Nature Center e-newsletter #17

December 15, 2006

Winter has set in. The days following Thanksgiving brought one of our rare snowfalls, accompanied by temperatures in the 20s Fahrenheit on a few nights. The snow did not blanket the ground here (as it did in the hills around us), but it dusted everything, bringing the contours of our land and the outlines of branches into sharp relief. After slightly warmer temperatures and rain, we've entered another wintry period, with snow coating the surrounding hills again and below-freezing nighttime temperatures. Some of our most spectacular weather occurred yesterday and last night, when rain storms with high winds toppled several trees in the neighborhood and caused many twigs, branches, limbs, and lichen bundles to drop. Douglas fir boughs, Usnea spp., and their relatives formed a patchwork blanket over many of the roads leading to Lost Valley, and made some of the walking paths through our woods start to resemble mazes and obstacle courses after a canopy-layer game of pick-up-sticks.

At this time of year, birds flock for winter feeding and mutual protection. Along with the flocks of dark-eyed juncos which have been prominent for a while, I've encountered a large, vocal group of bushtits, mixed flocks of ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets, many black-capped chickadees, sparrows, and the frequent solitary call of the northern flicker. Wrentits and tree frogs have been vocalizing as well. The snag to the north of the barn/outdoor kitchen is now leaning from a point about half way up its trunk. Its demise will mean the end of some cavity-nesting opportunities here, but it is passing on that role to other trees on our land that have died in recent years. A few of those (mostly grand firs) have fallen during recent storms, and needed to be cleared off of nature trails and off the DSL cable courtesy of which I am able to send out this e-newsletter.

Last weekend marked the completion of a cycle of four multi-session bird workshops led by Dave Bontrager, focusing on sparrows and finches, bird foods and foraging behavior, birds of prey, and birds in winter. Classroom sessions at Oak Hill School were supplemented by field trips to Mt. Pisgah and various west Eugene locations. My and other students' identification skills and natural history understanding seem to have improved significantly through this series. Dave offered several bird walks at the Nature Center this year and will be participating in 2007's weekend Nature Center events as well.

Recent reading highlights include The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, published twelve years ago but seeming just as revelatory and groundbreaking today as it was then. It concerns not just beaks, and not just finches, but the phenomenon of evolution. Darwin believed that evolution by natural selection shaped the emergence of different life forms, but proceeded too slowly to be observed within a human lifetime. Researchers who have studied "Darwin's finches" on the Galapagos Islands since the 1970s have proven Darwin wrong--but not as some evolution skeptics would have wished. Far from disproving Darwin's theory of evolution, they have tracked and documented its unfolding before their eyes within the span of as little as a year, in response to such things as dramatic weather events, climatological and vegetative shifts, the relative populations of other finch species, etc. Their insights into finch evolution are broadly applicable, not only as described in the book's examples of other species' evolution, but as visible all around us once we discard the idea that "evolution is too slow to observe." What I will take from this book most is this simple lesson: evolution is happening every minute, everywhere, once we have eyes to see it.

Owing to inclement weather, short days, the season, and a torn knee ligament, Nature Center staff has been spending less time recently in on-the-ground observation and activities, and more time on a laptop computer, on the phone, and in meetings, preparing for Nature Center activities and publications that we anticipate for 2007. Tentatively on the schedule, but still in the early formative stages, are March 16-18's Spring Ecology and Social Permaculture event, July 27-28's Summer Ecology: Exploring Place, and October 12-13's Fall Ecology and Harvest Celebration. Significant organizing work has been done on May 11-13's Native Plants and Permaculture gathering. Co-sponsors and speakers are starting to be lined up, logistics are being ironed out, and we've had at least one brief but encouraging response from a group we've approached about publishing the proceedings in book form. We are soliciting papers now from prospective presenters (if that includes you, please write something!--we're happy to work with presenters on getting things into publishable form).

Responses to our membership renewal mailing have continued to come in--what we've received has been much appreciated, and we check the mailbox eagerly every day for evidence that we will be able to meet our 2007 budget. We are hoping to raise additional money for the Nature Center through hosting the planned events already mentioned, and through publications such as the proceedings of May's gathering and a trail guide (on which, most of the time, progress continues to be at a gastropod's pace, owing to the number of other priorities and distractions here). Our latest mechanical malfunction (nonbiological) involves our engraving machine, which, after a long hiatus from sign-making, engraved several signs successfully this month and then started bogging down just before its warranty expired. In addition to covering relatively minor expenses like renewing the warranty on that machine, donations we receive can do such things as providing advance funding for Nature Center-generated publications, creating a scholarship fund for May's gathering, and more fully funding Nature Center staffing in this coming year.

A week from today, the sun will start moving higher in the sky every day, rather than lower. We're undoubtedly in for additional severe winter weather, but spring will be more palpably on its way again. Before long, the tree frog chorus will move from rehearsals and previews into full performances. Wildflower signs will start itching to get out of their buckets (if those buckets haven't floated away in floods first). Early shrubs and trees will start to break bud.

Barring unforeseen surprises, the next e-newsletter most likely will reach you in mid-January. In the meantime, thanks for your support and involvement this year, and we hope you're inspired to stay involved. We always welcome input, ideas, reflections, and help in reaching others who could learn and benefit from the Nature Center and its activities. Please continue to check www.lostvalley.org/nature for the latest updates about May's event, which is evolving almost daily into something that most of us agree we have never seen before (if we can manage to bring it to term--a number of competent midwives seem to be waiting in the wings). There may be no room for it at the Inn, but most of us nature lovers would rather see it happen here at Lost Valley anyway.

Happy Solstice and Holiday Season,

Chris