Carry In - Carry Out in State Parks

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The state parks I’ve visited in recent months in Maryland and New York have a carry in - carry out policy for trash; they don’t have trash cans anywhere. Many states are trying to save money on operational costs for state parks and trash collection is one way they doing it.

I was sad to discover how much trash is left in the parks rather than being carried out by the people that carried it in.

In the Patapsco Valley State Park in Maryland there were beer bottle caps, a hub cap, socks, empty water bottles, a broken grill, pieces of plastic (some looked like pieces of plastic ware…some I couldn’t tell what it had been), and broken glass. Wading in the Patapsco River we found broken glass and pieces of pottery. The patterns on the pottery looked old; the age of the glass was indeterminate; either way I was glad I had on water shoes.

At Stony Brook State Park it was much the same although the trash was right at the water’s edge; the next rain would wash it downstream; the trash included crushed aluminum cans, a baby’s soiled diaper, empty water bottles, empty and full soft drink bottles, and beer bottles.

In both places there was a lot of trash - too much to rationalize as accidents. It was apparent that some people were carrying in….but not carrying out anything at all. It is probably the minority of people….but it is a messy (and potentially toxic) behavior.

Do the parks remind people as they enter the park (the person in the kiosk looking the driver in the eye) that they need to carry their trash out with them? Not in any of the parks we visited. It seems like that would be a minimal thing that should happen. Maybe people are not fully away of Carry In - Carry Out since it has not always been like that.

I saw one stand that had plastic bags for people to take to gather their trash to ‘carry out’ but I wonder how many people miss the display just as they ignore signs.

Or maybe the people that leave trash in State Parks are simply slobs and no amount of signage or verbal reminders will make a difference. Depressing - if true.

Parks and Gardens Day Trips

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I am enjoying day trips to parks and gardens this spring - both old favorites and new ones. The places on my old favorites list are below - with the ones I’ve done in past few months in italics (does not mean that I might not see them again soon!):

US Botanic Garden

Patapsco Valley State Park

There are new ones on my list too. I’ve started putting pink post-it notes around the calendar on the refrigerator when I read about new places I want to see. The ones in italics on the list below are the two we’ve done already recently (and I want to do both of them again):

Adkins Arboretum

Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area

I’m sure I’ll be adding to the 'new' list soon after buying Barbara Glickman’s new book: Maryland’s Public Gardens & Parks yesterday at the annual Master Naturalist conference!

Violets and Rattlesnake Fern

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Violets and rattlesnake fern have been ‘finds’ over the past few weeks. Violets were not new to me - I notice them when they bloom every spring. What I had not noticed previously was the seed pods that are produced afterward. This year they seem to be everywhere - or I am just recognizing them for what they are.

 

The rattlesnake fern is new to me. It is a very different kind of fern. I saw it first in the Patapsco Valley State Park near Belmont and then noticed many more plants at the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area. I’ve added arrows to this picture ---- everywhere I noticed one there seemed to be other growing nearby! It looks different than many ferns in that the fronds come from a central stalk and

The spore producing frond is almost like a ‘flower’ above the leaves. I found myself wanting to photograph the variations of that spore producing frond!

Bigleaf Magnolia

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One of the trails we sometimes take from Belmont into Patapsco Valley State Park has quite a stand of Bigleaf Magnolias. They look like a tropical plant in the understory of the forest. The leaves live up to the name of the plant! In this stand, most of the trees have long slender trunks - sometimes with only one ‘umbrella’ of leaves at the top. The deer population around Belmont is quite high so their growth pattern could be influenced by deer browsing on their buds and leaves. There were quite a few plants that were a clump of 2 or 3 spindly trunks. The canopy over the plants may be getting too thick as well; they are understory trees but they evidently need sunlight too.

When I hiked in the area last week, a few of the trees were blooming! Unfortunately - the blooms were high in the trees. I captured several using the zoom on my camera.

Then we found one that appeared to be lower than the rest. One of the leaves under the flower showed evidence of how easily the big leaves can be damaged by wind. These trees grow in a sheltered area of forest and would not do well as landscaping trees surrounded by yard.

We carefully used a walking stick to pull the branch down for some photographs of the inside of the large flower. More confirmation that it is indeed a magnolia!

Master Naturalist Field Trip - Part 2

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After the hike along Trolley Trail between Banneker Historical Park and Museum and Ellicott City on Saturday (previous post), our group headed to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. The Thomas Viaduct - a railroad bridge that crosses the Patapsco River and Valley just inside the park. It was completed in 1835 and still carries railroad traffic!

In our previous Master Naturalist classes we had learned about the history of the area from colonial times. Where the sign talks about Elkridge Landing as a port looking unimaginable today; the silt and dams have changed the river tremendously since colonial days when Elkridge Landing was a significant port.

The CCC built building in the park and we visited one. It was built of stone and there was an interesting nest (wasps?) near the ceiling of the porch. The inside is evidently riddled with termites - beyond repair.

There is a sewer pipe is exposed along the river. It was uncovered during the flood caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 - and there is not stable way to cover it again. The river was stocked a few days before our hike; a little boy was fishing with his day and joyously held up a fish they’d caught for us to see as we were walking on the swinging bridge over the Patapsco.

We saw a couple of skunk cabbage just poking up from the leaves.

The main green was moss. This log with green cap was a welcome relieve from the brown leaves.

There was some color in the rocks too if you looked closely…a lot of big crystals in pegmatite.

And what’s not to like about water tumbling over rocks…and down to the river. It was a good last ‘uphill’ for the day. We’d been out and about since 8:30 and it was 4:30. The Master Naturalist field trip was history.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 4

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Last Wednesday was the fourth of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. Snow was not in the forecast….but there was still some on the ground. As I walked from the parking lot to the building, the fog was hanging in the low places and into the forest; daylight savings time made a difference in the lighting as well.

The two topics for the day were

  • Microbes, Mosses and Mushrooms and
  • Humans and the Landscape

I did the pre-reading for both modules and the factoid that popped out was that the cell walls of mushrooms are made of chitin (the same molecule that makes insects’ exoskeletons!). How had I missed learning that in the mycology class I took back in the 70s?

Another key learning from the beginning topic of the day was the logistics of the lecture. The instructor had her one year old son with her! I thought it was would be distracting (and eventually he was taken off to another room by a helper) but the lecture was interesting and he provided some of the lighter moments of the morning. It is not something that could be done for every class but I am thinking more often about ways we can blur the divide between work and the other things we do in our lives. The industrial age forced us to make work totally separate - but humans didn’t evolve in that kind of environment. Our interests were multi-faceted with only short bursts of total focus. Concentrating on one thing for a long period of time (the way many jobs are formulated) can be stressful simply because the human brain and body did not develop in that environment.

Later in the day we hiked into the woods and found lots of fungi. Slims and jellies

Shelf fungus

With pores (rather than gills) underneath

Lichen

In the afternoon we had two lectures. The first gave a history of the human development of the land along the Patapsco River (near our classroom). The story included John Smith (noticing red clay), a harbor just below the falls of the river was the second busiest harbor in Maryland after Annapolis until is silted up, the deforestation to feed the iron forges and heat houses, the mills (flour and textile), the floods, and trains - the first cars pulled by horses before steam engines were developed. Much of the around the river is deforested and is a heavily used state park. Floods are still a problem. The one caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 took many years of recovery.

Switching gears - the next lecture was from a wildlife perspective. The impact of plants and animals brought to the New World was discussed. Some introductions were accidently but had a huge effect: earthworms changed the forest floor from deep mulch with lots of moisture to drier places….and changed the understory; chestnut blight took away the biggest tree in the forest. There is more forest in the area now than there was 100 years ago but the deer population is so large that plants in the understory are increasingly thorny invasive plants. We’ll have another lecture on invasive plants in week 6.

At the end of the day, I thought about my expectation that the lectures couldn’t all be as interesting as the first few - but the ones this week were still the same high quality in terms of material and presentation. And the weather is enabling more outside treks….makes it even better!