Sunny boulevard

I feel like we all need this sunny boulevard.

Big old elms

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Walked down Palmerston again today, entranced by the big old elms...

Late-winter mushrooming

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Investigating two fresh elm stumps in the Southwood Lands, I found this mushroom. (I think it's a last-year mushroom that was rehydrated in the melting snow...)

My Runaway Fave

On a bleak day in early January, I asked people on Facebook for their favourite nature-y spots. There was a twister of suggestions and counter-suggestions that continued over the next several days.

In the end, I compiled a list of all their suggestions because I wanted to remember them but also because I thought some of you might also need nature-y suggestions.

From Clearwater Lake Provincial Park, July 2016.

So here goes:

From Riding Mountain National Park, July 2015.

MANITOBA

William Lake Provincial Park in southwestern Manitoba.—writer Julie Kentner

Have you spent time in Whiteshell PP? It has lots of hiking and biking trails, and accessible canoe routes. The tunnels on Caddy Lake canoe route are worth the trip. —writer Donna Besel


SASKATCHEWAN

Camp Shekinah outside Waldheim, SK (north and a bit west of Saskatoon) is my favourite place in the world. It's also very close to Batoche and Duck Lake, so you could immerse yourself in the Riel Rebellion history. —writer Lynne Pieper Martin

Crooked Lake Provincial Park in the Qu'Appelle Valley is sweet. And the back roads are wonderful —poet Bernadette Wagner

Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park and Area

You can drive down from Cypress Hills to Havre, Montana, on the Milk River. I think there are more badlands along the Milk. Also, just south of Havre are the Bearpaw Mountains, where Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce finally ended their 1500 mile flight to Canada from eastern Washington. —novelist Bob Armstrong

You can also hit Grasslands National Park on the way to Cypress. It's a complete "wilderness" park for the prairies (no development; no camping within sight of any road (but you can camp there), pack in everything you need and pack it out again, some incredible landscapes and tons of archaeological features to see right on the surface. And lots of snakes. —archaeologist Jordi Malasiuk

Cypress hills in S Sakatchewan is amazing...and you can go to Eastend, SK, to see the TRex museum at the same time. And apply to write at the Stegner house while you're at it! Nearby is The Old Man On His Back tall grass prairie reserve which used to be the Butala ranch. Would love to see that as well.—novelist Erna Buffie

I've been to Cypress Hills. Went for an amazing horse ride.—poet Ashlyn Haglund

Cypress Hills is great, and especially the road between the two provinces, if it isn't muddy. You go by a couple of historic battle sites.—scholar Jason Wiens


ALBERTA

Waterton Lakes National Park in SW Alberta. You can take the International Peace Boat across Waterton Lake to the US side, without a passport, even! It's my favourite place in the world (on a non-windy day!). You could do Cypress Hills and Elkwater for a few days, then zip across to Waterton within a couple of hours! And between the two is Sweet Grass, MT, which is an special eco-system and spiritual site. —writer Lori D. Roadhouse Haney

Yes, Waterton! Especially in that period of the Wildflower Festival.—poet Alice Major


REST OF CANADA/US

How about Yukon! Tombstone Territorial Park… —Poet Joanna Lilley

Yukon. Just for the midnight sun.—artist Grant Guy

Cape Breton Highlands Nat'l Park. —editor Jill Wilson

Gros Morne. Like Iceland in Newfoundland.—textile artist Cara Hehir Winsor

Gros Morne rules. Best geological tours in Canada too!—Julie Rak

Also, the small amount of Ontario’s Silvia Grinnell I got to see is, well, a whole different landscape.—union organizer Craig Saunders

Silvia Grinnell is southwest of Sudbury—it's on my to-do list too, it was a favourite Group of Seven location.—Bob Armstrong

Parc Forillon in Gaspésie (sea and hills, seals and bears).—poet Bertrand Nayet

Yoho if you haven't. It's my runaway fave.—Julie Rak

Kootenay or Yoho for mountains/glaciers/waterfalls. Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota) for badlands and grasslands— they have a 100 mile mountain biking trail connecting the north and south units of the park travelling through national grasslands. West coast rainforests on Vancouver Island for big honkin' trees. (Check out Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew at the southern end of the West Coast Trail). Pukaskwa National Park or Sleeping Giant Provincial Park for the rugged coast of Lake Superior. Forgot to mention Mount Robson and Mount Assiniboine—the two most beautiful big mountains I've ever hiked to. Each is a long backpack in with multiple day hiking areas once you're at the basecamp at the mountain.—Bob Armstrong

You could go to Yellowstone before it blows up, too.—Lori D. Roadhouse Haney

In Conversation: Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Winnipeg Free Press—PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by Ariel Gordon

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is an Irish-born and Ontario-based author, scientist and environmentalist.

Her latest project is the feature-length documentary Call of the Forest, which was produced with Winnipeg’s Edgeland Films and Merit Motion Pictures.

Five years in the making, the film investigates humanity’s profound biological and spiritual connection to forests, from Japan to California and Ireland to Germany, from Vancouver Island across to the great Boreal Forest.

Winnipeg Free Press: What was it like going up into Manitoba’s boreal forest near Poplar River First Nation and working with some of the peoples there?

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: What is amazing there is that for the last 5,000 years, the people of Pimachiowan Aki, they have a pristine forest, they have a pristine boreal forest. Now let me tell how important that is: no forests anywhere in the world have been described botanically, from the ancient forests to the modern forests, we have no botanical description of them. Some of the species underground, we still don’t know what they are. In the Bloodvein area, those forests have been standing for 5,000 years and then some. So the pattern of growth within that forest is absolutely unique.

I saw all kinds of unique things in this area; it was like a paradise to me. It is a jewel in the heart of this whole continent and the aboriginal people have sacrificed so much to save that place. They’ve pushed away the gold miners and all kinds of people so as to save it. They have been guardians of this area for 5,000 years. Nobody on the planet has managed to do that.

FP: Manitoba is home to a generous swath of Canada’s boreal forest. Can you tell me more generally why it’s important to preserve the boreal forest?

DBK: The boreal forest is not one forest. It is a forest system all over the crown of the planet, like the tonsure on a monk. The boreal forest sits like a divine monk in meditation of the planet itself, going all across North America, going all across northern Europe into Russia’s taiga, going into northern China and northern Japan, into the Kuril Islands.

It is the last functioning intact forest left on the planet. And just in case you’re not sure of what this forest does, it oxygenates the atmosphere and absorbs carbon dioxide. What the boreal forest also does is produce prostaglandins from some of the trees and it is an activator in the atmosphere. It produces aerosols. It produces forest-bathing chemicals that bathes the whole of the atmosphere in the spring and it benefits people, even down in the south, even the people in Ottawa. So it floods the atmosphere with health-giving beneficial chemicals.

Fifty years ago, 100 years ago, we scientists did not know what a tree does. We didn’t fully understand it. The aboriginal people, hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, knew this by way of meditation, they knew it by way of ancient wisdoms. And their teaching was that the trees were sacred. And the trees are sacred, now in science we know the sacredness of the trees. We can’t cut the boreal down: we have to maintain it.

FP: Another aspect of your message is the importance of urban forests.

DBK: Well, first of all, let’s look at the children of the people in urban areas. They live in a concrete castle; everything they see is concrete or stone or asphalt on the road. They don’t see nature. And that becomes the landscape of their minds, of their imaginations. So the urban forest produces, on a very basic level, the landscape of nature for these people. And that instils some little tiny bit of feeling for nature, because we are part of nature, we are part of the tapestry of nature. The people who are walking on the city streets they earned the right to have a little bit of nature in their homes and in their hearts.

Then, on the next level, the particular trees that you have in Winnipeg, the species called Ulmus americanus. Now what they do is something really, really unusual, in that the elms in particular have trichomal hairs on the undersides of the leaves and they act like combs, pulling the particulate pollution out of the air for the human family. And that’s 2.5 micron pollution, which is about a 10th of a pollen grain; it gets into your lungs and causes asthma and other problems. When you have trees there like you have in Manitoba, like you have in Winnipeg — Winnipeg is unique on the face of this planet, believe you me —what happens is that the pollution load is really really low.

FP: Winnipeg has one of the largest collection of mature elms left in North America, but climate change, disease and age are taking its toll on our canopy. Do you have any advice for Winnipeggers, both in terms of how we might preserve what’s left and how we might best go forward?

DBK: My suggestion would that every second tree you plant be a burr oak, a Quercus macrocarpa. They’re super drought-resistent, wind-turbulent resistant, just as the elms are. So if you lose your elms to disease, you won’t lose your oaks.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.

Oak grove, Southwood Lands

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I might have a little crush on this oak grove in the Southwood Lands.

Southwood Lands

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Had a long and productive day at work. But about 3 pm, I realized that I hadn't been out from behind my desk. Also, the fall sun has been beautiful all week. And in late October I always have the feeling that "this could be the last nice day..."

So I went and walked around in the Southwood Lands, the decommissioned golf course adjacent to the university.

I was somewhat reluctant, in that I've been watching the construction of the new transit stop, nibbling away at two of four parcels.

I walked the route I used to take to and from work last year. It was on a gravel path lined with trees. And there were usually at least one raptor. Big ones and small ones. Roosting and flying. It made me happy to see them, to startle them and be startled myself...

More of the trees have died since then. And today, with half the path cordoned off and covered over by the new transit line, there wasn't a single raptor.

But I visited the oak grove near the river. And it looked healthy. And I walked on fallen trees and found a few mushrooms around stumps.

I was walking by one of the water hazards, which is basically a pond, when I saw something white and porous bobbing in the water. I thought it was a golf ball. Then I realized it was too big to be a golf ball. And by that time I was lifting it from the water.

It was a dud goose egg, faintly green from the green plants in the water. I hefted the egg for a few seconds, trying to visualize the tiny dead goose inside, knowing there were geese napping on the slope behind me.

I put it back in the water and kept walking...

As I walked on, I made a point of looking at all the crabapple trees. I was startled by how many varieties there were in Southwood - at least five or six. The first tree had yellow apple-crabs with orange and red accents. I tried one and it wasn't good.

And then I came to two trees in a line. The first one had deep red apple-crabs on it. But they were a strange shape, elongated. I still tried one. It tasted good, so I ate another.

The next tree was the same, except the apples were round. There were only 10 or 15 apples left, so I picked three and walked back to my office. And I held the cold red-purple apples in the palm of my hand and waited to eat one until I was back in my co-worker's office.

We'd picked wild plums together on a few weeks ago, combing the big yellow and small red plumbs into our hands. We'd been excited by what we could make with them, by the taste of them in our mouths.

So I knew he'd like these apples. And he exclaimed over them, the impossible colour and the taste.

And I felt better about everything. (I worked a bit after that before going home, before writing this...)

Pledging

So this is my pledge: over the next year, there will be nothing extra beyond the day-job and writing (and the menstruation anthology, of course...).

No organizing, no reviewing, no interviewing. 

I NEED to concentrate on getting this book of essays done. 

My mum was a workaholic and I've inherited some of her habits, though I think she'd think I was a slouch. 

I really get a lot of energy working in/through community, but it sometimes leaves me with next to no ACTUAL WRITING TIME. 

So: I'm going to be withdrawing a little.

Not from social media or this blog, because I'd feel isolated, but from some of extra unpaid work of the writing life.

Amplifying The Call of the Forest

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So I'm going to be helping to promote the feature-length documentary The Call of the Forest, amplifying the call if you will. The film features scientist and author, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, as she investigates our profound biological and spiritual connection to forests both in Manitoba and world-wide. 

The Call of the Forest will be screening at Winnipeg's Cinematheque October 22-30. There will be a panel discussion after the October 22 screening and an urban forest walk on October 23.

I'm excited and proud to be working on this project and I hope you'll be interested too, having listened to me burble on about trees/forests/urban nature for ages.

Breaking waves!

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Just small ones...

From what's called Pebble Beach at the bottom of the Caves Trail at Clearwater Lake PP. (After I took this pic, I stripped down and buoyed around in the green water in my skivvies. Best swim of the entire trip...)

Tiny perfect puffball

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Obligatory mushroom pic from the Caves Trail at Clearwater Lake PP.

Mossy slopes

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Again, from my solo walk of the the Caves Trail at Clearwater Lake PP: trees attached to mossy slopes and the teeny-tiny mushrooms at the base of those trees.

Common harebells

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Two views of the Common Harebells that were all over the Caves Trail at Clearwater Lake PP. The first is a typical clump at the shoreline. The other is from a cave-side and, while it's a terrible photo of the Harebell, it works as a pic of the lichen on the rock behind...

Common Harebells are described as follows in my dog-eared copy of Plants of the Western Boreal Forest & Aspen Parkland: "Do not let the fragile-looking blossoms fool you—harebell is a very hardy plant."

middle-aged mushrooms

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Purply mushrooms. Bottom pic is from May 28 and the top from June 9. Not the same cluster but on the same log.

So: 12 days apart.

Middle-aged! Mushrooms!

forest coral

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Went for a walk in Assiniboine Forest with a colleague in town for a publishing conference. It had rained the day before/several days in a row, so the forest was boggy in low places/most places.

Which is to say that I walked around said conference for a couple of hours in hiking boots that smelled of bog.

The best part of the walk were the clusters of coral mushrooms that seemed to be everywhere in the forest. The best part was how green everything was. All the different plants in the understory. The shushing of the trembling aspen leaves. My feet in puddles, the bottoms of my pants wicking moisture up.

Animal Internet could help species survive

Winnipeg Free Press—PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by Ariel Gordon

My smartphone pings. My sister has texted me, reminding me that I’m supposed to make a salad for our family dinner this weekend.

Another ping — this time from my electric car, letting me know it’s fully charged.

I could go to the store for lettuce, but instead I spend the time watching a peregrine falcon nest on the roof of the Radisson Hotel via webcam. I’ve been binge-watching the chicks since they hatched.

So far, according to Munich-based writer Alexander Pschera, I’ve just accessed three different Internets: Human, Internet-of-Things and Animal.

Pschera has written several books about the Internet and media in his native German, but Animal Internet is the first one released in translation in North America.

There are a few facts that underlie Pschera’s examination of the Animal Internet. The first is that according to the World Wildlife Fund, Earth has lost half of its animals in the last 40 years. The second is that the average American child spends over 50 hours per week on electronic devices and less than an hour outside.

To Pschera, those are the results of ecology. He believes that attempts to protect endangered animals by separating them from people has only distanced us from the natural world and hasn’t slowed the rate of species loss. And the Human Internet has only widened the gap between people and nature.

"But I watch kitten videos and look at pictures of wild animals on a regular basis," one could protest.

Pschera counters that images of something are not the same as the thing itself.

"Over the last two hundred years, the real animals have been replaced by likenesses. The process is dialectical: the further we distance ourselves from nature, the more we produce, reproduce, and disseminate images of animals — all without moving a single step closer to nature in the process."

What’s needed, Pschera says, is direct access, either in person or online, via the Animal Internet.

Pschera thinks that being able to watch a peregrine webcam or "follow" a wolf on Facebook will allow people to connect with animals in a way that nature documentaries and information-dense signage at provincial parks can’t. "Seeing creates knowledge and knowledge leads to action," he writes.

His logic is that interest in a single wolf leads to affection for wolves in general, which leads to advocacy that will protect wolves and the ecosystems they need to survive.

Pschera also believes that gathering data on hitherto-unstudied species, particularly migratory animals, will enable us to better plan for their protection.

But what are the ethics of the Animal Internet?

Pschera claims that there are currently nearly 50,000 wild migratory animals equipped with GPS units. Will having a large population of plugged-in animals enable us to better predict and therefore protect against natural disasters like earthquakes or avalanches? Perhaps. But does having a better early-warning system justify capturing and attaching sensors to ever-increasing numbers of wild animals?

Also, how will we go about monitoring the wealth of information created by the Animal Internet? Pschera says a global monitoring system is needed and quotes German scientist Martin Wikelski, who is attempting to partner with the European and German space administrations to implement this idea.

Are there dangers inherent in the Animal Internet? Yes. For instance, poachers could use the information provided to them by GPS units to more easily find their prey. And allowing people into land trusts and conservation areas might result in paved strips in the wilderness blanketed with discarded Tim Hortons cups.

Is the Animal Internet the answer to our environmental problems and increasing use of the Human Internet? It’s hard to say.

What is certain is that Pschera is an interesting guide to the issues — technological, scientific and philosophical — that derive from such radical thinking.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.

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pinked

birched

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