cedar grove

It was my birthday, and I had some time between appointments and had some time. With the 30x30 Challenge in mind, I found my way into an urban stream. Thankful for my boots and comfortable socks, I stood in the middle of McVicar Creek, sometimes slipping a little getting knocked over by the shallowest running water, suffering a little vertigo for some reason.. 

Suffering great confusion over my photographic demands, my iPhone spat out a few uh, interesting, panoramas. I haven't looked at them all yet. 

The sky was blue and the creek was a swirling mas of bubbles and life rumbling around me. Sometimes a camera just can't capture it, you have to be there.

Where would we be without urban forest escapes? We're fortunate in Thunder Bay to be within minutes of them in every direction. From science at the Tree Farm to Centennial with rivers running between. It ties into why I prefer to be a pedestrian, or on a bike - so that I can take advantage of these escapes. 

Irritated drivers paying the highest price for gas get crankier waiting in dual Tim Horton's line-up for the worst coffee in the world - if only they knew a better perk was right there in front of their eyes, hidden behind asphalt. 

Big Boreal Adventure

Big Boreal Adventure

There are 35 of these cedar posts around Thunder Bay, each topped with a plaque designed by a local artisan depicting relevant nature-based images. Refer to your free guidebook (available at Thunder Bay Public Library locations) to learn more about each location, as well as clues on getting there. Guidebooks also include blank pages for rubbings at each post.
This is such a clever way to encourage people outdoors, and to explore the incredible nature trails within the City. It's sort of amazing that these places exist between the lanes of Thunder Bay traffic - between a place filled with lousy drivers and ignorant "specials," but it does. Tranquil is one word, a deep breath is a feeling. Sometimes I wish more people around here appreciated these places as travel routes, ...but most times not - for as well travelled as they are they are still underappreciated, even unknown, to so many in #TBay.
They've also now included geocaching - with GPS units available through the TBPL - something perhaps I'll rope in T & W to explore in. ;)

The new trees along the McVicar Creek recreation trail are amazing, simply amazing. Imagine this path in a few years when those maples gain a little weight. I walked this path every day to and from work for years year round; my love changed and grew in so many ways every day.

If there is anything in Thunder Bay that people need to appreciate more, this is it. How lucky are we to live here, and to have this steps away from home? Peace in the City.

Weather Hypochondriacs

 Oh dear, here we go again. The Chronicle Journal spent Monday contradicting itself from one page to another. A regular victim of the 'global warming alarmist syndrome', our local newspaper should spend a little more time researching their trivia, and possibly do a little bit of unbiased investigative research.

On page A2:

"Today's Trivia

1932: A day of Muggy heat

(28.3C) spawned an electrical storm with heavy rain in

the Chaplin area of Saskatchewan. It flung utility poles across roads, blew down barns, coal sheds, and chicken coops (oh no!)...and overturned wagons. In Chaplin, the Alberta Pacific Elevator Company'soil house was lifted and carried several metres, and a building filled with barrels was left in the middle of the road.

World Environmental Day

Courtesy of the David Phillips, 2012 Weather Trivia Calendar"

...must have been "climate change" that caused that storm in 1932 - they just didn't have a fashionable name for it yet.

Two pages over, the CJ tells us that "climate change is very much upon us" because the East End flooded after some heavy rain. Obviously my heart goes out to all those who lost so much, but flooding shouldn't be unexpected in a place that was once, not long ago - geologically speaking, at the bottom of a Great Lake.

Our house here in Port Arthur was also once at the bottom of our Lake. Maybe someday it will be again. My first UofG hort course years ago had me running all over town tasting testing soil (yeah, I ate some...in the name of science!)... anyway, it gave me a great appreciation for our geological history from a garden soil perspective - most of which was once under water. This should be the perspective we view our City in, and respect that.

The alarmist perspective doesn't help. "Weather over the northwest is getting more erratic all the time." No it's not. It's always been erratic, changing - for about 4.5 billion years. Locally, I can point directly to the thoughtless and environmentally careless clear cutting around the Dog Lake area for changing the wind patterns in the City. ...just an observation from an observant gardener and greenhouse worker. It broke my heart when I saw what they did out there, just as it is over that ridiculous clover leaf at Hodder Avenue and 11/17. Do you not think that by changing that landscape we're not going to notice a change in the City of some sort? Some gardener somewhere will notice - or a cyclist riding along a bike lane - a new wind, a different water run-off...
This is not "global warming" that's changing anything in Thunder Bay - it's us. Stupid humans who think that they know more that mother nature, that a few trees here, and a little bit of the oldest rock on the planet won't be noticed if taken away and destroyed.

Winter and summer have been noticeably warmer and cooler many other times in the long & changing climate history here on the Canadian Shield. This is not something new and alarming CJ.., this is poorly researched, incorrect "journalism." It's interesting: I've been reading more and more about Medieval gardens - after my mother gave me a great historical gardening book for my birthday (Even from palliative care, she's still ordering books from Amazon using her iPad - which is hilarious, and so her. Love.) We are growing very similar gardens these days to those found in medieval England for similar social and cultural reasons (backyard veggies & self sustainability), and in a very similar climate. For years I've been intrigued by Shakespeare's flowers - all the same plant name I read on tags in greenhouses, in seed catalogues. It was some time last summer, we were driving - and on the radio they were talking about how so many medieval & renaissance still life paintings - or any painting that included vegetables, or meals featured this crazy looking purple carrots - just like we're seeing again now ...on the radio they were marvelling at this as if we should all be surprised. That surprised us, as we drove around.

Hannah's reading 1984 & Animal Farm and she thinks they're weird. (My mother ordered those books also - in a sweet hardcover that includes both books.) We've been trying to tell her that there are some good lessons in history - even more interesting when that history is looking into a future we've already passed. (Hey, where's my Tardis?!) If Thunder Bay is Manor Farm, I'd like to know when the pigs are going to take over...because maybe that's what it will have to take to stop the human's poor behaviour. Call it an environmental revolution, and look at it through eyes that have read how damaging ignorance and indifference can be.

If you want to know why our Lake is warming, infested, filthy, becoming increasingly unhealthy - take a look at your street, look at the run off water - and the cigarette butts that are in it. Even with our early spring, snow free roads, it took our Stupid Human City too long to get around to cleaning the streets this year - so much garbage everywhere, so much that could have been swept, ran off into our urban streams, into our Lake, on to cause problems that someday will be reported as shockingly alarming "climate change."

We put asphalt at the bottom of a Great Lake, buried the mineral rich soil beneath, we let garbage blow around on it, oil spill on it, waste fuel on it; we've taken away trees who have the roots to hold it all together - more than we stupid humans will ever have - real roots, a real connection from the sky to the soil. We've been so greedy in north-western Ontario - and continue to be, then we cry "climate change," rally, plant new trees, a garden, and think we're making a difference. But are we? Really? How can we justify that stupid clover leaf or what they're doing to the Lake Superior landscape with that highway expansion? This is not a global issue or the El Nino, or because we used too much aerosol hairspray in the eighties damaging the ozone - this is local - local stupidity and greed. Ignorance is bliss, isn't it.

How about a change in leadership. A new pig. Maybe we don't need councillors who doesn't think bike lanes are dangerous, waste time & money at the cost of our environment, and destroy our history (buildings, parks & landscape) for the sake of a parking lot for lazy people who think four blocks is the Boston Marathon.

::::deep breath::::

I wish we would see more informed articles like this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05/29/global-warming-alarmism-when-science-is-fiction/ 

raindrops

catoneaster

First real rain of the year today, spring-like rain, steady,
cleaning the streets, hopefully the sidewalks.
Too bad it's all running off because the City didn't take advantage of the nice weather and get cleaning.

ramblings on recreational trails

Along the McIntyre on my way to work
with flowers for my desk.
2010

The other day R and I were driving down east John Street, we had just past the Junot lights and were travelling along side the shared bike lane. R made the comment that he rarely sees cyclists using that lane, continuing our on-going conversation that follows all the letters to the editor in the Chronicle lately.
We're both in favour of the bike lanes, but regularly - as with all things - discuss all angles (which is one the many things I love about us). In this case, along John Street, I can see why he wondered about users - they are a little scarce, and I know why.
First, what the shared lane there does is give people the choice: to either follow the straight forward commuter route, or connect to the recreational trail. Personally, the decision is simple: recreational trail. As I explained to R,

 "The reason you don't see as many riders using the shared lane here is because anyone who really rides in this city is in behind there (pointing beyond the houses south of John) riding along one of the best stretches of recreational trail in the city."

It rolls like a coaster along the McIntyre river bends. It's a quick trip, a fun one - there's no better way to begin your day. That was my route to work...., *fond memories* ...sigh.
If you've got wheels under your seat, (or under your feet), this trail is the one to ride. It would be a beautiful walk, but I haven't walked it since 8th grade at EQ - and people are all over it with dogs and children, so you have to be aware. That's what bike bells are for.

faces along the trail
April 2011

I stop for photos along this stretch of trail often..., sometimes I ride it back and forth a few times, then stop to take photos... . There's the river, the sunshine through the trees, bends in the path and wildflowers, but what I search for with my lens are the faces. The faces have been there for years - for as long as I've taken this path. I've never seen the person who draws them despite being there are all times of day, at all times of year. They reappear after rainstorms wash them away, and are in predictable locations, but are still each different every time - as faces are.

I remember feeling heartbroken when I learned the city was moving the trail that follows McVicar Creek behind the 55+ Centre on River Street. They were cutting down trees. Thankfully I attended the Streamwalk, and heard all about the rehabilitation and conservation that has actually gone into the project - and though a few of my favourite trees are now gone, most remain, like this group standing a little too close to the old trail:

Along McVicar Creek
2006

They're still accessible as the old trail has been adopted as a detour, smaller and hidden in the new plants protecting our pretty urban stream. The new recreational trail still has a charming flow, curving with the creek, with new trail-side trees that will someday, hopefully, stand too close to the trail.

Impressed on my memory are my morning trips down this path. I didn't have a camera back then, but took the time to take it all in, remember it, appreciate it. I knew life would change and I wouldn't always take that route, it was inevitable. I did well though because it's all still there, even the sounds of the songbirds and the way the sun - when still low on the Giant's horizon - would dapple through the trees. I don't even have to close my eyes.
Evenings too are beautiful along this trail, but my memories of evenings aren't just of returning from work; rather all the evenings spent with Hannah when she was young, learning to ride her bike, and inline skating for the first time.

Back then I lived in a location that allowed me to take the recreational trails to work in less time than it took me to drive. I'd ride most of the way with my feet up, with my camera around my neck and a coffee in my hand; I’d arrive relaxed and refreshed.

between the university and college
along the McIntyre

There’s no road rage on the recreational trails in Thunder Bay. People say good morning, smile, comment on the beautiful day, on the falling rain. Or snow, and when it does snow I’ve always found that the trails are cleared before the streets are, not to mention clean with fresh snow on the trees around. Who doesn’t love fresh snow on trees?

It’s just a really nice way to travel around this city. From Current River to Westfort the recreational trails connect to commuter routes, and in many areas weave through residential streets connecting them to commercial areas, the hospital, and the university.

to McIntyre Centre
along the McIntyre

In recent years the city has been stalling information signs: some about the urban streams, other about wildlife - birds in particular - that can be seen along the way. The people do that too, I've found. Not only are good mornings and comments on the weather welcome, but people seem to strike up conversations about things they've spotted along the path. Maybe it's because I've always got my camera in my hand, and they think I'm out hunting for the perfect shot (which I always am)..., I just think it's nice that people take the time to stop.

Drivers are always in too much of a rush, and the only talking your generally hear on a Thunder Bay street is that of jeering at jerk drivers who don't know how to use a turning signal. I find that stressful, even in little doses. Little does of these recreational trails can take away that stress. 

I'm trying to come up with a short 300 words to use to describe the recreational trails for The Walleye and find myself stumped. I could go on forever about so many little things - things that mean something to me, that I love about so many places along the way. Where do I begin? Where do I end? Pick up a map, throw a dart at it and ride there by trail? Go for a walk in your backyard..., because there's probably a trail nearby...?

Hm. 

...they make my heart go boom, boom, boom?


 ..and on that note I'm going to take a break.

Urban Streamwalk

a new sign explaining how we affect,
and how we can protect
our urban streams

Last night I attended the Streamwalk hosted by EcoSuperior and 

the Thunder Bay District Stewardship Council along McVicar Creek.

McVicar Creek 5 July 2011

When I used to walk the recreational trail that follows McVicar Creek between Hinton and Madeline everyday on my way to work, I would thank my lucky stars for the privilege of starting my day with such serenity. The evening walks home were no different. Even in the rain.

In the winter when even the roads aren't cleared for traffic, the path along the creek is, and it's clean. People acknowledge each other with a smile, almost always saying hi or commenting on how pretty it all is. ...and birds - for some reason people are always sharing sightings of birds, in fact I would bet that happens at least once each time I visit (especially when I have my camera in my hands). It happened yesterday.

I love this path and over the years have developed a sort of personal ownership of it, which I'm sure I'm not alone in doing - especially after talking to a few of the others last night. People around here feel a strong attachment to it, and care about the trees and the wildlife that make it what it is. I could never describe what it is here well enough, you just need to experience it for yourself. 

The Streamwalk was informative, and I'm so glad I went. Davis from the Stewardship Council hosted the walk and talked about the conservation of and cohabitation with our urban streams. He also explained the moving of the recreational trail, and the new trees. Someone from the City Parks / Planning department was there also explaining reasons for moving the path, and what was being done to replant the area. Both obviously care as much for the Creek as I do, ...which was nice to hear. Lucy taught us about some of the insects (and dragonfly larvae!) who inhabit the streams, and what they can tell us about their environment; and John, a 40 year veteran from the MNR fisheries was there in waders with jars of baby stealhead. 

new  Burr Oak, Maples, Poplar, and Willows along McVicar Creek

It's evident that people are reluctant to give up the old path route, but that's not too much of a problem. Over time the trees and shrubs will fill the space, flowers and grasses will naturalize, and it will likely end up a lot like the path along the McIntyre River behind the university - with the recreational trail at a safe distance, and small sandy paths tucked around the water. Every effort was made to preserve favourite accesses to the creek, which shows just how much thought was put into this creekside renovation.

the new Recreational Trail, and the old  route to the right

Emphasized also was a message to stream-side property owners about their role in preservation. Manicured lawns that reach the water have so little to offer in comparison to a buffer of life between house and stream. 

daylilies reflecting in somebody's not so manicured stream-side yard

We all have a roll to play in the quality of water that runs off our properties into streams and on to the lake. Five blocks from our house and garden is Lake Superior, ...it's something to think about.