Little Hobie Hike
It’s April break, the weather is sunny and in the 60’s! I’m having a staycation with the cat while Jakobi & Colleen are in Puerto Rico. On Sunday I hiked Little Hobie which was beautiful. So nice to hike before the forest blooms and the leaves unfurl as there is so much visibility.
And beautiful spring flowers poking their heads out of the forest floor.
The summit of Little Hobie. What we are looking at up here at the summer is 18,000 years. That is how long it’s been since the last glaciation scoured these peaks and all of present-day Vermont down to the bedrock. All the soil, leaf litter, lichens, moss, tress and other flora have taken almost 20 millennia to reach their current state. Deep Time is all around us all the time.
The Gates of Hobart: Looking towards the summit of Big Hobie from the top of little Hobie.
So much life all around and on the surface of every rock which began its life 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period when sand and mud were washed off from volcanic island arcs and deposited on the Iapetus Ocean floor. As the Iapetus Ocean closed and the volcanic arc collided with North America, the seafloor sediments were shoved deep into the Earth’s crust where intense heat and pressure transformed the ocean floor into the hard, layered schists and quartzites. These rocks were thrust up into mountains by the Taconic Orogeny 450 million years ago and then eroded away by the successive glaciations of the Pleistocene Epoch into the mountain I climbed today.
So many stories and such beauty contained in this rock.
The limitless views of a early Spring hike!
A Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica). The seeds of these plants have a fatty attachment called an elaiosome. Ants take the seeds to their nests to eat, discarding the seeds are thus dispersed to bloom anew. The pink veins on the petals are nectar guides for pollinating flies and bees and the leaves and roots are edible and have a nutty flavor
Such Beauty
Quartz Magnificance
Red Trillium
Tree Hugs Rock
Charcoal Birch
Peaceful Waterfalling
Pirate Contra at UVM
On Saturday I travelled to Burlington for the last contra put on by the UVM Contra Club of which Ambiana is the secretary. I was nice to see her and the dance was one of the best in my 27 years of Contra Dancing. The combo of a super hot band, simple dances which allowed lots of space for rockin’ out and an enthusiastic crowd of young college students equaled an unforgettable time on the dance floor,
Meanwhile in Puerto Rico….
