Walks in the Woods

Warning: This story stars both my Dad and Hawk!


There is a special place near my hometown called the Pine Woods.  It is where pine trees grow (it's stupid boring spruce trees everywhere else).  The pines grow there because the soil is special, a pocket of sandy stuff in the otherwise peaty, muskeg-ey dirt you find everywhere else.  This place is rad.  

Pine trees!

My Dad would take me there in the spring looking for the prairie crocuses (anemone patens) that won't bloom anywhere else.


According to this map, they don't even grow in the Cold Lake area at all.

The lake cut in half by the Saskatchewan border, approximately half-way north
of the province, is Cold Lake.

These trips out to the Pine Woods were special times for me and Dad.  This set of photos is from our trip in 2008, when he let me use his good camera.

This is hardly worth mentioning.  This sign was just lying in the dirt.

Besides, we are not the only trespassers.  For starters, there is a clearly marked trail.

It winds off deeper into the woods, where you will not be surprised to see it can keep snow until May.

Here is evidence of trespassers.  Beavers!  Look what they did to this place!  You can see spruce trees here.  This is the far edge of the Pine Woods.

Of course, there are the trespassers the DND is actually worried about.  At the time I was considering making a photo essay of just empties.

Teenage girl

Douchebag 

Bless him, it's someone who thinks drinking swill is patriotic

If you follow the path through the woods, and concentrate on nature rather than on the failings of human nature, which you (I) will have to do eventually because your companion (Dad) is ordering you to stop taking pictures of garbage, then the Pine Woods will reward you!

Grouse!

Prairie crocuses, are, as everyone knows, not actually crocuses, which are in the lily family; they're members of the buttercup family, as everyone knows.

Now the really good part was, two years later ... no, no I am getting old.  Three years later, I got to bring Hawk to Cold Lake at Easter time and I got to share the Pine Woods experience with him.

He was concerned.  For a former boyscout, he seemed overly trepidatious when it came to heading into the woods. "Hawk, there's a very wide trail" did not quell any fears.  "Hawk, I come here all the time" didn't help much either.

It was earlier in the year than the 2008 trip.  There was more snow, and more mud.  Hawk was concerned.  But, I pressed him on, all the way down the trail.

Maybe the glowering sky was a source of his concern.

Maybe it was the unsettling verdancy of the pines.

Maybe it was the way the water squelched when I kept stepping out just a little bit farther onto the banks of the creek to get a photo of that goose.

Maybe it was that I promised him crocuses, and this is all we found.

And they're not even true crocuses!  THE NERVE!

Maybe it was because, that weekend, I'd become obsessed with a new dance move I'd invented myself (I told Hawk it was totes legit, though).

It's called "Bats in My Hair".
You flap your hands around your head like there are bats in your hair.
You do not do it to the beat of the music.

Anyway.  Hawk couldn't get out of there quickly enough, but for me, it was a very special afternoon.  I'm sure Hawk felt the same way, once the car was back on the main road.

The trick is, you let them feel safe somewhere the first time.  Then, the second time, they're not concerned ...

Credits

Prairie Crocus Distribution Map:  http://plantwatch.fanweb.ca/plant-information/prairie-crocus/prairie-crocus-distribution-maps/PrCrocus%20MAP.jpg/view

Crocus facts, which I didn't in fact know:  http://plantwatch.fanweb.ca/plant-information/prairie-crocus