Fragments From Floyd

This year, the 34th annual Mt Rogers Naturalist Rally happens on May 9-10 and I will go. It will be like going home. But then again, neither I nor the world is the same as it was the first time I gathered with others for the Saturday morning field trips at Konnarock.

It was the spring of 1976 and as a twenty-something new faculty member, I’d successfully petitioned the community college to let me offer a new “plant life” course that I would gladly develop–a class I envisioned as field trip intensive, wild foods and ecology minded, hands-on botany. The class was offered, and students (from local freshmen to retired world travelers) signed up. We began our field excursions right away in a small caravan out to stalk the wild asparagus!

I was told about a new outdoor event in May at Mt. Rogers and was intrigued: a congregation of fellow tree huggers! Ten students went with me; we pitched our tents Friday night after the dinner and speaker and awoke at daylight to a light frost.

Saturday morning, more than 120 participants gathered to be matched with the designated field trip leader of a dozen scheduled events–birds, plants, geology, small mammals, mosses, salamanders and more. But one of the leaders had become ill at the last minute. Could anybody lead a wildflower field trip, the organizers asked from the top of the steps of the old CCC building?

My students volunteered me, and I reluctantly agreed. It was such a rewarding experience, I went back for eleven years after that to lead the same field trip over the same familiar terrain of Grindstone’s nature trail across gentle slopes of rich cove forest–a 3/4 mile loop where year after year I repeated my little speechlets at the same bends of the trail about this fern or lichen or wildflower. I came to know the place by heart.

In 1987 we moved away, and not long after returning to Virginia in 1997, I revisited Grindstone and the Naturalist Rally–a kind of double homecoming. Many of the human faces were the same, save for the passage of time. Some folks in my long absence had never missed a single year. But much about the natural face of the area was not the same, even in the short span of years since ‘76.

The dark visage of the area’s 5000-foot mountain crests (Rogers, Whitetop and Pine) are less dark now than they were then. The evergreens (spruce-fir, white pine and eastern Hemlock) are under siege by adelgids and beetles, the trees’ abilities to resist compromised by acid precipitation and climate change. The summit trails are strewn with unnatural blow-down of dead treetops, open light reaching the mossy forest floor that was for centuries in dark shade all day long.

The birders at Mt. Rogers see a different mix of birds now on their field trip, some species less abundant, others missing entirely, many showing up at odd times as the northern migration season warms earlier than what has long been normal. The accelerating disappearance of tropical forest converted over the past four decades to pasture for beef production and now to biofuel crops spells doom for many once-familiar Virginia summer songbirds that winter in shrinking South American habitat.

And saddest of all for me: on my solo reunion walk around Whispering Waters trail at Grindstone in 1998, some of my old friends–rose twisted stalk, showy orchis, umbrella-leaf, and yellow trillium–were not there where I had always found them all those May field trips before.

I want to stick my finger in the dike, to click my heels and have the natural order right again. Can humankind live in harmony with this world for good? Can we as good stewards keep an eye on the sparrow even while we live off the bounty of our finite home place?

If in the end it turns out that we can successfully be both stewards and consumers of our vanishing natural wealth, that change of heart and habit will come in no small measure from those across the world who live in nature, who are attuned to its nuances and small wonders and who by necessity or choice, immerse themselves in the outdoors–many for the sheer love of it.

So I’ll be pleased to cast my lot again this year with the bird-watching, stream stalking, butterfly-netting, tree-hugging naturalists at Mt. Rogers–a group who, as a whole, are filled with wonder in the out-of-doors. And in wonder, it has been said, is the beginning of wisdom.

a.k.a. Morgellons Disease. Initially dismissed as nothing but a kind of mental aberration, now with more than 12,000 “registered” sufferers from all 50 states and more than a dozen foreign countries, CDC is on the case. 

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States announced the launch of an investigation on ‘Morgellons Disease’ in January 2008 [1], after receiving thousands of complaints from people with this bewildering condition, which it describes as follows [2]: “Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms including crawling, biting and stinging sensations; granules, threads, fibers, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin, and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in visions.”

Morgellons Disease first became known in 2001, when Mary Leitao created a web site describing the illness in her young son, which she named after a 17th century medical study in France describing similar symptoms [3]. Until then, people with Morgellons Disease have been diagnosed as cases of “delusional parasitosis”, in which the symptoms are deemed entirely imaginary, and lesions allegedly due to self-inflicted wounds.

Some early evidence (with a very small sample size at this point) suggests a bacterial agent associated with Morgellons–all the more significant in that this particular bacterium (Agrobacterium) is everywhere, has the ability to transfer some of its genetic material into organisms other than fellow bacterial types, AND that this organism is an agent in genetically modifying plant crops. (Are you hearing the intro theme to X-files yet?) And some fringe groups (natch) are shouting ET GO HOME!

I’ve followed this for more than six months and it only gets more interesting. If you haven’t heard about this previously unknown and very rare condition, my guess is that like WNS in bats over the past six months, the topic will snowball as CDC either substantiates or refutes the legitimacy of this “new disease”. Wikipedia has a good set of resource links of you’re interested and here’s a link to Google News archives for 2008 on the topic to date.

This piece was printed in the April 18 edition of the Roanoke Star-Sentinel. 

My wife says you could sit me down anywhere any time with a map of any place in the world and I’ll be happy as a pig in mud. Yep.

Maps suggest human stories against the backdrop of landscapes most of which I’ll never put my feet on but can experience vicariously as a map traveler–with new bearings and sense of proportion, man to map to territory. In their odd place names, features and boundaries, maps suggest the passage of geological and culture time.

Of course, the larger and more detailed the map, the wider and deeper the imagination soars.  And so you can imagine my absolute Walter-Mitty awe when Google Earth arrived on the scene.

As an arm-chair explorer, this free digital globe program is the most wonderful adventure tool to come along in my not-particularly-well traveled life!  I’ve followed the waters of the Nile and the New from their sources to their respective oceans and found the highest peaks of all the great mountain ranges.  I’ve soared over Pakistan, Madagascar, Chile, New Zealand and Afghanistan and about each place learned  facts that would never have become as “realized” from a textbook description or a flat map of these places.

While blemishes like rain forest destruction and Appalachian mountaintop removal are clearly visible from a hundred miles up, there are still remote and beautiful places left on the planet to map-browse—including the mountains and forests of southwest Virginia. Many regions of the world still have sizable if shrinking patches of healthy forest, prairie or jungle wilderness intact.

We’ve learned much in the last fifty years about how Earth’s ecosystems and creatures get along, and at times, we have created ways to conserve and protect them. But our numbers on Earth continue to grow and humanity’s material and energy wants and needs seem inexhaustible, while the little blue ball on my screen and under our feet is finite.

Both the planet’s immensity and variety and its susceptibility to the uses and misuses of civilization become more real when you see them with your own eyes from above. “Oh, I’ve been there!” I say when I read about the melting glaciers of Nepal or the disappearing Colorado River.

Maps line us up with the world as it is. Google Earth does this especially well for me. In its three-dimensionality and interactivity it makes me a participant in place. The global browser as a mapping tool gives the vicarious vagabond a literal grounding to the environmental and human dramas that unfold in natural terrains around the world. We are affected more than ever by events that happen on the dark side of our daytime world. They are closer to us than we imagine.

Soon, the World Wide Telescope (now in limited beta) will do for space what Google Earth has done for the planet. What power this gives us to know our place in the universe as no other generation has ever been capable of. Can we use these views of our common world and cosmological position in the order of things in such a way that we grow closer to this shrinking planet and each other and work together for the common good?

I encourage you to go see for yourself.

UPDATE: WWT is destined for public release very soon and Google Earth’s latest version lets you see the same landscape as the sun rises and sets–a very impressive and interactive way to experience the planet! Of course there are also improved “street views” in GE, but I’m waiting for “trail views”. Even so, let’s get out in the real world and know it better!

Ann asked when she got home from work how Earth Day went, and I honestly couldn’t say. I told her I felt removed from the event the way I feel after hosting one of our rare big parties at the house, in which case when it’s all over:

Yes, I saw all the cars parked along the road, so we must have had a good crowd. Yes, I said a few words to all of our guests but not many to any; I sampled a few of the covered dishes and saw but never had time for a taste of my favorite Pecan Pie somebody put on the table though I heard it was wonderful. And I saw people meeting new friends and finding common ground and apparently enjoying themselves and most said as much as they left. And afterwards, I was totally exhausted from the stepping and fetching and general “upness” required during the several intense hours of the event after days of planning. But I was not immersed in but rather hovering outside of the time, an overseer, not a participant.

And at the end of the day yesterday, I felt like the “good steward of a few things” of the Biblical parable. How many times over the years I’ve approached a responsibility with the full force of my energies and planned as if it would be presented to an auditorium full of interested people only to have the three or four politely bored elderly ladies who came nod off during my carefully crafted discourse. No so many came yesterday as I’d hoped (something like 85) but about as many as I expected. But those who came seem to have thought it worthwhile. I couldn’t say, too involved in tending the trees to see the forest.

Will yesterday’s event be only the first of similar environmental-focus gatherings in the future? Could be. And I think that those who came yesterday will be more inclined to come back to future events and bring a friend. And those involved in planning will know some things learned yesterday. Most things went right, only a few details fell through the cracks. It was a Floyd-scale success by almost all measures, for sure, though “the choir” composed a good bit of the audience. How do you bring in those people who aren’t already convinced of the worthiness of the topic you will present?

Meanwhile, a varied slate of events for Earth Day are scheduled at nearby Virginia Tech. Of note, there were few young people in the audience in Floyd yesterday, and this is one deficiency that could perhaps be addressed in future efforts.

I hope to see many of you starting at 9:30 (I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any of my Floyd friends and neighbors before noon on Saturday!). The place, Floyd High School auditorium. The central topic is water. The program speakers, times and topics are listed below. Hope to see you there! And if you can’t come, Green Your Water: print the linked page, put it on your fridge. Make copies for your friends.

9:30 Fred First

Fred First moved to Wytheville, Virginia from Alabama in 1975 and taught biology at WCC until 1987. Since 1989 he’s been a licensed physical therapist practicing locally and has also taught as adjunct biology faculty at RU. Since 2002 he’s written and photographed the “beautiful ordinaries” of life in Floyd County and shared these reflections on his blog, Fragments from Floyd, in his book, Slow Road Home, and by way of NPR essays and his columns in the Floyd Press and Roanoke Star Sentinel. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the South Fork of the Roanoke River.

PRESENTATION ~ Fred will narrate his multimedia “Our Place in the World” that includes some sixty Floyd County digital images. His presentation offers a visually-rich and compelling invitation to forge deeper relationships with the landscapes we call home.

10:00 Tammy Stephenson

Tambera (Tammy) D. Stephenson is the Senior Water Supply Planner for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. In this capacity, she works with localities in western and southwest Virginia in developing local and regional water supply plans. She has a B.S. in Business Administration from Old Dominion University and is certified as an Erosion and Sedimentation Control Program Administrator. Tammy serves on the Alleghany Highlands YMCA Board of Directors and Executive Board, President of the Alleghany Highlands Humane Society Board of Directors, Chairman of the Upper James River Roundtable/Mountain Waters RC&D, Chairman of the Alleghany Highlands Emergency Food and Shelter Board, and a member of the Council for Rural Development Board of Directors Tammy is married to Roscoe B. Stephenson, III, an attorney, and has three children: Nick, Sarah, and Daniel, and two stepchildren: Jane and Bo, one granddaughter by Jane and Joe, Antonia, and one granddaughter on her way (due early April) by Nick and Courtney.

PRESENTATION ~Tammy Stephenson will discuss the role of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and particularly, her role there as she works with the region and localities in the development of their water supply plans. She will provide a brief overview of Virginia’s Water Supply Planning regulation which requires all localities in the Commonwealth to develop water supply plans that will become part of a statewide water supply strategy. In addition, she will identify policies that may impact the water supply and offer actions that everyone might take to conserve water inside and outside the home.

10:30 Rupert Cutler

Rupert Cutler of Roanoke, Virginia, is vice chairman of the board of directors of the Western Virginia Water Authority, a trustee of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, and a former member of the Roanoke City Council (2002-2006). A native of Detroit, Michigan, he has an undergraduate degree in wildlife management from the University of Michigan (1955) and master’s (1971) and doctor of philosophy (1972) degrees from the Department of Resource Development of Michigan State University.

He has been the editor of the Virginia Game Department’s magazine, Virginia Wildlife, and the National Wildlife Federation’s magazine, National Wildlife. He has been assistant executive director of The Wilderness Society, senior vice president of the National Audubon Society, executive director of Population-Environment Balance, president of Defenders of Wildlife, and president of the Virginia Section of The Wildlife Society. Rupert was assistant secretary of the US Department of Agriculture in charge of the Forest Service and the Soil Conservation Service during the Carter Administration.

Since 1991, Dr. Cutler has resided in Roanoke where he has served as executive director of Virginia’s Explore Park, an outdoor living history museum, and founding executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust.

PRESENTATION ~ Dr. Cutler will offer ideas regarding grass-roots measures for conservation of water supplies and protection of water sources. He’ll describe how easements can help keep working farms and forests going, to provide local food and fiber and protect watersheds. Reducing the amount of coal and oil-based electrical energy we use can reduce air pollution and slow climate change and global warming. We can reduce our “carbon footprints” in southwest Virginia and should encourage state and national legislators to help us manage our water and other natural resources and maintain a healthful environment.

11:00 David E. “Jason” Rutledge

Mr. Rutledge is a lifetime farmer, forester, horseman and father of four. He co-founded Healing Harvest Forest Foundation in 1999 along with community volunteers and fellow horse loggers. He has provided leadership as a visionary and practitioner of “restorative forestry” speaking on the issues of sustainable forestry and sustainable agriculture all over the United States. He was awarded the Rock the Earth Planet Defender title in 2006, has been featured on the cover of the Mother Earth News, Draft Horse Journal and has been featured on television for PBS, A & E Discovery Channel in the documentary “In The Company of Horses”. Jason has raised, trained and worked Suffolk horses for nearly thirty years. He is a native Virginian and lives on Ridgewind Farm in the Appalachian Mountains of Floyd County, a “born teacher who has done more than anybody else known to me to establish horse logging and sustainable forestry as a way of life and work among younger people. In my opinion, his educational efforts are worth whatever you may wish to invest in them.” Wendell Berry, December 31, 2007

PRESENTATION ~ Jason Rutledge will speak on the issue of water as being the most valuable product to come out of the forest. Since the forest is the largest landscape condition in our region it plays a vital part in our environmental quality. Jason practices restorative forestry that is ecosystem based, carbon positive and a part of ecological capitalism.11:30 David Crawford (no bio available)

11:30 David Crawford of Rainwater Management Solutions (Roanoke) ~ will speak on practical aspects of rainwater harvesting and other practical and sustainable ways to manage freshwater resources.

You mean this isn’t one of the Ten Commandments chiseled on the Stone Tablets?

Thou shalt drink an 8 ounce glass of water 8 times a day.

Turns out, while this aqueous “law” has been around for some time, it in fact, er, doesn’t hold water.

A recent editorial (PDF) in the Journal of the American Society for Nephrology is getting wide press coverage for debunking the so-called “8×8″ theory—the popularly held belief that drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water daily helps remove toxins, improve skin tone, and increase satiety, among other health benefits. The authors chalk up the belief to folklore, and newspaper reports claim ignorance as to its provenance. Just how long has this idea been around? Source: Slate

The Slate piece looks at the long history of what has been widely thought of as substantiated dogma that the nephrologists now have pretty well debunked. And say…do you think this has played at all into the hands of the bottled water folks–another myth that swims in there nicely with the one that bottled water is healthier and cleaner (if enormously more expensive) than the vast majority of tap water.

So maybe you CAN fool most of the people most of the time after all.

The recently publicized and now second-year bat disorder being called “white nose syndrome” has been found in Connecticut, a new state added to the list. But then, neither the bats or the purported agent of disease can see the artificial state lines on the ground.

I’ve seen over and over again the comparison of WNS to CCD and this could be misleading.

State biologists announced on Friday they have found bats afflicted with a fungus called “white-nose syndrome” hibernating in unnamed locations in northern Litchfield County near the Massachusetts border. The fungus is similar to a mysterious illness that has decimated the honey bee population.

The two conditions are “similar” in that they both involve large numbers of individual animal deaths, are new disorders to us, and their causes remain a mystery. To imply that they have “similar” etiologies is way premature and given the different lifestyles and the distance between the mammalian bat and the arthropod bee, the cause–should we ever have a definitive answer–might be entirely different. Or both may be related to pesticides, cell phones, sun spots, climate change or some other common factor. We are embarrassingly ignorant at this point.

Here again (I’ve seen it reproduced ad nauseum in copy-cat reposts on this topic) bee and bat populations are said to be “decimated”. Not. I understand the author’s intent but would quibble with the chosen verb. In fact, bat populations are showing something like 90% declines. Many bee colonies are obliterated entirely.

Deci-mated. The word comes from the Latin based on the root word for TEN–as in decimal or decade. As I have heard it, it is a military term from the time of the Roman armies. A general considered his losses unsustainable if his troops had been “decimated” with a ten percent loss in a particular battle.

There’s a good bit of difference between the General’s 10% and the bats’ 90%. There, I feel better.

I never used to like blue jays. Or at least I pretended not to, so I’d have a cause to gather gravel from the road and shoot my slingshot at the jays that in my mind were bullies driving away the lesser birds from our backyard feeder.

Lately though, I’ve enjoyed their mobs of 8 to 10 that fly around our valley en mass scolding crows or each other, always restless, flashes of blue sky even on somber fog-ridden spring days. Until lately.

Where are the jays? There were almost none last summer. cravat

Last week, I didn’t pay much attention to Tsuga rolling in something (turkey poop, dead mole, old bone–he’s not very discriminating as long as the rolled object imparts a masculine olfactory aura of conquest.)

Turns out, it was a pile of feathers, black, shiny mostly, but in the mix was a ruff of softer feathers in a bunch, a black cravat–the chest ruffs of a raven.

Ravens. Crows. Jays. They are a group at risk these days, corvids all, and for reasons not entirely understood, they among all birds are very susceptible to West Nile virus and in some places are dying in large numbers.

So maybe it isn’t my imagination that jays have been missing, blue on blue, from our summer skies.

Recently, crows dead from West Nile have been found in winter–odd because it had been assumed that active infection by mosquitos was required. This article from CDC indicates roosting birds can pass the infection among themselves by way of active virus in their droppings AND in the mites that live on them.

Both these routes of transmission–even in winter–might potentially infect a human, so leave those dead raven feathers alone, dog!

Consider this linkage: Increasing White Nose Syndrome will mean fewer bats. Each bat dead would have eaten a good percentage of its weight in insects every summer night, many of those insects would have been mosquitos. So, more mosquitos, increased vectors for West Nile, and the potential for more dead birds (and human infection as well.) It will be interesting to see how these dynamics work out this summer. image source

We didn’t know we might need the services of the Univoltine Root Mining Weevil, but such is the case. Suppose, then, it is a good thing our pervasive pesticides have missed this little guy. link

While he looks formidable, he’s only the size of the letter “o” in 12 point font, they say. But we may be talking about large numbers of them needed to do their job: ridding the place of a European invader you may not even have noticed. Or smelled.

Garlic Mustard–botanically closer to the latter, a member of the “Cruciferae” to us elder botanists and a good name. It’s flowers, as exemplified by this example, often form a CROSS with their four equal petals. The heart shaped leaves are distinctively shaped, but if you are in doubt, pluck, crush and sniff. There will be no doubt you’ve discovered the “garlic” part of the name.

Alliaria petiolata–what a pretty name. And not a shabby looking thing either, except for the fact that, especially in “disturbed areas or forests with high deer populations.” it is spreading like crazy, outcompeting native flowering plants for sunlight in forested clearings and along roadsides in Floyd County–and from as far south as Georgia and north to Alaska.

ECOLOGICAL THREAT

Garlic mustard poses a severe threat to native plants and animals in forest communities in much of the eastern and midwestern U.S. Many native widlflowers that complete their life cycles in the springtime (e.g., spring beauty, wild ginger, bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches, hepatica, toothworts, and trilliums) occur in the same habitat as garlic mustard. Once introduced to an area, garlic mustard outcompetes native plants by aggressively monopolizing light, moisture, nutrients, soil and space. Wildlife species that depend on these early plants for their foliage, pollen, nectar, fruits, seeds and roots, are deprived of these essential food sources when garlic mustard replaces them. Humans are also deprived of the vibrant display of beautiful spring wildflowers.

Garlic mustard also poses a threat to one of our rare native insects, the West Virginia white butterfly (Pieris virginiensis). Several species of spring wildflowers known as “toothworts” (Dentaria), also in the mustard family, are the primary food source for the caterpillar stage of this butterfly. Invasions of garlic mustard are causing local extirpations of the toothworts, and chemicals in garlic mustard appear to be toxic to the eggs of the butterfly, as evidenced by their failure to hatch when laid on garlic mustard plants.  link

So the biocontrol folks at USDA seem to be thinking this little weevil won’t mistake our target mustard for a close relative–like cabbage or broccoli in your garden. How these little beetles might be distributed is something I’ll investigate. I’ll get back to you when I know more.

Meanwhile: many parts are edible. If you can’t like’em, eat’em.

There is speculation (of course, and in the absence of a smoking gun bacterium or virus) that behavioral changes due to warmer winters is to blame for the so-called White Nose Syndrome in bats. The fungus is only taking advantage of bats so weak they can’t wipe their noses. Here’s one wildlife pathologist voicing the global warming explanation:

Stone said the bats are dying from starvation and weakened immune systems resulting from the unusually warm late fall and winters during the last several years, which has kept bats flying even when fewer insects are available to eat.

That has led bats to begin hibernation with insufficient fat reserves, prompting them to starve and sometimes leave the safety of caves in search of food during cold weather, which is usually fatal.

“The good news is, this is not going to wipe out all the bats. All the bats are not in tough shape, a number of them have enough fat,” said Stone. “There are a lot of bats that have died that don’t have any fungus.”

Does the theory hold water? Maybe. It seems possible that white-nosed northern state bats (NY, VT and MA) might be less well adapted to stay in winter hibernation when temps are still warm while southern state bats have long done so.

Also with average winter temperatures a few degrees warmer hundreds of miles south there are probably still at times enough cold-blooded insects on the wing for bat food. On a warm December day, the Asian Ladybird Beetle swarms alone could feed a legion of bats where we live in Southwestern Virginia and the cost of leaving the roost would well be compensated for by a good meal. Not so with warm winter spells to the north.

But early on, a strong correlation was noted between caves where WNS was found and those visited frequently by cavers. Here again, perhaps the added stress of hibernation disruption compounded the metabolic stress the bats were under.

My guess is that we’ll have a handle on WNS long before we understand CCD in bees. Stay tuned.