Nature Center e-newsletter #15

October 15, 2006

The sound of crackling leaves underfoot greeted me when I returned to Lost Valley last Monday night after spending two weeks with family in Ohio. Monday night also marked our first autumn frost. Two weeks' absence makes seasonal changes much more noticeable and dramatic. Now virtually all of the deciduous trees and shrubs are displaying sometimes-brilliant yellows, browns, and/or reds in their leaves, and many of these have fallen to the ground. Of particular relevance to trail-wanderers and off-trail-wanderers, much of the poison oak has dropped its leaves, although the oils on its stems remain just as potent. During my two weeks in Ohio I carried around on my right shin a constant reminder of Oregon: one of the worst localized cases of poison oak I have ever had. Soothing it with calamine lotion, I also learned from my parents' medical self-care books about urushiol oil, poison oak's toxic component. A pin-head's worth is enough to give a rash to 500 people, and one-quarter ounce of the substance would be enough to provoke allergic skin reactions in the earth's entire human population (if everyone were susceptible--some aren't, or at least haven't had their resistance worn down yet).

Despite the relative lack of rain this fall so far, mushrooms are starting to pop up. With adequate rain, there should be many more by the time of the annual Mushroom Festival at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum on October 29. Birds have continued to become more vocal here as the fall progresses, and I'm looking forward to refreshing more of my identification skills and understanding in Dave Bontrager's upcoming bird class series (starting with Sparrows and Finches this Tuesday night).

Along the trails here, the major activity over the past month has been the beginning of a long-overdue project: removal of major patches of Scotch broom along the Creek Trail and Cedar Trail. During the course of four lopper-wielding work parties, we have managed to free up many patches of hitherto-almost-unnoticed native plants which were being obscured by the nonnative broom. The broom is being hauled down to several of our garden areas and will be turned into compost and firewood. Some of it was approaching old-growth status and had already done plenty of nitrogen-fixing out in the new forest (it seemed to be localized mostly in areas disturbed years ago by installation of drainfields). We hope to continue this removal along and off of other trails. We will probably never be able or want to remove all of it: some patches near the beginnings of both the Cedar and Thimbleberry Trails are so entwined with poison oak that only a mad dog, a fool, or a calamine lotion salesperson would attempt to tackle it, or encourage anyone else to.

Global warming has been a much-discussed topic recently. We will be hosting a free showing of the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth tomorrow night, Monday, October 16, at 7:30 pm, in the large classroom, made possible by Interfaith Power and Light as part of their "Spotlight on Climate Change" project. Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent book Field Notes from a Catastrophe was my flight-time reading on my return trip to Oregon; providing firsthand accounts of global warming's impact, especially on peoples living nearer the poles than we do, it's a good complement to Al Gore's recent book, also called An Inconvenient Truth.

Other excellent books that my trip gave me time to read include Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, both of which shed fascinating light on the human relationship to nature, especially to food and to land. They have helped provoke new thoughts about how Lost Valley's Nature Center and Permaculture/Sustainability programs can develop in concert; some of these ideas will follow in future newsletters.

Visits to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and the Holden Arboretum (the nation's largest, 3400 acres, with "only" 800 acres in cultivation) also stimulated ideas about the Nature Center's further evolution. We will not be constructing a two-acre rainforest building costing many millions of dollars, nor collecting thousands of plant species from around the world, but these facilities did suggest new ways to develop the educational value of our own unique site, with its rich diversity of native plants, animals, fungi, geology, and microclimate, its long history of indigenous use preceding European settlement, and its ongoing evolution as an intentional community, ecovillage, and Permaculture demonstration site as well as center for ecological conservation, restoration, and nature study.

As mentioned in the last newsletter, Lost Valley's 2007 schedule tentatively includes four weekend events sponsored or co-sponsored by the Nature Center. Featuring presentations, walks, workshops, discussions, and hands-on activities, these will focus on native ecology and also incorporate some of Lost Valley's Permaculture and ecovillage work. Tentative dates and themes are as follows:

March 16-18: Spring Ecology and Social Permaculture

May 11-13: Native Plants and Permaculture: A Gathering of Plant Enthusiasts
(see e-newsletter #13 for a description of what we are envisioning for this weekend; Friday night's concert will feature Laura Kemp, consistently voted Eugene's favorite singer-songwriter, whose role in providing moral support and musical inspiration for Nature Center staff cannot be overstated--see www.laurakemp.com)

July 27-28 (Friday-Saturday): Summer Ecology: Exploring Place

October 12-13 (Friday-Saturday): Fall Ecology and Harvest Celebration

If you'd like to offer a program or activity, or have a suggestion for what you'd like to see at any of these weekends, please email nature@lostvalley.org. Volunteer opportunities abound in the further unfoldment of the Nature Center; all help and input is appreciated.

Thanks for your ongoing interest. Happy fall!

Chris