wetlands – In the Woods

every somatic sensation, every breath

10.6.26 ~ Sandy Creek Park (view from the bird blind)

The heat and humidity seem to have finally left us! For good, I hope. I put on my permethrin-treated anti-tick pants and socks and joined Sally for a good long walk at Sandy Creek Park in Durham. It felt so good to be outside at long last and to do some birdwatching. And I got to add another bird to my life bird list near the end of our saunter!

Thought can keep the storylines alive, and the body reliably hums along with its somatic accompaniments that seem to confirm the storylines and then re-trigger them, but every re-telling is actually slightly different in content and always fresh in the act of remembering, and every somatic sensation, every breath, is fresh and new, however familiar it seems.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Ungraspable Presence, October 7, 2026)

Joan Tollifson’s words spoke to me the other morning as my thoughts have been spinning, trying to come up with a story to explain a distressing somatic symptom. Is it psychosomatic, triggered by anxiety and/or grief? (plausible) Or maybe a side effect of a prescription drug? (equally plausible) Or both, or something else entirely? My doctor is investigating and running all kinds of tests. Hopefully we’ll figure it out soon.

red-capped brittlegill mushroom in a patch of partridge berry

Somatic worries aside, it felt amazingly good and healthy to be out in the fresh air with a wonderful companion, enjoying the perfect sunlight of this time of year.

nature trail through the dappled sunlit woods

Ever since I moved to North Carolina I have received repeated warnings and cautions about snakes. Well, after living here for three years I finally encountered one! A copperhead was lying very still across our path through a marshy area. We turned around and went back the way we came. (Yes, I used the zoom to get the pictures!)

And he who made kittens put snakes in the grass.
~ Ian Anderson
♫ (Bungle in the Jungle) ♫

Eight months later, and the for the second time this year, Sally spotted another life bird for me with her binoculars. Even though it was at quite a distance, and moving around at a fast pace, she said it was one of the best looks at one she’s ever had. As with the yellow-bellied sapsucker we saw in February, my camera’s zoom lens struggled to get these shots, which are cropped.

The gorgeous Red-headed Woodpecker is so boldly patterned it’s been called a “flying checkerboard,” with an entirely crimson head, a snow-white body, and half white, half inky black wings. These birds don’t act quite like most other woodpeckers: they’re adept at catching insects in the air, and they eat lots of acorns and beech nuts, often hiding away extra food in tree crevices for later. This magnificent species has declined severely in the past half-century because of habitat loss and changes to its food supply.
~ All About Birds website

Sandy Creek from the Kenneth R. Coulter Bridge

Sandy Creek was pretty low. In spite of the rain we’ve been getting sporadically we are still in a moderate drought. The pond and the creek look a lot different than they did back in January 2025, the last time I was here with Tim. It was interesting to see the difference in the pictures of the creek at the ends of that post and this post. The post from that walk was entitled three stents make a difference. Turns out that was wishful thinking. Tim kept getting worse as his lung disease was finally diagnosed later in the year.

wetlands, seashore, moraine

Here are the pictures from my delightful afternoon in Connecticut by the sea. Beverly, John and I took a long walk through the marsh and onto the beach, wandering along a side path first. Sadly, invasive phragmites have taken over and spoiled much of the view Tim & I enjoyed when we came here five years ago. See that post here: sunlight by the sea. And it wasn’t long before we found another invasive species landing on our clothing, the newly arrived spotted lanternfly. Sigh.

I have not included pictures of either of them, and have no pictures of the beach itself because it was covered with people! But we made the best of it and found many little treasures to appreciate.

on the John A. Scillieri, Jr. Overlook Wetlands path

On the trip up to Connecticut we came the “inland” route to avoid the city traffic, through the Blue Ridge and Poconos mountains. Lovely goldenrod was blooming in abundance along the highway.

John is a botanist so we learned a bit about the different kinds of marsh and dune grasses and how they occupy different zones, depending on if the marsh is receding away from the sea or staying in place for a while. It will be interesting to see how this marsh deals with climate change.

I miss my beach roses and was so grateful to see a few on this walk. Lots of berries for migrating birds.

To avoid staring at people we walked the wrack line and found a few interesting items.

AI thinks this might be a cluster of translucent squid eggs attached to bits of seaweed

And of course, Beverly is a geologist so we found ourselves spending a lot of time at the glacial moraine at the end of the beach. In our younger years we might have been found climbing all over these boulders but decided to play it safe and not risk slipping and breaking any bones.

Listening to the waves was soothing, and the more we looked around the more there was to observe.

On the way back we found more beach roses and a cute laughing gull standing on the sand far enough away from any person, making possible my only gull picture of the afternoon. There were some gulls flying overhead, but too fast for me to capture.

But, not to worry, we were headed for another beach after a couple of errands and refreshments. There were more than enough gulls there, with no people around, to keep me happy for a couple of hours.

longleaf pine and sand dune forest

5.10.25 ~ Carolina Beach State Park
Carolina Beach, North Carolina

For our anniversary our daughter treated us to a weekend getaway at the shore, and our son and daughter-in-law came up from Georgia to join us!

Dima is still an avid climber and his children are likewise inclined

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. Tim’s shortness of breath has returned and now he has a cough that might also be related to his diastolic heart failure. (He’s had additional tests and the cardiologists still don’t have any answers.) So we knew ahead of time that he wouldn’t be able to take this long morning walk with me.

It wound up being an afternoon walk because I wound up sick with a flare-up that morning. I needed several hours to recover while the rest of the crew enjoyed visiting, and some time spent at a nearby playground and a walk down to the beach.

When I finally rallied Nate took some of us for a short ride in his huge truck — quite a thrill for me! Arriving at Carolina Beach State Park we then walked about three miles, looking for Venus flytraps in their native habitat and a 50′ high sand dune overlooking the Cape Fear River. The weather was lovely with comfortable temps and just a few drops of rain near the end.

coastal plain forest,
most of our walk looked like this

an abundance of huge pine cones along the trails
provided Finn with plenty of kicking options

The cones of longleaf pine are the largest of the southern pine and range in size from 5 to 12 inches in length. Because of their large size, only animals like the fox squirrel are sizable enough to manipulate and open the longleaf pine cones to eat the seeds before they fall to the ground.
~ The Longleaf Alliance website

reaching the top of the 50′ Sugarloaf Dune

resting at the top of the dune,
looking out over the Cape Fear River

a tree trunk that must have some story to tell…

The urge to run down the dune to the river proved to be irresistible for the kids, but Nate and I continued to rest at the top, and discussed possible routes back to the parking lot. Tried to get some pictures between all the trees with the zoom lens. Not sure if I’ve ever seen a dune covered with a forest before.

lichens and Spanish moss on some of the tree branches

We basically decided to retrace our steps and never did see any Venus flytraps. But, there were lots of pitcher plants in the area where the flytraps were supposed to be. And, as we got back close to the parking lot Finn spotted a broad-headed skink hiding in the leaves.

It was fun climbing up into the truck for the short ride back to the vacation rental. I was so happy to have shared this walk with my son who I don’t get to see often enough. A happy memory to cherish. Each one is precious, and all the more so the older we get.

down in the sandhills

4.8.24 ~ Sandhills Horticultural Gardens
Pinehurst, North Carolina

By coincidence, exactly six years ago on this day, my sister-in-law and I visited this lovely horticultural garden near her home. (spring blossoms) We had a great time exploring it again. It was quite different than my local botanical garden. There were lots of huge, vividly colored rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias, and very few identification signs.

We found these in the Hackley Woodland Garden:

We walked the boardwalk in the Desmond Native Wetland Trail, a little nature conservancy and bird sanctuary. It was filled with birdsong and lots of new greenery. Looking up for birds I spotted the only thing blooming in there, a wild azalea. So delicate and pretty:

The Margaret H. Ambrose Japanese Garden was calm and peaceful. We paused a lot, reflecting…

And we finally took a quick peek at the formal Sir Walter Raleigh Garden:

It’s interesting how each garden had a very different mood to it. There were ten other gardens there we didn’t have time to see. I think a lot about the differences between preserved natural land conservancies and cultivated gardens. Each have their value and place in the world.

In the afternoon the four of us took Dan & Fran’s dog Biscuit for a walk in their neighborhood and enjoyed watching the solar eclipse with our special eclipse glasses. They seemed pretty flimsy but worked very well. I had also obtained a special filter for the camera lens. Tim had to hold it in front of the lens while I tried to find the sun without getting it in my eyes. When I fiddled with the zoom it would get fuzzy and we didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what worked best! It was very awkward but we managed to get a few shots.

I almost forgot to check the ground for crescent shadows…

at or near the 78% peak we got in our area

We went back to the house to enjoy a meal and then I took one last peek outside to see the last of the eclipse from the porch. The moon was near the top of the sun and some long leaf pine needles way up in the trees got into the picture, too.

Truly a day to remember!

a flooded cypress swamp

2.20.24 ~ Colleton State Park, Walterboro, South Carolina

On our way home from Georgia we stopped to stretch our legs at a state park in South Carolina. The nature trail we walked on followed a cypress swamp alongside the Edisto River. This river is the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America and on this day it was flooding over into the swamp.

A blackwater river is a type of river with a slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. Most major blackwater rivers are in the Amazon Basin and the Southern United States.
~ Wikipedia

some of the water came very close to the trail

When we talk of flood control, we usually think of dams and deeper river channels, to impound the waters or hurry their run-off. Yet neither is the ultimate solution, simply because floods are caused by the flow of water downhill. If the hills are wooded, that flow is checked. If there is a swamp at the foot of the hills, the swamp sponges up most of the excess water, restores some of it to the underground water supply and feeds the remainder slowly into the streams. Strip the hills, drain the boglands, and you create flood conditions inevitably. Yet that is what we have been doing for years.
~ Hal Borland
(Sundial of the Seasons)

This magical rest stop helped so much to break up the long journey home. The walk was a only a third of a mile, a perfect finale to a wonderful getaway. And it was so good to get home to North Carolina a few hours later.

wildlife in the rain

Waking up on our first morning in Georgia I looked out our vacation cottage window and spotted another life bird! It was raining but Tim got these pictures standing on the covered porch. Exciting! After breakfast, Nate & Shea picked us up and off we headed for Jekyll Island. I didn’t want to use my camera in the rain so we took a quick peek at Driftwood Beach and decided to return in a couple of days when the rain would stop.

White Ibises gather in groups in shallow wetlands and estuaries in the southeastern United States. At each step, their bright red legs move through the water and their curved red bill probes the muddy surface below. As adults, these striking wading birds are all white save for their black wingtips, but watch out for young birds that are brown above and white below. White Ibises nest in colonies in trees and shrubs along the water’s edge, changing locations nearly every year.
~ All About Birds website

Then we headed for Horton Pond where there was a covered observation deck, so I could use my camera. You can see all the raindrops hitting the water.

my family said I should caption this “the standoff”

black-crowned night-heron hiding from the rain

As we were driving along to our next stop, Nate spotted an armadillo on the side of the road. He stopped so I could get a picture. Tim held an umbrella over me and the camera and I got quite a few shots.

After that bit of excitement we headed for the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, Georgia’s only sea turtle education and rehabilitation facility. Tim has been a big sea turtle fan since childhood and it was very interesting learning how they’re helping sea turtles injured and traumatized by human activity. One turtle that captivated me had some weights attached to its shell because it had a spinal injury and the weights helped it to stay balanced while it was swimming. I didn’t get any pictures in there but it was indoors and out of the rain.

In the evening we traveled down to Jacksonville, Florida to visit The Catty Shack Ranch Wildlife Sanctuary, which was all outdoors and it was raining non-stop. Their mission is “to provide a safe, loving, forever home for endangered big cats, and to educate the public about their plight in the wild and captivity.” I left my precious camera in the car so it wouldn’t get wet, but got a few pictures with my cell phone.

one of the caregivers with his small cat co-pilot
they were keeping nice and dry

I caught up with Tim who had found a dry bench under a pavilion to sit for a while. He had been watching a female lion named Rosa and told me that from the way she was acting he thought she had a migraine. My first thought was that animals don’t get migraines but then again, how would we know? They have other diseases similar to ours. Tim certainly has plenty of experience observing someone (me) suffering from a migraine.

pretty sure this is one of the Siberian tigers

After about an hour of us wandering around, the caregivers began feeding the big cats, explaining that they hunt at night in the wild and so they are fed at night here. Each cat had its own method of consuming the food offered, chicken and beef. We were told a bit about each of them, what situations they came from and what their personalities were like. While it was sad to see these wild felines behind fences we appreciated this was the best life they could be having after suffering from the ignorance and cruelty inflicted on them by some thoughtless people.

We returned to our cottage, soaked and tired from a very long rainy day! But grateful for all wildlife we were able to see.

hatchlings!

4.28.23 ~ Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center
papa goose standing guard over his new family

It was our lucky day — we got to see the Canada goose hatchlings still in their nest! However, papa goose was standing guard right where I usually stand to take pictures of mama goose on her nest. He never budged — what a vigilant, protective papa. I had to make do and find a different spot to zoom in from for my pictures.

the fourth one seems a little bigger than the others

If you look closely in the above picture, all the way on the left papa goose is standing there keeping an eye on the whole pond and his family. All the way on the right mama goose and the goslings are on the little rock island.

On our way over to the nature center we happened to see the Viking ship Draken Harald Hårfagre being moved to a different dock in the preservation shipyard at Mystic Seaport. Tim parked the car illegally so I could hop out and cross the street and capture it, probably the last time we will see it. Most of the time it is covered in marine shrink wrap so this was a real treat!

*Draken Harald Hårfagre* on the Mystic River

The Draken Harald Hårfagre first came to Mystic in 2016, if I remember correctly, and it’s been exciting to me having it here for so long. Even though its home port is Haugesund, Norway the crew seems to have made Mystic its home away from home. Its website says it’s the world’s largest viking ship sailing in modern times. Official website.

any day now

4.26.23 ~ Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center
mama goose still sitting on her rock island nest

Many young leaves are dotting the trees now, spray and foliage both showing. The woods are quite green; the rapidity with which the leaves unfold between sunrise and sunset, or during the night, is truly wonderful!
~ Susan Fenimore Cooper
(Rural Hours)

it’s feeling much more like spring, even it it is still chilly

We got our second covid bivalent booster on the 25th, recommended to those of us over 65. This will make me feel a little safer traveling to North Carolina and being around more people in the coming months. We had our first bivalent booster back in September. I wonder if we’ll be getting one every six months from now on…

salt marsh memories

7th Grade Class Trip
Mansfield Middle School (1969-70)
Barn Island Wildlife Management Area

Salt marshes have a long memory. Humans have a short one. Like sponges, salt marshes hold onto things. But for us, it’s out of sight, out of mind.
~ Tim Traver
(Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh)

4.12.23 ~ Barn Island Wildlife Management Area

Many years ago, my 7th grade class traveled for an hour-long ride to a field trip (48 miles away) on Barn Island on the Connecticut shoreline. Little did I know I would one day move down here to live in a neighboring town. It wasn’t until February of 2019, though, when my friend Janet suggested we take a winter walk here, that I got around to visiting it again. See: winter in the marsh. I took Tim there during the pandemic in December of 2020 when we were looking for isolated places to walk: See: reflections. So we decided to visit one last time before the big move. There is a very long path that crosses the marsh.

It was low tide and the water level in the tidal creeks was lower than it was on my other visits. I noticed a lot of clams and mussels in the exposed mud and clinging to the creek banks. The only waterbird we saw was a mallard but we encountered a lot of people and dogs, which was surprising mid-week. The woods beckoned from the other end of the path. Then we retraced our steps.

Barn Island is the largest and single most ecologically diverse coastal Wildlife Management Area in Connecticut. With over 60 years of continuous wetland research at this site, Barn Island provides a rare window into long-term marsh development both before and after restoration efforts. Its 1,024 acres are marked by centuries of cultural and biological history, once a vital resource for early colonial settlers and Native Americans and now for scientists and outdoorsmen. Its diverse habitats support rare plants and animals which add to its rich ecological resource base. Barn Island’s sprawling landscape sustains a wide variety of ecosystems and recreational activities; it consists of salt and brackish marshes, one of the state’s largest coastal forests, hilly uplands, intertidal flats, sandy beach, and a rare sea-level fen.
~ Long Island Sound Study website

The marsh is a microcosm of the world. With its peat meadows, meandering tidal creeks, microbes and mud, at the living, breathing edge of continent and ocean, it seems that life must have started here. Every microcomponent contributes to the whole. Discovering how this system works was a biogeochemical pursuit that took years and is ongoing.
~ Tim Traver
(Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh)

mussels and clams clinging to the tidal creek bank

In the above picture, looking south from the path, dock pilings can be seen in the distance. There is a boat landing there, on Little Narragansett Bay. We decided to drive down there and get a picture of the salt marsh from the dock. A solitary herring gull was quietly sunning himself on the dock when we arrived. He stayed put the whole time I was there.

The next picture is looking north to the salt marsh (between the woodlands) from the dock on Little Narragansett Bay. There are some people walking along the path that crosses the marsh, where we had taken our walk and had taken pictures. I zoomed in on them in the second picture, as much as possible.

On the way home we spotted two ospreys above a much smaller marsh near Paffard Woods, a preserve of the Avalonia Land Conservancy. We pulled over on the very busy road and tried my luck with the zoom lens. Unfortunately it was a very windy day and the car was shaking a lot.

We stopped again on the way home to pick up a cod loin for dinner and wondered what kind of fish we will find plentiful in North Carolina. Also, living by the sea it is breezy and windy here more often than it is calm. I started wondering what the wind will be like in our new inland home. And then we got back to our sorting and packing…