"A hard cold rain a forest of wind
late at night the lotus drips
who knows the dream that entrances the world
is simply the luminous prajna mind" – Han-shan Te-ch'ing







The lotus is kindred but not home here
we hear it singing droplets of rain
strum its pointed petals in Indonesia
I can taste the perfumed lilacs sag

Arboretum Diary

"for the colors and lines and expression of this divine landscape-countenance are so burned into mind and heart they surely can never grow dim" Muir, from "First Summer in the Sierras"







4/28


No more than three hours of sunshine predicted in the morning here will bring the hungry trail walker into the canopy of the oak savannah at the Grady Tract.  This is the Arboretum's outpost, and not yet, as far as I have seen, crowded as Longenecker or Curtis might be on nice days.  The entrance at Evjue pines affords a quick entrance into woods away from the noise of the belt line highway and then continues to reveal more authentic depths as the West Knoll rolls out something like a transported swatch of African Savannah; the eye tracks this flat pasture seeking out large mammals that aren't bound to be there, but instead settles on a loud beaked turkey crossing the path and then ducking into the oak thicket.  The Greene Prairie opens up and again tricks the eye into thinking that this might very well be an ancient remnant of years past, but it, like the restored savannahs, are not. Instead the hard handiwork of Greene who had meticulously researched species from other native

prairie habitats and replanted them here years ago by hand.  Marsh and sedge grasses open to taller stalks of goldenrod or even further down, aspen.  Geese bob up and down over the more substantial rolls of grasses as the boardwalks barely stay afloat over the shallow drain of water.  On all four sides, it's hard to imagine, suburbs, city streets, business and highways. The red winged blackbird chortles its own logic, the goldfinches spray across the wispy brush and a crane might elegantly cross the sky in the distance, he too fooled that this isn't a city scene.  The founders of the Arboretum wanted to recreate native habitat before the pioneers reached here and began upturn land for the sake of farming; as they preserved the habitats, they preserved time in a way.  Where ground species meet birds above in the trees, we get some idea as to the panorama of centuries ago.

Odes to Colorado

"Spring comes, together with a rush of feelings.
I go, alone, to knock at a grotto's gateway." – Ching An, "On the Road: A Spring Day at Ling-Feng"











4/27


A cold April rain blocks the way to sunny trails.
The daffodils have bowed to the ground defeated.

As the Yahara water rises it climbs the banks:
the rocks grow dark by hairy moss underneath.

Off in the distance of the mind
There are the still mountains of the Rockies
burning like white embers under an afternoon sun.

I am walking through a cloud of bear's breeches.
Alpine yarrow is up the crevasse out of reach.

By the time I come to the end of cabin trail
at Sylvan Lake just outside the town of Eagle
the rain has ceased, the daffodils awake.

Dhaba
The Wonderhouse

"As the trooper cantered off, Kim crawled round to the back of the house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there would be food – and information.  The kitchen was crowded with excited scullions, one of whom kicked him." Kipling, from Kim






ch.4

And so this mostly unheard of little swatch of sand spit they called an island at Sunset Beach became the paradisal home that only Atman had seen in those dreams of departure from his homeland so many years ago, where a blue here looked something much more of a painting and at sunset, if you watched closely enough at the great red ball slowly falling out of the sky and sinking into the horizon, you could see a green flash that tricked the eye much in the same way that a magician might pull green feathers out his clasped hand at a moment's notice.  Now that the dream of motion had been ceased, the Dhaba had found its ground, it was the seasons of the tourists that became the family way.  Peak seasons did not, of course, always coordinate with the school season, and so Atman had devised ways that the children did their lion share at the Dhaba when they were not at Sanibel School, and he and his wife reckoned with the other parts of the seasons when it would be just them...and truth be told, there was some peace to these days, despite more work. There were no orders to bark out, no splitting the bickering between Sanja and Cecilla and between three and four every day in the afternoon, as would be custom of a true Dhaba in India, they would shut the doors, turn off the lights, and they would walk the beaches together, hand in hand if the time were appropriate, and collect shells as all the others.  It was at this lull in the day that they might come to know and understand this paradise of sand and they came know many of the locals who had also found their time and space in among the tourist cycles.  The Ramseys had become great friends, Ms. Torres, from Long Island, had transplanted here, and could be found at the same spot on the same chair at the far end of Sunset beach. She enjoyed watching the local fisherman wade out into the shallows for sea trout or, when in season, the tarpon, which were notoriously frustrating to fish for.  The tarpon was an enormous silver fish, ranging sometimes from 6-8 feet long and finicky in diet.  The saying was be prepared to play backgammon for 7 hours if you want the tarpon by 8.  They had formed a small group of travelers and great eaters and would discuss local cuisine and would all stop by the Dhaba at various hours during the week giving Atman tremendous pride in his new concoction, always upping the ante, as he said, so that the menu does not become stale and we lose this paradise for no other reason than our being satisfied.  It had been such an afternoon in early spring that the Morays had come to watch what must have been a grandfather and his granddaughter take their daily kayaks out to the strait, anchor, swim, and come back, each day, same time.  This had seemed unusual because the strait was not usually a place for swimming -- many boats and, during the day, a strong current.  As the tide lowered, the current became less over the top, but it was still substantial, but the grandfather looked like he knew what he was doing and so they just assumed they had perhaps found an interesting structure below that carried exclusive shells...

Arboretum Diary

"It's the wind that makes them run away, and every poppy can linger at the edge of a furrow without worrying. They're fellow countrymen." Renard, from "Poppies"









April 23

The Magnolias we have to be thankful for.  The planter craves the spring bloom, but the spring bloom is quiet and quite calculating, each species having to draw itself out from under cover of the cool and moist and dead dark foliage.  Maybe a patch of phlox here, dames rocket inching out, even the dandelions biding its time until deep into April before it litters in yellow across the scene.  But not

Magnolias.  Big, bold, early bloomers that must share a hearty attitude that must sound something like the hell with it, we are coming and we will grow.  Magnolias are an extremely ancient species.  Because they do no depend on bees as pollinators, but beetles, they do not have to be so delicate in their beginnings.  Longenecker at the Arboretum is combined at the far east end by these courageous bloomers and their counterpart, the lilacs, which will wait another week or two thank you.  When at

their full peak alongside together, this part of the garden is considered one of the largest stands of curated lilacs in the world and the puffy pungent smell will push the unaware visitor back in their shoes as they get out of the car and start walking toward the purple deluge.  On sundays, when the Arboretum holds many of its family walks and programs, kids get to mill around the color, often feeling the pink satin on their hands, running to the next tagged planting, holding it up, yelling out its unusual Latin name, then running off to the next in a sort of random maze made by long limb and new colors which ward off the dull, hazy, sleepy brown of deep spring.

Dhaba
The Wonderhouse

"Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with three silver rupees–enormous largesse." from Kim







ch.3

Atman had brokered a deal with the resort after many tries and finally found what became considered one of the greatest locations on the entire island, at Sunset Beach, behind the resort tiki hut. This was a great cul de sac, easy to drive into, easy to drive out and supplies were transported to them on the same truck that brought the resort food. It was not long after then that Sanja had become known as 'Little Chaat,' or, on more mocking occasions, 'Little Chicken Boy,' for it was found that the best selling item from the menu of The Wonderhouse was the traditional Indian food called Lasan anna murghi nu chaat, or garlic chicken chaat.  It was his duty in the morning – "never be late, always carry a smiling face" Atman would say – to the delivery pick up out back and bring it back to the truck for refrigeration.  It was always, of course, tempting at Sunset Beach to forget about it all, all of

the work that had to be done for preparation; within eyeshot were the Jamaican beach service workers, pulling up blue umbrellas and serving shiny beers to early customers who would stroll along the lapping beach with their heads down seeking the famous Junonia shell.  "Little Chaat!" mother might yell from inside, the lighting perhaps not yet entirely on inside, always well dressed, hair done up nicely, hunched over the stove preparing garlic, the chili flakes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cilantro for the salad along side. "Are you caring for the chicken?" Sanja muttered out of the side of his mouth to his sister, Cecilla, who had an uncanny way of listening to just enough of his mutterings to find the small portions that might get him in trouble. "Why is it that you do not do the chicken," he would say, pulling it out of its sturdy packaging outback where the refrigerator door was located. "I see that the pelicans have many hours of freedom."
  "Someday all of this will be yours Little Chaat" father would say, and Sanja's eyes would light up back to the blue sky and act as if he were diligently mastering some new technique.  It was the day that he was finally asked to make the Chaat that all things changed for him..

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

Grits are easy to make good.  On their own, at least in the simple instant form, grits aren't much more than water and texture, but add to them a variety of spice, vegetable and shrimp and its like instant transformation to comfort food.  I had been enthusiastically introduced to the wonderful world of grits a few years back in Charleston, SC, where grits are God and a little out of the way eatery on the

grounds of Middleton Place served a batch that blew my socks off -- it was one of the great meals I've ever had.  That was homemade and had about two hundred years of experience behind it. Recently, a batch from Doc Ford's New Orleans eatery at Captiva Island continued in-line with the excellence.  Here up north, grits are not particularly prodigious on menus, but in the past few years the instant packs have showed up on shelves.  One half cup of boiling water onto the pack of dried grits and

that's that, a fine, but dull, concoction that could be used as a simple side for somebody.  A nice recipe in Food Network's most recent magazine provided what seemed like a good solution: cover those grits with everything but the kitchen sink. Get some butter in there, a bit of pepper jack cheese, celery, bell pepper, some garlic, scallions, chopped tomato, juice of lemon and, of course, a cayenne seasoned handful of shrimp.  I did all of this, plus added a sauce of parma rosa as a kind of gravy to pull it all together and to seep down into the grits, creating flavor in every pocket.  Luckily all of this, although a pinch spicy on the shrimp, is mostly mellow and something kids can enjoy as long as they set aside the scallions.

Green Hills of Captiva

"....then up and down through orchard-bushed hills, around a slope of forest to the top of the rift wall where we could look down and see the plain, the heavy forget below the wall, and the long, dried-up edged shine of Lake Mantra rose-colored at one end with a half million tiny dots that were flamingoes." Hemingway, from Green Hills of Africa






The parking lot of Ding Darling National Refuge was under construction so we parked two miles out in the tram service lot and waited for the shuttle bus which was to run all day continuously.  Behind us by a quarter mile was Bowman Beach, a vast public visiting area that we had biked to in a previous visit, and just one small part of the network of accessible beaches, canals, and straits that line the Sanibel Captiva Island.  We were on our way to Ding Darling, a great mangrove barrier island habitat that had been purchased then preserved by the late great Ding Darling, a Iowa cartoonist and newspaper publisher who had visited these waters back in the 30's and realized that

this was a sportsman's mecca – used as a landing pad for hundreds of species of birds, some of the great tarpon and sea trout waters in the world, and a few salt-water alligators.  Men of those times did not see the benefit of limits on harvesting the wildlife, nor did they see the disadvantages of prospecting old growth mangrove for golf courses and resorts. Ding acutely understood the beauty of

limits and the need for preservation and eventually became one of the most powerful conservationist of his time. The nature preserve, now visited by millions, is a fairly pristine habitat, virtually impassable by man except through narrow trails that can be kayaked and very shallow bays that don't lend themselves to heavy boating.  Once we got to the recreation center, we got onto our kayaks and slipped into the calm shoreline water where we had just watched a pelican jump down from his roost on a dock pylon to viciously gobble a unwary silver fish. Our guide quickly spoke of the manatees, or sea cows, a kind of non descript aqua mammal that are seen all over the islands as they rise their

snouts up onto the surface for air and, as they dip back down into the shallows, leave a smooth crest on the surface, their marking.  We bunched at the first stop and behind a manatee rose as if from nowhere, as a pelican swung around the corner of the mangrove and silently opened its fish net beak and we all awed.  The rest of the tour moved in a similar pattern: we paddled for fifteen minutes, stopped at the next trail sign, and as the naturalist spoke of the wildlife, they would show. Ospreys circled overhead, their peculiar talons as often as not carrying a fish; an Anhinga standing silent as a stark shadow in the grasp of a mangrove bank; Double-crested Cormorant, Heron, and so on.  Look out for the tree crabs, they might fall in your kayak, but don't worry, they are strictly vegetarian! To paddle through the dense shoots and tangled vines of the mangrove is to see immediately the difficulty of living here unless you happen to be a mullet or shrimp, and that, we hoped, -- as Ding Darling must have seen -- is just the way it would stay for a long future.

Dhaba
The Wonder House

"'When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a written picture of the Padma Samthora – such as I used to make on silk at the lamassery. Yes– and of the Wheel of Life,' he chuckled, 'for we be craftsmen together, thou and I.'" – Kipling, from Kim






Ch. 2

Much had changed since that time for the Moory's and particular Sanja since the great hurricane had raked over the barrier islands here along the coast.  There could be no way that Atman would have ever desired such a thing, nor could have anticipated, but the great rebuilding of the island had brought all of the rebuilding of the homes and resorts until the road from the mainland, Periwinkle, all the way to the end to the end of the island itself, had become a long train of people coming to visit. The Dhaba, which had been something more of a side-show, so to speak, – a kind of colorful Indian peculiarity – had now become a great necessity, and for all of those who have chosen such a life as serving the transient food, necessity was, of course, the key to all success.  Atman had found himself one day years ago underneath a grove of varied palms and one of the great green fruit had fallen just in front of his feet. One foot closer, standing nearer the Dhaba truck, he realized that this could have struck him on the head. He picked up the green ball and took it into the back side of the truck and handed it to his wife who was stooped over the griddle making the crepes and lentils known as Dosa, and claimed that fortunes had changed for them that day. "From this day forward, I believe

our pilgrimage to this world of water has ended. We are now on the other side." Of course this would have been nothing more than a comic scene for the wife. She had often formed a sweat over her by the time the lunch crowd had passed and had concerns over supplies, giving marching orders to Cecilla, who was a less than willing participant in this unusual life the Moory's had cut out for themselves.  Atman had the eyes of a large bug, quite wide, always seeking the answer to large mysteries, part ocean, part religion, making the claim that they had now finally found the answers to they're problems as the cars began to line up behind him.  He had been right. The Dhaba was no longer a peculiarity but something that began to show up on the wonderfully cartoon like maps of the island. Yes, there it was, the lime green and yellow truck, shaped more like a van for the sake of limited space on the brochure, and Atman took this as the most sure sign of success.  "Tomorrow we will begin looking for our new place at the end of the road," he said, which brought a look on his wife's face of such mystification that it would difficult to repeat its intensity. "For God's sake Atman, what are you saying. Our business is finally thriving and you want to move us down the road to an unknown place, closer, closer, to the water? Is that it?"
"Our journey will be complete at the beach. That is where we need to be. They will come from all angles. They will walk, drive, boat. Fisherman will smell your Pav Bhaji for miles out over the

water."  It was ludicrous, she knew this, but Atman's visions had rarely been proved wrong, as long as the Moory family was willing to be patient, to continue to work, and believe in the magical powers of this place, this blue water that was so much more angelic than anything they had heard of in the Ganges.

Dhaba
The Wonder House

"And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!" – from Kim, Rudyard Kipling








Ch. 1

It took the greater portion of Sanja's father's lifetime to find this place at the very end of the road, where the land – actually just a great hump of sand – by the time it reached the end of Captiva Island, finally ended abruptly and only a very swiftly flowing straight of thirty foot water separated its brother island, North Captiva.  There had been a moment in time, before Hurricane Charlie had separated the two sand masses, that Sanja's father, Atman (named after the holy) wanted, indeed, to finally land his Dhaba truck at the Mangoe's Grocery on North Captiva. "I would like them to pilgrimage to Wonder House, the same way that we have made such beautiful sacrifices to come

here." Sanja had not been born yet at this time, but the story had been passed down something like a recipe for Chaat or Jhalmuri, and it was his mother who had the rational sense, it had been told many times, that they cannot expect vacationing tourists to drive to the 'end of the road' just for their simple fare.  In fact, she declared, "you know that we must offer hamburgers, and we must offer something of hot dogs, you see this, right?" Sanja's grandmother had been the one to pass down all of the original recipes to the Moory's family. Atman was strangely an only child and had received,

unwillingly, all of the techniques of the kitchen as a child, a position usually reserved for the daughters, the wives, and the mothers.  He did not like such heavy responsibility when he was young, as all of his other childhood friends were busy getting into wild mischief and holding out dreams of one day becoming the next cricket champion.  But he did not resent his fortune as he became older; in fact, he intuitively began to apply his spiritual intuitions to the great crafts and trade of cooking authentic food.  "I cannot offer the hamburger or the hotdog. You know this," he would quickly scorn his beloved wife. "They will come if they find that the food comes from the hand of a yogi."  Sanja's sister, Cecilla, had been born by this time, and remembered this as the summer of discontent, all that

time trying to find the right location for the Dhaba food truck "at the end of the road on a clump of sand in the middle of nowhere." The island was ripe for it, Atman felt, born, as it was, as the largest key lime orchard in the world. Such will! Such fortitude! This would be the story of the Wonder House, he knew, and so they painted that first truck lime green and yellow and it stood out like ripe fruit against the mesmerizing near green blue of the shallow straights and rolling white-shelled beaches of Captiva.

Arboretum Diary

"I've just crossed a sunburnt plain and here they are. They welcome me, warily. It's a family, the elders in the middle, surrounded by the youngsters whose first leaves have just been born..." – Renard, from "A Family of Trees"







4-6

A strange and complex family it is, the linked prairies and woods of the Arboretum.  From the small parking lot off Curtis Prairie on Arboretum Drive, you can see the stitches of the various woodlands from this one spot: Noe Woods, an old farm that has turned to a woodland cover tall pines, cherry and much basswood and the like; Curtis, the one hundred and twenty five year old oaks still lined in places by the setting of an old farm fence; and off in the distance the Gallistel Woods, a thicker, denser combination of all of the above that often needs clearing to allow for sunlight on the canopy.  As the sun is out, something like a surprise, the new waves of songbirds seem to call out from the outskirts of each of the transition zones, from pine to savannah, back into the thick underbrush.  Was it the Downy Woodpecker this time tinkering with the hollow wood? Without binoculars, it is a fool's attempt to located each of the sounds as the birds, many of them shy, duck behind the stump or steep in brush.  As if on cue, the pond animates, despite its unhealthy storm water run-off content.

Up along the prairie trails the skeletons of the sumac stand ready and the dropseed waving at the wind.  All along the boardwalks the red wings perch and stand their ground as if guarding against the wind itself and its drawn chortle rules the marshes like a tyrant's song, there only as a reminder

to the casual visitor that they will be here long past your exit.

The Southseas

"All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is painful." Old Man and the Sea



They started with a casual paddle to the south shore of North Captiva Island.  This had always reminded him of Old Hemingway, Papa, who had finally found his home in Cuba where he would, for better or worse, write his life away as it had been inspired by the authentic aqua colors of the ocean there.  There was the lightness that came with it, the innocence, is what he had achieved there temporarily, as the washings of the most beautiful of beaches held the visage of long cane poles dunking and weaving against the surf.  There were city fisherman all over the world, no matter where you lived, the day fisherman, but nothing like that of Cuba, who you could see in the creases of the eyes the thousand days against the sun of the sea, the redding of the cornea and the clarity of the blue pigment which revealed the sea inside.  That was this island similarly because it was still raw and not entirely roaded.  Manatees ruled the waters, pumas and wild boars still roamed the strange mangrove woods and the raptors could see the struggling fry along the surface from five hundred feet.  This was the different world, that of Jose Gaspar, Captiva pirate, who hid the enslaved and the treasures around these very bays. Captiva, yes, the grandfather thought, what a place to be held captive! They rode a short wave into the surf and looked out at the straight where his once high masted schooner now sat under eight feet of water.  If he would have closed his eyes he did not know if he might show in Papa's old book or in the annals of the pirate's log.

Arboretum Diary

4-5

I am not sure that the position of early spring nature reporter would fill quickly if advertised in even the most zealous of nature magazines.  What is to be reported upon in the long days of drizzle has more to do with the hopeful imagination that what lays on or underneath ground.  A long run from the Lost Woods, through Curtis Prairie and on into the Noe Woods sealed this for me once again: the ground is sodden and rising, the birds dripping wet and quiet, the small little promises of flowers budding are forced to hold their own against the barrage of droplets and the threat of night frost.  If the sun would poke out, for even two hours, as it did yesterday, the chorus begins and the flowers rise as if on cue by the inert power of photosynthesis.  If anything, the long run through various portions of the Arboretum do reveal the extreme work being done by the property crews to cut back the invasive brush in nearly every quarter, heaped up in what look like beaver dams at the edges of the

saved patches of sumac, little bluestem, goldenrod, cattails and sedge.  All of this is being prepared for the spring burning seasons but conditions must be just right. The wind has to be traveling in a near perfect west to east. Blowing north would leave smoke trails over the belt line highway which is essentially illegal; to the south, neighbors and country club might find motive to complain.  Either way, no doubt the hundreds of wild turkeys that live in these woods and find forage in everything from the chestnut trees to acorns, nuts, and maybe the hard berry left over from previous season.  All of this reveals, maybe most importantly, is the long and hardy (seems almost foolhardy) life of the growing bud that gets fooled, as the migrating birds do, by the flashes of warmth and sun only to get hampered once again by the next event.  It doesn't seem that it should be surprising that human endeavors are similarly challenged in fits of progress and steps backward. The gardeners stand in their garages, trowels in hand, ready to help along the color, then must duck back in just as quickly, the loud rapping of rain across the roof as a reminder that earnest plans are yours to make but not always yours alone to keep.

"The sound of the stream is, after all, without a present, or a past." – Ching-An, from "On the Spot Where Shih-Chia Tzu Sits in Meditation"








In late afternoon
the drapery of rain
is carried away
for a few hours

Only the buds
of small flowers smile
purple at either
side of the mouth

Cardinal, kingfisher
the buffle headed ducks,
even a wood cock
hidden scurries and erupts

what is the world
without its spring sun?
bare brown beige
and an unholy hush

Here at the Savannah
a fresh spring
emerges from under
a formation rocks

Green clover rides
the trickles like an artist
does inspiration,
the painter does a sunset

Up on Monroe Street
the traffic rolls in tin
An airplane curves
across the sky in smoke

But a few yards in
under the waking savannah
a chortle of fresh birds
is where you are

Arboretum Diary

4-3

Final day of Trail Steward training, we took a ride over to the other side of Lake Wingra, to the south shore, where most people might know it as the bike path that skirts along the popular Monroe Street. This is an add-on to the Arboretum and one that loses its connection to the central hub of the Nature Center to the northeast.  It had been a standard thicket of woods, much in the way of basswoods, black walnut, a silver maple here or there, a cherry here and there, but that, over the last 15 years has been eyed-up as a closer connection to the restorations of oak savannah in the Grady Tract and Curtis

Prairie.  This spring much of the buckthorn and honey suckle had finally been torn out and readied to do battle against over and over again (we have learned that often to properly eradicate an invasive, it often takes at least three, sometimes four earnest attempts at cutting and sometimes treating with an herbicide). This conscious effort, although clearly seen as an ongoing battle in which all too often the invasive wins out, is worth the while in monitoring the process of not only how to eliminate but also

Belted Kingfisher as seen at Ho Nee Um Pond

to understand just what it takes to recreate the native landscape in a time and at a place that is no longer perfectly conducive.  Millions of gallons of stormwater flow downhill into the Arboretum watershed each year bringing in any number of species not native to the landscape.  Honeysuckle, Buckthorn, a devastating species of Asian thorn (wraps around a pine tree for example, all the way up to the top foliage and does not allow for tree growth), certain grasses and even flowers all make-up a modern landscape that is charged by polluted run-off, highway wash, and storm water.  Certain remnants throughout the Arboretum still show off the strength of unhindered land – the compact and healthy web of roots, to ground cover, to stem and leaf, all lend a hand in warding off invasive, but these are minority plots.  The modern viewer, not educated by the near total attack of invasive in so much of an urban woodland, might come to think that the spring flowering of the honeysuckle leaf, for example, is the norm and that it belongs, but in truth the honeysuckle simple takes away resources from the oak canopy and can even come to shade out the growth of the oak grubs (young pods of oak growth).  In these conditions, you either let invasive completely eradicate the native species, or you fight back, and that is what the Arboretum mission is called upon to do: to restore, monitor, learn, and educate.  This patch along Monroe Street, now that it has receive the proper resources, will be quite

Buffle Headed Ducks seen at Ho Nee Um Pond

an amazing swatch to watch, for it is the most common area that passing traffic sees – what had been an area impossible to see through, has now been cleared of much underbrush, the ponds are visible, and the oaks against stand in prominent positions, giving the casual viewer a brief picture of what a savannah once was and should temporarily be.  Aesthetics, though, are just part of the matter; the results to the soil, the newfound space for native flowers and plants, and the prospect for the acorn to germinate just became that much better.  If the invasive come back, they can now be burned out, leaving the oaks to breath.  This used to the be naturally occurring cycle, either by wild fire, or by the hands of the native americans who also knew that the prairie health needed fire to reproduce properly.   It's all a stark lesson: to replace the woods with concrete will always have adverse effects on nature. How people respond becomes the interesting part of the equation.  Back in the 30's the largest known human-made calamity ever known, the Dust Bowl, was one of the primary motivations for the Arboretum as a place to step outside of the so called progresso the time and reconsider how to maintain the land for its own sake.  The wings savannah is a great modern extension of the old idea -- you don't have to give up on the possibility of keeping it right, even as pass, daily, the new woods and think that the tangle and the thicket and the garbage are the norm.