Category: local adventure

  • Weekend Walking Clifford E. Lee Nature Sanctuary

    The Canadian prairies have a long and storied history that has been felt through the countless ecosystem changes in flora and fauna, and punctuated by the lives and actions of a handful of various peopled cultures that have lived and settled here for some recent thousands of years.

    I state it in this particular way to draw attention to the very idea of a nature sanctuary.

    A nature sanctuary is a space that has been set aside for the specific purpose of drawing a line around a bit of the map and deciding, as much as it is possible, to pause the progression of history or preserve a piece of it.

    We drove to the nearby Clifford E. Lee Nature Sanctuary on this recent sunny Sunday afternoon to wander the trails here and enjoy the day.

    The parking lot was full to overflowing.

    The sun was hot but the breeze pushing through the trees was still carrying the coolness of late spring.

    I turned on my camera.

    Located 33 km southwest of Edmonton’s city centre, the Clifford E. Lee Nature Sanctuary protects 348 acres of marshland, open meadow, aspen parkland and pine forest. The varied habitats of the Sanctuary attract a diversity of animals, including more than one hundred bird species, and provide excellent opportunities for wildlife viewing.

    This particular nature sanctuary was a space that was new to me. I’d never made the trip out here previously.

    There is a particular patch of wilderness here. It is crammed between the city-proper to the east, a trans-provincial highway to the north, and the twisting North Saskatchewan river to the south.

    The land is a mix of marsh and forest and seemingly poor agricultural space because it is speckled with acreages and nature preserves and the local University’s botanic gardens.

    There is a local ultra marathon that runs annually through the “river’s edge” tracing along the bottom of the above map tempting local runners with an eclectic single-track adventure on trails regularly inaccessible except with permission of the land owner.

    And when I was much younger, the scoutmaster of my troop knew of a bit of land (or likely knew of someone who owned a bit of land) in this area where we frequently winter-camped as teenagers.

    In short, when I think of nearby wilderness, it is this block of a few hundred square kilometers that often jumps into my mind first.

    The nature sanctuary itself was only established in the late 1970s, and set aside as a block of land that has been expanded and shifted stewardship over the years.

    It was hardly a pristine snapshot of undisturbed local wetland history however. The space has a multi-kilometer elevated boardwalk, picnic areas, bird houses and bird feeders, viewing platforms, plastic toilet boxes, and meandering families straying from the designated paths and being humanly-terrible by littering and trampling.

    Yet an imperfect preservation is better than no preservation.

    There were countless birds (and baby birds.) The elevated boardwalk was a photographic splendour. The marshland failed to excite my teenager, but I could have stood there for hours and watched the life in and around the murky waters. And spring was in its full groove on Sunday, new foliage popping from the trees, ground and swamp.

    This nature sanctuary is a space that seems to have been set aside for the specific purpose of drawing a line around a bit of the map and deciding, as much as it is possible, to pause the progression of history or preserve a piece of it.

    Resource extraction sites dot our landscape. Hundreds of houses hide in the woods on small plots of land just out of reach of the city. Roads and highways twist through the countryside. Jumbo jets climb into the sky on their way to explore the world as they take off from the international airport runway a few dozen kilometers away.

    It has been preserved for not just Sunday family walks in spring, but to draw our attention to the long history of these spaces, to help us recall the wilderness that was and the future we might want to recapture.

    If nothing else, it’s a nice place to escape the city for a few hours.

  • Backyard: Travel by Flower

    It’s Travel Tuesday, and even tho I cannot go anywhere I have been plunging plugs of soil from the yard as I deal with some visitors from Europe who have overstayed their welcome.

    Dandelions: the two most commonplace species worldwide, T. officinale (the common dandelion) and T. erythrospermum (the red-seeded dandelion), were introduced into North America from Europe and now propagate as wildflowers.Wikipedia

    This photo is one that I took last year in the park near my house. A couple thousand square meters of little yellow flowers that blossom for a few days before turning into countless white puffballs.

    Millions of yellow flowers cover the parks of my city starting in mid-May each year, and it is only with an epic diligence plucking, pulling, or even poisoning the colourful weeds that my yard does not look like a dandelion explosion.

    Why?

    There is an eternal tug-o-war between the naturalization of green spaces including the small parcel of land over which I steward, also known as my yard, and the tending of those spaces into manicured single-species carpets called lawns. We work, spend, and bicker over the fate of these little flowers that appear for at most a couple weeks each year.

    Locals despise them, pick them, and chide each other for letting them grow too amply.

    For many reasons we favour grasses, green and soft, mowed to an even trim.

    And even if I did not, if I instead chose to let my property return to the natural state of mixed natural flora, local bylaws would trample on my eco-crusade and issue me a ticket in the name of neighbourly harmony.

    So I pluck dandelions from among the blades of grass, knowing that one visiting species, grass, is in a constant battle against a different sort of traveler, the aggressive yellow dandelion.

    It is a fight against a flower in an epic struggle for a so-called perfect lawn.

    Sometimes I really am just tempted to dig it all up and grow potatoes.

  • Beaver Watchers

    We run hills on Wednesday evening, and in a prairie city full of creeks and a river valley, the only proper hills are where the roads and paths cross the water.

    It is not surprising then that our hill training brings us close up to nature, the bottom of our training hill being a bridge that crosses one of those creeks.

    The creeks are still a little frozen, but nature never really stops working.

    Last night we paused our multiple running repeats to watch this big guy, a beaver, paddling around the murky thaw of a spring creek still partially iced.

    This is the same creek where in the winter we did a small snowshoeing adventure.

    It’s amazing to me though, how even for people who routinely encounter nature on our runs, crossing paths with the likes of anything from birds, squirrels and hare to more substantial critters like coyotes and moose, we’ll all just stop what we’re doing to spend a few minutes admiring a lonely beaver in a creek.

    Nature captivates… or at least you know you hang out with the right people when you are all captivated by similar things.

  • Edmowood

    Community spirit comes in many different shapes and sizes.

    Sometimes it comes in the shape and size of a larger-than-life travelling sign that shows up mysteriously in parks around the city.

    ED - mō - wo͝od

    A nonsense name and (I assume) a portmanteau of the name of our city “Edmonton” and the name of a much more famous city “Hollywood” erected as an homage to the famous landmark of the latter. Mystery. Puzzle. Social media treasure hunt. Spirit-boosting community game. Who knows which for sure.

    I was driving my daughter to school this morning and looking off to the side of the freeway into a familiar park through which I’ve run and hiked countless times, the increasingly-famous rogue art display stood tall in the brown spring grass.

    On my way back home I made a point of pulling off the road, driving down the access road, parking, and walking the hundred meters into the empty park to snap a couple photos.

    On this wordy Wednesday, someone else had done my work for me and provided a word they thought could brighten a gloomy day and bring a little joy to a city in pandemic lockdown.

    I’d say they succeeded.

    That’s one powerful random nonsense word I’d never heard of until about 730 this morning.

  • Camping: Of Annual Adventures Gone Awry

    It’s Travel Tuesday and once again I’m reminded of the challenge of living through a global pandemic and a life dismantled by a thousand small cuts. You see, each year with — the exception of last year — we usually go camping with a small group of families.

    Eight adults. The same number of too-rapidly-growing-up kids. Pets. Tents. Campfires. Walks in the woods. Weather. Lakes. Crafts. Bike rides. Outhouses. And whatever new adventure strikes.

    I’m wondering today if this bit of local travel is one more of those cuts.

    This past weekend as the rolling summer booking window started to traverse those optimal summer camping months, The Email made its rounds to the families:

    What’s the plan for 2021? Y’know… with COVID and all that?

    It was a long weekend in late-June and despite the pouring rain upon our arrival, we set up the tents and tried our best to keep our gear dry. We have a lightweight backpacking tent that sleeps three, but a huge truck-camping tent that would make up a hundred and fifty percent of my backpacking carry weight, but lugs out of the truck box easy enough and is rainproof enough to tolerate most of the seasonal weather.

    I had pulled up my photo software and was poking nostalgically through some of my old photos of the last time we went out with that group. Kid cooking marshmallows. A day at the lake-side beach.

    We’re being cautiously optimistic, the first reply came through, but we might cancel at the last minute if things don’t get better.

    Cut?

    We cooked that first night over a hot-spitting fire, fending off the dwindling rain with some steaming cast iron pans. This may have been the exact weekend when some beer-fueled conversations about my collection of pans inspired the registration of a domain name and would a year and a half later kick off a daily blog you may have heard about somewhere.

    I just don’t think that I could keep my distance for an entire weekend while out there with everybody, came a second reply a half hour later. It would be really tough. Thanks for understanding.

    Cut.

    I have any number of summer plans, but one weekend with friends in a remote campsite still seemed like a safe bet.

    Or maybe not.

    Cut.

    Perhaps there will be just the four of us, a fire, a tent, and some lonely cast iron over a gently smouldering fire.