A Mathematician's Dot and Line Forest

This shot was taken while walking down off the Princeton Ridge towards the small farmstead in Herrontown Woods, in eastern Princeton. It was a clear, crisp afternoon earlier this fall. The boulders, which diminish in size as one walks downhill, add punctuation to the woods--dots to go with the trees' lines.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite books growing up, "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics", in which a line falls in love with a dot and seeks to win her over from her squiggly boyfriend by overcoming his stiffness and learning how to make all sorts of magnificent shapes. It's still available online, and there's even a ten minute animated movie version on youtube.

The first 81 acres of Herrontown Woods were donated to the county back in 1957 by a famous mathematician and his wife, Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen. They lived the last decades of their lives there, in the Veblen House, clearly in love with the dot and line woodlands of the ridge.

Though my daughter didn't know it, her pause next to the trail to gaze across the light-filled woodland was exactly what the Veblens had in mind. According to a New York Times article at the time of the donation, "Mr. and Mrs. Veblen donated the tract because they felt this rapidly developing area was in dire need of a public park. 'There is nowhere around here where you can get away from cars and just go walk and sit,' Mrs. Veblen said. 'Princeton, when we came here in 1905, was a lovely village,' Mrs. Veblen declared. She explained that the donation was made in the hope that a little bit of this outdoor atmosphere will be preserved.'"

And so it was, and so has much more been preserved over the decades, building on that simple but central vision of a place to go walk and sit. The romance of the dot and the line ends with a moral: "To the vector belong the spoils." We are surely the vectors, imbued with direction and magnitude, with many trails and vistas to call our own.

Wood Pile Habitat

One easy way to provide habitat in the backyard is to build a wood pile, even if one isn't intending to use the wood. We happen to use the wood, which brings discovery of just how varied and inviting are all the protected spaces these highrise hotels create.

Wooly bear caterpillars curl up inbetween logs.

This beetle liked a particular furrow in the bark.

Little ant hamlets, with ants larger than the variety that invade the home but much smaller than carpenter ants, cluster on small hollows in the split wood.

And a spider looked to be spending the winter sprawled protectively over its well webbed brood tucked in a knothole.

All this microlife makes naturalists slow wood gatherers, given the need to at least try to spare these animals, there homes set aside where they can remain through the winter.

Squirrel Artist Branching Out

After several years of sculpting primarily pumpkins, the Master of Gnaw appears to be experimenting with new materials. Past work below, and further riffing on this new development at the PrincetonPrimer blog.

Future Shade

Nothing symbolizes so well the quandary of the future as the question of how to shade play equipment in a park. Back when I was frequenting playgrounds with my kids, in various parts of the country, we'd typically find the play equipment lacked shade and would get searing hot in summer sun. The equipment would be rendered useless for hours, because no one had thought to plant a tree in the right place years before. Oftentimes, trees had been planted elsewhere in a park, but not in strategic locations where their shade would do the most good.

So when a couple wanted to plant a tree in the park behind my house to celebrate the birth of their son a few years ago, I suggested we plant it southwest of the new play structure, so that its limbs would eventually provide shade during the hottest hours of the day. I showed the tree to a town arborist the other day, and he joked that he will have long since retired to Florida by the time the tree is shading the play structure. I offered that he might be saved a trip, given how quickly Florida's weather is migrating northward.

It's not surprising that staff would be less than passionate about a well-shaded future, given a necessary preoccupation with keeping a storm-ravaged town functioning in the present. And when I look at the tree and see how far it has to go, it does seem a leap of faith. How else, though, does one make cool, delicious shade happen other than to make that leap? The future will come sooner than we think. Trees grow--the evidence is all around--and yet playgrounds across the land roast for lack of shade.

There's another kind of play and exercise that parks need to foster--the play of the imagination, leaps of faith--so that we might better see, and shade, the future.

Flower Gets Frosty Reception

Yesterday, while looking out across the bleak backyard landscape, one small point of bright yellow caught my eye. A dandelion, audacious or rightfully confused by all the weather's mixed signals.

My Photo Selected for Traveling Exhibit

I was very honored recently to hear that the eminent photographer Emmet Gowin chose to include my photograph of Carnegie Lake ice in a traveling exhibit of photographs, selected from the Princeton University's Art of Science collection. Assisting in selection was Joel Smith, former Curator of Photography at the Princeton Art Museum.

Here's the descriptive text from 2010:

When Carnegie Lake Became a Stained Glass Window

Stephen Hiltner

Friends of Princeton Open Space

"Energy drives water's greatness. No molecule responds more brilliantly than water to the energy regime negotiated by the planet's atmosphere. If there were a physical template that drove the evolution of our imaginations, it would be water. Water is the ultimate artist, a renaissance molecule, exploring endless patterns and textures and playing with light as it shifts nimbly from solid to liquid to gas. Glaciers and rivers are channeled energy, but in a lake, water is trapped, and must do its work within the frame of a shoreline. A steady exodus of energy yields congealed, dark ice. But more often, the process is complex — a series of freezes and thaws, compressions and expansions. One day this past January, crossing the Harrison Street bridge, I happened to look over and noticed that all of Carnegie Lake had taken on the rich patterns of a giant, horizontal stained glass window. This close-up is part of a comparative exploration of the forces driving creativity in people and in nature."

Other photos from that very unusual "frozen moment" in the lake's history are documented in a March 4, 2010 post on this blog. I also had a photo in the 2009 Art of Science exhibit, taken a previous time when Carnegie Lake froze thick enough to skate on.

The university's "best of" traveling show (facebook version here) of 45 images, selected from more than 250 images in past Princeton Art of Science exhibits, will continue through March 17, 2013 at the Liberty Science Center (LSC.org), located in Liberty State Park, not far from the Statue of Liberty.

You can see the current Art of Science exhibit on display in the main walkway at the university's Friends Center, or go to princeton.edu/artofscience.

To Clear a Trail

There's a trail in here somewhere. These photos, taken by Eric Tazelaar, document a weekend of volunteer work to open up trails through whatever Hurricane Sandy left of the pine woods at Community Park North.

Clark Lennon, one of the lead members of the FOPOS (Friends of Princeton Open Space) trails committee, did a lot of the chainsaw work.

Here's a good action shot.

 In this sequence, a multi-stemmed tree

 sprang

back

 up into its original position.

Second and third from the left, and second from the right, are Ted Thomas, Clark Lennon and Andrew Thornton--longtime members of the trails committee. I unfortunately don't recognize the others, but heard that some other local groups sent volunteers, including Blue Mountain Sports.

This shot includes Wendy Mager, president of FOPOS, who has led so many successful efforts to preserve open space in Princeton.

Some 40 trees were cleared from trails on that Saturday (Nov. 10) and "many more than that" on Sunday.

With all the windstorms and nor'easters that have come through Princeton in recent years, there simply would be no trails to walk on without these efforts.

Cross-town Dogwood Migration

When Tim Patrick-Miller, a longtime Friends of Princeton Open Space board member, sought volunteers to move 9 flowering dogwoods to Mountain Lakes, we answered the call. The township grew the trees at its Smoyer Park nursery, but as trees in a nursery gain inertia with each growing season, it sometimes takes someone with exceptional determination to actually dig them up and give them a home out in the real world.

The real world, of course, has become a lot less shady since Hurricane Sandy, and these trees were headed to spots near Mountain Lakes House where the canopy has opened up. In this photo, trail committee member Clark Lennon waved encouragement while Andrew Thornton and Tim heaved and hoed.

I contributed the truck for delivery to Mountain Lakes, and the camera,

in lieu of heavy lifting.

So in this fine photo with fellow habitat restorationists, AeLin Compton and Andrew, my shovel is looking pretty ornamental.

Leaf Interest in Late Fall

Early December is not considered a time of dynamic leaf change, but the evergreen Japanese azaleas are starting to drop their "spring leaves"--the larger leaves that grow in the spring along the stem. "Summer leaves" closer to the tips stay on. More info at this link.

The recent coolish spell offered a chance to photograph leaves just below the thin ice at Mountain Lakes Preserve.

The combination of partial decomposition

and the translucent properties of the ice made this leaf look as if it were from an oil painting.

Post-Hurricane Mountain Lakes

Did some scouting yesterday for today's nature walk at Community Park North and Mountain Lakes, beginning at Pettoranello Gardens.

A closer look at the photo shows a great blue heron. We saw two, or four if you count their reflections.

The pine woods up the hill from Pettoranello Gardens looks like a logging scene. Hurricane Sandy was only one of several storms that have been knocking the trees over. They were planted in the 1960s in what had been a farm field. I can't say I've ever seen white pines or Norway spruce growing naturally in this area, where deciduous woods are the norm.

Ash trees (note opposite branching saplings in the foreground) have been massing at the base of the pine trees for years, ready to  take full advantage of the sky that has opened up above them.

The Friends of Princeton Open Space trails committee has led efforts to reopen trails--an incredible job.

A closer look suggests two small yellow creatures running behind my daughter. Hard to tell, though, given the focus.

On the far side of the Tusculum fields, the hurricane pretty much polished off what was left of the woods between Mountain Lakes House and Tusculum. This was mostly a mix of white pines and black locust--again, not tree species that existed here historically. Fortunately, a couple native chestnuts planted here to take advantage of sunny openings have survived and should make the most of the additional sunlight.

Upstream of Mountain Lakes, This Old Bridge took another hit, this time from nearby maple tree. Some years back, the bridge was transported 100 feet downstream by a massive flood, then dragged back into position by the township. State regs would probably make replacing the bridge prohibitively expensive.

At Mountain Lakes itself, things were much more peaceful. A couple young fishermen weren't having any luck, but they didn't seem to mind too much.

The raingarden next to Mountain Lakes House has gone into attractive hibernation.

Every time I look at how evenly the water slips over the upper dam, I think of Clifford Zink, the consulting architectural historian who encouraged the dam restorationists to make the spillway perfectly flat.

Starving Artist Consumes Own Art To Survive

In a previous post, I decried what appeared to be a lack of serious effort exhibited by squirrels this fall in carving our front door pumpkin.

Apparently, the local squirrels read this blog, because soon thereafter the squirrel community sent one of its masters of gnaw to create a more elaborate carving. Rodentopologists who have researched squirrel legends tell me this one-eyed monkey face has deep meanings extending back to when great squirrel nations vied for dominance in what proved a losing battle with primates. Current squirrel populations represent a diaspora from that time.

The next day, however, I grew concerned that something other than aesthetics and traditional expression was motivating the carver. The symbol of the "exploding pumpkin" appears nowhere in squirrel mythology.

It became increasingly clear that a starving artist was at work.

One of the take-home lessens here is that an all-consuming passion is not enough to create enduring art.

Deceptive Age of a Tree

The stumps from a couple oak trees pushed over by Hurricane Fran have remained to ornament Nassau Street, like mortars from the Civil War.

Counting the rings of one, I was surprised to find that, though 3 feet wide at the base, it was only 40 years old.

Translated to the trees we encounter in Princeton's open space, it goes to show how young a mature-looking forest may be, and how some of the woods that feel like they've always been there may in fact have been pastures or farm fields not too many decades back.

In contrast, other woods in Princeton may harbor trees 180 years old, like this slice of an ash on exhibit at the Frist Center on the Princeton University campus. It was sacrificed as part of the stream restoration next to Washington Rd at the university.