A Journey Across the Road

Wildlife & Plants, ,

While walking at Hollyhock Hollow a few days ago, I noticed this unusual creature slowly making its way across the gravel road. It is a hellgrammite, the aquatic larval stage of the dobsonfly.

For most of its life, it lived hidden beneath rocks in a clean, well-oxygenated stream, where it was an active predator. But when the time comes, it leaves the water and crawls onto land to complete one of the most remarkable transformations in the insect world.

To me, it was simply crossing a road.

To the hellgrammite, it was the final leg of a journey that had taken years.

It made me wonder how many extraordinary stories are unfolding beneath our feet every day—stories we never see because we never stop to notice.

Stewardship begins with noticing.

— Ron Dodson

I also can’t help but smile at the mystery behind the adult’s name. No one seems to know for certain why it’s called a dobsonfly. Perhaps somewhere in history there really was a Mr. or Ms. Dobson who admired them… or maybe even a distant relative. 😉

Deadly flooding in West Virginia finds prevention plans unaddressed

Wildlife & Plants, , ,

When a community already knows where flooding is likely to occur, at what point does repeated disaster stop being only a weather story and become a stewardship story?

What I Noticed

West Virginia prepared a statewide flood-protection plan in 2004. After devastating flooding in 2016, it created a resiliency office partly responsible for keeping that plan current. Yet major recommendations, dependable funding, and implementation mechanisms remained incomplete as damaging floods continued.

What It Makes Me Wonder

What is the practical difference between having a plan and stewarding a place according to one? Who was supposed to act, what prevented action, what costs were deferred, and what evidence should the public expect to see before the next storm?

Source Article to Read

To read the article in Mountain State Spotlight’s July 29 investigation, click: “Deadly flooding in West Virginia finds prevention plans unaddressed.” 

Stewardship Way Virtual Field Trip

Every day I take a virtual field trip through the news searching for stories that help us better understand the stewardship of places. Most simply go into my Notice Moment Reserve. Occasionally one makes me stop, notice, and ponder. This is one of those stories.

I don’t share these to tell you what to think. I share them because they raise questions worth asking. I invite you to read the original article and come wander and wonder with me.

“I don’t share these to tell you what to think. I share them because they raise questions worth asking.”

It’s Not Just How Much Rain Falls

Wildlife & Plants

July 29, 2026 • Feura Bush, New York

It started raining yesterday.

By this afternoon, my backyard weather station had recorded 6.10 inches of rain in 48 hours. Almost all of it—6.08 inches—fell within 24 hours, including 4.37 inches during the most recent 12 hours.

That seemed like a lot of rain. So I started poking around in the records from my weather station.

That is when things became more interesting.

So far this month, we have received 8.88 inches. During the past 30 days, 9.60 inches. And since January 1, we have received 25.56 inches, about 19.6% more precipitation than the 30-year normal for this point in the year.

But look at the cumulative precipitation graph.

For much of 2026, our precipitation wasn’t particularly remarkable. The blue line wandered above and below the 30-year-normal line.

Then look at what happens at the end.

Almost straight up.

One rain event suddenly accounts for nearly one-quarter of all the precipitation we’ve received this year.

That made me ponder something.

When we talk about changes in rainfall, we commonly ask whether a place is becoming wetter or drier. But perhaps that isn’t the only—or even the most useful—question.

Suppose two years each receive 40 inches of precipitation.

In one year, that water arrives fairly evenly through numerous rain and snow events.

In the other, long dry periods are interrupted by enormous downpours.

The annual precipitation total could be exactly the same.

But would those really be the same environmental conditions?

Probably not to a stream.

Or a wetland.

Or a farmer.

Or someone’s basement.

Or a community’s stormwater system.

Which leads me to another question:

Is our rain changing even if our rainfall isn’t?

My little backyard weather station can’t answer that question yet. But it can help establish a record.

And perhaps that’s one reason ordinary people should pay attention to ordinary places.

Today’s observation may not seem particularly important.

Twenty years from now, it might be a baseline.

Notice. Ponder. Document. Remember.

 

A Walk Through Time at Hollyhock Hollow

Wildlife & Plants

Field Notes — July 2026

I went for a walk at Hollyhock Hollow recently.

That sentence sounds simple enough. I have walked those trails hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times. For 26 years, Hollyhock Hollow was where I worked. It was an office, a classroom, a meeting place, a laboratory and, in many ways, a second home.

I have now been retired from working there for 13 years.

That means I have been away from Hollyhock Hollow for half as long as I worked there.

That is hard for me to comprehend.

But this time I wasn’t there for work. I wasn’t leading a field trip, inspecting the property, meeting with someone or thinking about a management project.

I was simply taking a walk with Theresa.

And noticing things.

I Wonder What Robert Rienow Would Think

One of the thoughts that kept coming back to me was Robert Rienow.

Rienow donated Hollyhock Hollow to the Audubon Society of New York State. That simple act entrusted a piece of land to people he would never know and to generations he would never meet.

As I walked around the sanctuary, I found myself wondering:

What would Robert Rienow think if he could walk these trails today?

Would he be pleased with what the sanctuary has become? Would he recognize the values he hoped to protect? Would he be surprised by some of the changes?

There is something powerful about donating land for conservation. The donor eventually disappears. The people originally entrusted with the property disappear. Organizations and their leaders change.

But the land remains.

And the responsibility remains with it.

A Message From a Glacier

At the stream, I noticed the large boulders.

I’ve seen rocks like these countless times, of course, but this time I found myself thinking about the force required to put them there.

A glacier.

It is difficult to stand in a peaceful little stream at Hollyhock Hollow and imagine an enormous mass of ice moving across this landscape, reshaping the land and carrying rocks along with it.

Yet there they are.

We tend to measure change in years because that is the scale on which we live our lives. A forest changes. A building gets older. An organization changes. A person ages.

The boulders operate on another clock entirely.

They are reminders that this landscape had a very long history before any of us arrived.

My Favorite Tree

Then there is the sycamore.

It has long been my favorite tree at Hollyhock Hollow.

I looked up at it again and admired it, just as I have many times before.

And then I noticed the power lines.

I wished they weren’t there.

There isn’t necessarily a profound lesson in every observation. Sometimes you simply notice beauty and then notice something that detracts from it.

But perhaps that’s part of stewardship too.

We don’t experience nature in some imaginary world untouched by people. We experience it in the world we have actually created—trees and roads, streams and culverts, forests and power lines.

The question becomes how well we can make those things coexist.

A Dead Tree Full of Life

Farther along the trail I photographed a standing dead tree riddled with cavities.

Some people might see a dead tree.

I saw real estate.

Woodpeckers excavate cavities. Other birds use them. Mammals use them. Insects use the decaying wood. Fungi and microorganisms continue breaking the tree down and returning its nutrients to the soil.

The tree has stopped doing what it once did, but that doesn’t mean it has stopped having value.

There is beauty in that.

A Redbud and My Dad

Then Theresa took a photograph of me standing beside a redbud.

That particular tree isn’t just another tree at Hollyhock Hollow. The Conservancy planted it in honor of my dad.

So naturally I thought about him.

Dad has been gone for many years, but there I was standing beside a living reminder of him in a place that was such an important part of my own life.

I suppose that is another kind of time.

We plant trees knowing—or perhaps without thinking about the fact—that many of them can outlive us.

Someone plants a tree.

Someone else cares for it.

Years pass.

And someday another person stands beneath it and remembers.

And Then There Were My Feet

There was another thing I noticed on this walk that wasn’t nearly as poetic.

My feet hurt.

My neuropathy makes walking trails more difficult than it once was. I don’t particularly like that fact, but pretending otherwise won’t change it.

There was a time when I could spend much of a day walking around Hollyhock Hollow without giving much thought to the physical act of walking.

Now I notice every hill a little more.

I notice rocks and roots differently.

I notice how far I’ve walked and how far I still have to go.

And, yes, there is some sadness in realizing that something I once did so easily is becoming more difficult.

But I am still doing it.

That matters too.

Turning Wander Into Wonder

By the time we finished our walk, I realized that I had traveled much farther than the distance recorded by my footsteps.

A boulder had taken me back to the glaciers.

A sanctuary had taken me back to Robert Rienow.

A sycamore took me through decades of my own experience at Hollyhock Hollow.

A snag made me think about life continuing after death.

A redbud took me to my father.

And my aching feet brought me squarely back to the present.

None of this was planned.

I simply went for a walk.

But I noticed things.

And when I noticed them, I became curious. When I became curious, I began asking questions and making connections.

Perhaps that is one of the great gifts of noticing.

The same trail can never really be walked twice because the woods have changed—and so has the person walking through them.

I worked out of Hollyhock Hollow for 26 years.

I’ve been retired for 13.

I can’t walk its trails quite as easily as I once did.

But I’m still walking them.

And perhaps after all these years, I’m noticing more along the way.

Turning Wander into Wonder.

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Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail, Delmar, NY — July 22, 2026

Wildlife & Plants, ,

Yesterday I went for a walk along the Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail where it passes through Delmar, New York.

There were several other walkers and bike riders on the trail—and at least one reddish-brown stag beetle.

As I passed him, I politely said, “On your left.”

He didn’t seem to care.

Sometimes a Notice Moment doesn’t need to lead to a grand conclusion. I noticed a beetle sharing the trail with the rest of us. I stopped long enough to take his picture. And for a few moments, an ordinary walk became a little more interesting.

That is reason enough to notice.

And the photograph is terrific for it: this rather imposing beetle occupying his little piece of asphalt while the enormous human traffic goes around him.

The Sound of a Season Passing

Wildlife & Plants, , , ,

Field Notes — July 20, 2026

Early this evening, I went for a short walk in a nature preserve in Bethlehem, New York. As usual, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I was just walking and noticing.

The first thing I noticed was something that wasn’t there.

Birdsong.

The preserve was surprisingly quiet. I heard very few birds and saw only a couple of robins. Just a few weeks ago, the woods seemed alive with birds singing, calling, establishing territories, and raising their young.

Now, things are changing.

The spring migrants have long since passed through on their journeys farther north, and many of the birds that nest here are mostly finished with the busiest part of their nesting season. There isn’t as much reason to sing as there was earlier in the year.

The seasons are moving along.

Then I began noticing some of the things that were there.

A few fungi.

Different plants.

And Joe-Pye weed beginning to flower—a plant I associate with mid- to late summer here in upstate New York.

I didn’t need a calendar to tell me that summer is moving along. The preserve told me.

Less birdsong. Joe-Pye weed blooming.

Those were my Notice Moments today.

Sometimes we notice something because it suddenly appears.

And sometimes we notice because something that was once all around us has quietly disappeared.

Either way, nature is always telling us something.

We just have to notice.

A Cell Phone, but No Toilet

Wildlife & Plants, , , , ,

A Notice Moment – From the Field

Today I listened to a TED Talk, something I do on a fairly regular basis. I enjoy learning a new thing or two, picking up some little morsel of knowledge that I didn’t have when the day began.

Sometimes those morsels are interesting.

Sometimes they are useful.

And sometimes they stop me in my tracks.

Today was one of those days.

According to the speaker, around 8 billion people in the world now have access to a cell phone. At the same time, around 3.5 billion people do not have access to a toilet. And of those, around 400 million people still practice what is referred to as “open defecation.”

Now, I haven’t dug deeply into those numbers yet. That will come next.

But this isn’t a Stewardship Guide. It’s a Field Note—a Notice Moment—and Notice Moments often begin before we have all the answers.

We notice something.

And then we ponder it.

My immediate reaction was pretty simple:

In 2026, there is something deeply flawed with the overall system.

Think about it.

As a global society, we have developed the technology and infrastructure necessary to put a sophisticated communication device into the hands of billions of people. A person can potentially stand almost anywhere on Earth holding a small computer capable of communicating across continents, accessing vast amounts of human knowledge, taking photographs, watching videos, conducting business, and connecting with people thousands of miles away.

Yet billions of people apparently still lack access to something as basic as a safe and sanitary place to go to the bathroom.

I’m not suggesting that the problem is simple. I’m sure it isn’t.

Nor am I suggesting that cell phones are somehow the problem. They aren’t.

What caught my attention is the contrast.

There is also a certain irony in all of this that is hard for me to ignore.

I suspect that a fair percentage of those billions of people who have both a cell phone and a toilet routinely use the two at the same time. Apparently, sitting on the toilet and scrolling through a cell phone has become something of a modern human pastime.

Which makes me wonder if we’re looking at this problem all wrong.

Maybe the world’s cell phone companies should get into the toilet business.

After all, they have already figured out how to get their products into the hands of billions of people around the world. Perhaps it’s time they started working on creating a few billion more cell phone use stations.

I’m kidding, of course.

Well…mostly.

Because beneath the humor is a serious question about priorities. We humans are remarkably good at creating systems that can manufacture, market, sell and distribute things people want. Yet we seem far less successful at creating systems that ensure everyone has access to some of the most basic things people need.

Why is that?

I don’t know.

At least not yet.

But now I’m curious.

And that is what happens with a Notice Moment.

You are moving along through your day when something catches your attention. Maybe it’s a bird you’ve never noticed before. Maybe it’s something growing alongside the road. Maybe it’s a pile of stuff in your basement that hasn’t been touched in twenty years.

Or maybe it’s a statistic you hear while listening to a TED Talk.

You notice.

You stop.

You ponder.

And sometimes you begin asking questions that you weren’t asking five minutes earlier.

This particular Notice Moment is going into my mental compost pile for a while. I need to learn more about sanitation, infrastructure, poverty, public health and the numbers themselves.

But the question that first popped into my head isn’t going away:

If we can figure out how to put a cell phone within reach of nearly everyone on Earth, why haven’t we figured out how to do the same thing with a toilet?

I don’t know where that question will lead.

But I noticed it.

And now I’m curious.

P.S. If you happen to be reading this while sitting on a toilet and scrolling on your cell phone…well, I rest my case. 😂

Waiting for Cooler Air

Wildlife & Plants, , ,

Some summer days invite you outside. Others remind you that nature sets the schedule, not us.

Today was one of those latter days.

My backyard weather station recorded a high temperature of 97.5°F, and it felt every bit of it. The air was heavy enough that even standing still left you wishing for a breeze. Like many people across the Northeast, we’ve been looking for air-conditioned places to take our daily walks rather than heading to our favorite nature preserves.

As evening approached, though, the day offered a reward.

Smoke and haze softened the western sky, turning the setting sun into a glowing orange-red disk hanging above the trees. At the same time, the backyard meadow remained surprisingly busy. Bees and other pollinators continued moving from flower to flower through the tall grasses, seemingly unfazed by the heat that had driven most of us indoors.

It reminded me that every species has its own way of dealing with summer. Some seek shade. Some become more active in the cooler hours. Others simply carry on with the work that needs to be done.

The weather forecasters say the humidity will begin dropping tomorrow afternoon. If they’re right, the heat should become a little more bearable, and I’m looking forward to getting back onto one of our local nature preserve trails.

Sometimes stewardship isn’t about doing something extraordinary.

Sometimes it’s simply paying attention, waiting for the right moment, and then stepping back outside.

Tomorrow may be one of those days.

The Value of a Hole in a Tree

Wildlife & Plants, , ,

Most people walking a nature trail probably wouldn’t give a second thought to a hole in an old tree. A few days ago, while hiking through a small nature preserve near my home, I stopped to look more closely at this one.

As a biologist, I immediately recognized it as a cavity likely excavated by a Pileated Woodpecker. These impressive birds, nearly crow-sized, use their powerful bills to carve nesting and roosting cavities into dead or declining trees.

But what caught my attention wasn’t just the woodpecker. It was the reminder that this hole represents something much larger: the importance of leaving some dead and dying trees standing whenever they do not pose a safety risk to people, homes, or other structures.

Wildlife biologists often refer to birds as either primary cavity nesters or secondary cavity nesters.

Primary cavity nesters, such as Pileated Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, and Hairy Woodpeckers, create their own nesting cavities. Secondary cavity nesters, however, cannot excavate cavities themselves. Species such as Chickadees, Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, some owls, and even certain ducks depend on cavities that have already been created by woodpeckers or formed naturally through decay.

In many ways, woodpeckers serve as nature’s carpenters. Their work provides homes not only for themselves, but for an entire community of wildlife that follows.

And the story doesn’t end with birds.

Tree cavities may also shelter squirrels, bats, flying squirrels, raccoons, insects, salamanders, and countless other creatures. What appears to be a simple hole in a tree is actually a valuable piece of habitat.

As people, we often focus on living trees—and rightly so. But standing dead trees, sometimes called “snags,” play an equally important role in healthy ecosystems. A forest without a few snags is a little like a neighborhood without apartments. There simply aren’t enough places for many residents to live.

The next time you encounter an old tree with a cavity along a trail, pause for a moment. What looks like decay may actually be a sign of life. Someone built that home, someone may be living there now, and many others may depend on it in the years ahead.

Sometimes a hole in a tree tells a much bigger story than we realize.

— Ron Dodson
The Nature of Things 🌿

A Walk Through Van Dyke Spinney Preserve

Wildlife & Plants, , ,

Yesterday evening, Theresa and I decided to take a short walk through the Van Dyke Spinney Preserve, located less than a mile from our home in the Town of Bethlehem, New York.

This 33-acre preserve was accepted by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy in 2012 as part of the permitting process for a nearby residential development. What might appear to be a small tract of land on a map provides an impressive diversity of habitats, including forests, wetlands, floodplain communities, and stream corridors.

The preserve features a gently rolling one-mile loop trail that winds through mature woodlands and alongside portions of the Phillipinkill, a tributary of the Vlomans Kill, which eventually flows into the Hudson River. Along the trail, visitors encounter small bridges, seasonal wetlands, towering trees, native wildflowers, and quiet views of the stream as it meanders through the floodplain.

One of the things I appreciate most about Van Dyke Spinney Preserve is how accessible it is. Located at 246 Van Dyke Road in Delmar, New York, the preserve includes a convenient parking area and offers an easy opportunity to spend an hour immersed in nature without traveling far from home.

During our walk, the forest was alive with the soft light of early evening filtering through the canopy. Forget-me-nots bloomed along the trail edges, the Phillipinkill reflected the surrounding greenery like a mirror, and the cool, shaded woods provided a welcome escape from the day’s heat. It was a reminder that meaningful encounters with nature do not require a trip to a national park or a remote wilderness area. Sometimes they can be found just down the road.

Places like Van Dyke Spinney Preserve demonstrate the value of local land conservation. They protect water quality, provide wildlife habitat, preserve natural beauty, and offer nearby residents a chance to reconnect with the natural world. For those of us interested in conservation and stewardship, they also serve as living classrooms where we can observe, learn, and simply enjoy the wonders of nature.

As I often remind readers of The Nature of Things, stewardship begins by noticing things. A short walk on a local trail can lead to discoveries, appreciation, and ultimately a deeper connection with the places we call home.