Stuff to See

Whenever and wherever I walk I always seem to be looking down. My eyes scan the ground for anything out of the ordinary. I watch for pennies, quarters, or the odd $100 bill (yes, I did once find a $100 bill in with a bunch of trash collected at the base of a chain link fence in Hawaii...but that's a story for another day), and I'm often distracted by little movements in the periphery of my view. Movements that might give away the presence of an interesting critter...

Sometimes I look up too. It's kind of hard not to when passing such bright clusters of spring blossoms...

...and besides, there are lots of interesting animals that find their way up high as well, like these ants exploring the innards of a flowering pussy willow...

Looking down into the reflected depths of a still bog can give the illusion of another world opening up beneath your feet...

...to the attentive eye even ordinary dead leaves betray a subtle elegance...

...and surprises are everywhere.

Rob and I stumbled upon this little guy while leaving the Cornell Ornithology Lab's Sapsucker Woods...

I'll be taking off for Evanston tomorrow morning.

There's a lot I'll miss here, but I'll keep my eyes open wherever I go--there will always be neat stuff to see.

One farewell

Because Rob will be moving to Ohio this summer this will likely be my last visit to Ithaca in quite a while. There are so many things to love about this town and Rob and I have re-experienced a few of them this week as sort of a last little farewell.

A couple days ago we drove out to Taughannock Falls and spent the afternoon walking along the river side trail that leads to this "great fall in the woods." The river bed here is made of gray limestone left behind from an ancient sea that once submerged a good portion of the eastern U.S. and the shale walls that form much of the surrounding gorge are hardened layers of silt that were once deposited above the lime mud. Here I caught a picture of the slightly veiled sun reflected in a solution pool on the river bed.

These features formed through chemical weathering of the limestone. Rain is naturally a little acidic and puddles left behind after a storm gradually dissolved the limestone till the whole area was dotted with undulating little hollows.

(the above explanations are paraphrases of trailside informational signs we stopped to read along the way)


And here's the falls...
(for a sense of scale, there's a man sitting near the lower right of the photo)

Most of you have seen it before as I've photographed and written about it several times over the years, but it never ceases to amaze me how different it can look depending on lighting, season, and camera angle. Of course one of my favorite features is the oddly geometric shale cutout to the right of the falls. I've watched this feature in particular change a good deal since I first saw it back in 2008...

And here it is in 2012...

I guess this distinctive formation might eventually erode away entirely. Maybe I'll have to come back in a few years to see how things progress...

Amorphophallus Titanum

I'm not sure I have a real "life list," but if I did, smelling a giant Indonesian corpse flower would definitely be on it. In an unexpected twist of good fortune, I can now say that I've been-there-done-that...but no, I did not get the t-shirt.

This morning Cornell's own Amorphophallus Titanum (a fancy name for enormous deformed penis) bloomed for the first time in its history. These plants flower only once every several years and each bloom only lasts a couple of days so when it was clear the big event was imminent, excited emails went out to all Cornellians inviting them to visit the unusual plant. You can tune in too via a live video stream (the live stream is now disabled, but you can still view time-lapse sequences of the Titan's bloom at Cornell's Titan Arum Blog). The flower's giant phallus will likely wilt soon, so check it out while you can.

Rob and I went to the greenhouse yesterday when the flower was still closed.

Titan Arum is given the nickname "corpse plant" because of the awful rotten meat smell it sends out to attract its pollinators: carrion flies. The giant phallus growing out of the bloom helps to disburse the putrid perfume far and wide.

Inside the greenhouse we waded through an excited crowd--all eagerly awaited their turn to get up next to the sleeping titan and try to get a whiff of dead animal...

The plant was heavily monitored by cameras and smell sensors meant to track the plant's growth and maturation as well as measure its odor's intensity from pre to post bloom...

In its final stages the phallus can grow 2 inches daily and reach a height of 10 feet before blooming, but it looks like Cornell's Titan is kind of a little guy in comparison...

Here's a Cornell grad student making sure the smell monitors are staying in place.

She said that even in the greenhouse it is difficult to maintain the needed level of humidity here in Ithaca--notice how the leaf is dry and wilted along its edges. Looks a little like old lettuce...

Last night after we were back home from dinner and practicing, Rob pulled up the live video stream and we were stunned to see that over the space of an afternoon the Titan Anum had bloomed. To accommodate curious crowds the greenhouse's public hours were pushed back to 11:00 pm and they estimated 2000 people streamed through last night alone--I guess we humans go just as gaga over a rotten smell as a swarm of carrion flies!

Rob and I went back in to the greenhouse this morning. There was an impressive line, but people were pretty chill about everything and we moved up quickly.

Finally...the sight and smell we'd been waiting for! As soon as we entered the display room I caught a faint whiff of the Great Salt Lake--nothing too overwhelming--but wow! What a beauty!

I love the plant's deep red interior, and the giant sweeping fan of a leaf that surrounds its namesake inflorescence.

Even up close the smell wasn't nearly as intense as I'd imagined. According to the workers there it was a lot stronger last night when the bloom was new and it had not yet been pollinated.

Here's a view of the flower's innards...

And there are much better ones HERE...up close it reminds me of a sea anemone, or what I imagine some strange alien plant life could look like.

Ithaca Ice: 2

Here are som'more icy waterfall pictures...taken as I made my way to the bus stop after my morning practice session at Cornell. This is the waterfall that flows over the Bebe Lake Dam and on down Fall Creek Gorge to Ithaca Falls (the waterfall in yesterday's post). And it's the same one that featured so prominently in my summer posts about the local flooding...

I wonder how many more icicles this log will be able to handle...

Ithaca Ice

While lately I've found myself cursing the chill of the Ithaca winter (even though up to just a few of days ago our temperatures have been in the high 40s), I was reminded today of one reason to celebrate the months-long deep freeze ahead: amazing ice formations!

Rob and I visited Ithaca Falls this afternoon and were dazzled not only by its usual imposing stature...

...but also by the intricate wintry wonderland it had constructed for itself within the surrounding gorge. The closer we got to the fall's base, the more striking the ice sculptures became. From delicately frosted leaves...

...to fresh dandelion buds--as green as summer on their leeward side...

...but heavily laden with a thick icy armor on the other. Built up from the windy spray of the falls not far away, this dandelion was cemented so firmly that when I reached out and grabbed its base, it was solid and unbending as stone.

Even the rocks underfoot were coated with crystals...

The formations all pointed in a single direction--straight toward the aerosol jets that were still in the process of building them--and had an almost organic look, like a carpet of icy moss thriving among flat beds of broken shale.

I was entranced and got a little carried away with my nose-to-the-ground explorations. Several minutes passed before I realized that Rob, who had suggested the outing in the first place, was about to turn into an ice sculpture himself! So we hurried back to the car to bask in the warmth of its heaters and finish up with our list of errands.

It has been a good day.

A Scare

Last night, Rob and I had an all night party in the Cayuga Medical Center's emergency room ...complete with heavy drugs and a groggy cab ride home at 5:30 am.

This wild excursion was not in any of our original plans, but arose spontaneously when I suddenly became numb over the entire right side of my body--from the top of my cheek bone down through the tips of my toes--and ordered Rob to call an ambulance. I thought I was having a stroke--not an idle fear considering my mom had a stroke at a very early age--and as we waited for the EMTs to arrive I panicked. What if I'm paralyzed? What if I can never play the trumpet again? What if I fall into a coma and become a vegetable?

The ambulance arrived about 15 minutes later at which point the numbness had actually subsided somewhat. It seemed to strike in waves and I cried out in pure terror when a second surge moved through my limbs. When the numbness again began to lessen I was overtaken instead by involuntary trembles--like the worst nervous shakes I've ever had in my life. The ambulance drivers advised me that it would still be wise to go to the emergency room and get checked out, so in a couple minutes I was strapped into a stretcher and we were off. Rob hitched a ride in the front seat and I laid in the back accompanied by a young female EMT. Whoever she was, she gets 5 stars for her calm and positively reassuring manner. By the time we arrived at the hospital my shakes had subsided and I was almost breathing normally again.

I was wheeled into a little room and immediately hooked up to an EKG machine so they could be sure my symptoms weren't related to any sort of heart problem. I had wires sticking out of me all over and felt a little like I'd just been assimilated into the Borg collective. I joked to Rob "Maybe you should take some pictures of this for my blog," and then promptly vetoed that idea...hospital gowns are decidedly unflattering. Another nurse came and asked me a list of questions--"yeah, I've had a terrible migraine for the past 3 days...definitely the longest lasting headache of my life...Well, I was just lying in bed and all of a sudden my whole right side went numb...I could even feel it in my tongue...like I'd just been to the dentist and he'd drugged my whole body." Soon after another nurse came in to take some blood and then...we waited.

Long story short: Rob sat patiently (in a horrendously uncomfortable chair I might add) beside me in the emergency room from about 11:00 pm till we finally left in a cab at 5:30. After the third hour or so they had given me a CAT scan and a shot of morphine for my head (when the numbness went away the headache returned with a vengeance), and when the doctor finally arrived hours later with my diagnosis, Rob was sagging in his miserable chair and I was falling in and out of sleep.

I'd been worried all night that nothing would show up in any of my tests and that I'd be sent home embarrassed to have made such a scene over something minor. It is an odd sensation to, on the one hand, hope that an extreme diagnosis will vindicate the terrifying reality of what I'd experienced, and on the other, hope that nothing at all is wrong and get sent home with a relatively clean bill of health. What I got was something in the middle.

All the tests came up clear--so probably no stroke--and the doctor said that the numbness was likely an extreme symptom of a particular kind of migraine--hemiplegic migraine--which in its onset actually mimics the symptoms of stroke. He said it might be wise to follow up with a neurologist and gave me a referral to a local Dr. if I want to look into it while I'm here in Ithaca.

Rob and I slept in till noon today. I still have a headache (Ugh!), and just went to the drug store for some Aleve. I hope the weird numbness doesn't return, but if it does, I'll at least have a name for it.

By the way, Rob gets 10 stars for being nothing short of my night in shining armor. I am a lucky girl!

Pool Auditions

Here at NU we have quarterly pool auditions in order to determine placement in excerpt class and--just in general--to practice getting the hang of the audition process. This time they took our excerpts from the audition list for the Chicago Civic Orchestra and threw in a piccolo aria from Bach's Christmas Oratorio for good measure (you know how much I love that...high Fs...yay...) Anyway, I played about an hour ago and feel I did as well as I could've hoped. I had my usual second wave of nervous shakes set in right around the end of the Ballerina Dance from Stravinsky's Petrouchka and stupidly botched some fingerings, but in general I'm thrilled with how the other 91% of the audition went.

What a relief!

I'm sure I'll get a bunch of critical comments from the professors--there's always room to improve after all--but for now I'm just thrilled to be done with it.

So now begins all the holiday madness I guess. I'll be heading out to Ithaca tomorrow and will probably spend my first few days there trying to snag some seasonal work. I'm nervous as all get out about attempting to reenter the job market, but hope that I can find something basic where my honesty and strong work ethic will be valued.

Wish me luck.

Beautiful Arachnids

I'm feeling exceedingly tired and stressed tonight, so I thought I'd take a break for a minute and dig back into my photos from this summer in Ithaca. There are some really great spider portraits I never got around to posting, and these beauties deserve to be seen.

This is a common variety of orb weaver that Rob and I ran into (almost literally) one night while strolling along a river that runs near Cinemopolis--an independent movie theater in downtown Ithaca.

Around a single large street lamp were clustered dozens of these plump predators, each stoically perched in the center of a beautifully constructed circular web.

We had discovered what must have been considered prime spider real estate. As mosquitos, flies, and moths buzzed frantically around the glowing lamplight, these eight legged denizens of the shadows had only to sit patiently until one, or two, or ten of the hapless insects landed in their silken traps.

Below is another species of orb weaver that is commonly found in Madagascar. And yes, that is a BIRD it's eating...eeek!!!

Now, before you become too disturbed, consider that silk from 1 million of these amazing creatures was extracted by hand (how would you like that job!?) and woven into a spectacular golden tapestry (yes, that is the natural color of their silk) that is now housed at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Ithaca Flood Tour

After being overwhelmed by the sight of a swollen Fall Creek yesterday morning, I thought it would be fun for Rob and me to visit our other favorite waterfalls in the area to see how exaggerated their flows had become after the storm.

We began at Ithaca Falls.

Rob used to live about a block from this lovely falls and we've visited it many times in the past. Here's a picture he took of me standing in front of the giant cascade a couple years ago. Yes, I promise, I am in the photo...look to the lower right...

Impressive right? Well, Ithaca Falls is also created by Fall Creek and is located not too far below the rushing madness on the Cornell campus I showed you yesterday. I'm sure you understand why this falls was first on our list!

You can see the falls from the road and as we drove over the bridge towards the parking lot we caught a brief but tantalizing glimpse of the raging torrent through the trees. We parked the car and started walking back toward the bridge. Even though the waterfall is set pretty far back in the gorge, our clothes were already being dampened by a fine windy mist in the air.

When we attempted to enter the park and take our usual route up to the base of the falls we were stopped dead in our tracks by a tremendous flood coursing through the gorge at a terrifying pace. The entire area had been inundated.

We couldn't get close enough to glimpse any of the falls this way, so we turned back to see how good the view was from the road. Unfortunately, we were never able to see more than 1/3 of Ithaca falls, but with a little use of the imagination, could recreate within our minds the full fury of the scene.

Next stop, Taughannock.

Here's a shot I took from the overlook 2 years ago...

And here's what we saw from the same spot yesterday...

With its elegantly translucent bridal veil thickened and muddied by the flood, it was easy to see how such a flow could have carved out its gorge over the ages. Indeed, when I got home and started looking through past photos I noticed something interesting. The first time Rob and I visited Taughannock, I was struck by one particularly geometric shale formation just to the right of the falls.

Now that I've seen many such formations I am less surprised by them, but at the time I was completely bewildered by the nearly perfect 90 degree angles cut into the rock face.

Here's the same spot taken this past December. Notice any changes?

And here is yesterday's shot. Different again, yes?

"GEOLOGIC TIME IS NOW."

When you encounter a sign that cautions passers by to watch for falling rocks...believe it!

Lastly, we drove back up to Cornell so Rob could get a good look at the scene I'd observed on the footbridge that morning. We had just enough time to watch a few gigantic dead trees fall over the menacing precipice before we had to head back home for Obama's address. I was lucky enough to film one of them on its way to a spectacular destruction...

Flood Warning

When I planned an extended summer stay in mid-state New York, the last thing I expected to have to deal with was extreme tropical weather, but a couple weeks ago the blustery tailings of hurricane Irene moved through and for the past couple days we've been soaked by the inland remains of tropical storm Lee.

Yesterday the local news was all aflutter announcing flood warnings, school closures, and evacuations in the surrounding counties, but (though we'd been dealing with a leaky ceiling at Rob's--I've discovered that a single drip of water can function surprisingly well as a metronome) it seemed at first that Ithaca would be spared the worst of it. When I woke up this morning and heard from Rob that Cornell had cancelled classes due to flood danger and that the Tompkins County Sheriff had closed county roads for all but emergency travel, I could scarcely believe my ears. I've heard of snow days, but rain days?

Normally I would have taken the bus in to Cornell at 8:05 am for my morning warm up, but with all the closures I was faced with an abrupt change of plans and decided it would be interesting to get out and explore. I wondered if I'd run into blockades of cop cars enforcing the street closures, if I'd find roads of running water, or if I'd reach a place along my route where a flooded stream would prevent me from continuing further.

I ate a quick breakfast and set out in the direction of the Cornell campus (about 3 miles from Rob's apt.) armed with my trusty Nikon and a cell phone in case of emergency. This neighborhood is snaked with little streamlets and in a few places those typically friendly backyard meanderings had swelled to engulf yards, gardens, and tool sheds...

...but on the whole, life seemed to be going by fairly business-as-usual. Despite a county-wide travel ban, the normal morning traffic was building up (minus the buses) and I (foolishly perhaps) found myself a bit disappointed that nothing seemed to be too far out of the ordinary.

As I neared Cornell, I took a detour in order to photograph a sculpture I'd always been curious about...

Why does a school whose mascot is "Big Red" have a giant purple sculpture at the entrance to its campus? Shouldn't this thing be at NU--home of "purple pride"?

My planned destination for the morning was the main auto bridge that crosses Fall Creek Gorge just south of Beebe Lake and leads into the heart of Cornell's campus. From there I would be able to get a decent look at the status of Fall Creek (which was supposedly nearing flood stage) and hopefully head for home with a few good photos. As I neared the bridge I noticed the air above the gorge was filled with a misty spray, and an increasingly gravelly roar made me cock my head and wonder if there was some sort of heavy construction taking place down there.

Heavy construction? No. Insane debris-filled torrent of angry flood waters? A DEFINITE YES! To give you a sense of perspective, here is a of borrowed photo that shows what this area usually looks like...

Beebe lake lies just beyond the dam and on most days picturesque trickles of water gently cascade over the steps of the dam on their way back down the gorge. A little foot bridge gives pedestrians this romantic view and--as now seems inevitable--a few have even begun to leave love locks along the railing.

And here's what this same area looked like this morning...

Take a second to examine the bottle neck of falling water at the bottom of the picture below (again not my photo)...

Now imagine all this water trying to fight its through that narrow little chasm...

Frightening!

Here are a couple of videos I took to help you picture the madness of it all...

Suddenly these love locks look a little less romantic...more like they're just hanging on for dear life!

I exhausted my camera's batteries on a few more pictures and then turned back for home. By the time I arrived at Rob's again the sun was shining and I was sweating through my shirt from the heat and humidity.