The Most Glorious Big Night

Big Night… the most magical two words of all time… except for maybe Harry Potter. All of the Spotted Salamanders and Wood Frogs and other amphibians crawl out of their burrows on the first wet and warm (ish) night of spring and make their way towards vernal pools (I just taught a lesson about this and probably said this line 10 times today at least). Anyway, I’d been dreaming of this night since I arrived in snowy New England this January. The Spotted Salamander is in my Top Three Favorite Salamanders Ever count, and they’re just so big and chunky and cute and the best… eek.

See?

This year we had a very strange winter, with a lot of false alarms. We had our first wet and warmish night at the very end of February, in fact. The pools were still mostly frozen, but still a few brave salamanders marched over to find mates. I waited sort of patiently for the next warm rainy night, but it never came. Instead we got below freezing temps for a few days at the end of March! Luckily, April showers on April Fools Day brought the most epic Big Night I have ever witnessed. I went to Maine for the weekend, and luckily spent the night with fellow herp-enthused friends who were totally game to go out herping at midnight when we got back from a concert. We found So. Much.

Everywhere we looked in the pond there were five or so spotted sals flitting up to the surface to nab some air or just say hey. They were quite easy to catch, so I probably held/cooed over a dozen. And I will go our to the pond here a Bear Brook as much as possible over the next few weeks and just hold amphibians and all will be well.

Here I am with Lucy, all dressed for a night of herping.

Searching for salamanders is sort of a frenetic/ compulsive activity for me at this point. Obviously it’s really enjoyable too, but when I search at night I end up looking like this hunched over pond gremlin fishing around with my hands and poking myself in the eye with branches and grumbling and scouring the surface of the water and flipping over logs and scrabbling in the leaf litter. I probably have crazy eyes. But it’s worth it, lemme tell ya.

Mushrooms and amphibians and cabins, oh my!

I moved to camp on Thursday, and by now I think it is safe to say that I'm settled in. At least, I have enough damp clothing and rodent-chewed fabric to show that I've been here a while.

I'm feeling lucky about quite a few things regarding my current living situation.

1. Free room and board-- always fun to have, and we eat quite well. Roasted turkey and mashed potatoes one night, baked chicken and fresh-picked morels another night... mmmm mmm. We took a couple of hours off from work to hunt for morels on the hills, and we found a good number of them.

2. Close access to salamanders. I can just turn over pretty much any log around and find them-- it's been super rainy and perfect for sals! Stay tuned for way too many pictures of salamanders.

3. Sharing a cabin with my friend Bridget. We live in Heights, aptly named for how it's the the farthest cabin up from the lodge. It's my favorite place to live at camp, because it has a big porch with a swing, and because I feel like I'm sleeping outside. We get lots of deer, spider, flying squirrel, and moth visitors.

My pet cactus isn't as happy about the living situation-- it had been super cold and wet-- not a good time to be a cactus. But tomorrow is May, so all hope is not lost.

Dear Diary

I have kept a journal for years, usually full of mundane day-to-day things, but if I don't write it down or take a picture then I don't remember it.

Today I was typing out my journal entries from my summer course, and thought that I might as well share them, since they're all nice and typed out. And also, dear readers, this is your one chance to read pieces of my diary, because I am usually too ashamed to let anyone know about all the boring things that I write about.

Here are some clips and corresponding pics from August in the Apostle Islands!


8/17/2013
Camping on Stockton Island tonight, after a day of paddling and sailing. We woke up at 5 am as per usual and dragged out stuff to the beach and had breakfast and paddled to from 8 to 9:30 ish when we started to sail, which was way better for my seasickness. Paddled the last stretch and had a relaxing camp set up and lunch and swim and rest before hiking to the quarry. The only problem is the mosquitos, and also that there is not much time to do the immense loads of reading.

Here we are, sailing!

On the beach at Stockton

8/18/2013

So very buggy. It’s fun to have a home campsite- no lugging huge food bags. Today we had a sleepy morning- slept until 5:40 then ate breakfast then slept again instead of reading. We went to Presque Isle VC and talked with Ranger Dan, then got lunch on Julian Bay and had two hours of free wander time. I had a lovely stroll along Anderson Point Trail, stopping along the shore to take selfies and enjoy the rocks and sun.

Ranger Dan!

Yup, selfies. Lots.

8/20/2013

Heat Advisory Day! Up early as usual, but with a purpose- a 7.5 mile paddle to Manitou Island. I wasn’t feeling so great on the ride over, but was good as soon as we got there. Stared at a tadpole pool for a super long time, then got a tour of the fishing camp from Denise, and I became a Junior Ranger. Then we hiked to some old growth Hemlock and back, lunched at the boats and pushed off for a choppy but enjoyable paddle back to Stockton, where I sprawled on the beach for a while.

My beloved tadpole pond.

Ranger Denise telling us about the fishing nets.

8/25/3013

Paddled from Basswood to Oak, on choppy water but with a tailwind. We stopped by a shipwreck, but only Travis and Elizabeth scoped it out. I was creeped out enough by just floating on top of it. Now we are set up in a beautiful campsite, and have to come up with our full presentation and do a rough run-through.

A calm, innocent, Lake Superior.

View from the campsite on Oak Island.

 8/28/2013

Haven’t written in a while, but we’re leaving the camping life today, heading to the city life... Ashland. I’m excited to get back, get my phone, really sit down and figure out my program. I just showered so I don’t really have to worry about that. We packed up at Wilderness Inquiry, listened to Travis’s talk, played frisbee, took a group pic. Yesterday was our last day of paddling, and we left Oak and I sterned to Raspberry. We hiked to the lighthouse, and listening to an amazing interpretive tour by Ranger Jim, that basically exemplified all of the good things that we’ve been learning about interpretation-- he even sang us a lighthouse song. Then the fog was rolling in so we just paddled to Sand Bay, had a nice time in our boat-- good convo, scenery, got to jump in and plank the boat, good stuff. We unloaded at the beach and lugged it to the campsite, the set up camp and started hauling gravel for our service project.

The paddle to Raspberry

Ranger Jim after singing his lighthouse song

The last stretch of our trip-- canoe lyfe.

Us!

Canoeing the Apostle Islands

Apparently due to my Jewish upbringing, I never learned that to say the word 'Apostle', you do not accentuate the T. Unfortunately, this was not brought to my attention until after we were done with our 12-day canoe trip through these islands, but whatcha gonna do. The islands were named so because it was thought that there were at least twelve of them, like the twelve apostles (I had heard of them, pronunciation aside). Turns out there are actually 21 islands included in the National Lakeshore. Off the top of my head, they are named: Long, Rocky, Outer, Cat, Bear, Hermit, Stockton, Oak, Raspberry, Sand, Basswood, South Twin, North Twin, Devil's, Manitou... sadly there is not a good mnemonic device for remembering them... so that's all I got for now.

My favorite thing that I learned about the flora and fauna of the islands regards the black bear populations. A couple of the islands are the most densely populated black bear regions in the country, because their area is just tiny and they have a lot of bears. For example, Stockton Island used to be the most densely populated, but then two bears swam to Oak Island and the title shifted accordingly. Funny, huh?

Good place for a swim, eh?

But way more exciting than bears... wait for it... AMPHIBIANS!!!!
Of the six species of frogs and toads in the Apostles, I saw all of them. And tried to hold as many of them as I could. Cynthia and I have often talked about how we have an amphibian catching problem. No matter how many times we have caught a dusky salamander in the stream, we HAVE to catch one if we see it. Even though we know exactly how it will feel, and even though we know it's not really good for them to be handled. It's slightly problematic, but as problems go, I think it's an ok problem to have. Plus they are sooooo cuuute!

Salamanderz

I thought I should have some sort of nature blog post, since I do work at nature camp/ bug camp. Plus, I cicada nature!


On a slightly nature-related note, here is my favorite picture from 2nd session's final exam: The Great Race! Staph vs. Campers. We prepared for it with quite the rigorous training regimen (intimidation + lunges with biology textbooks + flexing zee gunz).

Pulling chara and WINNING!

Anyway, back to nature. Salamanders! I've been having a great time searching for them in our stream this summer after taking herpetology. 1st session I had camper projects about salamanders, and I am siked to teach about them at 3rd session as well.

This is a long-tailed. Except that you can't see the tail. But I swear it's there!

I believe this is a northern red, but a juvenile because it's not super dark yet.

This is not a salamander, but a pic of The Bald at final ceremony! It was a gorgeous night.

Stay tuned for more salamander pics! I maybe take too many. But they are sooooo cuuute!