The water that runs, a year later

I'm starting to fall seriously behind on blogging, as other things (including the aftermath of a flooded basement) have taken priority, but will try to post every now and again. This is from about two weeks ago, when we once again kayaked the Niobrara River. [Link to last year's post.] With the obvious exception of Mike (who was, however, present in spirit and in a few small vials of ashes), we paddled with pretty much the same crew, and this time completed the standard 25.3 miles from Cornell Launch to Sunnybrook Camp. Rather than post repeat pictures of the same waterfalls, I'll concentrate this time on sights from the lower half of the river:

The obligatory shot of Ellie in her kayak. She's really starting to hate the sight of me with a camera pointed in her direction, but at least she's smiling in this one...


Big Cedar Falls. This is cold water. Really, really cold. I wish I was there now. (The heat index in Lincoln lately has been anywhere from 105 to 115.)



Another falls, farther up Big Cedar Creek.


An unnamed falls. Or, more likely, a falls which has a name, but I don't know it.


We laugh in the face of danger...and then we do what the sign says.


Lower part of Staircase Falls, where it empties into the river.


Middle Staircase Falls reminded me for some reason of Ocho Rios in Jamaica, only here there's no one hustling you for tips.


Upper Staircase Falls.


One of several dragonflies to make a temporary perch of my paddle. (Lots of dragons on the river this year, so I may soon have another dragonfly post.)


Another small, "unnamed" falls, except that this one really might be, since it's all of about three feet high. I propose the name Three Feet Falls.


Last year I lamented not having photographed Deb's keeshond, Queso. I had no intention of making the same mistake twice. (Actually, I do that all the time...but this is not an example of that phenomenon.) Deb swears that Queso is a high-energy, even hyperactive dog at home. But put her on the water and everything is groovy.



We reached Sunnybrook just ahead of a thunderstorm, but the worst of it was back in Valentine. Half the town lost power, there were several fires started by lightning, and once again the streets were flooded (if this keeps up, the Chamber of Commerce may ask us not to come back), but we didn't lose any vehicles this time around. Susie's Forester (yes, she's also in a Subaru now) did just fine; no need to pull the kayaks back off the roof. She came along primarily to babysit; next year I hope to get her in a boat so she can see the river for herself.

Home on the range

Blackwater River ospreys

The longhouse

Near Blackwater NWR on the Eastern Shore of Maryland:




A longhouse can serve any of several purposes: residential (the original longhouse was a multi-family dwelling), religious, or civil. This is a civil longhouse: think town hall or community center. (There is no religious longhouse as such here, though I understand that the tribe does have a church building; nowadays most Nause-Waiwash are Methodists.)

Blue Rocks

Blue Rocks is a felsenmeer (or blockfield) on the slopes below Blue Mountain near Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania. Boulder fields of this type are periglacial features, common in arctic or near-arctic locations in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, but also found in parts of the northern Appalachian Mountains. Two other well-known examples in Pennsylvania are the River of Rocks at Hawk Mountain and Hickory Run Boulder Field at Hickory Run State Park.


Blue Rocks was formed during the late Pleistocene, when glaciers approached to within approximately 35 miles of Blue Mountain. Freeze-thaw cycles broke off blocks of Tuscarora quartzite. The blocks—up to twenty feet in size—did not tumble downhill in a rockslide or rockfall, but flowed downhill on a layer of mud above the permafrost, resulting in not a jumbled pile of rocks but instead a relatively orderly line extending for approximately a mile downhill.

The blockfield looks like a river of rock because, in a sense, it is; over time, running water has carried away the mud that made this feature possible. (Other portions of the original flow are covered in soil; parts of the forest adjacent to Blue Rocks overlie buried boulders.) But since this is a geologically young feature, there has been little erosion of the quartzite itself, which remains highly textured.


Owing to the scarcity of soil, most of the plants here are lichens and mosses. But a few hardy pioneers like woodsorrel and raspberries are able to get a tenuous foothold in between some of the boulders, especially at the edges of the blockfield.

photoblogging: dragonflies

The following were all taken at Blue Rock Pond, a small (approximately one acre, maybe less) impoundment near Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania. I was sorely tempted to post the photographs alone, but in the end decided to annotate after all. Feel free to ignore the text and just enjoy the pictures.

Eastern pondhawk.



The rather similar blue dasher; note the brown-and-yellow striped thorax and the diffuse brown on the wings.



This one drove me crazy until I found it two days later in Sidney Dunkle's Dragonflies through Binoculars. It's a female eastern pondhawk, not depicted in the quick-reference foldout guide I had with me at the time.



Slaty skimmer. These were the most abundant and most cooperative of the odonates at the pond. I had originally identified them as great blue skimmers, but great blues have white faces.




This is a damselfly, not a dragonfly. I believe it's either a dancer or a bluet, but there are multiple (and very similar) species of both.


Eastern amberwing.


Widow skimmer.


Several common green darners were present, but this is the best picture I could get; not once in three hours did I see any of them perch.


This last dragonfly was even less cooperative than the green darners. Only one individual visited the pond, just briefly, and like the green darners it never perched. This, the only picture I made, approaches the quality of purported photographs of Sasquatch or the Loch Ness monster—but if you embiggen and then zoom, you can just make out the wing markings that identify it as a twelve-spotted skimmer.

Illinois skies

Just a few snapshots...

"Higher Ground"

The Believers:

Down by the river

My favorite osprey nest, next to the Whitehaven Ferry, which crosses the Wicomico River on Maryland's Eastern Shore:


It's not discernible in this photo (my other camera, the one with the zoom lens, had a flat battery), but there was at least one eyas in the nest when Ellie and I were there a couple of weeks ago.