From the woods

I ran out to the two nearest forest sites that we sampled over the summer to grab some photos for my presentation. They're not GREAT, seeing as my camera is older and has fewer megapixels, and also seeing as it's the end of a very dry summer and it's been cold for a couple days, so a lot of leaves are down.

The first site is one my university shares with the Corps of Engineers. I was a bit apprehensive about this one, because hunting is occasionally permitted on it (though I think we're between seasons right now, and it's only bowhunting season). But I didn't see anyone. (I wore a "caution yellow" vest just in case). I did see a couple of deer and an armadillo (rare sighting of a LIVE armadillo...).

This one gives kind of a general sense of what the woodland is like. It's pretty open, not really true "cross timbers" forest:



(You can see the lake in that one. It's really down from where it should be).

And another:



There's a lot of small trees down. I don't know if the couple high-wind days we had this fall were solely responsible, or if someone's been in cutting (I noticed the trails were a lot more brush-hogged than they normally are, probably in preparaion for hunting).

I also fell out in this forest - caught my foot under a root or something. Normally I can recover from a fall like that and not actually hit the ground, but I was so concerned about not dropping and breaking my camera that I wound up just falling. Luckily I didn't drop the camera until it was just a couple inches above the ground, and it landed in a pile of leaves anyway. But I cut myself up a little bit - and the other odd thing, it was like falling "rebooted" my internal GPS (normally I'm very good at navigating areas) and I was kind of off-track and lost for a few minutes, but then managed to re-orient myself (being able to see the lake helps; I knew I had to walk parallel to it to get back to the trail out).

Also: now THIS is a hackberry. (Hackberry is known for having "warty" bark.)



The second site, I actually DID get kind of lost, because there's a network of horse trails that are ambiguously marked. I got off on a side trail and was circling around and starting to get alarmed because it was drawing up on 3 pm and I didn't want to still be out there when it got dark and cold, and I REALLY didn't want to have to try calling the Corps office on my cell phone and asking them to come rescue me, because I'd never hear the end of that. (A lot of our students work for the Corps.)

Fortunately, I ran across a couple riding their horses, and (after stepping respectfully off the trail so they could pass) asked them if it was the trail that led back to the parking lot. The man said yes, just take a right whenever there's a junction and you'll get there. Between that and being able to use the occasional fresh horse-plops as a sort of "breadcrumb trail," I was able to get back out.



The forest here looks much like the other forest. Oh well, at least I'm being honest and presenting photos from two different sites, even if they look alike.



There may be a little more underbrushy stuff at this site, I don't know.

I also snapped a picture of a convenient soil profile, to use in next spring's class:


Our local soil profiles are not very exciting. Kind of a pale A layer grading right into a B layer.