Brains are like cars

Brains are like the cars we ride
When put in gear and driven;
The highest peak or loneliest stretch
Is climbed and conquered, striven.

But fuel they need, and ignition too,
Or far they will not go;
Nor accomplish much on Life's long trip
But waiting for a tow.

'Cause brains not used are like the cars
Neglected 'til they're rusted;
Though power lies beneath the hood,
Ignored, is just like busted.

But with the proper tuning,
Attention, love, and care,
Brains last much longer than the cars
And none the less for wear.

Indeed, with use, comes added value,
Honed to a polished luster;
For models of a hundred years
Still actively pass muster.

Both brain and car must be engaged
When going for a ride;
'Cause neutral only gets somewhere
When nothing stops its downward glide.

Don't put your brain in park and stop
And leave it to ignore it;
Nor put it in reverse too long
Without a reason for it.

For if you do you'll never know
The thrill and skill of learning;
From the passing lane of open road
Comes knowledge, wisdom, yearning.

So with the proper maintenance,
Good fuel and extra spark;
Both car and brain are like as not
To help you make your mark.

Go forward then, run through the gears,
Sometimes get into overdrive;
For nothing happens, 'less it's made to
Nor neglected, stays alive.

The brain that came with your year's model
Can last at least a lifetime;
Don't wreck it with an aimless living -
To do would be a crime.

Fluxing fortunes

Change happens:
● High in the upper atmosphere, the jet stream shifts subtly to the south.
● Suburban sprawl invades the woods in northern New Jersey.
● Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank are fired from their jobs in a home improvement store.

Opportunities arise:
● Certain of their data, savvy AccuWeather forecasters pool their funds and invest in citrus stock before a freeze reaches central Florida.
● Black bears near the Delaware Water Gap learn to raid backyard birdfeeders and garbage cans. They discover the ease of preying on pets and breaking into kitchens for food.
● Misters Marcus and Blank co-found The Home Depot chain of retail stores and become billionaires.

Cycles come and go:
● The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a product of an eight-year drought, relentless wind erosion, and economic depression that settled on the American Great Plains. After the rains returned in 1941, dust storms ceased, crops thrived, and prosperity returned.

● Many speculative dot-coms bubbled briefly in the late nineties before spectacularly failing. Fashion apparel retailer Boo.com burned through $135 million of venture capital in an attempt to capture brand recognition and market domination before profits. Unfortunately, the profits failed to appear before the capital vanished, and the company liquidated after just 18 months.

Have a bad day? It’ll pass. Have a good day? It’ll pass. Such is the temporal nature of all things.

The leadership issue in such fluxing fortunes, however, is not that change happens, but rather, when it does, how do we react?

Consider the raccoon: one of the most adaptable of all animals, it freely chooses among almost any kind of shelter or food or habitat and gets along famously. The omnivorous rascals eat just about anything—bird eggs, berries, snakes, crayfish, small birds and mammals, even roadkill and refuse. And as owners of paws with semi-opposable thumbs, they’re able to get the lid off your trash can anytime they want. Changes in their environment happen all the time, and the raccoons are ok with that.

But consider the plight of the dusky seaside sparrow, whose last survivor died at Walt Disney World in 1986. Like all other creatures, it had needs that were met by its habitat, but when its habitat shrank and changed, and other land uses crowded in, the poor sparrow couldn’t adapt. It refused to cross any barrier, even if that barrier was merely visual, such as a highway or a power line, and effectively doomed itself.

No one is immune to change; it finds us from all quarters. Some changes are manageable, others are beyond our control, yet all, by their very nature, are temporary. Those who anticipate and embrace change, and who are able to adapt to its nuances, are those who thrive while others dive. Pluck your opportunities while they’re ripe, and enjoy their fruit while conditions last.

MasterPoint: Anticipate change. Remain flexible and open to new opportunities, and things may go better for you.

The Special Gift

lyrics © Tim Herd

chorus
Two men given a special gift;
To know the date of their own lives’ ending;
Free will in hand, their destinies shaping;
Legacies revealed in their own lives’ making.

verse 1
“No fear in a life of adventure!” said one.
To live and to know what I do doesn’t matter!
I can booze and snort and shack up with women,
Cut loose and drive fast and live big and get high!
Life’s mine! I take it! I make it!” he boasted—
“To get what I want and to want what I get!”

Two men given a special gift;
One cries “Power!” and makes Self Master;
Free will in hand, his destiny shaping;
Legacy revealed in his own life’s making.

verse 2
“No fear in a life of adventure!” said the next.
To live and to know what I do does matter!
I can serve and bless and raise up the standard.
Be real and grow tall and live right and aim high!
Life’s fine! I hold it! I mold it!” he marveled—
“To get what I want and to want what I get!”

Two men given a special gift;
One cries “Service!” and makes Christ Master;
Free will in hand, his destiny shaping;
Legacy revealed in his own life’s making.

bridge
“What—me worry? Why should I? Get real!
I can’t lose—oh, what power! Now get out of my way!”
With no fear of an immediate fate,
The first one chose to accumulate—
He spent all on self and wasted his youth,
On smut, drugs and filth, and relative truth.
He gambled with life and hoped he had won—
But in his choices, his wisdom was none.

“What—me worry? Why should I? God’s real!
I can’t lose—oh what power! He shows me the way!”
With no fear of an ultimate fate,
The next one chose to appreciate—
He spent all on love and invested in couth,
In service and faith, and absolute truth.
He wrestled with life and knew he had won—
For through his choices, his wisdom was done.

key change
Two men given a special gift;
One claims pride and a life that’s demeaning;
Free will in hand, his destiny shaping;
Legacy revealed in his own life’s making.

verse 3
Soon sick from cirrhosis, but high on cocaine,
He climbed a high building and leaped from its height,
But to his amazement, he dropped like a stone;
Not flying, not soaring, but only just falling,
Facing the music with head to the pavement—
Brought low hard and quick, he lingered a decade:
A shell of a man in a vegetable suit,
A shell of a man in a vegetable suit.

Two men given a special gift;
One claims Christ and a life of much meaning;
Free will in hand, his destiny shaping;
Legacy revealed in his own life’s making.

verse 4
Soon rich in his spirit, and high on life’s promise,
He completed a goal and leaped from its height,
And to his amazement, he rose to the next;
Now flying, now soaring, enabled, empowered—
Brought over and under and through and around,
He lived long and prospered, was full and complete:
A mold of a man in a virtuous suit,
A mold of a man in a virtuous suit.

All men given a special gift;
To choose the why of their own lives’ reason;
Free will in hand, our destinies shaping;
Legacies revealed in our own lives’ making.

bridge
Not a minute too soon or too late,
Both men died on the predicted date.
Yet one’s life had ended ages before;
And the other’s had only begun to explore.
For after their lives had been lived and been spent,
The first died again, and the other lived more.

All men given a special gift;
To know the why of their own lives’ reason;
Free will in hand, our destinies shaping;
Legacies revealed in our own lives’ making.

Recreation and re-creation

Run with this idea: The greater our connection to nature, the healthier and happier we are.

According to accumulating research, time spent in green outdoor spaces by children fosters creative play and relieves attention deficit disorders. Among adults, the rejuvenation derived from such outdoor pursuits as trailing a tiny ball through the byways of a golf course—or the hours teasing trout with an artificial fly—are well known. Aerobic activities of jogging, walking, and swimming contribute directly to our physical health. But perhaps surprisingly, studies show that the amazing therapeutic benefit of the outdoors extends even to office-bound cubicle workers with a mere view of trees, shrubbery or large lawns—who experience less frustration and stress than their deprived co-workers!

Time was that all our outdoor activities were subsistence-based. The chores of farming, gardening, hunting, and fishing produced food; walking, snowshoeing, skiing, and horseback riding were for necessary traveling. As such, the inherent benefits of interactions with nature were incorporated into our basic lifestyles.

These days, however, such interactions are usually not found listed on our electronic taskminders. Recreation is crammed into overly-busy vacation days, and the concept of outdoor leisure for the conscientious professional is considered naively quaint. Yet getting out there is neither the unproductive time nor the inconvenience it may seem.

The creative soul mates of recreation and re-creation pursue the same worthy goal. By refreshing both mind and body in invigorating diversions (recreating) you are also casting yourself into a new and improved you (re-creating). Such dual exercise is crucial because our careers trample a mind-numbing, body-crushing, and soul-dimming domain. Without recreation/re-creation, the weary world just wears us out.

So it’s not an option if we’re truly interested in success. Our highest and best functions—physically, intellectually, psychologically, socially, professionally, financially, and spiritually—can only be achieved and maintained by regular, refreshing, and stimulating personal makeovers. Bring it on!

As a leader in your profession, however, you must concern yourself with more than just Number One. (Selfishness is not only irresponsible, it’s counterproductive!) Look for ways to create a positive learning and sharing environment among your staff, board members, and stakeholders. Organizing occasional fun, educational, and team-building activities help to create that kind of learning atmosphere while strengthening team bonds and individual commitments. And if you can get everyone outside while you’re at it, the healthful benefits multiply for all!

Real leadership is not measured by position or rank, nor in accumulated honors and awards, a corner office, or a corner on the market. It is found in the number of the times we’ve tried, failed, adapted and re-tried; the people we’ve encouraged and uplifted; the challenges encountered and overcome together; and the healthy, productive balance in recreating and re-creating.

MasterPoint: Get out! Refresh. Create. Lead. Succeed.

Matters not for legacy

There are conflicting stories about the precise heritage of my 7th-great grandfather, Augustin, a protestant minister born in 1661 in Germany. One claims he was rightful heir to an ancient well-known noble lineage; the other alleges he was the grandson of a common miller and an aristocratic pretender. Neither can be conclusively substantiated because the Thirty Years’ War, which ultimately and messily involved most of Europe, has permanently muddled the records. But no matter: either way, his story remains fascinating.

Whether he was of well-to-do birth or not, Augustin did marry well—to the youngest daughter of the Danish Count of Waldeck and Pyrmont, and began climbing the social ladder. And in the passions and patterns of the day, they settled down to raise a large family. At first, because of the warring French, they were forced to flee with their young children several times to new cities of refuge. In Vacha, while serving in a promising position in the Reformed Hessian Church, and soon after the birth of his sixth child, the preacher also fathered a girl born to the neighboring farm maid—thus forfeiting all his upwardly-mobile ambitions. Augustin lost his post, his profession, his future in Hesse, and his freedom. After serving a prison sentence in the city hall tower, he relocated his family to Brandenburg, Prussia, for a new vocational start, where he was appointed minister in Drossen.

But there he was poorly housed and paid, and the young family continued to suffer while Augustin worked, wrote, schemed, and strived; yet the blessings failed to reappear. While hunting, Augustin accidentally shot a boy. So the family moved again, this time to Berlin, where he attempted living as a traveling lecturer. Another child was born and the family remained impoverished.

The persistent preacher eventually removed to Drechen, where, as one of the historical accounts maintains, in this smallest province of Prussia, far from Berlin, he began his new aristocratic life as Senior Pastor. Three more children were born to the preacher and the Countess, and he began his life’s work on an exhaustive exposition and commentary of the New Testament. Sixty-five years old by the time he completed it, he presented a leather-bound, gilt-edged copy of the great book with his personal dedication to each of the two protestant European monarchs: King George I of England, and Frederick I of Prussia.

His calculated gift paid off. In gratitude, the Prussian Soldier King appointed Rev. Augustin as the Royal Supervising Preacher to the Reformed Church in Brandenburg; accepted his two eldest sons into privileged military service; and became godfather to the minister’s grandson in 1730, even bestowing his own name to the baby: Friedrich Wilhelm. The child grew up to serve his king, Frederick the Great, as Aide de Camp in the Seven Years’ War, and was later appointed Inspector General of the struggling Continental Army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: the Baron Von Steuben, recognized paradigm of military leadership and profound difference-maker in world history.

So apparently it doesn’t matter if you have a particular ancestry or not. Nobody’s past is pure, nor free from troubles or bereft of opportunities to excel. Everyone has just one lifetime—his or her own— and no one else’s— to create a lasting legacy. As for Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Gerhard Ludolph Augustin Von Steuben, he’s credited with instilling the high standards required by General Washington for his soldiers: integrity, knowledge, loyalty to conscience, and aversion to fraud and waste—and his legacy endures even today as a modern model for civilian professionals. He’s my first cousin, seven times removed. He’s in all the history books.

Currents

The Class IV rapids on the Youghiogheny River flipped me and the raft skyward. When it finally occurred to gravity to reclaim me, the raft and my pals had already moved on without me, and things came down to just me and the river. (You could say I became totally immersed in my work!) I broke my paddle on a large rock and almost did the same with my tailbone. Fortunately for me, my buddies were able to retrieve me from the swift currents and haul me back aboard before the river took me for good.

Three awesome things about water trails:
1. They move.
2. They’re better with a buddy.
3. They can be navigated by almost any kind of vessel.

Tocks Island is a narrow strip of land in the Delaware River, and the site of three memorable stands against the flow:

1. A highly controversial proposal by the Army Corps of Engineers to dam the last undammed major river of the eastern U.S., flood upwards of 23,000 acres, create a 37 mile-long lake, and drive thousands of people from their homes and livelihoods. After 19 years of planning, investing, acquisitions, legal wrangling, pitched campaigns and hearings, the plan was halted.

2. My Scout troop’s campsite during a paddle trip. As most of our provisions had been delivered to the shore a short distance downstream, we undertook several round trips in the canoes to ferry it all back to the island for the night. Pulling strenuously against the current with the heavy loads took much longer and required much more energy than riding the empty canoe the same distance downstream.

3. That same campsite, when late that night one of the boys walked in his sleep, threading his way among all the tents’ intersecting guy wires and stakes until he stepped barefoot in the river and woke up. It was harder for him to find his way back in the dark fully awake, than it was for him to proceed apace while asleep!

Three life lessons from water trails:
1. A lot of the time it’s fine to go with the flow, but there are times when reversing against it is the only viable (or honorable) option you may have. Realize that it takes both strength and determination to buck the status quo, and advance against majority opinion or ingrained opposition. Prepare, then go for it.

2. It’s better if you’ve got the strength and assistance of a partner or team working with you toward the same goal—no matter what direction you’re heading. Collaborating in almost any venture dramatically increases your chances of success. (No man is an island, and all that…)

3. Real life is not the place for sleepwalking—unless you want to sleep with the fishes! Currents can quickly transport you to your destination or your doom. Keep alert to the trends—both physical and ideological—swirling about you at all times, and paddle accordingly!

MasterPoint: Keep current with the issues and trends within your profession, partner up, and navigate with purpose!

Thinking and being and doing

Olympic champions, bodybuilders and dieters, sales representatives, and all your basic goal-setters keep before them a clear picture of the desired end results even as they work toward them from afar off.

You see, our brains are gullible: they believe what they are consistently told.

The teen berated as a screw-up continues as one; the girl ostracized for being different becomes a loner; the man who confesses he has no willpower succumbs to temptation. On the other hand, the child praised for being thoughtful continues to be; a student who believes she can overcome dyslexia does; a disadvantaged young adult rises to the challenge of being a single parent. All of us act according to what we believe we are capable of doing, to the degree we believe it.

Sometimes the “facts” are irrelevant. You wish to be a professional musician, but you’re simply not proficient enough. That may be true. But it doesn’t mean it always will be. A professional musician practices many hours every day to hone and maintain his or her skills; so does the aspiring professional musician. We must take on the habits and behaviors of the professional before we actually become the professional.

Professional motivators and creative thinkers speak about thinking “outside the box” or acting beyond our comfort zones to effect innovation and change. The truth is, ruts are comfortable. We spend a long time carving them out to our exact dimensional habits and then resting in them: aahhh! But to seek improvements in our lifestyle or to dream an impossible dream forces a change in our thinking, which in turn affects our doing, and eventually, our being.

When I was in junior high school I enjoyed a couple of semesters of Mechanical Drawing, where we sat at large drafting tables and used the T-square and triangles and scale ruler and dividers and compasses to draw 3-D objects on a piece of paper taped to the table. Mr. Dotter insisted that he did not mind us making mistakes, declaring often that “He who makes no mistakes, does nothing.” But he did warn us about making grooves in our work. We all had a tendency to push hard on our pencils, firmly and irrevocably etching our decisions forever. Sure, we could erase the line if it was wrong, but we couldn’t erase the groove in the paper the line created, so our mistake remained even though we had repented of the error.

We may not always be sure of our exact pathway to progress, but we can tread lightly as we train and develop to avoid unnecessary and unsightly “grooves” in our professional lives that may mar ourselves, our relationships, and our future. To do anything at all guarantees that we will, from time to time, make mistakes and fail. That is certain. So the issue is not when or what we fail, but how we fail and recover, while consistently reconfirming to our own minds the purposeful image of our destination.

It is the willingness to do what it takes; to purposefully banish negative, destructive, and counter-productive thought patterns, and substitute them with uplifting, edifying, and encouraging ones to motivate a change in our behavior. It is to accept in faith that which we cannot see as though it is. And to act upon that belief to fulfill our own greatest potential.

MasterPoint: Think to believe; believe to act; act to become.

Unique gifts = niche value

The acorn woodpecker spends most of its time drilling holes in a single tree, only to plug each one with a single acorn. How do you fill your time?

The specific role an animal fills in its habitat is called its niche, which in turn facilitates the healthy function of the entire interdependent and interrelated community.

Similarly, your unique gifts and how you use them reveal your niche and enable your life purpose. What is your vital function? How do you facilitate vibrant living in your family? In your profession? Your community? Your world?

By this time of year, the pecker may have stashed as many as 50,000 acorns into one granary tree! Not only does that peculiar behavior develop an extensive food cache for itself and others, it also effectively disperses resources throughout the habitat, contributing to its long-term ecological health and stability.

The woodpecker’s simple, visual example tells us to “find your niche and fill it to the best of your ability.”

You Are Here

No one asks to be born.

No one knows everything.

No one is perfect.

Yet here you are poised at the start of something really big.

Age doesn’t matter. The past is immaterial. Your journey begins new every moment.

Ability isn’t important. The present matters only in the choices you now make.

Culture, heritage, and socio-economic issues are of no consequence. Your future is lived only as you create it.

So leave all such baggage behind: trails are for traveling, after all—not for lodging.

You need only one piece of equipment: a Great Attitude (the kind with the filter that strains out all the negative stuff). Strap it on.

Now go. Your trails await!

Starting things

Full disclosure: I never went to kindergarten. It didn’t exist in my rural township in those dark, early days soon after the ice sheet had receded from North America.

And so I never learned all those things that people learn in kindergarten: Things like… like…

Hmm. Maybe that’s the problem right there.

In the late 1950s, educational progress in our locale consolidated a dozen one-room schoolhouses into a “modern” elementary building. So a few days after I turned six years old, I started First Grade. My teacher, Mrs. Sham, wore what used to be called “coke-bottle glasses” (because the lenses were so thick), and what I called “teacher’s perfume.” (I have never met anyone else so distinctively scented in my life.)

I was an impressionable kid, and I learned many life lessons from Mrs. Sham: How to Raise Your Hand; How To Carry a Chair; How To Set Down Your Glasses (even though not a single first-grader wore them); When to Hang Up Your Wraps (poor Cindy E. didn’t know she was a girl on the first day of school because she hung up her jacket during the boys’ turn. She flunked that year.); How Not To Run Out To Recess Riding On Donald L’s Back While He Whinnies Like a Horse; How To Stay In For Recess For A Week, and so on…

But the most lasting and profound lesson Mrs. Sham taught me was When You Start Something, Finish It. It speaks of the invaluable trait of persistence, which, when practiced, pulls you through the quicksand pits, muck-filled troughs, and inevitable round-about detours of life. Although we may not always be consistent, it is with persistence that we reach our goals.

I once witnessed a yearling black bear cub—a first-grader, you might say—with her heart and appetite set on a well-stocked birdfeeder, practice both persistence and ingenuity as she literally clung to her dream pursuing it. Because the feeder was suspended by ropes between trees, she quickly discovered that her goal was unreachable if she did not leave her comfort zone in one of the trees. Attempting and failing to step across tightrope-style, she also tried: hanging by her front claws; dangling upside-down sloth-style; failing and falling repeatedly; reaching and missing and stretching and grasping; and awkwardly holding and swaying and inching along a bouncing and dancing rope until she achieved what she had so persistently aimed for.

This post marks a new beginning for Scene & Herd. In my previous posts, I’ve commented as a naturalist on my personal interactions with nature, wildlife, and other fascinating moments in the vast, tumbling cycle of life. In this new start, paralleling the launch of my new column, Leadership Living, as well as a deeper venture into professional speaking, I will be interpreting proven concepts of personal, corporate, nonprofit, and community leadership for both the aspiring and the seasoned professional. In it I will offer principles and parables—drawn from the worlds of nature, culture, business, and everyday living—for personal and professional growth, along with “MasterPoints” of essential concepts to master and maximize your leadership impact. Welcome to this new beginning! I invite you to join this blog as a follower, and join me in the journey!

MasterPoint: Never stop learning, never stop striving: practicing persistence pays off!

Beachcombing at Møns Klint

This is the Danish word for island: ø. Denmark has 406 of them.

At the eastern end of Møn—one of those islands—stands a scenic stretch of magnificent chalk cliffs called Møns Klint towering 470 feet above the Baltic Sea. It was created after countless millions of shellfish laid down their lives (and calcium) in a very thick seabed layer that was subsequently compacted into hills by Ice Age glaciers. And ever since the climate warmed and the ice receded, the sea has been eroding the chalk deposits in a grand reclamation of its mineral resources.

As the surf, wind, rain, and frost perform their work, large chunks flake off the cliffs and tumble into the sea. The soft chalk dissolves and dissipates in the currents, while its embedded dark bands of harder flintstone crumble and litter the beach.

The view from the top is magnificent, but the trip to the bottom of the cliffs is worth descending (and later ascending!) the several hundred wooden steps traversing the steep coastal terrain. Beachcombing there can result in fossil finds of sea urchins, mussels, and cuttlefish; as well as the petrified resin known as “northern gold,” amber, which washes up with seaweed and other flotsam from the Danish archipelago.

Curious crayfish!

I was profoundly confused.

In the summer along our country road, I sometimes find roadkilled crayfish. And that’s just what befuddled me for a while. Just why?—and how?—and what?—were they doing out of the water?

About the only explanation I could conjure up is that they must’ve been dropped by a marauding raccoon, and subsequently run over. But that many? Raccoons aren’t known to be that inept!

And so I pondered until one warm summer eve while I was working in my garage, when in walks a crayfish, big as you please! (Well, it was only life-size, really, at about six inches.)

Now crayfish are very common in the streams around here, but definitely not on the land, and especially not strolling up my driveway, some 75 feet from the creek. Their usual haunts are under submerged rocks or logs. But creeping its way northward with its four pairs of walking legs, this particular aquatic beast seemed perfectly at home on the concrete floor of my garage, despite the fact that its special set of legs to bail water over its gills had nothing at all to do!

As Alice cried on the other side of the looking glass: “Curiouser and curiouser!”

I wound up calling an astacologist (one who studies crayfish) at Penn State University to confirm that I wasn’t just making this up—and that it really does happen. Crayfish sometimes do leave the water to migrate, he confirmed. Why, he added, no one has a clue!

Mob rules

It’s tough being the top of the food chain: All your food gives you problems.

I was working back at the shed on Saturday when I heard the ongoing kuk-kuk-kuk of a distressed pileated woodpecker and the skree-ahs of a red-tailed hawk. Seems the hawk and its youngster had chosen to perch atop a tall oak in the tree line near the woodpecker’s nest. And she, being rather perturbed about it, fearlessly circled them quite noisily. After a few minutes of that kind of special attention, the hawks decided to beat it, and the woodpecker took a victory lap; one kuk per wingbeat.

The poor red-headed mama isn’t the only one who reacts to danger by crying all the louder about it.

It’s not uncommon to see a blue jay chasing an owl, or swallows ganging up on a hawk, or a red-winged blackbird routing a much larger snail kite.

Such overt discrimination is called mobbing and is practiced by many smaller birds against the very ones who could easily turn tail and snatch a couple of them up. Why, then, do they do it?

Mobbing tends to occur most frequently on breeding grounds where, despite the danger to individual birds, the “keep-moving” order to the predator safeguards many more helpless and hapless hatchlings and fledglings. And while it may simply divert the bad news away, such profiling also educates the younger members of the population to recognize the enemy.

I witnessed one memorable, but misdirected, display the day I had placed a mounted raccoon at the base of a tree where I would be leading classes of elementary kids along the trail. I had intended it as a quiet test of their observational skills, but it didn’t really work out that way. A single, sharp-eyed crow discovered the egg bandit posed stiffly on the ground, and had appointed itself the raucous alarm, yelling at that stuffed animal from the top of that tree all day long!

Particular in pink

A singular beauty of the springtime woods, pink lady’s slipper is an unusually selective wildflower.

The distinctive silhouette of the rare woodland orchid presents a slender flower stalk centered in two leaves, topped with a deep pink, three-inch, slipper-shaped flower.

Unlike most flowers that are openly inviting for the purposes of pollination, the slipper’s pouch is tightly closed, except for one tiny aperture that allows only the strong and virile to penetrate. Bees and other large insects, detecting the sweet internal fragrance and the promise of nectar, push inside to discover a literal trap. With no nectar and no way to back out, the bee must force its way past a pollen-laden stamen to squeeze its exit to freedom.

Should the bee be waylaid again by another alluring temptress, a little pollen of the first is delivered to the second, new reproductive grains are loaded for the next transfer, and the act of pollination is complete. Without the bees’ help, the moccasin flower could not produce seeds. The bee, however, is jilted in this relationship, because unlike in other symbiotic floral arrangements, it earns no food in this encounter.

But the lady’s slipper is sitting pretty, with fertilized ovaries and a new lease on life.

This type of relationship, in which only one partner benefits, is called commensalism, and the lady’s slipper is a master practitioner.

The finicky flower grows only under the towering influences of pines, oaks, red maple, and sweet gum trees, which ensure the unique habitat it requires, yet the trees gain nothing from its presence.

Additionally, the lady’s seeds develop without an internal food reserve to power-up the new growth once it reaches suitable fertile ground. In order to spread and flourish, pretty-in-pink requires a certain low-life to help it grow. Only when the threads of a specific ground-dwelling fungus break open the seed and attach themselves to it, does the fungus dispatch the necessary nutrients to jump-start the seed, which then grows very slowly into a new stately scion of the forest. Only in its death does the plant finally offer something of itself: consumption of its tuber by the fungus.

Unfortunately, many people try to collect these showy orchids from their wild havens to keep for themselves, in their own version of commensalism. Yet because of their slow-growing, discriminating natures, and their dependence on the fungus, most transplants simply die.

I’m happy to report sighting more than a dozen thriving specimens atop South Mountain in south central Pennsylvania in their natural setting—where they remain particular in pink.

Super cool!

Frazil ice is a frozen slurry of suspended ice crystals in a supercooled turbulent stream flow.

And the prime season and place to witness it is on the Yosemite Creek bed in Yosemite National Park in March and April. Although it has the surficial appearance of snow, the slushy crust advances like lava—and with a force that literally moves mountains. Surging along until it builds its own ice dams, blocking its own forward motion, the creek then swells below the crystalline surface until it finds another outlet, reversing and changing course on its chaotic downstream dash.

Look, but don’t touch! (In fact, keep a safe distance!) While its stationary snowy surface seems static enough, one misstep can quickly plunge you out of your depth in roiling ice water.

The park has produced an excellent video showing the fascinating phenomenon.