Notes from Windward: #58
Amy's in the woods
Amy:
My Time at Windward has been well spent doing things I enjoy, such as burning things,
including my eyelashes, dead wood, and a few hairs off my forehead. While I was here I found a
new job as an au pair, and remembered how to cook good tasting food. I also discovered an
affinity for an unusual beverage that I have never had before, Kool Aid, which oddly enough
seems to be colored and flavored sugar water.
Exciting as these three activities were, my favorite activity was wandering in the woods. Although I often left the boundaries of Windward, I still found the forest to the Northwest to be endless untouched forest. Well basically untouched fifty year growth trees, and a few huge old growth trees.
Autumn is the best
time for mushrooming, as there are about twenty species I could count, and some are very edible.
The goats like the mushrooms as well, especially the large white trumpet shaped ones, which of
they only eat the bottom stalk.
The tavern site broken down
and ready for winter
 |
To the south of the forest lies the winter-abandoned camps of the St.
Hildergard site. I can only imagine what it will look like in spring at the first event.
My
naturalist's eye tells me a lot about the geological nature of the land. This area as created by
repeated encrustations of lava, and then on top of that was a large glaciers. The receding of the
ice as temperatures warmed ground the large rocks into small rocks, and the accumulated dust
and debris that melted from the ice created the thin top soil layer.
In a stream bed in the far
Northwest forest, I found three types of obsidian, red, yellow, and pale cream. There are also
highly impacted quartz stones that have been dyed yellow by the tannins in the oak leaves that
clog the stream this year. You can see evidence of the glacial recession in the grass valleys and
gullies that have strange beds of rock in them.
Index for Notes Issue # 58
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