Winter at the Lichen Sites
After the past two weeks of snow, ice, ice, rain, ice, rain……and then a lot of snow, the ice formations on the rocks along County P were especially large and beautiful. This is the rock face on the south side of Cty P, under a wall of icicles. The sun is out and in a day the ice will be gone and the lichens and their associates will carry on photosynthesizing and adjusting their environment chemically and physically and maybe in ways we can’t yet imagine. Even now they are not totally dormant, as it is not extremely cold.
Next week I’ll post a quick review of this site and at least one other one, as I begin checking on how each location is changing, who is living there or active now and simply to record the beautiful colors and shapes.
This year I will try to improve my skills using the Celestron microscope in the field, to get better images of very close up details without having to remove so much sample material from the lichen bodies. Can we improve on the standard scientific observation and measurement procedures? I think so! They are valuable, and yet almost always entail the death of whatever we want to look at, or at least inflicting damage. We endure those procedures on ourselves for our medical treatments, but do draw the line at severe maiming or killing to get a test result. That criteria could be applied to our interactions for ‘test results’ from other living beings too. Who knows how much we could learn by changing the way we observe?
One of the reasons this interests me is that the more we re-learn about whatever or whoever we are studying, the more we realize we haven’t hardly a clue about what they know or do or how they all interact together. By de-emphasizing the mechanistic, objective perspectives just a bit, and re-orienting toward slowing down, staying present, observing over time and from new and different perspectives, a world alive with possibilities we have ignored may open to us. Who knows what will happen then? Exploring these ideas does not take away from useful information and techniques for getting it that we use now. But there is plenty of that being done, and I believe, too little listening and watching. So as well as trying to get the taxonomy as correct as possible, and taking some samples when needed, I’m going to share the Lichen’s place in the world with you in as many other ways as come to mind, as we wander the trails and hillsides of the KVR and beyond.
Check in once in a while this year, for adventures with the Tiny Ones.
Susan
KVR Lichens 