A Black Friday Rant

*trigger warning for first-world problems*

I had seriously intended to return to this blog with a deep, reflective post about my continuing education, a wrap-up from Pennsylvania, migrating birds, etc. Instead I have been inspired by the time of year to instead write a post about blatant consumerism, how much I want to spend all my hard-earned money on outdoor gear instead of my electric bill, and why I haven't done that (and it's not because I'm mature and responsible).

First of all, I would like to state that I have a terrible weakness for outdoor clothing. If there was nothing holding me back, I would have the equivalent in half an REI store in my house by now. I can barely tolerate the grocery store for 15 minutes, but I will stand for an hour weighing the relative benefits of boot socks or hiking packs or all-weather vests even though I have no intention of buying any of those things. Give me a good pair of waterproof pants and I'll be showering the cashier with credit cards. However in my years of attempting to buy outdoor clothing, both for personal use and for jobs, I have repeatedly hit a frustrating wall.

I speak, of course, of the desolate wasteland of women's outdoor wear. This phenomenon grows more frustrating to me the longer I'm in the natural resource field. Of course, there are small oases in the wasteland, mostly online; stores like REI and Outdoor Research tend to have practical women's outdoor clothing (often with a heftier price tag) and mid-level chains have wider selections online than they often do in stores. But here is a broad generalization of what you find when walking into the women's department of your average outdoor store: Yoga pants. Pink camouflage hoodies. Pink camouflage yoga pants. Decent hiking boots that, inexplicably, are trimmed with pink. Tons and tons of jogging gear. And if you like pink, more power to you; but I don't, and I don't understand the need to have all our lady stuff denoted as such by color. Are companies afraid if they make the shoelaces brown I'll mistake them for men's hiking boots and not buy any? Will my feminine sensibilities be offended by olive green and grey?

Then there's the heartbreaking "almosts"--when you find exactly the article of clothing you need, but it only comes in garish colors that make you look like Barbie got lost in the woods. Check out Exhibit A below. A very typical example of this color issue, this is a nice fly fishing shirt from Gander Mountain.

Here we have the men's version. With his rugged jawline and practical clothing colors,
 this gentleman is ready to hit the streams.

And the women's. No wildlife watching for you, because every animal
saw this pink nightmare coming from a mile away.
Also, no one wears their hair down while fly fishing.

There are 10 color options for men, most of them fairly muted with a couple bright options thrown in if you're feeling adventurous. There are five color options for women, none of them outdoor-appropriate. I wanted to buy this shirt for working in Pennsylvania over the summer because it is genuinely a very nice, high quality, breathable shirt. However I was doing bird research, for which one generally tries to remain inconspicuous. "Limelight yellow" is not a good look for someone looking to fly under the radar.

I'm not trying to pick on Gander Mountain because I do think they have good gear in general, and also this issue with women's clothing occurs across almost all companies. There's no escaping the pink camo. (Who even came up with that idea? What's the point? Are there pink woods? Why do you have yoga pants in the hiking section? Do you realize what a decent patch of greenbriers would do to yoga pants? Why are the shoelaces on all the shoes pink?)

Why?

A lot of the times the best option is to buy men's clothing and improvise. Sometimes this works out all right; for example, I own men's gaiters, simply because there were no women's options available in my price range ($50ish). In all fairness, I had a Cabela's gift card, so I was limited to that store; note that you can go over to Outdoor Research and find a decent pair of women's gaiters (in black, no less) in that price range. So the options may be out there somewhere if you're willing to dig for them. I guess my hope is that one magical Black Friday sometime in the future, I'll be able to walk into a brick-and-mortar store and have a fairly-priced, practical selection of outdoor clothing in women's sizes, and none of it will be pink.

I've been everywhere (in Pennsylvania)

It's a bit of a shock to the system to wake up in your tent one wet and chilly morning and realize that both the year and the field season are halfway over, and in four more weeks you have to go back to being a normal person. For the past few weeks I've been hopping from car to field house to tent, moving around Pennsylvania covering field sites for my summer job, and I've certainly gotten the early morning, birds-eye view of Penn's woods. (And more bear backsides than I've ever seen put together.) I don't have a lot of time to write, so that'll be something to catch up on later; but for now enjoy Anna's Mediocre Photography 2.0: The PA Tour, Part I. Expect Part II when I have consistent electricity and a place to wash my socks out.

a red-eyed vireo doing his best leaf impression

Pine Creek near Jersey Mills, PA.

A tree swallow checking up on the kids outside one of the field houses.

Most mornings you have to bushwhack through mountain laurel to get to a site, but sometimes--happy day!--you come across a road going exactly in the right direction.

I can't resist these little family plots tucked away in the woods. The final resting place of  this Civil War vet was all decked out for Memorial Day.

It may have poured rain the entire day the crew camped here, but Leonard Harrison State Park (the "Grand Canyon of PA") may take the prize for prettiest sightseeing (and nicest bathhouses).

After an evening thunderstorm at the PA Grand Canyon.

Historic coal tipple at the heritage park in Renovo, PA

View over the northern PA farmland. A long haul up that hill to get to this site.

My first-ever (state-endangered) Wood Turtle

He really didn't want to come out from behind that leaf. Why does every picture of an animal I take have a leaf in front of its face.

Aaaand it's not technically in Pennsylvania, but we couldn't pass up the Mecca of birding--Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Sapsucker Woods in Ithica, New York

Wiker does stuff

It's been a rough winter for the Bluegrass. A foot and a half of snow and ice in the middle of February effectively closed my entire city for a week. Watching the South's ineffective efforts at grappling with snow was a sad, sad thing. Thankfully it melted soon, flooding the streets until the following week when the temperature again dipped below freezing and turned the entire city into a skating rink. That was followed by another foot of snow. I stood in the ghost town of Krogers, watching a hollow-eyed woman load nine gallons of milk onto her cart, and was silently grateful for growing up in Ohio, a land of diverse and terrible weather. We Ohioans know how to hunker down and survive off saltine crackers and ranch dressing for however long we need to.

But it seems like spring is finally here. The roads are flooded again and there's a pothole like a tiny Lake Erie in front of my house. Whitlow grass, hairy bittercress, and spring beauty tied for first place as the first flower up. Every farm pond is crowded with ducks. The salamanders are on the move, and the spring peepers are singing. I've been making some changes too.

First off, I am an ex-student no longer. I'm now a half-semester into my Bachelor of Science from Eastern Kentucky University. It's been an interesting transition; most of my wildlife credits transferred from my Associate degree, and what I'm mostly lacking now is the general education requirements. So even though I transferred in as a junior, I'm still in freshman classes like Lifetime Wellness 101 (also known as How Not To Make Bad Choices and Eat Only Twizzlers for Dinner Because This is the First Time You've Lived Away From Your Parents). But it's okay--the end goal is to get that degree and from there move on to the next end goal.

Second off, the professor in charge of the aquatic macroinvertebrate lab at Eastern has graciously agreed to let me volunteer to gain some experience in a laboratory setting. The goal for that one is by the end of the semester to be ready to take the taxonomic certification offered through the Society for Freshwater Science. Macroinvertebrates are mostly unfamiliar territory for me, so we'll see how it goes; but it's something to work towards anyway.

Thirdly off, I transferred parks to be closer to school. So now instead of 25 acres, I'm working on 700ish acres of deciduous forest adjacent the Kentucky River. Lots more to explore, and lots more in terms of species diversity.

Fourthly off, I got a job in Pennsylvania for the summer, on a field crew looking at how oil and gas development affects birds. It looks to involve lots of hiking and camping and early mornings and bears, so that's exciting. I've been pretty sedentary in Kentucky for the past year and a half or so and it feels good to be on the move again. Plus, who can complain when your actual job is to look at birds? (And possibly get chased by bears).

After that--well, it would be an exaggeration to say I have a game plan for what's going on next, but I guess that's part of the fun.

A foggy morning in the Kentucky foothills--March 2015

Pleasant View Farm at Battlefield Park--camera time

The old Pleasant View Farm is located at Battlefield Park, part of the site of the 1862 Battle of Richmond in Richmond, Kentucky. The area was originally settled in 1801 by a Joseph Barnett. Eventually I'll make a better post about this very neat little park, but for now here's some pictures.

Barnett family burial plot on the old farm site, a remnant from the early settlement days of Kentucky.

Joshua, a servant of the family who "died by a stroke of lightning."

The interpretive sign states that these box-tomb style grave markers were unusual for early settlement Kentucky and were possibly a carryover tradition from the British Isles. However, I have seen similar box tombs in graveyards around Kentucky and eastern Ohio so I don't know whether it was really that uncommon, or maybe common in areas where Europeans of certain descent settled. Something to look into, anyway.

Possibly a servant's grave?

The old farmhouse, finished around 1824

Detail of stained glass above the front door

View from the front porch

Back side of the house

The slave quarters

The Quick 'n' Dirty Self-Help Karst Tour

I have no problem admitting that whatever the opposite of a geologist is, I'm that. Before I moved down to Kentucky I had the luxury of being able to, for the most part, ignore the ground beneath my feet; but those days are in the past. Now I work at a park and the third commonest question I get from people (after "Are there any poisonous snakes?" and "Where are the restrooms?") is, "What's karst?"

The geologic phenomenon known as karst is a big deal in Kentucky. The word itself derives from a Slavic word indicating barren, stony ground. It refers to a terrain formed from the slow dissolving of soluble bedrock such as dolostone or limestone, resulting in caves, sinkholes, sinking springs, subterranean drainage, and general all-around instability. Because of its predominately limestone bedrock, Kentucky is one of the most well-known karst landscapes in the world; this results in some amazing places— like Mammoth Cave National Park—and also some accidents, like the 40-foot sinkhole in the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green. Now I find myself smacked down in the middle of some of the karstiest karst you’ll see anywhere and I've resigned myself to the fact that I better learn something about it; so I've put together (mostly for my own edification) a self-help guide to some elements of karst topography.

And if you want you can follow along with a picture from our beautiful signage.

For the sake of demonstration and a visual tour, let’s start at the beginning with the karst system at the park where I work. The headwaters (so to speak) of our little spring system is the Blue Hole. Essentially a sinkhole filled by water leaking through an underground fissure, prismatic effects work together with the Blue Hole's depth--an abrupt 15 feet--to create its unique appearance. 

or MAGIC

Insulated by the bedrock, the water coming up from the Blue Hole stays a balmy 55 degrees Fahrenheit all year around (similar to many cave systems). You can see a little snow on the bank, but otherwise there's no clue that this photo of an American Robin stopping for a drink was taken on subzero January morning. Aquatic plants, like the water purslane in the background, stay green all year round in the spring water.
 A few yards past the Blue Hole, the water disappears underground again into a handful of crevices. Following the trail for another 1/8 of a mile or so, and you'd never know there's water running under your feet until you come around the corner and stumble upon the second spring in the karst window, known as the Boils. Much shallower--about calf-deep--than the Blue Hole, the underground water filling the Boils comes to the surface under enough pressure to create a bubbling, roiling effect. After a solid rain the Boils sometimes rises up a foot or two like a tiny Old Faithful.

The Boils, after several weeks without rain. Most of the water comes up through cracks and crevices hidden under the limestone outcropping.

And then the old H20 is above ground again for another quarter mile or so. If you deviate from the path of the water a little and go up the hill into the woods you'll find something of both historical and geological interest (if you're a massive nerd). Way back in the day before the land was a park, it served as a farm (and also an old settlement site, and a gunpowder mill, and an illegal dump, and lots of other things, but that's a long story). One of the remnants of the earlier usage are long stretches of ye olde famous Kentucky drystone fences, so called because they're held together by artful stacking and gravity versus mortar. Usually dating back to the 19th century, the drystone fences have weathered the years shockingly well. Coming from Ohio--a land of short-lived split rail and barbwire fences--I was surprised coming into the Bluegrass region, where hundred-year-old property lines are still clearly visible in many places. Most of the fences on the park, and some of the other historical structures, were built from limestone from a little limestone quarry situated up the hill from the springs.

Limestone quarry, a couple different views and a closeup (right) of the stacking

This rocky outcropping gives you a nice little cross section of what's going on under your feet. It's stacked very loosely, more like paper piled up than the stratification that you sometimes see in bedrock where highways were cut through and that sort of thing.If you wanted to you could walk up and pull out big slats of rock just like it's a giant game of limestone Jenga. (But don't. Because it's on the National Register of Historic Places and you aren't supposed to destroy it. Actually it's a good idea not to destroy things in general.) Limestone (in case you didn't know) is basically made of sediment and remains of smashed sea creatures from the millions-year-old sea that once covered Kentucky. This means that some of the best fossil hunting I've ever come across has been in the Commonwealth. Most of what I've found in areas like this has been branch coral and brachiopods, but just about anywhere where you find some good exposed limestone has the possibility to be fossiliferous. That's a real word.

Whoa, so fossiliferous!
(from a creek bed in Madison Co., KY)

If you're interested in the fossiliferous properties of local limestone, get more a more educated and in-depth look at it here.

Anyway, back to the water. After the Boils, it continues as an above-ground stream for maybe another 1/8 of a mile or so, and then it abruptly disappears at the back side of the park, into a little cave entrance called the Final Sink. Unlike the cracks that allow the water to come up from the Boils, the Final Sink is large enough and cave-y enough that an adventurous skinny person would be able to crawl down it, but it certainly doesn't look tempting. (This is the spot where, on a school field trip I was leading, one of the kids yelled "I SEE EYES! I SEE GLOWING EYES DOWN THERE!")

If you look at the upper righthand corner, you can sort of see another element of karst topography, a small sinkhole on the far side of the Final Sink.

In an interesting twist, the park was owned by a development company back in the day and slated to be filled in and become part of an industrial park. This backfired when the plan was derailed by a city ordinance prohibiting people from filling in sinkholes and springs. (Why anyone would think it was a good idea to build on sinkholes I have no idea.)

So there you have it, some karst topography. At the very least I've come to appreciate the effect geology can have on a landscape. I've vastly oversimplified the whole idea here, because that's where I am in my learning curve, but if you're all about the karst and want to see some awesome examples, be sure to hit up the Bluegrass region. And if you aren't all about the karst, at least you learned not to build a house on a sinkhole.

And everyone likes nice fences.
(Bryan Station Rd., Lexington, KY)

Words from Aldo

"A man may not care for golf and still be human, but the man who does not like to see, hunt, photograph, or otherwise outwit birds or animals is hardly normal. He is supercivilized, and I for one do not know how to deal with him. Babes do not tremble when they are shown a golf ball, but I should not like to own the boy whose hair does not lift his hat when he sees his first deer. We are dealing, therefore, with something that lies pretty deep." 

--Aldo Leopold, "Goose Music"