I Surmount the Crest

No time for it on yesterday’s ride.  But generally, I stop the bike at some point during my daily ride and walk about twenty, thirty yards up the trail, cross the road and return continuing on for the same distance in the other direction.  Then I cross the road and complete the rectangle.  And all along the way, I look for plants which I don’t recognize.   

Time was that this process would generally yield a few discoveries for the time invested.  Three-hundred-and-eight plant species now and counting on this Seek app, I’m running into some limits on biodiversity.  At Bridge Creek Road they’ve blocked the trail.  The old bridge not far beyond was stripped of its wood a few months back and no work whatsoever has been done to repair the structure eve since then.  I’m sure it was done for my and everyone’s own good.  No one wants to fall through a bridge.  But there isn’t a day I pass by here when I don’t vex about the fact that no progress has been made.  The sign, I imagine draping over the sign they have in place there says: “So . . . when do we expect you to begin the work?” 

And one road closed means another one opens and if you take a right along Bridge Creek you get a steep decline that takes you past a few nice homes until the detour suggests a left on Old Ford Road.  This is downhill for a hundred meters and then a steep incline for the next two football fields or so.  It’s grueling every time and among the most satisfying moments of my day, whenever I surmount the crest and return to the highest gear. 

Today, I stopped just before the downhill begins.  There was a smart looking tree with long triangular leaves that caught my eye.  I stood like a fool for zooming in and out, angling one direction and another, trying to force the Seek app to positively identify the tree.  “Hickory family” is as far as it would go.  And after a while I gave up and proceeded with my rectangle.  I do my best to guess a few.  I can now tell a White Oak from a Northern Red Oak. I was hopeful when it told me I’d found an “Arrowood” but it soon became clear that I’d already identified that species months’ ago, so it wasn’t new.  At the next worthy piece of bottony I thought I was repeating this process when the app suggested I’d found and “American Hazelnut.”  Come to find however that I’d never recorded such a tree before. 

I snapped a few pictures of the trees and the field with different filters, as I always do and then got back on the bike and enjoyed the rush of the wind as I sped down the hill, passed the red house to the left, which built their place along a creek and wondered why it was they had a constructed it with metal roof. 

Wednesday, 07/15/20