The Rivanna Rambler

July 17, 2008

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (90)

This show originally aired in July 17, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

As I sat at our kitchen table yesterday evening, casually peering into the loose thicket of privet that divides our lot from our neighbors, I was startled to see the tawny brown of what could only be a deer moving slowly across the lawn towards his house.

Head down, browsing on the choice green grass, the deer was unconcerned, casually munching as if it had been there before. Now, for many in our watershed, this would not be an unusual sight, but not only do we live in the city, we live uphill, across the street, and several houses away from the green corridor that flanks the unnamed stream that flows downhill from the ridge of Rugby Road.

So why did the deer choose to cross the road, after all?

Read the rest of this entry »

July 3, 2008

This show originally aired in April 25, 2007 and then again on July 3, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (90)

On a sunny Sunday in April, we finally cast the lines off the boat and leave for a trial run to the Potomac after a long marina-bound winter. With a sweet 12 knot breeze out of the east, we are soon under sail skipping across the Potomac from Virginia to Maryland. The river is mostly empty of boats, a few April adventurers and other folks who know that this can be one of the best times on the Chesapeake and her rivers. And we have other company, too.
In the distance, the dive and plunge of birds, repeated again and again, catches my attention. Instinct suggests, and my binoculars confirm, that I am seeing Northern Gannets flocking and fishing. I know these birds from my time working on the ocean,

Read the rest of this entry »

June 26, 2008

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (87)

This show originally aired in July, 2007 and then again on June 26, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

Summer time is travel time – and for some of us involves hours in the car, watching the road, the clouds, the passing scenery. On a recent trip to Orkney Springs, I took stock of summertime’s fullness: the tree-covered mountains fuzzy with blossom, the roadside grasses, prolific and head-heavy with seed. I recognize chicory’s cheerful blue flowers, along with Queen Anne’s lace, mullein, and thistle.

Once at our destination, I take to foot along a rough macadam road headed towards West Virginia. Walking uphill at a leisurely pace, with a field guide in hand, I stop from time to time to identify those flowers I do not yet know. Bouncing Bet, or soapwort, with its generous flowering orbs of pale pink and white; New York ironweed, tall, stately, with emerging purple flowerets. Oxeye daisy, everlasting pea.

For better or for worse, roadways are as good as any for seeing wildflowers, in part because in clearing a swath through the trees suitable for roads we make it possible for other plants to thrive.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (86)

June 19, 2008

This show originally aired on August 2, 2007 and then again on June 12, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

She fairly coos at them, these bugs, these tiny aquatic insects who, in their larval stages, can reveal much about the health of the river.  Rose Brown, Program Manager and Volunteer coordinator for StreamWatch, is my companion for the morning at Rivanna Mills down in Fluvanna County. The overflow chute is now a shallow cobble filled channel below the rapid.  It is here that we’ve grabbed our sample, set up our table and are culling through a net full of the results.

“I see you,” Rose says to a healthy sized stonefly that’s crawling through the wet debris away from her blue plastic forceps poised to snatch, ever so gently, the bug and place it in a white plastic ice cube tray filled with water and used for counting the specimens.  I, too, am talking to them … “Here you go,” and “there you are” — especially the caddisflies and, of these, especially the more exotic casemakers.

And it is hard not to talk to them – for once you have seem the elegant home that the longhorned casemaker crafts of the detritus from the bottom of the river, you are likely to think of these tiny insects as entities worthy of respect,

Read the rest of this entry »

This show originally aired on May 3, 2007 and then again on May 22, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

May 22, 2008

They call it The Dragon, headwaters to the Piankatank, a sinuous flow of water through marsh and wetland that bisects the Middle Peninsula of Virginia.  You should not attempt to paddle this river without local knowledge, everyone says, before they add ominously, “or you will get lost.”

But we won’t get lost because today we’re with the Friends of Dragon Run,

Read the rest of this entry »