Note: In 2021 I’ll publish at least one blog post per week, ideally on Wednesdays. Here’s entry 5 of 52, just something simple and fun.
Last weekend, I departed from Seattle with some friends and went up to Snoqualmie Pass, just an hour’s drive outside the city. There I snowshoed on the easy Gold Creek Pond trail. It was my first time to ever snowshoe. The path started at a trailhead by a street, continued through a valley, and reached the snowed-over Gold Creek Pond. Other paths progressed past the pond, but I didn’t get a chance to check them out. Except for the final pic, I took the following DLSR photos of the snowy surroundings. I had a great time and plan to go again.
Right by the trailhead for Gold Creek Pond path. Some wore masks; others didn’t
A valley the trail passes through
Looking back at Summit East from the frozen-over Gold Creek Pond
Amazing how far you can see, out in Nature
Makes me think of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness
Part of Gold Creek Pond wasn’t frozen over
On the shore, a shirtless guy after diving in the icy lake
Until next week!
This blog post, Photos from Snoqualmie Pass’s Gold Creek Pond trail by Douglas Lucas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (human-readable summary of license). The license is based on a work at this URL: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/2021/02/05/photos-snoqualmie-pass-gold-creek-pond-trail/. You can view the full license (the legal code aka the legalese) here. For learning more about Creative Commons, I suggest this article and the Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license, or want to correspond with me about this post otherwise? Please email me: dal@riseup.net.
Note: In 2021 I’ll publish at least one blog post per week, ideally on Wednesdays. Here’s entry 5 of 52, just something simple and fun. Last weekend, I departed from...
The most impressive Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora) in Dallas-Fort Worth lives at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. The picture above shows a view of it from near one of the Garden roads (along with a few tiny, other trees). Many magnolias in Fort Worth are impressively tall — for example, the one pictured below, which grows next to the library of my alma mater, TCU — but the one at the Botanic Gardens is the best!
A TCU Library Magnolia
From some angles, the Garden’s huge magnolia can at first look like many trees, not one. That’s why I never(!) truly noticed it; I mistakenly saw a big stand of multiple trees, not a single special individual. This past May, however, Kate — a special individual herself — showed me one of the “secret entrances” to the “cave” made by the magnolia’s drooping branches.
- A Secret Entrance to the Big Magnolia Cave
Once you go through the secret entrance (no password necessary), you’ll see a scene like something out of Lord of the Rings or a King Arthur tale. This cave hides in plain sight near University Drive, one of the busiest streets in the city! Here’s a shot of it. The branches go all the way around, 360 degrees.
The Secret Magnolia Cave
Texas Tree Trails has a page with many facts and pictures about this particular magnolia. A few facts about the tree taken from that site and elsewhere:
- As of 2004, the tree is 64 feet tall.
- Leaf: Leathery top, fuzzy red-brownish underside, evergreen, alternate simple (whorling at tip), asymmetrical base, pinnately veined, oval-shaped, 5-8 inches long, untoothed margin.
- Flower: Large (6-8+ inches wide), creamy white, fragrant. Borne singly, May-June.
- Fruit: Cylindrical aggregate of follicles (“seed pod”). Green changing to red. Matures Oct-Nov.
- Twig: Stout. It gives off a citrus scent if broken.
- Bark: Brown to gray, thin, smooth when young, but plating or scaling later in life.
- The Southern Magnolia is sometimes called an Evergreen Magnolia, or a Bull-bay.
I took four pictures of the tree’s flowers, each illustrating a different stage of the flower life cycle. You can learn much more about the magnolia flower life cycle, and see pictures of it, at this website.
The Flower Before Blooming
The Flower Begins to Bloom
The Flower Has Bloomed
Once the petals fall off, the center of the flower remains — the fruit or seed pod:
The Fruit; Flower Petals Have Fallen
In the last year I’ve taken to learning about trees via field-guiding. While field-guiding is certainly enjoyable in itself, I started mostly because I wanted to improve my ability to see, both during observation and with my mind’s inner eye. Routine close observation of details — samaras, leafstalks, whatever — definitely has lead to improvement in both areas. For example, a mechanic showed me some small parts of a Civic brake system a few months back. My eyes would have simply glazed over a year ago. But as a result of field-guiding, I could see just what he was talking about. As to the inner eye: I’ve always had difficulty visualizing in my mind. Many people are startled when I confess that while I can close my eyes and picture a stop sign, I can’t mentally change its color. Still can’t. But the more I scrutinize small visual details, the better my mind’s eye becomes. A specific instance of this is what I think of as “stabilizing” my mental imagery. Before field-guiding, if I closed my eyes and visualized the sycamore fruit I have sitting on my shelf, the image would sort of wobble and vanish after only a second or two. Now I can more or less keep it in my inner eye for as long as I can concentrate.
I have to say it, I have to conclude with the cheesiest line ever: Enjoy the forest…and the trees!
The most impressive Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora) in Dallas-Fort Worth lives at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. The picture above shows a view of it from near one of the Garden roads (along with...
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