Monarch Chronicles

"Men sleep. The cassia blossoms fall.
The spring night is still in the empty mountains.
When the full moon rises,
It troubles the wild birds.
From time to time you can hear them
Above the sound of the flooding waterfalls."
 –Wang Wei, "Bird and Waterfall Music"





From inside the prairie the last day of spring.
We walk through the old hip high plantings
seeking the whorled and swamp milkweed.
We push aside the waves of prairie like water.
A single rattlesnake master among the spiderwort,
among the goldenrod, the common St. John's,
stands as sharp as a head of green needles.
As we lean down to see if it is flowering
a monarch flits by at ten feet silent as a thief,
prairie dust snagged by luck on its black legs.

Monarch Chronicles

"In the interim, field studies have developed techniques and ideas quite as scientific as those of the laboratory. The amateur student is no longer confined to pleasant ambles in the country resulting merely in lists of species, lists of migration dates, and lists of rarities. Bird banding, feather-marking, censusing, and experimental manipulations of behavior and environment are techniques available to all, and they are quantitative." – Leopold, from "Natural History"



6/26

It is quite a two-day leap to be made for the amateur citizen scientist to go from identifying milkweed species with the assistance of the local field guide, to laying transect lines through the raw prairie and sub plotting every seven feet for the sake of tallying data.  This great leap comes as a result of the amateur being willing to move past the more comfortable stage of natural observer to one who is willing to stop, bend down on a knee and take the milkweed leaf in hand in order to flip to the underside in order to detect, hopefully, the larvae of Monarch butterfly.  Eyes open, prairie sumac, goldenrod, dogwood and bluestem up to the hips, the common milkweed

Whorled Milkweed

plant now holds a far more esteemed position, the very treasure of the plant hunt itself.  The amateur is provided means for quantifying the data: lay down the subplot rectangle onto over the top of the habitat and identify the flowering species or milkweed within the A,B or C square confines...examine the milkweed for a third instar caterpillar and determine whether it is monarch or Queen Larvae by counting the tentacles.  Stay along the laid transect lines for a hundred meters, as it reaches toward a fixed point in the distance at degreed bearing you must follow by compass. Continue this procedure at random coordinates laid out by satellite imagery, north to south, south to north, until 150 subplot observations and data entries are complete.  The amateur's eye has just made the great leap from

Butterfly Weed

appreciation to counting miniature basil stalks at the bottom of a plant's stem. What had once seemed not much more that the abundant green made by the broad leaves and fibrous stalks of a hundred species, has become a rhizome-like interconnection of the thousand components that make up a butterfly habitat.  You celebrate the upcoming rare patch of milkweed because it is there, perhaps flitting along an otherwise unknowable path from plant to plant, an adult monarch might be seen in the distance and will be transcribed as incidental, our outside the parameters of your transect line.  As you scan out east and west, you look for the bobbing of wings; you wonder which of the hundred milkweed out there might carry a yellow egg and root for its quiet little tucked corner of the prairie to be safe for the duration of the instar process.

Monarch Chronicles

"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. – Leopold, from Round River, "Conservation"





6/23


A few notes on Citizen Science based on the upcoming Monarch Conservation Science Project training at UW Arboretum...

Many instances of the need for human re-intervention in species monitoring exist.  As Leopold alludes to in the above in his more informal definition of conservation, it seems a peculiar but common situation that we might find ourselves in when the very human causes of various species trouble might be alleviated only by the very hand that caused it.  Pollinators simply fall into this category because it is the decline in habitat by human development, agriculture, or abundant chemical applications that now necessitate as many counter-means for reparation.  Monarch butterflies, among many other pollinators, need the variety of milkweed species to survive and propagate, yet milkweed availability has declined as a result of its precarious existence as a perceived common weed or noxious plant that might be mowed, gouged, eradicated or sprayed.  The irony is the difference between its extremely critical necessity for the very species that are built for the sake of pollinating, and its perception by only some, but whom hold the tools.  Here is where Leopold's early concept of the land ethic seems to enter again like the most obvious of fundamental truths: we cannot fully care for the land until we begin to see it as community not commodity.  To the land developer, the highway crew, the cattle rancher, and the chemical company, a milkweed species is an expendable part of the landscape –

Butterfly Weed can be found
in Greene Prairie Arboretum

eradicate it where it does not lend itself to efficiency or 'good numbers.'  In the meantime, although our highway shoulders might reveal a more manageable space, monarchs in the midwest might lose half of their habitat.  The concepts of bee or butterfly decline might be seen as a modifiable algorithm which is solved by more chemistry and more modification; where the real answers, based on life subsistence itself, needs to be all things conservation: identification, education, pause, plan, progress and, in this case, elimination of the very practices that have led to the double intervention by the human hand. Certain biological processes must be identified as pure priorities.  Pollination is not one that we can solve long term by artificial chemistry. When the bees are gone we've lost our bio-engines. Citizen scientists can help to an unprecedented degree because the size of the problems must be met by the size of the citizenry – just as one heroic marine biologist cannot save the Gulf of Mexico from its abundant chemistry, the lone conservationist cannot save the monarchs.  Leopold's call for a land ethic was in many ways a means to save our natural resources from ourselves, at a time when highways had taken over to form auto routes into otherwise pristine parks and the dust bowl was the easiest evidence of poor agricultural practices.  Today the problems are far more difficult to see than a car or a sandstorm.  Chemicals that barely a microscope can glance may cause the demise of two of our more sparkling, and vital, treasure species.  It might take the thousands of eyes of citizens to watch where nobody else is.

Olbrich Diary

"If you suddenly lose
Your dusty eye, out of the distance
The rainstorm will gradually lessen,
And you'll see a rainbow dart out,
Striking the Immortals Palm
With a cold light."  – Heng Chao





Guarding lion,
watchful, laying on its belly,
is sculpted onto the rock wall
of the rose garden pavilion,
as we rise up along
the stairwell to weather the storm
under cover of the prairie roof.

All the visitors
had gathered at the vestibule
seeking cars as the clouds
gathered overhead,
we listened to the welcoming
of the rain and followed
as the storm played
chords over the crabapple
and peonies at the garden entry.

Time blew by
and slanted the rain
to new meaning
as the watercolors now sparkled
by drops of jasmines and aquamarines,
a wild green palm, rarely seen
by dusty eyes,
revealed new worlds.

Olbrich Diary

6/20

The smallest, and sometimes therefore the most fun, adventures might start with the question as to whether they will work at all.  When the little weather symbols suggest that the rain will come late afternoon for an hour then quickly pass it is always hard to know whether to trust such vague information.  The sky is blue and the oriole is directly outside the front window frolicking in the

juniper bush, so there might be time to hop on bikes and ride the two miles to Olbrich where, if the timing works, you might find the plants under the sun after a recent rain and the leaves and grass and wildflowers will sparkle in uncontrollable jewels.  Minutes away the gray cloud cover, which seemed as if it had been floating over Lake Mendota, marches east, the sky becomes gray, and only the

overhanging oaks on Oakridge street save you from a slight torrent.  "How did we pick this time to go. Why didn't we wear coats?" As the rain hits so the temperature drops – we are cold and wet and our prospect is to head right back into it at the gardens. We make a dash for the rose garden in under the pagoda entry and see that the exotics are lush but drooping from the new weight of the rain and make our way along the cobblestone path and up through the water features to the prairie style pavilion, a great

perch to watch the storm pass as it's now sideways rain blanketed the entire garden.  As hoped, the storm quickly passed, fifteen minutes, and as some portions of to the south and west stayed under rain, to the east the sky opened and the greens turned to glitter and the warmth seeped back into air as quickly as it had left only half an hour ago.  The cool and water had left the mosquitos bewildered or somewhere hidden -- as we toured the rest of the garden, to Thai Pavilion, the frog pond and along the edges of Starkweather Creek, there was not a bug to be found and we took the narrowest of rock paths into the depths of the many small nooks that entice visitors sit wait and listen.  We had made our goal of adventure.  As we left and we bent down to touch the thick moist leaves of a plant we had never seen, a baby frog leaped from the pool outside the conservatory and we held it in our hands for awhile wondering how something this small could be so precisely beautiful.

Arboretum Diary

"...Then I went to the dunes behind the harbor, where the roses cover the berms and also grow thickly and randomly on the slopes of pale sand, and are lively with bees, and a deep honey-smell, and I lay down." – Mary Oliver, "Roses"










6/16

Today you leave the car along the sidewalk at your home street in the center of the city.  Wallet tucked in cupboard where you might not find it easily. Some water, something to eat, and follow nothing but the wind and water by feet to become what you see.  Where Wingra turns marsh why is that you cannot become cattails stilly marching, the board walk by its sturdy shoulders bounding left and right through peat and tamarack? As the bikers slowly wheel past the Arboretum Drive I know where they are going, past the Wingra Marsh where the swamp oaks have lost their limbs and stand like signposts holding the statue ends of turkey vultures who radar in on the mice burrowing tomorrow's tunnels.

They don't know who I am – shadow of a thought, the walker of a path, the black-eyed susan I have yet to see but is coming along my path at west knoll descending onto Greene Prairie.

Here the butterfly milk weed stands out as host to the narrow trail restoration.  The only of its kinds as far as the eye can see and I can't help but wonder if it too, its marmalade petals stiff and exuberant, has purposefully lost its way in among the oak canopy of the savannah?  Black-capped chickadee asks a series of short questions from a tucked limb, so light, a mere drop upon the bough of waxy leaves.

The sky opens and never has been lost.  Steady, giving.

A temporary planet of spiderwort opens, so close to home that it is just that.

Arboretum Diary

"A spade: Fac et spera.
 A pick: Me, too. I always say to myself: work in hope.
 Flowers: Is it going to be a sunny day?
 A sunflower: If I want it to be." – Renard, from "The Garden"










6/16


A single spiderwort standing along the narrow trail at the top of the west knoll prairie can hear only so much. It's three ears are soft and sensitive and knows everything purple but not the oak grub. The bedstraw is close and quiet, the forget me not is in hiding, also alone, and the alumroot, stick straight, tough to the roots, seemingly aloof. A prairie-full of spiderwort, however, knows and hears

everything.  They duck in to hear one another, slightly twisting their spider-like stems. Their three ears welcome the soft chatter among the grass and aspens.  The sounds of your thoughts bound in among them and they send them back soft and purple, then they rise up to the sky like wisps of prairie smoke.

Montane Brewery Ltd.

"If I hadn't been drinking champagne at noon on Friday, I would have been over at the honey house with Manny Chapman, my beekeeping mentor and owner of Queen Bee Honey, and possibly, just possibly, I might have saved him from what must have been a very painful death. Instead, oblivious to his pending demise and feeling slightly tipsy, I popped open bottle number three and filled more flutes." – Hannah Reed, from Buzz Off, a Queen Bee Mystery







They all told me way back, guys like Harley himself, the one this story is about in the first place, and Molly and Wayne and all his crew, that if you head up the side of the mountain too early in morning and without as much to wear or drink, especially in spring when it always looks better than it is, you literally start to freeze up without knowing it. Your muscles tighten and your heart starts to wonder where all the oxygen is at, the mind gets a little faint, maybe a little silly or cocky and when you are tempted by the lure of the wild creek rushing down the narrow valley, more than one has walked right off into the sound itself. I had almost said buzz off, my mind was at work for my own wild schemes of settling a little spot along that trail for a nano brewery.  "A whato what," said Harley, usually game for virtually anything, but he happened to be from around here in the Gore Range Mountains of the Eagle Nest. "I think some of the valley transplants have gotten to ya. There are so many schemes in town nobody knows what's next. Have you noticed there aren't any micro breweries in town. Think that's for a reason?" We were on bikes, far east along the Gore Valley Trail, stopped and looking out

at the famous grass roofed house near the interstate. "So you can plant grass on your roof and maybe even recruit a few mountain goats from up at the top of Bighorn Creek Trail to settle up there, but I can't open a nano at 10,000 feet?" How could anybody know, besides myself, that to use the flora and fauna of the landscape for my small batch brewery had been in the works for years.  There were more private plots of land up there in mountains than most knew. I had found a willing taker, Mam Sherman, as she liked to call herself, who was pleased to lease me her husband's cabin he built 46 years ago to the day.  "The-e-e-e day." she said, when I first met her.  "He didn't build that old thing for us, I can assure you, we never got up in there overnight any more than I can count on one hand. It was so folks could get up on these mountains, find out what they were missing back in Kansas City and Minneapolis.  If you can haul it up, you can use the cabin." Mam Sherman was about as tall as I was, lean but strong, and even though she said she was in her early 70's, based on the smooth skin of her short flowery face, she didn't look much over 55. "Consider it done," I told her. We'll treat the lake, use the water. grow our own hops, use the wildflowers. Mam Sherman's face didn't give it all a second thought.  Her husband mush have been a similar loon. Harley, on the other hand, simply shook his head left and right until I showed him tall thin 12 oz can with mountain art. "Oh, well, where do we begin."

Arboretum Diary

"Living down in the country again. A wonderful conjunction of all that goes to make those sometime miracle-hours after sunset – so near and yet so far. Perfect, or nearly perfect days, I notice, are not so very uncommon..." – Whitman, from "Hours for the Soul"










6-14


Hours of the soul are by the lushness of recent rain, and the full maturity of so many prairie plants and flowers, as only a week has passed since last through this path, and the entire world of green has risen and taken hold where only a month ago a prairie burn had flattened the landscape, left it charred, short and homogenous.  The morning by the luck of sunlight on such days is the truest of gifts. As one person might send a long a card with a token of gratitude inside it, say, a locket, or a

letter, the morning here at the arboretum, as a short and shifty breeze scuttles along the bluestem and shakes things the leaves of the oaks as if by the slightest of nudges, is a gift only if we allow it to be that.  To walk along the narrow paths that are now virtually swept by the prairie grasses, the soft sweep over the legs are gift.  Add another by the hiding forget me nots, near the soft creek, in a near squat close to ground to the purple spiderwort – is it white wintergreen? – and wild blue phlox.

Mating dragonflies rise up from out of the crowded lot of green to dive and duck as if to inspect all new comers then off again as fast.  At the moment when the sight and sound and smell and temperature come together there is only the lost machinery of mind that tries to hold an old grip but then the pollinating bumblebee skips across the white puffs of flowers unknown. Back in Colorado the subalpine world was all of craggy rock or elfin trees, aspen and Douglas fir, the Indian paintbrush,

as one walked out onto balded points reaching into air toward a valley showering a creek. Here at the arboretum is a study in low lands that stem and fruit from earth's bubbling springs.  The mind's eye, then, becomes a counter of contrasts between the elevations at mountains and marsh and everything in between.  The air we breath the simplest gift, what swings wild in the transparency the mystery to seek.

Snapshots from Eagle's Nest Colorado

6/9


To take the path less travelled in the case of Gore Creek vs. Deluge Creek turns out to be plenty worthwhile.  The Gore Creek trail is understandably one of the most used trails in the Vail valley, as it is easy access and shows the origin of the fierce namesake river that defines the valley and city.

Deluge is less travelled. It is a narrowly cut trail, no wider than the width of a hiker's walking gate and as pictures of previous years shows, the trail is often over run on either side by wildflowers; it is steep for the first two two miles, rising up through hardscrabble, not to mention the fact that it looks

something like a wild life playground...so close to the trail that your eyes have to be adjusted to a more immediate possible encounter from anything from deer, marmot, moose or bear.  And yet this side of the Gore valley is more verdant, sprawling by wider stretches of wildflower meadow, fir and aspen, as well as lodgepole pine.  Once up above the 2-mile mark, the trail evens out some, and one is

left with a view below that transports to visions of subalpine scenes of the Alps.  Like Gore, Deluge leads to a lake eventually, just over 11,000 feet up, where written descriptions have described seeing a mountain lion off in the distance near the lake, and where, one climbing party says, a band of mountain goats that chased the climbers off the ridge and back onto the trail.  In other words...this is a trail that gets the hiker about as close to walking up the raw side of a mountain as possible. The fact that there is less foot traffic here means that there is less disruption in the patterns of the wild and that it is important to stay in tune to each coming rocky peak around the bend. This seems to be a sure way that the trail becomes well imprinted on the imagination and one that is not easily forgettable.

Snapshots from Eagles Nest Colorado

6/8


As you get up into the mountains, along Booth Falls, Gore Creek, Deluge Creek and Bighorn Creek trail, all of them have one fascinating thing in common -- the spring melt is in full force. The larger of the creeks, fed by their parental alpine lake above, hold way more volume then normal and much of the surrounding banksides tend to get crushed and gouged.  Just as fascinating though are the little

mountainside creeks that pass over rocks and create miniature river valleys through the lush green foliage. Water is never far from the mind along the Gore Creek Trail, the signature river for the

valley, as it gains steam off the mountain and curls down through the entirety of the city of Vail, beautiful, rolling, and quite wild.  Elevation on this hike gains over 3,000 feet; like Booth Falls, as you walk, and watch the beautiful varying zones of the Rockies take shape before your very eyes on

the climbing trail -- steppes, montane, subalpine, and the alpine that seems to always linger at the far distance of the view a bit like an unknowable dream.  A thousand nature writers have done a far more thorough job of describing this fascination of where elevation meets green meet water, but it is certainly well worthwhile to do my part in waxing at the marvels of these vast and ever-changing canvases that truly do look like the creation of paintbrush.  At points, the art and the functions of the mountains come together in indescribably spots of magic, as random dashes of wildflowers split out

from cracks of boulders the size of apartments; a tangled spruce or lonely Douglas, stand at the top of the hillock which then as quickly transforms to the bright clean stands of alder, then the trail weaves

back into ponderosa or, higher up, the Engelmann spruce, a creek shining through like a broad brushstroke of motion.

Snapshots from Eagle's Nest Colorado

6/7

Early enough start to Booth Falls Trail that there were no other cars yet in parking lot, only the tips of the south-facing mountain range were lit. This meant that steep hike sidling up along cataract after cataract of rushing creek would be relatively dark, loud by water, quiet by foot traffic.  Vail is at 8,400

feet elevation and the destination elevation, if an option, is 3,000 feet higher.  The montane stages become sensitively apparent as you walk along the trail that meanders through various stages of heavy pine, craggy boulder, and many rockfalls along the north slope.  Side trails often cut through the pine forest for overlooks of the spring-fed creek as it twists and carves like an avalanche down

Booth.  Subalpine regions rise up the treeline where thick patches of snow still litter well shaded portions.  The creek and its roar become your companion; veer too far upslope and as you lose the noise, you find that your isolation is a bit more eery than before.  Long open climbs lead up to cliff outcroppings and if not under the tower of the pines, you can see what appears to be the tops of the range, quiet and still.  At the falls, the violence of the water shows itself – the water has no pattern, but merely battering off side by side promontory.  Over on the other side, the sun has begun to reveal

the more cheery quality of the south slope aspens and even open meadows.  I went ahead and continued to hike past the falls, some two hours in-mountain, and very quickly the elevation transition had allowed for more and more unmelted snow until the trail began to hug tightly to a steep and rocky north slope which became total snow.  Some footprints shown across the surface, but holes also appeared, especially at the base of pine trees, still a foot or so deep. It was at the tree line up into the alpine elevation the trail would no doubt lead through hardscrabble rock, following the creek, to Booth Lake some hour and half up at the top.

On the Yahara

"At sunrise, the pure clear sound of the meadowlark. An hour later, some notes, few and simple, yet delicious and perfect, from the bush – sparrow – towards noon the reedy trill of the robin." – Whitman, from Specimen Days










6/1


Late afternoon hours, summer sky on us, the city moves into its parks, filling in the quiet spots under the monument oaks.  Children, hand by small hand, lurch at the span between the red monkey bars and gasp out when they lose grip and mother is there for soft landing on the bark.  Green slide a long line of legs and rising arms as a basketball bounces in the near distance, the chain link notifies success.  As we walk along the narrow trail that skirts Lake Monona, the creatures of the shores dash off or, as with the watchful mallards, hug close to their chosen patch of grass as easy lookout for ducklings.  They barely move their heads; sun washes over the emerald fluorescence of the male's head as mother coordinates warmth and feeding.  We stand briefly at the horseshoe pit, still crusty from winter, unused yet, and toss a bright blue ball to the rods and one skips off the tip and arcs directly in the shaded water.  It rotates slowly to the crossing waves, a small planet. A lime green kayak in the distance slips across horizon line as if planted there in a painting.