Jar of Goodness 10.30.22: Gans Creek

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for Gans Creek Wild Area.

I’ll never get tired of this view.

Gans Creek is part of Rock Bridge Memorial State Park. I’ve been going there for hikes since the place opened in about 1981. It’s always been a favorite hiking place of mine. Lots and lots of my early journal entries begin “At Gans, at my outlook.”

I had to call it “my outlook” and “my precipice” because that was before anyone declared that it should be named “Shooting Star Bluff.”

Indeed—this was so long ago, there was a sea of perennial wildflowers, yes, called shooting stars, that quite literally carpeted the triangle of ground between the main trail and the V of trail leading to and from the outlook. It was a magical scene each April, with them and bird’s-foot violets all over that outlook.

The shooting stars, violets, and all their topsoil are a memory now at that spot; it’s been trampled to death.

I don’t go to Gans nearly as often as I used to. The old field at the beginning of the trail has turned into second-growth woodland characterized by cedars and autumn olive.

But the older forested areas along the bluffs still feel like a home to me, and it was good to visit the place last Thursday.

Springtime in Missouri

But is it April now, or May?

You have to admit, it was pretty much a nonwinter, and spring started in February. We’re a month ahead! I started planting lettuce and radishes the second week in February, and those plants that I haven’t picked yet are starting to bolt.

I’ve been busy, yes, yes, and you don’t want to read about that. But part of my busy-ness has been in hiking. Sue and I have made a point of “getting away” on weekends, or whenever we can claim a few hours, to enjoy the spring.

I’ve been photographing wildflowers, which has been fun. I do not consider myself any kind of “photographer” much less an “artist,” but I’m kind of proud of some of my pics. I’ve been visiting woodlands and prairies, witnessing the progression from early spring (February instead of March this year) into mid-spring (March instead of April this year).

So I hope you won’t mind if I share some of these pictures with you. I hope it’s not overkill. My camera does a pretty good job with closeups, and I honestly adore every single one of these plants.

I’m arranging roughly in order of blooming time, with the earliest of bloomers first. Several of these are long gone already, not to be seen again until next year!

Here are some flowers from Missouri woodlands.

Bloodroot.

Dutchman’s breeches.

Spring beauty.

Dogtooth violet (which is not a violet at all, but a lily).

Rue anemone.

Blue-eyed Mary.

Bluebells.

Wake robin; but I prefer the genus name, Trillium.

Here’s a trillium with fascinating genetics: It has parts in fours instead of in threes. Should we call this a quadrillium?

Yellow violet. Crazy-sounding, but true.

Wild sweet William, a.k.a. blue phlox.

Mayapple.

Wild ginger (not at all related to true ginger).

Wild geranium (yes, this is actually a type of geranium).

Jack-in-the-pulpit (in the same family as elephant ears).

Here are some flowers from glades.

Bird’s-foot violet, the two-toned form.

Shooting star.

Rose verbena.

And here are some from the prairies.

False garlic.

Yellow star grass.

Wild strawberry.

Hoary puccoon.

Wood betony.

Indian paintbrush.

And here is a bat!

It was on a shady trail one morning at Gans Creek. I’m pretty sure it’s a silver-haired bat, Lasionycteris noctivagans. I don’t know if it was ill, but it promptly flew away when I prodded it with a stick. (Gently. And yes, I’m extremely careful with bats.) Maybe it had just eaten a bug; they are known to eat off of surfaces in addition to catching bugs on the wing.




There’s some extremely bad news about bats, by the way. Please, please read this. Since silver-haired bats apparently don’t roost in caves, but sleep days in shagbark hickory crannies, hollow trees, and old birds’ nests, maybe they won’t be in trouble with that evil White Nose Syndrome.




Its face reminds me of a little dog’s. Incredibly cute. Silver-haired bats are migratory and spend nights fluttering up and down creek bottoms, hunting the zillions of pesky insects that fly in those areas.

Wouldn’t it be neat if everyone started hounding their governmental representatives about needing to find a cure for White Nose Syndrome? If not out of affection and respect for the bats, then out of hatred of mosquitoes—?

More about Morels

See, I got so excited about eating the morels that I forgot to tell you about the experience of finding them, which is half the fun.

For those of you who don’t know—like I didn’t know until about 2000, when Sue and I had “Year of the Mushroom” (more on that some other day)—morel hunting is like an addiction or obsession. Yes, part of it is the joyful surprise of finding them and the pleasure of eating them, but that is preceded by genuine effort, yearning, and sometimes outright frustration. There is desire, work, and then a reward.

Morels only appear in the springtime, and then only for a limited window of time. I’ve heard people describe the timing of their appearance in various ways. “When oak leaves are the size of squirrels’ ears.” “When the lilacs bloom.” “About the time you’re cutting grass for the first time.” “When the redbuds are blooming.” You know?

And then there are special places to look. Under elms. Under apple trees and other woody members of the rose family. You hear all kinds of stuff. And sometimes a patch that was spectacular one year offers nothing in subsequent years.

Morels have (so far) resisted cultivation—they are a truly wild mushroom, and this is one reason they’re so pricey.

They are perfectly camouflaged on the forest floor, not only because of their coloration, but also in their patterning. When I look for morels, there are all kinds of other things that catch my eye, particularly the many sharply reticulated shadows cast in the leaf litter by small ferns and bedstraw. If there are pinecones about, it gets even harder.

If morels pop up out of your green grassy lawn, then lucky you, ’cause you can see them so easily. But if you are in the woods, you can be standing in a whole patch of them and not see a one.

One of my favorite stories about morels—and I wish I could remember where I read or heard this—is that the tradition of “Easter egg hunting” might have evolved from springtime morel-hunting forays. The parallels do make you think: First, morels emerge only in the spring. Kind of like Jesus and the Resurrection. Second, among people and cultures where mushrooms are valued, morel hunting was a family activity; grandmother carrying the basket, and the little ones, naturally being full of energy as well as closer to the ground and with better eyesight, doing most of the hunting and finding. Third, morels are ornately patterned and, indeed, rather egg-shaped. Fourth, they are hard as the dickens to locate. They really do blend in.

So isn’t that a cool idea? Maybe the first “Easter egg hunt” took place during an exceptionally dry year when the mushrooming was bad. The kids are flopping around, depressed, because there are no morels to be had. The solution? “Here, let’s hard-boil some eggs, decorate them, and have the kids do a little hunt.”

So here is my hunting story from Sunday, April 19.

It was raining, and Sue had her bonsai meeting, so she dropped me off at Gans Creek Wild Area. Again, I’m not going to tell you precisely where I found these, because nobody does that.

I was amazed to see other cars in the parking area. People were hiking in the rain? No: They were mushrooming. One lady was right by her truck, getting ready to leave. She showed me her prizes, cupped in both hands: The gray kind, which she’d found right near the parking area. We chatted a while about mushrooms, you know, like you do . . . And she explained that she’s been trying to teach her dogs (waiting for her in her truck) to sniff out morels. Wouldn’t that be a great trick! Just like those truffle-hunting sows in Europe!

My main goal was hiking and enjoying myself, but after seeing her bounty, morel-lust caught hold of me and I found myself creeping off the trail often to inspect patches of ground that looked promising . . .

Here’s the first non-morel thing I encountered in this way; I got within a few feet of it before I noticed the coppery patterns. Ohmygosh.





The copperhead was just resting there, didn’t move a muscle; that is what they do. They have cryptic coloration. I think this one was having a quiet day, enjoying the rain. Of course (after taking my pictures) I left it alone. You have to admit copperheads are very lovely; they almost look airbrushed.

Then there are all kinds of flowers. At this point the trilliums and wild ginger are blooming brown; the Dutchman’s britches, spring beauties, toothwort, and anemones are still hanging on; pussy’s toes are blooming; jack-in-the-pulpits are just starting; shooting star and bellwort are recognizable but not blooming yet; violets and bird’s-foot violets and rose verbena are in bloom, and several trees are blooming—service berry, wild plum, that sort of stuff. Of course I got sidetracked. This here is blue-eyed Mary:



The mayapples are mostly fully deployed and are thinking about blooming. Remember I told you a few posts ago about how a patch of them looks like Munchkinland? Here’s what I was trying to express:



At Gans, I also get sidetracked by the relics of the old farmstead that remain, particularly the bulb flowers that someone planted decades, perhaps a century ago. Daffodils, jonquils, irises, and so on. There’s a lilac in the parking area that you know someone had planted ages ago. And when I first started hiking at Gans in the eighties, there was a venerable old pear tree that still produced fruit, though it’s gone now. There’s something very cool about how these plants endure long after their planters have moved on, passed on . . .



And yes, it was absolutely raining. It was not particularly cold, at least, but I got all wet and muddy. I did walk rather softly, trying not to mess up the trail too much. So it was on one of my little off-trail forays into what seemed a “likely” spot that I nearly tripped over the first pair:



And this is the addictive part, the “Whoop-whoop and woohoo!” aspect. I’d been out there in the woods messing around for about an hour, and then, Bam! Hooray! I knelt down to say “hello” to them and to get my pocket knife and plastic bag ready, and then, Ta-dahh! I spied another morel about two feet away. Then, looking up, I noticed another small cluster. I scored all forty in one small patch a quarter of the size of our backyard.

Yes, it does feel like an Easter egg hunt. And like I recently explained to a close friend, it reminds me of the kid in me.

After my little extravaganza, I figured I had enough for the two of us, and I didn’t want to be greedy . . . and I do worry sometimes that unbridled harvesting must impact the fungus’s ability to reproduce itself and to disperse . . . so the rest of the hike, for me, was just a hike, no more “hunting” required. Just a smile on my face.

Sue was incredibly pleased with me when I got in the car and showed her my bag of fungal treasures.

And boy, the creek was up. By the way, that’s another morel hunter in the background, across the creek.



. . . But a discussion of the curious interactions among morel hunters will have to be for another post, since I know this one is already “too long” for our ADD culture. So I’ll sign off for now.

(Happy hunting!)

What Can Happen in the Woods

I haven’t said too much about myself here in this blog, because I’m not sure how “safe” it is to do so. Or sensible. I mean, if I write about my broken foot, will fetishists read my words for reasons I don’t intend? . . . But then I can’t live my life in a box, and neither can I avoid writing about myself. And anyway, why hide it? It’s no huge secret that I recently lost my job through downsizing, after having held the position since 1995. The experience shook me up.

Before the trauma of job loss, I had a long recovery from a broken right foot. (Google “Jones fracture” if you want an idea of what I went through.) There was no driving or walking for about five months. That experience did a lot more than shake me up; it got me off balance, figuratively and literally.

When you feel like the floor has dropped out from beneath you, when your footing is unsure both metaphorically and literally, you desperately look for things that make you feel grounded again.

And one of the things that has helped me recuperate from the last few years of struggling has been “getting out in nature.” I was reminded of the connection this month when I read Jeanette Winterson’s column, in which she writes,

I think that the really bad time of my depression was when I could not find that happiness in simple things. I devised a ritual to help myself through it, and to re-make the connection with the natural physical world that gets lost in depression.

What I did was to sit outside, quietly, raining or not, and concentrate completely on a leaf or a flower or a stone, feeling it, looking at it, putting it to my face, sometimes in my mouth, until I recognised it again, as both separate from and part of me. At my worst I just lay in the rain, or sometimes even the snow, until I could feel something not in my own head.

I am not sure this would work for everyone, but I know that finding the way out of the dark labyrinth has to happen in connection, in relation, and can’t happen in the head alone—where the monsters are.

Reading this, I was reminded of how I felt the first time I hobbled into the woods after being on crutches so long. It was April 2, 2008, and I had just experienced a peak of frustration in my healing process: Six months after my fracture, I was still wearing an Aircast for most of my so-called walking, the doctor was gradually moving me into a stiff-soled shoe, I was finally driving again, but the X-rays still showed abysmally slow healing of the bone.

Emotionally I had hit the wall; I had lost faith in my body’s ability to recover and the doctors’ ability to heal. I had been helpless and cooped up all winter. It was spring, yet the docs hadn’t been able to see any improvement for months. And if anything, my foot was hurting more and more, the more I used it. I hope you never have to know what this feels like, physically or emotionally.

Anyway, on April 2 a year ago, in the midst of all this, I went AWOL at lunch and drove myself to Gans Creek Wild Area, where I encourage you not to go, because the place is overused and trampled and that breaks my heart. Because it is my favorite place to go hiking myself. And by myself.

Something in me was throwing a tantrum that day. So I decided I would take my “inner brat” for a walk. I worried about my foot: “Is this really okay?” But an inner rebel answered: “Who’s telling me no? Who’s giving me any direction in this process at all? It hurts almost as much to walk in the Aircast as it does to walk in this shoe.”

I struck a deal with my internal voices: “I will go slowly and steadily and carefully. As soon as I get any sign of being tired I’ll turn back. I have plenty of time. No one cares where I am right now. It’s all right. Let’s go walking.”

It was an incredibly sunny day, and I felt like a prisoner on his first day back in freedom. I immediately started feeling better, on that well-loved path, hearing the birds singing, the chorus frogs clicking at a nearby farm pond . . . the smell of the cedars, which all seemed intensely alive and green. Tiny, brave, tender blades of grass poking up like bristles in the middle of the trail, where I was trampling them with my lumbering limp.

I decided I was getting tired of limping, so I stopped for a minute, lined up both my feet, carefully distributing my weight evenly on them both, and then resumed walking, slowly, focusing on trying to move smoothly and without limping. “Naturally,” the way I vaguely remembered being able to do.

It was very hard, but not for the reason I had thought: It was hard because limping had become a habit, born of favoring my hurt foot out of fear.

I only got as far as what is called “Shooting Star Bluff” on the maps (sadly, the shooting stars are almost all eroded from the little glade area by now); and I reclined on a big rock, stared up at the intensely bright blue sky, watched a turkey vulture or two glide around up there, closed my eyes, and began to weep tears of homecoming and relief.

On that day I became my own health advisor. That hour in the woods brought me all kinds of revelations; about the toxicity of being around computers too much; my need to be alone on a regular basis, preferably in the woods; the quality of nature that enables me to hear my internal voices (the wise ones) clearly.

I have realized that—contrary to my constant experiences in home, work, and yard, contrary to my internal struggles, my emotions, doubts, and endless confusions—in nature, there is nothing that needs my attention; everything is exactly where it should be (not counting trash or graffiti or stuff like that). Nothing needs “doing” out there. There is no “to-do list” on the trail.

If sticks and fallen leaves clutter the ground in vast disarray, it’s all perfect just as it is. If the detritus of rotting heartwood spills messily from an opening of a thick, senescent tree, that’s okay; in fact, it’s part of natural perfection. I don’t need to do a damn thing. If pretty ferns grow from the base of this rock but not from that similar rock over there, it’s not inconsistent, it’s just a sweet surprise. The woods remove me from my stressed-out, anxious, overwhelmed, day-to-day reality, and I need it.

. . . I’m really looking forward to hiking tomorrow.