Post 21

 

   I can’t sleep and it’s really late, almost 2:25am; time to start to write another blog. On March 12th, I went bike riding near the river. It was a windy day, 17 mph winds with gusts over 25, so I stayed on the mountain bike trails in the woods. It was also a weird day because everything was gray, and black, and white. 

    I rode the whole 8 mile loop on my white bike, going slow. It isn’t a mountain bike but it handled the trails fine. They aren’t rocky. Even so, MTB trails are different from other kinds of cycling. One just has to focus on the trail, all the time. Watch out for roots, sudden turns, mud, deep sand, etcetera. It's fun. 

A flat, tame trail section

    When I got to the end I stopped at Mud Creek. Despite the temperature it was still looking wintry. There was some algae, and a few young arrowhead plants shooting up, but not much. I looked at rocks. They weren't any different from most rocks around here. Fossiliferous limestones with fusilinids, crinoid stems, some other stuff. One big chunk of limestone had some nice calcite crystals. Don't always see that. I miss the Blue Gneiss and other great metamorphic boulders of the piedmont, but it is nice to see so many fossils. Even if most of them are just fusilinids.

     

Calcite bits in here

 

     So I just turned around then, but stopped at Land's End. It's where Mud Creek flows into the Kaw, and one can go down to the river. I did. I dipped my hand in. Cold. None of the grasses are green yet. There were some lovely amber tipped ones growing in a frequently flooded corridor. I was on a little area that's an island when the water's high. I'm still not where I want to be with grass identification, especially in the winter, but I noticed another plant, cocklebur. How couldn't I? Look at it. 

     Those seed pods are sharp enough to pierce skin, if you're unlucky. They liked grabbing onto my clothes, one even got on my bike's framebag.

    There's something special about islands, even ones that aren't islands most of the year. River islands are so ephemeral. Did the island I was on exist 100 years ago? Probably not. 

On the headland, Mud Creek on the left, Kaw in the background

    It was warm. It's been really warm this year, like we only had a month of winter. I don't know, right? The sixth mass extinction is happening, people are suffering. Everything's changing, and everything's been changing so fast for ~500 years. It's exhausting. People aren't looking forward to the future like they used to. Or, what do I know, I'm not even 20, but that's how I feel. For us young adults, the future is full of dread. 

    And still, life gives us so much. Like deer, coyote, and opossum prints, like the singing of crows, chickadees, robins, and woodpeckers, like a well made meal. It's just a mass extinction, it's happened before. I don't know anything. Life gives us so much. I'll go for a bike ride tomorrow.