Rhododendron columbianum
Tag: Sierra Nevada
big springs haiku
celebrating place
Kate offered a workshop called Celebrating Place with the Four S’s — Spaces, Senses, Scenes, Souvenirs. I couldn’t attend the class because I was offering my own workshop at the same time, but I used her handout as inspiration to create this spread.
stick painting
Painting with found objects (in this case, sticks) is a great way to loosen up and achieve unexpected marks. And there’s something delightfully meta (no, not that Meta) about using a piece of a tree to paint a tree, with ink made from a tree.
Pterospora andromeda
A new-to-me parasitic plant, discovered at Sand Pond in the Sierra Nevada.
sit spot
On my first evening at Big Springs Garden Retreat Centre, I fell down a set of (carpeted) stairs in the Main House. There’s an odd landing arrangement at the top of the stairs, and I just missed the top step and walked into air. My nose and sternum bore the brunt of the impact. Nothing was broken, and I was very lucky that an EMT witnessed my fall and provided immediate first aid.
I spent the rest of the retreat with a swollen, rug-burned nose, black eyes, and an aching sternum, which I took as reminders to up my proprioception.
in transit
I’d planned to get a ride from San Francisco airport up into the Sierra Nevada mountains for our nature journal retreat, but Jack came down sick and couldn’t attend. So instead I caught a bus an hour and a half north of SFO to Petaluma, where another participant met me and drove the rest of the way. It all worked out in the end, but it was a long day.
Pyrola picta
On my last morning at the retreat, I sat beside another unfamiliar plant to nature journal. We had no cell reception there, so no checking iNaturalist, but I’ve since ID’d it as white-veined wintergreen or whitevein shinleaf, Pyrola picta. This perennial herb in the heath family is native to western North America from southwestern Canada to the southwestern United States.
It is not a source of wintergreen oil; that comes from plants in the Gaultheria genus.
Veratrum californicum
Veratrum californicum (California corn lily, white or California false hellebore) is a beautiful but extremely poisonous riparian plant that I encountered in the Sierras. Its steroidal alkaloids can cause serious birth defects in animals such as sheep, horses, and other mammals that graze upon it. I’m guessing pregnant humans shouldn’t munch on it, either.
Letharia vulpina
Wolf lichen is my new favourite lichen. The Klamath Indians in California soaked porcupine quills in a chartreuse extract of Letharia vulpina to dye them yellow; then wove the quills into their basket patterns. The pigment is actually vulpinic acid, which is relatively toxic to meat-eating mammals as well as insects and molluscs (but not toxic to rabbits and mice). It’s been used historically as a poison for wolves and foxes.
Just one of the many new-to-me wonders in the Sierra Nevada.
