Happy Birthday, Rachel Carson
Happy Birthday Rachel Carson
The back yard was lovely this morning, and I owe the reading of Rachel Carson’s books to my observance of my little wild space. I’ve managed to retain that “sense of wonder” each time I look at the world around me. I photographed this fleabane just this morning, covered with dew and shining in the sun as if it was celebrating.
Rachel Carson was a Pittsburgh area native who attended now Chatham University, whose books and work were a great inspiration to me, both as a person who observes and honors nature and as a woman who wanted to walk my own path.
Sands of Time
Sands of Time
What primordial wash left these deposits of colored sand between layers of limestone? How many times did the landscape change to create these layers? How much time does this represent?
This highwall is a man-made cut along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Twp., PA, a former rail line from Pittsburgh to Weirton, WV and connecting to points north and west. A section at the trail head runs through the McShane Quarry of Collier Stone, providing Collier Gray limestone and other products around southwestern Pennsylvania.
The portion of the quarry around the trail is no longer mined, but several quarry ponds still provide interest and habitat, and in the woods huge quarried and natural boulders left behind are covered with lichen and moss. And like most limestone and sandstone formations, there’s a natural cave to explore. Farther along the trail is another limestone feature, the Fossil Cliffs where millennia of flora and fauna remain in this ghostly form.
Today 