The Rivanna Rambler

April 10, 2008

 

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This show originally aired on April 10, 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.

Photo of shadbush by Dudley Rochester.

This is one of those weeks that you can literally watch the hourly changes as spring bursts forth. It’s hard to know where to put your attention, amidst all the flowering trees – the dogwoods blooming on cue for the Festival, the audacious magenta flowering crabapple, redbud blossoms lining dark branches in perfect counterpoint, like tiny purple Christmas lights.

In this area, if spring seems to be moving too fast, you can always travel to a higher elevation and catch it again. If I were headed to the hills, the one tree I’d still be looking for is the serviceberry, whose white showy flowers have always been a reliable marker of spring, but pass so quickly that you may have only a few days before the wind snatches them from the bud and soft green leaves unfurl in their place.

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March 27, 2008

 

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This show originally aired on March 27, 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.

About the same time that forsythia brazenly claims the color award in yards all over the watershed, there’s a quieter, but no less remarkable, yellow emerging in the hills and woodlands, especially in the damper, cooler swales. You could almost miss it if you were expecting something more dramatic, but it’s worth stopping and taking a closer look at the shy but ubiquitous spicebush, also known as Benjamin Bush.

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This show originally aired on March 6, 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.

 

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March 6, 2008

It’s a whirlwind geologic tour of the Virginia, and it all takes place within five square miles in Charlottesville. We’re a group of Rivanna Master Naturalists, standing before a rock outcrop that borders the rough boat launch into Ivy Creek just upstream of the Woodlands Road bridge. Tom Biggs, Professor of Geology at UVA, invites us to use the rock hammers he’s brought along, stepping forward himself to take a swing. A chunk of rock cleaves off, dropping into his practiced hand.

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This show originally aired on February 21, 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.

February 21, 2008

The upper Doyles River, like most headwater streams in the Rivanna watershed, is about as pristine as they come. The waters that collect from springs and drainages of the land that is protected by Shenandoah National Park do not suffer the assaults of sediment and runoff that challenge the health of streams at lower elevations. For this reason, the community based water monitoring program, StreamWatch, has chosen a spot high on the Doyles as one of several headwater streams that will be used during the next few years as “reference streams” – a standard of “as good as it gets in our watershed” — against which other tributaries of the Rivanna will be evaluated.

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Bird-watching, like other outdoor pastimes that have a specific focus, provides another lens through which to see and understand a watershed. This week, the Rambler joins the Monticello Bird Club for a morning tour of sites in northern Albemarle County.

 

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This show originally aired on January 31, 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.

Recently, I have been thinking about the variety of ways one can get to know the watershed. You can take to the water, by canoe or kayak, by jon boat, or propelled by oars. If you don’t have a boat, you can observe from water’s edge, along public trails and at parks that snug the banks of rivers and streams. From bridges, you can see a whole lot, too – so by foot, by bike, by car, even, you can start to know the waterways and the vistas, a sense of the terrain. And there’s also the manner of seeing, focusing on habitat, or geology, or plants. Last week, I joined some folks from the Monticello Bird Club and exercised my vision in yet another way.

Now, I am not what you might think of as a birder.

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