From Bitter Cold to Warm Springlike Days

Wooly bears, cryoprotectants, and more...

I take my walk in the timber at Cedar Bluffs almost every day but some days it’s tough on Violet the Dog when it gets really cold. This photo is of our kitchen window one day when it was around 5 degrees and we didn’t go out. Violet the Dog and I missed about five days of walking this January. One day it was about 9 above and we went out and shortly into our walk Violet the Dog let me know her feet were bothering her by lifting one of her paws up, walking a few steps, and then putting it down, lifting another paw up and then walking for a few steps, then putting it down until I saw the pattern. We weren’t 50 feet up the trail before we turned back to the truck and went home.

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This day was in the 20’s and she was fine.

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Then a few days later it was 50 degrees and I found this wooly bear on the back deck of our house. There is high drama in this video! Wooly bears are Pyrrharctia isabella, or the Isabella tiger moth. Theirs is an amazing adaptation:

The Isabella tiger moth can be found in many cold and temperate regions. The banded woolly bear larva emerges from the egg in the fall and overwinters in its caterpillar form, by allowing most of its mass to freeze solid. First its heart stops beating, then its gut freezes, then its blood, followed by the rest of the body. It survives being frozen by producing a cryoprotectant in its tissues.^[5] This freezing occurs outside of body cells, but not within. In the spring, it thaws.

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You can see the temperature swings in the National Weather Service data above for January as recorded in Johnston.

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We wandered off of the path and found what looks like some kind of monster in this fallen tree. Do you see it? I wonder what stories it has to tell us?

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Someone curated these lost gloves and three walking sticks. They have been there for about a week. I hope the gloves find their way home. First, there was one walking stick, then two, then three, curated for the next person to use.

I think this is very kind of people—to leave walking sticks for the next person to use. Even a good walk is made better with a walking stick.

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One day someone(s) moved the walking sticks into this arrangement. I wondered why? Was it an art installation? Or kids goofing around? Or maybe an ancient symbolic warning?

I didn’t know what to do with them at first, but decided that since I’m the volunteer park steward my job was to keep the path clear, so I returned them to where they would be better kept and ready for someone to borrow and return.

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It looks to me that this plant is getting ready to flower.

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When nothing flowering is there to catch my attention I’m always comforted by the beauty of fungi.

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And of course, there’s the beauty of the ice on the crick to ponder!

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