’t your cup of tea, you could dive into the world of real life fungi with the recent (4 years ago) film release of Fantastic Fungi. This film the enters the world of fungi from food all the way to its healing properties. While it may seem that this film and Star Trek Discovery have nothing in common, they actually do. Paul Stamets is the scientist behind Fantastic fungi, and he is the inspiration for the Star Trek character who is named after him. In fact much of the terminology around fungi in Star Trek is taken right from Paul’s lectures and research. The space fungi connection can really be felt by the end of the Fantastic Fungi film where Paul begins to dive into the psychedelic world of fungi and how it can save the world and expand your universe.

Image of Cordyceps from the HBO show The Last of Us

Just a step beyond brain altering fungi are brain-controlling-fungi from the HBO show The Last of Us. These fungi are based on the real life species Cordyceps which infects ants. Unlike the show species, the the real species causes ants to walk away from their home and find a cool damp place to colonize a new location for the fungus. The show species shared some characteristics of the real world cordyceps, causing erratic behavior, changing the physical appearance of the victim and eventually death. Once the HBO cordyceps victims died they were integrated into the mycelial network and could send signals about potential threats to other batches of fungus in the city. The wildly popular show is far from reality but maybe the success is more due to the dreamy lead actor rather than its realistic fungus depiction.

With all the rain we have been having in Austin, I have also trained my eye on fungus. They appear to be popping up all around my garden. The above photos are from some of my hikes, my backyard, and strangely a fungus growing directly on my driveway. No matter how you feel about our fungal cousins, it appears that Hollywood has trained its eye on these decomposers. Fungi share more characteristics with us than they do with plants, but there is still so much about them that is unknown. They exist primarily underground, and send up the mushroom caps when they are ready to reproduce. They play a critical role in plant health and their demise from industrial agriculture may be able to explain much of our difficulty in growing certain foods. One thing is for sure, you can expect more fungi media in the near future.

Hey, is that water clean?

There are three questions I get asked on a regular basis when I tell people I am an Aquatic Scientist.

1. What’s this plant, bug, or thing.

2. How clean is this water? (points to nearby pond)

3. Have you ever thought about doing anything else besides teaching.

I love answering all questions related to nature and the environment and I have a really good time hearing about peoples interests. However, the third question lets me know a lot of implicit bias people have towards teachers and how few people think of teaching as a real career. That could be a whole post on its own, but we are here to talk about clean water.

Greers Ferry Lake, Arkansas

This post is specifically about your local lake, neighborhood stream, or backyard pond. Public utilities are, for the most part, a regulated entity that have standards of quality that must be met. What happens when they don’t meet these standards is another thing entirely. However, I am interested in how clean the water is in your neighborhood. Both because it has an affect on your well being, and the animals and plants around you.

Green Heron at our local pond, 2023

What does it mean for water to be clean. We have been told by advertisements and tv shows that clean water should be clear. It shouldn’t taste weird or funky. It should come from a clean place like a mountain spring or a deep underground aquifer. Clean water is cold and icy, water straight from the sky or melted snow. Clean water is untouched by any animal or biological hands. Does that mean that a lake full of life, plants, fish, ducks and turtles is not clean? Does that mean if you cant see the bottom of your neighborhood pond that its, dirty?

Many of the things that we don’t want in our drinking water, or things that make water taste bad we cant actually see. If I asked you where the dirtiest water on earth is, you might think of water that’s brown or covered with a rainbow sheen from oil. But the nutritious life giving force of Mississippi river, which supplies food and oxygen to gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, is brown. The nickname muddy Mississippi comes from the light brown silt layering the depths of the Mississippi river basin. This silt darkens the river water and paints the beaches in the gulf of Mexico west of Louisiana something in between Sherwin Williams Bacalite gold and Sears khaki. Many people think this brown water comes from nearby industry, but they would be surprised to find out that this elixir of life is driving the whole ecosystem.

Ducklings at Mary Moore park 2021

So if we cant rely on our eyes, can we rely on our nose? Water in nature has a funk, there is no way around it. Spring water bubbling from the ground, as it passes layers of rock older than humans, picks up chemicals that give it a “flavor.” In Texas this flavor is calcium and can make your tongue feel a little chalky. What about lake water, brimming with algae and bacteria? It can smell a little like moldy salad greens, and taste about the same. Is this also dirty? When you jump off the nearest rock wall and get a nose full, it might stick with you for a few days.

The truth is that the things we really should be worrying about are difficult to smell or taste. These things are the icky ones, the ones that make us sick or could hurt us long term. Bacteria that give us diarrhea, parasites that eat our insides, or chemicals dumped by the nearest republican funding corporation- I mean totally legit business enterprise that sometimes makes mistakes.

A moth stopping for a drink at McKinney falls state park. 2021

With the recent events in Palestine Ohio and the immense cover up and government inaction it really makes you question how much people really value water in the environment. The idea that “its already dirty” or “this wont affect me” really goes out the window when everything gets so much worse. Ohio was the site of one of the first major water based disasters on the Cuyahoga river in 1952. An event that led indirectly to the forming of the EPA and clean water act. I wonder if this event will have the same impact in 2023, or if we are doomed to repeat history.

To read more about the Cuyahoga river checkout this article from the history channel here

Year end review 2022

I am a big believer of new years resolutions. I keep a running list of all my new years resolutions in my journals, and at the end of the year I compare all the lists like an accountant and see how well I did over the years. For the most part I feel like I do accomplish what I set out to do. There is something to be said for where you spend your limited time and energy. If you focus on it, and the goal is somewhat achievable, then you can be successful. The trick is to make goals that don’t rely too much on outside influence.

This year was the year I posted the least in my blog. I feel like I hit a creative rut, or a wall. I have done what I set out to do. I did all the projects I had backlogged in my brain. Then I just ran out of ideas. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted the blog to look like in the future. This has always been a space for me to be creative and come up with ideas.

The national seashore at South Padre Island after a storm. Looking very MAD MAX

We decided to get out of town for thanksgiving break and go to South Padre Island. I’ve never been that far south in Texas but I was in search of good weather and even better surf. The weather didn’t participate and managed to storm all 3 days we were there. We decided to cut our trip short the last day and head home. But the moody weather provided some interesting photographs of the beach. Lots of salt and mist in the air made everything look spooky and magical.

The horizon is completely absent with the storm so close.

It wouldn’t be a beach trip without some photos of beach trash. The plastic waste on the beach is much less in the winter but instead its flooded with microplastics. Plastic bottle lids dominate as well as those little rings on bottles to keep the lid attached.

For the bird fans. We visited the coastal wetlands bird sanctuary and got some impressive photos of a tricolored Heron.

This rather unimpressive photo is quite an accomplishment. I have for the first time photographed a kingfisher. These birds are common in central and south Texas but they are difficult to capture a photo of. Most of the time you hear a kingfisher and never see one. But what a find!

After returning from south Texas and taking a much needed break I began to brainstorm what I wanted to do with my blog in the future. I have set my mind on other types of media. I am eager to record videos or sounds of nature around my neighborhood and beyond. I am hoping to hone some of my skills and focus in on some of the quiet beauty in Austin.

Below is my first video of me trying to learn how to take photos from a kayak. This whole video was a learning experience from the camera to the editing.

The turkey vulture in question from the video, doing its best impression of a bird of prey.

The end of the year is the time to reinvent yourself, if not reinvent reflect. Here is a roll of my favorite photos and my NY resolutions. Thanks for reading!

I have several of these hanging around my house. If you are interested in a print send me an email and I can get you one.

Resolutions:

1. Wear sunscreen everyday

2. Be kind to myself

3. Make time to be creative

4. Acknowledge my accomplishments

Bien Olas

One of the greatest tragedies of getting to live on the coast for 3 years, is experiencing the pleasure of learning how to surf and then moving away. To begin to finally understand what poets, writers, and beach bums have been prophesizing about. There are very few activities outside of illegal substances that will cause members of society to simply leave it all for a sand crusted existence. Its not easy to give it all up just for the surf. The cost of living in the best surf towns is unattainable for even the most wealthy. The surfers are left to living the “van life” or bumming on peoples couches. Stacked four to a room in a shared house, splitting a 5k monthly rent between the 7 of them. Rotating between temporary jobs that leave enough time for surfing and are not draining enough to leave you exhausted. If you cant make it in the US there are plenty of cheap beach towns across the world that surfers flock to. Living in an affordable home with no wifi and little contact with the world but all the waves you could ever want.

There is very little I enjoyed while living in Corpus Christi Texas. A town built in-between the fermenting shores of a salt marsh and a barrier island. Its a perfect place for industry and shipping, yet not so perfect to live. The entire city was constructed along a highway without a single tree in sight. A familiar Friday night activity is rotating between the Applebees or Chilis and maybe seeing a movie. If you can manage to make it to the beach, you might find it a rather harsh experience. The summers are brutally hot with a near constant onshore wind of 10mph. Not a single thing you set down will stay there as the water, sand or wind will take it away. People are allowed to park on the beach, turning the only positive attribute of the city into a parking lot. However, once the busy season cools and the tourists all head home, something very interesting happens. The Texas surfers emerge. With their shorty wetsuits and longboards they brave the whitewash and head to the sandbars to surf. The tiny Texas surfing community is as old as Corpus itself but almost completely unknown to the other coasts of the USA. When I tell people I learned to surf in Texas, many people respond with “they have beaches in Texas?”

The surf is mushy, the waves are weak and the weather is temperamental. It took me almost a year to stand up on the board successfully but once I did I was hooked. I got a surfoboard for chirstmas and later on a wetsuit to extend my season. My husband and I would go out in February when the air was almost 50 degrees and not another person was on the beach. We would spend most of the time paddling and eventually catch some good waves. By the time we made it home our lips were blue and we could hardly unzip our wetsuits. Its all we could think about. I started smelling like surf wax, and would begin every morning by checking the webcams and surf reports. You start to learn the rhythm of the ocean and be able to read the swells. Surfing gets easier because your timing gets better. You can predict when the wave will break and how much you need to paddle. You also start to notice the seasonal changes in the ocean. When are the mullet jumping, when are the turtles popping up. When are the dolphins close to shore. The locals start to look familiar and so do their boards. You can spot a few people from far away on your paddle out and can tell what kind of day its going to be. Afterwards when you are cleaning out surfwax from under your fingernails, sometimes they come by to chat or just say hi.

When my husband and I moved back to Austin for work, and friends, we kept our surfboards for almost a year. We hung them on the wall of our tiny west campus apartment. We kept saying we would go back regularly, maybe once a month and surf. But we couldn’t. We started to realize that if you were going to travel to go surfing, you might as well travel somewhere nicer than Corpus. We went to Costa Rica, California, and Florida. However, we never really got over the pain of missing the beach and the surf.

in 2017 Nland surf park opened in Austin as a waterpark esque adventure. Boasting some of the best manmade waves in the US, we had to go check it out. Could this be the thing we were looking for? The place to cure the hole in our hearts where surfing once was? The now bankrupt surf park was a magnet for all the landlocked surfers that moved to Austin for work. It felt like the park was made for people like us. Our first indication that things wouldn’t live up to our expectations happened right when we set foot in the water. The bottom of the man made lagoon was white plastic with razor sharp seams where the pieces were melted together. The water was brown, a result of using recycled rainwater for their park. We paddled out in groups of 5 with a “coach” who yelled instructions at us as we lined up along the wave. A loud mechanical sound initiated the beginning of our surf session as the mechanism zoomed past to push the water into the perfect wave. I caught the first wave and sat down on my board at the end of the lake, my coach yelling at me to hustle back to the beginning. It felt sterile, rushed, and absent of any feelings I experienced on the ocean.

Part of surfing is slowing down. Its not a sport for people in a hurry, people who need to be somewhere at 9am. I rented a board from a surfer in Costa Rica and he said I could have it for a couple hours. I asked him “when would you like me to bring it back” he responded “Qualquiera”, or whatever whenever you want. That’s the essence of surfing. You cant predict what the ocean will do or how you will feel. You paddle out with no expectations and see where the experience takes you. You cant manufacture that in a lagoon in the middle of Texas.

Share the beach

It’s seal pup season on the west coast and a number of beaches in Southern California are closed. These small stretches of coastline are seasonal habitats for sea lions to raise their young. Groups of females lay in the sand while anxious 2500lb males patrol the water for any threats to their delicate social status. As a constant reminder of who belongs to whom the males bark constantly into the sea like an audible zip code.

Female sea lions relax on the beach with their young, La Jolla California. Photo credit, Author

The other dominant mammal present, humans, walk shoulder to shoulder on the boardwalk observing the spectacle play out. With a nearly 50 ft cliff in between the two species, possible interactions are kept to a minimum. However, not every beach belongs to the sea lions. Up and down the coast signs like the one below remind people that these beaches don’t belong to just us. The idea of sharing the beach is about as foreign to humans as it is to sea lions. The beach belongs to us, is what many people think and will say. As early as 7 am tourists flock to the ocean to lay down their towels and post up their umbrellas to Claim their spot for the day. Their territory that belongs to them. Hey that’s my spot I got here first it belongs to me. As if any part of the planet could actually belong to one person. Yet in Southern California it’s the locals that many people have to contend with and they don’t take kindly to their nap location being occupied.

The day after we visited La Jolla cove a male sea lion cleared off the shared beach so that his gang of females could bask in the sand undisturbed. As children and parents ran for the hills leaving towels and buckets behind I couldn’t help but feel like I’d never witnessed an animal run off a group of people. When humans come up against an animal that won’t be moved from its habitat, we often kill it to get our space. But in the case of a near 2 ton protected species we are left with no option but to give up. I have been thinking a lot since then about ways humans share our space with animals. Humans often share space with animals that we find “inoffensive”. Birds are cute and don’t bother anyone, squirrels can be annoying but they get to stay, snakes are a no. How did we decide that some animals can stay and others aren’t welcome? More people get hurt from domestic dogs than bats, yet ask anyone if they want bats near their house and they will probably say no.

A tourist walks over rocks to inch closer to take a photo of a sea lion. Anyone heard of the zoom feature my dude?

Part of creating a healthier and more sustainable planet is deciding how we are going to share the beach for generations to come. What will that look like? Projects like, homegrown national park have taken the lead by registering places where people have intentionally dedicated their yard or courtyard to nature. A commitment to plant native plants for animals, even providing water or shade. Recently states have realized that animal crossings are necessary to connect pieces of habitat safely over roads. California broke ground on the largest wildlife crossing over the 101 in April. Beyond infrastructure and yards, sharing the beach is also a mindset. We live here with the animals and plants on this planet and we need them.

Tourists snorkel just out of sight from a resting female sea lion

Ozarks St Francis National forest

When was the last time you heard real silence? I mean the real kind, the deafening, space between your ears kind? The check to see if you have tinnitus kind? The kind of silence that makes you realize how loud cars, AC, your cat, the fridge and everything else in your life is? If you are looking for a little silence in your life look no further than a national forest.

School house falls

On a momentary break from the rain we drove the extra 90 minutes from where we were staying to the eastern most tip of Ozarks St. Francis National forest. A sprawling forest located in northwest Arkansas this land is peaceful, full of country roads, and abundant hiking trails. Our goal was to see waterfalls but what we ended up getting was some solitude.

I frequent hiking trails around Austin, I drive out of the city to see nature, and I see nature everywhere around me. However, it is a rare occasion that I don’t see or hear a single person on my adventures. There is plenty of evidence that people are around in the national forest, you can even own land nearby but they just weren’t there on our visit.

Trailhead

In a rather bizarre coincidence the trail was called “Austin trail” which may have been one reason why we chose to go there. Unfortunately, the maps available on the Arkansas website were rather limited and without a subscription to alltrails I decided to wing it with google maps and some poking around. There was a small parking area and the trail itself was very easy to walk on.

Schoolhouse falls is located downhill in a gulley and the water is frigid. This gives the area around the creek a eerie cold feeling that would be pretty spooky in the early morning or evening. The most interesting thing about the pond was that it was completely full of crayfish. I am always reminded that our most favorite fantasy novels are written with the influence of our natural world. This space felt like a sacred site where many magical creatures came to practice or rest.

Pelicans in Central Texas?

What the heck is a large colony of white pelicans doing in Central Texas?

Flag pond in Lake Somerville state park

This large colony of American white pelicans are over-wintering in Texas and will spend a period of time at various inland lakes or on the Gulf Coast. They are avid eaters of small fish and amphibians and will eat up to 4lbs of food per day. They do not dive like grey pelicans and will forage on the surface. The information I read seems to say that these pelicans prefer saltwater over lakes but will venture into lakes seasonally. Its possible that they were simply passing through on their migration south to the coast and we happened to catch them here. This is another one of the great reasons why we need protected wetlands throughout the US so that migratory birds have a safe place to stop on their journey.

White pelican from Wikimedia Commons Image source

Lake Somerville State park is over 11,000 acres and 40 miles of trails. This park is a perfect hideaway for migrating birds and historically was a duck conservation park before becoming a state park. Flag pond is a small pond adjacent to the lake that is quite shallow and surrounded by wetlands. It is the ideal place for any waterfowl to hangout. It is open for hunting during part of the season. It also is an incredible place to see Bald Eagles and other wildlife not often seen in the more busy parks.

Do you feel more American yet?

Camping at lake Somerville is as close as entering the wilderness as you can get. However, no matter what there is always some old person that needs to get up at 6am and run a leaf blower. Honestly the stranglehold leaf blowers have on the boomer generation is unparalleled. Just mulch your leaves with a lawnmower and get on with your life.

There is a 100% chance that there is a wizard at the end of this trail so unless you brought some hornwort to trade maybe turn around.

Winter at the beach in Texas

Humid, windy and little cold is what you might experience if you head to the beach in December. The sea oats look orange in the morning sunlight and remind me of the bottom of the ocean. Its almost as if the transition from sea to land is less of a line and more of a gradient. There is something incredibly relaxing about looking out across a sea of grass moving in the wind that melts all of your human-ly troubles away.

The sun is low in the winter making the shadows long and moody. There is nothing like a moody sand dune to express all of your current feelings about life and the world around us. I can almost feel the sand groaning in dissatisfaction with current state of affairs. As I carefully walked along the dunes I started to see all of the sand crabs and begin to try to snap a photo.

The first one I took a photo of, I caught out of his hideout and he gave me the stink eye for several minutes. This would also be the moment I got sand all inside my camera dial and probably will never get it out.

If you sneak up on a sand crab and they run and hide, you get to inspect their hideout while they wait for you to leave. They are incredibly fast and very good at sensing vibrations in the sand. They are usually gone before you even get close. Some of the hideouts were so big I was dying to see what sized crab lived in there.

Just look at that camo, what an interesting color.

The most distinct feature of the winter beach is the lack of people. If you venture to the coastline to cool off in the summer you will find it crowded, with the wildlife hiding from both the sun and the people. The winter is where the wildlife explodes, basking in the cool sunlight.

A blue Heron spies me out of the corner of its eye, with a oil rig in the distance.

3 frogs take shelter from the nighttime cold in an electrical box outside the campgrounds.

Where will your next winter adventure be?

Can turtle tourism keep a species afloat?

With my Cancun vacation over I find myself sun soaked and delightfully exhausted. However, there is one thing that I seem to be completely unable to stop thinking about. How is it possible for there to be hundreds of sea turtle nests on one of the most populated tourist hot spots in Mexico? As I boarded the plane ready to leave, I couldn’t help think about all the turtle nests that were mere inches away from me on my beach chair. Is this ok? Are these nests actually going to hatch into successful turtles that will enter the ocean? Is turtle tourism a thing that can help keep this species afloat?

On the left several sea turtle nests and tracks can be seen on a stretch of protected beach in Playita Tortuga in Tulum. This beach is closed during nesting season. On the right, a marked sea turtle nest on a stretch of private beach club land. This beach is open year round and the turtle nests are marked with a stick and the date of nesting. I am assuming the nests are registered somewhere but I was not able to find information on the numbers of nests in this particular area. This particular nest was almost under the lounge chair I was sitting on. The beach club was not crowded and everyone seemed to give the nests space and try not to walk on them. Several parents were keeping their kids off the nests and no one seemed to disturb them while I was there. I am really curious as to the success of these nests in a populated area so I decided to dive into some of the data available on the mexico.

I am particularly interested in this topic because I want to believe that humans and sea turtles can coexist. I desperatley want to believe that people want sea turtles to survive so they will do their best not to disturb nests in a public beach. But there is one huge problem (or not??) Mexico has a lot of coastline. Not only do they have a lot, its a commodity, they sell coastline like its a cash crop. They sell it to hotels to build huge resorts, they sell it to tourists to come and stay, and they sell it to wealthy landowners to build beach villas and air bnb’s. Managing that coastline for something like a turtle nesting season is an enormous task that is nearly impossible without the help of private citizens and hotel owners. Luckily “saving the turtles” is trending. I cant go a week in Austin without seeing someone with a t-shirt that says “save the turtles.” Its difficult to find a restaurant (aside from some fast food places, looking at you Chick Fil A) that still have plastic straws. In Cancun I never got a single straw with any drink I ordered, even in an off resort local restaurant. I had trouble locating a plastic bag for my wet clothes, and had to BUY one at a store because there were so few in the city. Efforts to curb common sea turtle maladies are well underway, but what about one of the most critical ways to save the species, protecting the next generation?

Get to know your Carribean and Gulf Sea turtles

Image credit NOAA fisheries.

The most endangered of all the sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico are the Kemp’s Ridley. They were once hunted or rather “gathered” (because turtles don’t really run away) to near extinction for their colorful shell. Their eggs are also supposedly really tasty but pretty much no one alive today could tell you what they taste like. Efforts to rebound the species have been very unsuccessful and this year Florida only saw a handful of Kemps Ridley nests in the whole state.

The most common turtle we saw in Mexico was the green sea turtle. I was not able to snap a photo of one so here is a really realistic photo of me with a green sea turtle.

Did I mention I went scuba diving? It was awesome

Sea turtles are wildly popular in Mexico with tourists. If anyone spots a turtle people huddle around them to hear the whole recounting of the event. It goes something like this “yea I was snorkeling and it just swam by, it was amazing.” Hotels know this is popular and have been doing anything and everything to promote turtle tourism, but what about eggs? I squealed like a little kid when I saw a turtle nest but they are rather….meh to look at. Can nest sites bring in tourists or are they just another piece of wildlife for drunk Americans to trip over in the night?

I am going to compile some of the internet data I can find of the Hotel zone in Cancun. This area is a densely populated stretch of beach with hotels managing waterfront zones. It reminds me of the beach version of the Las Vegas strip. The turtle monitoring and tagging process began in this area sometime around 1999 (??) though I have been unable to find an exact date of when it began. Hotels in this zone will move nests from one area of the beach to another protected beach area with a “corral or fence” around it.

corral photo credit: Rivera maya news

The movement and protection of nests in Mexico seem to be plagued with funding issues across the country. However, in places where tourism thrives there seems to be a drive and funds to continue projects. A similar program like the one at the hotel zone was underway in 2003 (source) in Jalisco, and was very successful. These efforts can be low cost and involve the community in a way that more intensive programs do not. I struggled to find scientific articles with data showing sea turtle nests, but I collected some information from various news sources. All of the sources I looked at described a notable increase in nests over the past 5 years, as protection for the turtles has increased. The Pronatura Península de Yucatán environmental organization manages 210 km of coastline and noted 31,218 turtle nests this year. Those numbers seem amazing but in reality we don’t have a lot of data of what turtle numbers were before human impact. Florida has a robust data collection program that began in 1979 and has seen a huge increase in turtle nests since then. Hopefully Mexico will follow suit and begin to show and report more data.

I think people are hesitant to report too much good news when it comes to conservation. Especially with turtles facing so many threats on the ocean, nesting, plastic, and habitat loss. People in general tend to stop caring about a cause the moment success has been reported. I think its important to remember that the species almost went extinct, so its easy to have a positive growth when the number was almost zero.

graph here—- feel free to stop reading if you aren’t a graph person

A 2010 research study by Centro para la Protección y Conservación de Tortugas El Cuyo, source, seems to show an increase since 1990, looking good for now. lets hope this trend continues.

Turn your front yard into a butterfly garden

This is not a blog post about what you should do in the future, its what you should be doing right now. The title is a statement. You need to turn your front yard into a butterfly garden, and its easier and cheaper than you ever thought it was.

I’m new to pollinator gardens. I’ve had a vegetable garden in every place I’ve lived that could support a potted plant or more. BUT, I have yet to plant anything for the specific desire to attract and feed pollinators. Man have I been missing out, and if you are interested in starting one, you are too. I got into pollinator gardening in a class project and I took what I learned from the classroom back home to implement in our yard. You need two things to make this work, a reliable source of water, and native perennial plants. The water source is very important and should be a shallow birdbath or bowl that you keep filled up regularly. After adding a birdbath we had a small group of miner bees move into our yard.

These miner bees are solitary and dig a small home in your garden bed. They sometimes nest around each other but don’t form hives. We have about 4-5 that live in our garden and we have seen drink from the birdbath. These miner bees look a little like wasps from far away but are more small and stout.

Part of the class project I mentioned above was planting milkweed in the garden to attract monarch butterflies. This year my milkweed was mature enough that I planted it and I have had regular monarch visitors ever since. I also got to experience 4 caterpillars from hatching all the way to cocoon. Though I know that this process happens its very different to witness it first hand in your garden. The monarch cocoon has gold accents! My biologist brain cant figure out why it would be evolutionarily successful to have gold accents on a cocoon but they exist.

It turns out milkweed is the easiest plant to grow. It literally is a weed and goes to seed 3-4 times in a summer. Those seeds then grow fast enough to sprout and flower within a month. The Monarch and its lookalike the Queen butterfly will eat the milkweed leaves as caterpillars. A single caterpillar can de-leaf a whole plant but don’t worry. The milkweed will just sprout new leaves in their place. Once the caterpillar is certified chonky it will find a quiet place to form a cocoon, usually my vegetable patch, and spend several days turning into a butterfly.

You can buy milkweed seeds online for very cheap and plant in early fall. I sprouted my seeds in seed starter cups before planting. However, after my experience this season you could probably throw them over your shoulder into the wind then sneeze on them once and they would be fine. You will get lots of aphids in Texas, so I sprayed the aphids one time when I saw them with a diluted soapy water mixture. Try not to spray the leaves of your milkweed or you could impact your caterpillars.

Good luck and I hope to see some photos of your butterfly garden next year.

Sam Houston National Forest

So you are thinking you want to get away from the city during a pandemy. First thing you wanna do is find some sort of activity where you have the least amount of contact with people. That would probably be hiking, boating, solo painting in a dark room with the door closed? Well hiking it is then.

Sam Houston has been on my list of places to visit forever so we packed up the volvo and headed east to the pine curtain.

Sam Houston is big, real big. Big enough that two people could go to the same trailhead and possibly never run into each other. National forests are also a bit of wild west still in the civilized world. You can hunt most of the year with a gun and the only stipulations are that you need to A. Buy a license and B. don’t shoot while standing on a trail and point away from the trail so that your bullet never crosses a marked hiking trail. I feel like the federal government is putting a lot of trust in people. You can also camp anywhere, not only designated camping sites. Even with all of that in mind only 1000 people every year are injured in hunting accidents, 75 of those result in fatalities. That seems like a lot, but get this 85% are self inflicted accidents. That means only 11 people die each year in hunting accidents where someone else was at fault. This makes hunting or hiking in a active hunting area safer than riding your bike. Now that I have convinced you to enter the forest with people carrying guns, lets checkout some stuff you might see.

Houston is swampy so most of the trails cross a water feature of some kind. Wear boots.

The most notable thing about a national forest is the silence. Its really quiet. There is a major road that cuts through Sam Houston that connects two counties. Even with this highway the sound of the road disappears within the first half mile of the hike. Once you get going you start to notice that YOU are the loudest animal in the forest. You really have to keep quiet to hear the sounds of the animals, because they hear you. We could also hear other hikers several minutes before we ran into them on the trail.

Coral tooth fungus Hericium Coralloides

Winter means that there isn’t a lot of wildlife but there is a lot of evidence of wildlife.

The trail had a hikers notebook in a mailbox that people write in as they hike by. I sat down for a while and read a few of the notes in there. Some were sweet, some mentioned things they saw, and some were quite sad. One hiker was in the midst of a serious medical battle and wasn’t sure if they would make it. It seems that many people return to the forest to seek some peace and guidance.