A Striking Red Algae

 

Sunday’s here.  This was to have been the day my girls went on a rock-climbing lesson.  A date I chose in mid-December, one weekend seemed as good as any.  The folks at Alpine Endeavors wrote me two days back to suggest we reschedule.  Rain was expected.  I checked.  I saw and indeed they were right.  We’ve moved things out till next Saturday.  But sitting here typing just before 1:00 PM it would be wrong to say there isn’t a cloud in the sky.  The sky is an ominous quilt of grey clouds.  But it isn’t raining. 

 

I rode up to the bridge.  And even though it was a spring Sunday the clouds kept most people off the trail.  To the left, heading north, in one of the vernal pools by the swampy flood plains of the Wallkill I spied a puddle covered in what looked like a striking, red algae and I vowed to head down the steep track and investigate on my way back.  My mind was drawn back to a remarkable lake my stepdad and I had seen in Papua New Guinea, in a park, not far from Port Moresby as I recall, near one of the vast WWII grave sites they have there for U.S. and other Allied servicemen.  I have the photo somewhere in my basement in a box and I can’t refer to it easily, but this was on my mind when I ambled down the ravine to have a closer look. It is disconcerting, I can tell you, to see a body of water, completely covered in bright red carpeting. 

I got closer and realized whatever it was had fallen from the nearby tree.  I stooped over, assuming that I wouldn’t get anything to identify positively but the Seek app quickly told me that these were ‘coralbells.’  Really?  Cool.  No internet.  So, I couldn’t see anything else about this species, but I was immediately suspicious.  The same red droppings were all over the trail on the ride home.  I’ve stopped and identified most of the trees along this road before and it is terribly unlikely that I've suddenly just spied a new tree.  I stopped once, twice and a third time trying to identify more of trees I know, I’m pretty sure what I’d seen were the blossoms of the red maple. 

 

Riding out the cherry tree that flames up two hundred yards down the trail from here, as bright as any cherry in Shibuya, was finally in full flush.  I couldn’t help but comment on it to two young ladies who were walking along, as I rode by.  “Look up there.  Isn’t he marvelous?”  And they couldn’t, but agree.  Back home I searched out the trowel, went down to do more guerrilla planting of pumpkins and squash in our field besides the rail trail.  And now, the dahl and the curry, nearly prepared, it is pouring rain as they predicted.  This must be shaking the cherry blossoms and ideally activating those newly deposited pumpkin seeds I was able to lay down. 

 

 

 

Sunday, 04/11/21