Fire Works at The Springs

Posted on December 31, 2014 by paulmozina

We’ve been celebrating the end of 2014 at The Springs

with fire works of our own.

It’s been a great year, and we’ve accomplished a lot — some of which is really good. Visit the Archives drop-down list, on the right side of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail Home page, and pick a month to scroll through. I did just that, and added my favorite moments of 2014, one for each month, to the Posts I Like section of the Home page (scroll down and look on the right side.) I hope you have enjoyed your journey on The Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail with The Buckthorn Man in 2014 and that you will continue with me in 2015! I welcome your comments, suggestions, clarifications and corrections.

There is one thing that buckthorn fears more than The Buckthorn Man: FIRE. Buckthorn will fight you until you subject it to the flame. When you’ve been offended, slapped, pricked, tripped, mocked and poked by buckthorn, like The Buckthorn Man has, then you will understand how satisfying it is to cut, poison and burn this vermin foliage in a few hours time.

Usually we wait for snow cover before burning brush piles, but this Winter has been wet enough that I considered giving it a try. Our first burns at the Ottawa Lake Fen SNA were safely conducted and very productive. It saves a tremendous amount of time and effort when you can throw freshly cut buckthorn onto a raging fire, as opposed to piling it to burn another day (when it may be buried under 6″ of snow.)

Last weekend I began burning brush piles along the northeast rim of the loop trail. I tried, and failed, to light some of these piles last year, and was glad to get another chance at them sans snow.

I’ll never get tired of saying ‘it was a great day’!

Andy Buchta came out to help me and mentioned that he had finished piling the brush we cut, and did not burn, at the Ottawa Lake Fen SNA. Thanks Andy!

On Sunday, I had a date with Chris Mann and the Kettle Moraine Land Stewards and we continued where Andy and I left off on Saturday. But first, here are a couple of “the day after” views of what we accomplished.

The slope from the wetland shown above, east to Hwy 67, transitions from mostly buckthorn to mostly black locust. The black locust has been harvested but many of the buckthorn were simply pushed over. The ones that were cut did not appear to be poisoned. The combination of battered buckthorn and slashed black locust resembled a war zone, and I wanted to clean up the mess.

Chris, Andy and Austin joined me as we re-cut and poisoned the buckthorn stumps and fed huge fires with buckthorn and black locust slash. We cleaned up the lower portion of the hillside, leaving the rest for a contractor that the DNR hires. They grind everything up, which contributes fuel for a prescribed burn, but it is necessary to come back and poison the resprouts from the undamaged buckthorn root systems. On the other hand, our technique leaves much less fuel for a prescribed burn but kills the buckthorn the first time. It will be interesting to see how fire carries through these areas if the DNR is successful at executing a prescribed burn here in 2015.

The conditions for burning brush piles are still very good, so I’m going to try to burn as much as I can before the snow finally arrives. We got out again yesterday and continued on the west side of the wetland shown above, approaching The Buckthorn Alley.

It was a cold day and the fires felt real good. Andy, Chris and Austin standing before a huge blaze.

One of my favorite things to do is hang out by a fire on a cold winter’s night. I propped myself up with a pitch fork and watched the smoke trailing up from the embers and through the trees into the moonlit sky.

Happy New Year and I hope to see you at The Springs!

The Buckthorn Man Unocculted

Posted on November 23, 2014 by paulmozina

Ask me anything.

I’ve got nothing to hide.

Ok Buckthorn Man. Are you a misanthrope?

Hmmm, that’s a tough question; better define our terms first. Per wikipedia:

Molière‘s character Alceste in Le Misanthrope (1666) states:

My hate is general, I detest all men;
Some because they are wicked and do evil,
Others because they tolerate the wicked,
Refusing them the active vigorous scorn
Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.

Ok, I confess: whether it be from honesty or hubris, I don’t know, it’s true, I do feel that way sometimes. I barely saw a soul last week working at The Springs, and that was fine by me.

To occult something is simply to hide it from view. As Mark Passio explained in his Natural Law Seminar, people occult knowledge to create or preserve a power differential they use to their advantage. Take the idea of satanism; what is the first thing it conjures up? Mark was a priest in the church of satan, and when I heard him explain their 4 basic tenets, which he knew first-hand, it opened my eyes.

Survival: self-preservation is the top priority
Moral relativism: if it’s good for me, it’s good, if it’s bad for, me it’s bad
Social Darwinism: it is right and desirable for an elite few to dominate the other 99.9999% of humanity
Eugenics: who is allowed to procreate, and at what rate, must be controlled

That is satanism unocculted.

At the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail, it is U.S. Highway 67 that has been unocculted. The removal of huge colonies of black locust trees from both the north and south ends of the preserve, along with the buckthorn cutting, have exposed the sights and sounds of the highway to major portions of the trail. I won’t occult the truth: this is very obnoxious, especially in winter, and worst of all, at night. The bright, rolling headlights, intermittently blocked by trees, evoke the feeling of prison bars and clandestine interrogations; not very relaxing or natural. And on Saturday night, it was one car after another… I don’t like it one bit. We have to get some native shrubs planted and recreate a healthy understory.

Despite my deeper appreciation for those who prefer a wall of buckthorn to highway traffic, I continued to work the brush cutter last week at The Springs. Tuesday was cold and I had to rest my water bottle in the relatively warm river to keep it from freezing solid.

Here is how it looked before I started…

… and after

It’s subtle.

While on my evening stroll, I got a call from my old friend, Randy Schilling, who came out to The Springs 2 years ago to harvest some oak, hickory and cherry logs. He had some presents for me: vases and bowls turned with care into art on his wood lathe.

Thanks Randy. I love you man!

Friday was perfect and I worked on the south side of the river just upstream from the gaging station bridge.

Again, before …

… and after.

I think this is the best use of my time now: solidify the gains that have been made in the last few years and prepare for the burn next spring.

Yesterday I did some work on the south end of trail focusing on black locust.

I took a walk as night fell …

See you at The Springs!

Imagining The Scuppernong River

Posted on October 7, 2014 by paulmozina

Generation after generation of people lived and loved along the banks of the Scuppernong River. They never imagined saw mills, cheese factories, trout farms or marl pits; instead, they imagined that the spring waters, diverse prairies and oak savannahs would continue to support them, their children, and their children’s children for generations to come.

When Chester W. Smith arrived in 1847 he imagined the power he could create harnessing the force of the river and he dammed it to make the Buttermilk Mill. His cultural background emphasized man’s mastery over the natural world; it was his oyster!

Talbot Dousman imagined a more sophisticated application of the water in 1874, and he bisected the Scuppernong River with embankments and flumes transforming the headwaters into a trout farm.

The marl works left scabs and a deep scar on the land, wounding and abusing the river during the years it was operated along its banks.

These “care”-takers of the land took more than they cared, leaving the headwaters of the river submerged; its natural course lost under ponds of water for 120 years.

In the early 1990’s DNR Naturalist, Ron Kurowski, and others, imagined the Scuppernong River the way it was before European settlement, and they began reversing the anthropogenic impact via the Scuppernong River Habitat Area restoration project. What does it mean to imagine the river minus the reckless impacts of those who preceded us? I think Dr. Megan A. Styles, Ben Johnson‘s professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, expressed it quite eloquently in a recent email to him:

You’ve hit on a really important central theoretical tenet in restoration ecology — very rarely is the landscape “restored” to a precolonial state; it is actually constructed (notice there’s no “re-” here) anew in a manner that reflects (1) contemporary environmental values and (2) the ways that we “imagine” a truly wild and functional ecosystem should look like. I use the word “imagine” here not to suggest that it is not based in science (it certainly is!), but to remind us that there is a creative process afoot here as well. What we consider a desirable habitat will change over time in concert with changing values and new scientific discoveries.

Ben Heussner and the Wisconsin DNR Fisheries team imagine what a natural and healthy trout habitat should look like and they — one spring at a time, one bend at a time, one tributary at a time — have been reversing the anthropogenic effects on the Scuppernong River watershed for the last 20 years. Recently they performed an elevation study of the Scuppernong Springs to get the data they needed to objectively support what was visually apparent.

On a recent visit to The Springs, Ben interpreted the results of the elevation survey and explained their plans for the headwaters:

From the Hotel Spring bridge (site 3 below) we walked upstream along the river bank discussing how the river bed would change as a result of the projected head-cut. Heussner concluded that the scope of the plan, in addition to the work at the “perch” at the Hotel Spring bridge shown above at data point 1078, should include reducing the humps left after the removal of the embankments where the two bridges lead to the Hillside and Hidden Springs (sites 1 and 2 below), and the hump at the embankment where the mill pond was formed (site 4 below). He is working now on the permitting process and targeting Spring, 2015, to implement the plan.

Then we walked downstream from the Hotel Spring bridge and inspected the results of the back filling we did last spring to compliment the bio-logs the DNR installed late last year (with help from Trout Unlimited), and imagined what it will look like when these areas fill in with vegetation. The river is really ripping through this stretch now, creating a sandy, stony bottom and carving deep pools and cut banks; great trout habitat! Ben is hoping that, with one more workday this December, they can finish the stream bank remediation effort all the way to the gaging station bridge.

Meanwhile, this year, after a long hiatus, the DNR has begun stocking trout again in the Scuppernong River watershed:

McKeawn Springs, 37 Brook Trout yearlings
Ottawa Lake, 1,485 Rainbow Trout yearlings
Paradise Spring Creek, 300 Brook Trout yearlings
Paradise Spring Pond, 200 Brook Trout yearlings
Scuppernong River at Hwy N, 148 Brook Trout yearlings
South Branch Scuppernong River, 74 Brook Trout yearlings.

We are constructing a new reality at the headwaters of the Scuppernong River that reflects: “contemporary environmental values”, and what “a truly wild and functional ecosystem should look like.”

♥ ♥ ♥

Last Thursday I resumed my efforts to prep the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve for the next prescribed burn by cutting buckthorn sprouts and seedlings with my brush cutter in the area around the old hotel site. The new bench that Ben and Karen Johnson built is getting a lot of use!

I noticed that the black locust removal effort has resumed in earnest. This is dramatically changing the look of the northeast corner of the property.

I also addressed an issue that DNR trail boss, Don Dane, pointed out a while back, and which Dan Carter reiterated on his recent visit, and that is the steep little short-cut trail that was getting “burned in” from the Hotel Spring bridge up to the Sand Prairie. Here are before…

… and after images.

Ben Johnson joined me after work and we harvested some red oak logs that we planned to use to raise a boardwalk at the east end of the Buckthorn Alley.

We cut up the downed tree on the left shown above and moved the logs over to the boardwalk with a hand dolly.

On Friday I strapped on the brush cutter and did some “mowing” along the cut-off trail. Although it looks like a carpet of buckthorn, there was a lot of wild strawberry and geranium actively growing at ground level and I was glad I wasn’t spraying herbicide.

Later, I checked out the results of the latest hand-to-hand combat with the black locust. I’ll go out on a limb and say this is the handiwork of Steve Tabat and his crew, although I have not seen them personally in action.

On Sunday, Ben Johnson and I began an ambitious boardwalk raising effort.

In a couple hours we had the deck torn apart. You can see how it was embedded in the dirt.

It took a while to get going and determine the best, complimentary, way to use our skills, but soon the new boardwalk was taking shape.

It was fabulously busy and we were constantly interrupted by hikers; good thing Ben posted a couple of orange, “trail work ahead”, cones to warn them.

Did I mention that Ben is indefatigable?

Thanks again Ben for leading this effort!

It was an epic week at The Springs and I hope to see you there soon!

The Woot Of All Weevil

Posted on August 20, 2014 by paulmozina

I’ve had my hands full with spotted knapweed on the sand prairie, so I was curious when The Buckthorn Man said that his old hunting buddy, Elmer Fudd, might have a solution.

I was pretty skeptical, as you can image: Elmer knows a thing or two about wabbits, and wascals, it’s true, but knapweed?

Sometimes I can barely understanding Elmer, so when he described Cyphocleonus achates as “The Woot of all Weevil”, I had to scratch my head. Then, he challenged me to: “wook it up on the intewnet!” I brought up startpage, found Weed Busters BioControl, and before you could say “What’s Up Doc?”, I had my weevils.

Dick Jenks joined me as we wet weevil wun wild on the sand pwaiwie.

These little guys have a grip!

I’ve had a three day run at The Springs — beginning this past Sunday morning — every day spraying clopyralid on the black locust seedlings and resprouts that have emerged in the areas where Steve Tabat and his crew did major league black locust harvesting this past spring.

Ben Johnson joined me yesterday afternoon and helped me finish the area on the south end of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve property. When I told The Buckthorn Man, he said: “dude, I thought you were only going to spray stumps!” “Yeah, I know”, I told him, but I thought these seriously degraded areas were far enough away from the river that it would be ok.

When I told Lindsay Knudsvig that my hands were sore and blistered from pulling and digging spotted knapweed, he suggested I focus on pulling off the flowering seed heads, and I think that is the way to go for the rest of the season. The flower and root weevils we’ve released could take 3-4 years to increase and spread across the whole prairie, and I’m going to do the best I can stop the production of new knapweed seed in the meantime. Sunday I worked on the northwest side of the sand prairie…

… and on Monday, I worked on the northeast side (before and after pics below); I’m leaving the knapweed on the far south end of the prairie to the weevils.

Later, I got in some relaxing time at the marl pit bridge…

… and met some new friends from my old stomp’in grounds up in Hartland, WI.

The big bend.

The view from the Scuppernong Spring

The Indian Spring.

The Sand Prairie.

More views from the marl pit bridge.

The Buckthorn Man and I will be taking a working vacation at My Shangri-La for a week beginning this Friday, so stop in and surprise us i.e., bring your own.

See you at The Springs!

Weeds “R” Us

Posted on June 28, 2014 by paulmozina

Back in the days when I used to stand on street corners passing out dvds and flyers in an attempt to get people to re-examine what really happened on 9/11, I would often hear, “Get a life”, mumbled or shouted at me. “I have a life”, I thought, in which the truth matters and starting wars based on tissues of lies is deadly serious. Nevertheless, the insults stung and dumbfounded me. Why don’t they care? Why are they choosing to remain ignorant? Is ignorance really strength?

Although no one that passes by as I cut and burn garlic mustard, or pull and dig weeds on the sand prairie, says “get a life”, I wonder sometimes if it is the best use of my time. Maybe I should be trying to make some money? And, isn’t the definition of what is, or is not, a weed, a bit arbitrary?

“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hope you don’t mind me baring my soul like this. I’m volunteering my time — spending my spiritual currency — working at The Springs, and trying, one weed at a time, to make the world a more beautiful place.

Since meeting Jason Dare on the trail last summer, I’ve adopted the approach of following the phenology of the weeds and timing my efforts accordingly; it feels like playing Whac-A-Mole. There are so many weeds out there, and so little time, and I’m just one Buckthorn Man!

Paradoxically, I really enjoyed working on the daunting task of eradicating the invasive, non-native plants, infesting The Springs this past week. I can see the progress being made and I got help from Andy Buchta and Ben Johnson, which was great.

On Tuesday, June 24, I pulled into the DNR 2-track on the south end of the property, and found someone hard at work grinding up the slash from the black locust trees that were recently harvested there. They did the same on the north end of the property last week. Thanks to Paul Sandgren, the Superintendent of the Kettle Moraine State Forest — Southern Unit, for making it happen; this is a huge improvement to the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve.

I re-girdled some of the aspen trees just west of the Indian Springs and, hopefully, that clone will shrivel and die. Then I pulled the flowering seed heads from smooth hawkweed and annual hawksbeard. Unfortunately, the sand prairie is threaded with poison ivy, and I got another dose of it on my ankles and legs.

I mentioned last week that I did a little engineering at the Indian Springs, removing a dense mass of peat/clay that was blocking the channel and creating a little dam. Here is how it looks now.

When the stream bed settles down into its new profile, we’ll transplant some native plants to replace the quack grass and watercress that previously flourished here.

The late afternoon was spent pulling and digging spotted knapweed. I contacted the Weedbusters and got in the queue for batches of root and flower weevils, which should be available by early August. The Kettle Moraine Natural History Association is going to cover the costs!

I’ve been watching the area around the deck at the Emerald Springs for signs of life; it’s been a dead zone since I sprayed imazapyr there last year. It looks like some brave grasses and sedges are finally starting to return. I’m really glad I stopped spraying herbicide at The Springs.

I missed the summer solstice sunset, but this is pretty close.

On Thursday, June 26, I was back at it and, while I worked on the south end of the property, Andy Buchta was piling buckthorn near the main parking lot on Hwy ZZ. Thanks Andy!

I girdled a clone of little aspen that was spreading down the hillside in the vicinity of the Hidden Springs. The mature aspen trees in this clonal colony were girdled last year, and its important to close the deal and get the little ones too. The rest of the day was a repeat of Tuesday, only this time Ben Johnson joined me to pull and dig spotted knapweed. We got a ton of it.

The highlight of the day was harvesting lupine seeds from the west facing slope of the sand prairie and sowing them along the trail above. It will be sweet indeed if we can spread lupine across the sand prairie.

See you at The Springs!

Hognose Snakes

Posted on May 7, 2014 by paulmozina

I met my first hognose snake of the year with the tip of my brush cutter. Darn it! I watched helplessly as it writhed in pain, snarling angrily at me. I’m on the lookout for them now! When you encounter one on the trail, The Springs feel more wild.

Carl Koch captured these wild hogs at The Springs last year.

Sue Hrobar caught this hognose displaying its classic defensive posture: “When threatened, hognose snakes will flatten their necks and raise their heads off the ground, like a cobra, and hiss.” (from Wikipedia)

I’m getting more intimately familiar with every square foot at The Springs as I continue attacking garlic mustard with my brush cutter. Guiding a brush cutter focuses your attention to detail much more so than waving a poison spray wand. In many cases I found the garlic mustard amidst many diverse flowers and grasses. Using the brush cutter definitely causes less collateral damage than spraying a non-selective herbicide like glyphoste. Rich Csavoy suggested this approach and it will take a few years to judge its effectiveness.

Over 5 days I have worked at all of the locations where I sprayed garlic mustard in previous years and I have to note that, in some cases, particularly on the cut-off trail, the poison significantly reduced the amount of garlic mustard. Last year the area near where the cut-off trail merges with the main trail at the marl pit factory was carpeted with garlic mustard and this year there was barely a plant or two, and the forest floor is alive with sedges and flowers. I’ll speculate here that this area did not have as much garlic mustard seed in the soil as others areas where the mustard came back strong after spraying.

Sunday I worked on the south end of the loop trail in and around the bowl with the vernal pond.

It was a peaceful day and I did a little yoga on the marl pit bridge to unwind at the end. Here is the view from the old barn site.

I returned yesterday to work in the area around the old hotel site, then near signpost #13, and finally, along the cut-off trail. It was a blessed warm, sunny, bug-free day with fragrant breezes blowing in from the northeast.

Garlic mustard on the hillside at the old hotel site.

As I was finishing up at the hotel, I heard the sound of heavy machinery working on Hwy 67; they were taking down the black locust trees I girdled back in March. I was headed that way to signpost #13 with my wheel barrow and stopped to check it out.

I don’t know what this machine is called, but I think Hognose is a fitting description.

The operator of this hydraulic hercules was a virtuoso, and I could have watched him for hours.

I’ve never seen forestry done like this before. Below, Steve Tabat cuts the base of a tree and his partner pushes it over. Check out the snout on this hog and the way it chews off logs and spits them out at the end of the video.

I returned to admire their work after cutting garlic mustard all afternoon.

Again, the person operating this log loader was an adept and it was a pleasure to watch him drive that huge machine through tight spots and skillfully manipulate the log picker.

The corner of Hwy ZZ and Hwy 67.

I’m glad to see the black locust go and I have a lot of respect for the hard-working foresters, who were paid for their efforts in wood; the coin of the realm.

From there I headed over to the boat landing at Ottawa Lake to check out the brush and tree removal the DNR did there this past winter.

Above you can see the shadow of the mighty oak below.

These nice improvements compliment the buckthorn clearing we have been doing on the east shore of the lake, which you can see in the views from the fishing pier and boat launch dock.

My new favorite place to hang out, meditate, and do yoga after working is the observation deck at the handicap accessible cabin.

The Emerald Spring is really looking the part these days. This past winter was a hard one and I often saw ducks feeding and staying warm in the river. I wonder if the algae bloom might be fueled by duck poop?

Sunset at the marl pit bridge.

See you at The Springs!

Order Out Of Chaos

Posted on March 27, 2014 by paulmozina

When I returned to work at The Springs almost 3 years ago, I found it in a state of utter chaos. Buckthorn crowded every trail and cloistered every view. The Indian Springs were hard to find amidst an impenetrable tangle of brush. The Sand Prairie was spiked with half burned, dead and dying, red and black oak and black locust trees. The Scuppernong River was choked with water cress and the Hillside and Hidden Springs were lonely places no longer visible or visited. The river valley was dominated by phragmites, cattails and brush, and aspen encroached from every side. Weeds like garlic mustard and spotted knapweed forced the native grasses and flowers to cower and hide.

Slowly but surely, the Super Friends♥ of the Scuppernong Springs are working diligently to bring order out of the chaos. Yesterday, Rich Csavoy and I finished burning the brush piles in the Buckthorn Alley; it looks like a war zone, and I can’t wait until it greens up (skunk cabbage is already emerging.) The south end of the trail, where Carl and Marty are harvesting black locust trees with chain saws and a skid steer loader, looks like a war zone too. The transition from chaos to order is a little like making sausage, and what, exactly, do I mean by “order”? Tom, one of the birders (he’s a snow bird himself) who keeps his peepers peeled, warned me a couple years ago, “now don’t go turning this place into a park!”

Do we equate “order” with a return to a natural state? That’s not possible; human hands have worked the land for thousands of years. For me, and, if I dare speak for my Super Friends♥, our goal at The Springs is to return the landscape, and its flora and fauna, to the pre-settlement condition that the first inhabitants of the land defined as “order”. I think they were on to something.

Getting rid of the buckthorn is an obvious first step to bringing order out of the chaos and I returned to the buckthorn alley again yesterday to put a torch to piles that Andy Buchta made. I can’t thank Andy enough for the work he did this past winter. He closely monitored when we cut, and when the next snow was forecast, and consistently worked in nasty conditions to pile the brush, thus setting the table for us to complete the cleanup effort.

Here is what we faced at the east end of the buckthorn alley.

Rich Csavoy arrived just as I finished documenting the “before” scene and he had his own “Order Out Of Chaos” story to tell. Rich, along with others from the Jerusalem Presbyterian and Rock Prairie Presbyterian churches joined HOPE (Helping Other People Everywhere) on a mission to help the people of Peking and Washington, Illinois, rebuild from the devastating tornadoes that ripped through their homes last November. Rich’s crew was assigned the task of “car siding” the interior of a cabin.

Rich is the tough looking dude second from the left below.

That’s Rich in the bibs front row center.

I knew it was going to be a good day with Rich at my side! We burned a lot of piles and made it all the way to end of the buckthorn alley.

While we were working Andy Buchta came by looking for the last couple spots that needed piling. I directed him to the area under a beautiful oak on the east side of the wetland by signpost #13 and he got after it.

Thanks again Andy!

This past Sunday, I ran into Super Friend♥ Jim Davee armed with tools and a replacement sign for the spur trail that leads to the Emerald Spring. I was thrilled to see his handiwork!

Thanks for bringing order to the chaos Jim!

At the south end of the trail I ran into Carl and Marty harvesting black locust trees for firewood. This is a win-win situation; they get great firewood and remove the eyesores that these dead hulks are. The land will heal quickly from the scars of the skid steer loader.

Finally, I made my way to the south point of the Scupernong Springs Nature Preserve property to take a look at the progress that DNR trial boss, Don Dane, has made with the forestry mower (see the end of this post to see the results of his first day mowing.)

What a day! As I headed back to my truck, I had a wonderful feeling thinking of the many people contributing to transform The Springs from chaos to order. Thank you all!

See you at The Springs!

p.s. I just got the notice for the Kettle Moraine Natural History Association’s Annual Friends meeting at 10:30am on Saturday, April 5, 2014 at the Kettle Moraine State Forest-Southern Unit Headquarters, located 3 miles west of Eagle on Hwy 59. This is a lot of fun, hope to see you there. Click image below to read the details.

Soul Power

Posted on March 7, 2014 by paulmozina

It’s been a hard winter season as measured by local history, but certainly not hard by the standards of arctic explorers or those hardy folks “up north”, who endure much more severe trials. I’m lucky to have a buoyant spirit and to be motivated by desires above the comfort of the physical body, such that this has been a season of opportunity at The Springs, and not one of complaint or stagnation.

You may have noticed a few recent enhancements to the home page of this site such as the Blog Roll where I share websites that offer inspiring and informative content. The Peace Revolution Podcast is one of the most valuable resources I have found to aid in my personal growth and development and the most recent episode (linked above) features a brilliant lecture by Manly Palmer Hall.

This is the food that nourishes and sustains me through challenging times and reinforces my commitment to give my time and energy to rehabilitating the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail. In the words of Manly P. Hall:

Man represents (more or less) a Soul Power in the material world: the power of inner consciousness, inner dedication, inner understanding and realization to transmute and transform the outer environment into an appropriate and proper place for the development of life.

…The human being is able to take over his own destiny. This is something that sets him entirely apart from every other kingdom of nature. There is no other kingdom that we know that can create a future destiny for itself by intent, that can take the rough materials of life and ensoul them with purposes beyond survival.

And so I carry on at The Springs, through thick and thin, eschewing the accumulation of additional financial “security”, and instead, gaining understanding of real value and creating wealth to share.

Last spring I notice the extent to which Black Locust was dominating the northeast part of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve. The DNR initiated an effort some years ago to check the spread of this invasive tree at The Springs by girdling hundreds of black locust trees in the south section of the preserve. The wood from these standing, dead, trees is a valuable resource as firewood and many of us are actively harvesting it for that purpose. So, with the approach of spring, I decided to spend a couple days girdling black locust while it is still dormant. I didn’t get all of them and will revisit this project again next winter, as even one live tree can propagate a whole new colony.

The area I worked is marked in red below.

I began on Tuesday along Hwy ZZ and turned the corner south and began working along Hwy 67.

DNR Trail Boss, Don Dane, provided the Transline poison I applied to the girdle cuts. The conditions were challenging and I had to dilute the mix with water to keep it from turning to sludge in the cold weather.

Thursday, which was hopefully the last cold day of this winter season, I was back at it continuing where I left off on Tuesday working south all the way to the old barn site.

I pulled my sled from the parking lot on Hwy ZZ east along the north side trail (formerly known as The Buckthorn Alley) and noticed that Andy Buchta had again piled all of the brush that I cut the last time out.

Thanks Andy! When I got near the east end of the trail, I cut through the woods to set up my base of operations just below Hwy 67. There is a drainage here carrying water from the opposite side of Hwy 67 that leads down to the abandoned cranberry bog adjacent signpost #13. I had never visited this section of the property before and was impressed by the huge, open grown, oak trees that are being overtaken by the black locust colony.

The cold temperature and deep snow made it a challenge and I was pretty exhausted by the time I ran out of poison around 2:30pm. This will be a multi-year effort, I didn’t get them all, but I want to switch gears and burn as much brush as possible while conditions permit.

I took a walk around The Springs after work and was joined by Ben Johnson. Ben has built dozens of bird houses, with more to come, and we talked about where to place them as we traveled the trails.

The marl pit bridge views.

Views from the gaging station bridge.

The old barn site.

The Hotel Spring bridge.

And sundown at the Indian Campground.

See you at The Springs!

Scuppernong Summer

Posted on September 7, 2013 by paulmozina

Usually you’ll find me in the mountains this time of year, when they are gentle and uncrowded. This year I’m looking forward to experiencing the waning days of summer right here at home — at the Scuppernong Springs.

I’m taking liberties at The Springs including attempting to transition the cattail and phragmities dominated marshes that border the river into wet meadows, which will encompass a wider diversity of flora and fauna. The upper meadows (shown in blue below) are along the river valley upstream of the sawmill site #12 and the lower meadows (in red) are downstream from there to the gaging station bridge #5.

The upper meadows

It was a beautiful summer day at The Springs yesterday and I got started with a project that has been on my mind for some time i.e., re-girdling the black locust trees on the south end of the loop trail. Some years ago the DNR hired a person to girdle the trees in this area and they did approximately 200 of them before committing suicide (he did not mention the black locust trees being a motivating factor in his last note). Unlike this unhappy forester, many of the trees survived despite being deeply wounded. I re-girdled around 40 trees and added a new girdle to another 20 or so.

There is a vernal pool inside the south end of the loop trail just below the trees shown in the beginning of the video above that was filling in with phragmities, reed canarygrass and Japanese knotweed and I spent some time with the hedge trimmer cutting the flowering seed heads from these invasive plants. Then I headed over to the west edge of the lower meadows at the gaging station bridge to cut some cattails. Below are before and after videos, and again, I was able to cut above most of the flowering heads of the aster, golden rod and joe pye weed.

I almost finished before the hedge trimmer jammed. Then I headed up to the south end of the sand prairie and dug out spotted knapweed for a couple hours and finally finished the day pulling Japanese knotweed on the hillside just south of the Indian Springs. It was a great day to stop and enjoy the sky, the breeze and the summer flowers that are approaching their peak color.

Another Scuppernong Sunset

See you at The Springs!

Mowing the Sand Prairie

Posted on July 31, 2013 by paulmozina

My thoughts about the Sand Prairie are finally coming together into a restoration strategy. Slowly mowing the weeds with my brush cutter affords ample time to carefully observe and ponder both the forest (prairie) and the trees (plants). I see them both.

The weeds are obvious to me now; I recognize them from my childhood, playing at new home construction sites, and by their names: fleabane, knapweed, ragweed etc…. Jason Dare helped me connect the micro and macro perspectives when we talked last Saturday evening and I feel a lot more confident that I’m going in the right direction. DNR Trail Boss, Don Dane, is going to meet me at The Springs on Tuesday, August 6th, at 8:00am (where westbound Hwy ZZ meets Hwy 67 in a “T”) to walk the trails, identify invasive species threats and prioritize the efforts. We’ll also be integrating the results of Jason’s invasive species survey; a very timely commission by the DNR. You are welcome to join us and learn about the restoration!

I enjoyed a fine day at The Springs yesterday, spraying black locust saplings in the morning and then brush cutting weeds on the sand prairie. I would consider using a brush mower next year, but for now, I prefer the finer control of a weed whacker, as it gives me the opportunity to work slowly, identify what I’m seeing, and avoid cutting high quality native plants as much as possible.

The Wisconsin DNR Sand Prairie website includes this summary:

Sand prairie is a dry native grassland community dominated by grasses such as little bluestem, J junegrass, panic grasses, and poverty-oat grass. Common herbaceous associates are sand cress, field sage-wort, western ragweed, several sedges (e.g., Carex muhlenbergii, Cyperus filiculmis, and Cyperus schweinitzii), flowering spurge, frostweed, round-headed bush-clover, western sunflower, false-heather, long-bearded hawkweed, stiff goldenrod, horsebalm, and spiderwort. Drought-adapted fungi, lichens, and mosses are significant components of sand prairie communities.

One of the next steps is going to be to see how many of these plants are currently established at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail’s sand prairie. Then we’ll need to consider how we want to reintroduce the plants that are missing and if other native plants that are not listed above can also be included. I’m looking forward to working with the new Naturalist for the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest once that person is hired. We are a long way from the restoration ideals of John J. Ewel’s “Restoration is the ultimate test of ecological theory”, but I think we are headed in the right direction.

See you at The Springs!