Monday, Nov 10

Been a really, really busy time so I haven’t had much time for writing. Teaching two classes pretty much soaks up every bit of free time. I’m looking forward to the end and I know the students are too.

Things are happening even though I can’t get out to enjoy them. The Detroit River Hawk Watch has reported 42,700 hawks migrating through since October 19. The single daily high count was 14,212 on October 22. That had to be fun time to be a spotter.

This past weekend Lise and I went down to Bloomington for a Sycamore Land Trust annual banquet. David Banks, a friend and the person that took over as board president after me, was the guest speaker. David now runs The Nature Conservancy’s Africa program. We had a great time and saw lots of old friends, both at the meeting and tooling around Bloomington.

At the SLT annual banquet with Vicky M. (Cathy Meyer photo)

I used to really like Bloomington. Then they built a massive number of student apartments right downtown. Without bothering to provide parking for those apartments. So the City blanketed the area with parking meters to discourage students from having vehicles with no place to park them. I guess they want the students to spend their money there, but don’t want them to park there. Somehow I can’t help but feel that maybe the right way to do this would be to require a parking garage be built as part of the apartment complex.

The meters are particularly nasty in that they blink a red light when they are expired. The trolls they call meter readers just cruise around looking for blinking red lights. I’ll bet they really like their jobs too. Probably can’t get dates.

Bloomington. A fun place to visit, you just wouldn’t want to park there.

Sycamore Land Trust has done great since its founding in 1990. The organization has incredible community support. What started as a bunch of us getting together to start a land trust now has over 1,000 members and protects over 8,300 acres. The dinner we attended had over 300 attendees at the Bloomington Convention Center. A lot different than when we would have a picnic at someone’s house for our annual meeting.

Lise and I visited one of my favorite Sycamore Land Trust properties, the Beanblossum Bottoms. The bottoms are the floodplain of Beanblossom Creek. It’s a complex of mostly wetlands that have been acquired over time. One keystone parcel was the first property Sycamore bought. We were scared stiff but committed to raising and paying something like $50,000 over a five year period. We ended up raising the money in seven months and didn’t look back. Now there is upwards of 500 acres under protection of one form or another. Areas that were essentially failed corn fields when we started are now undergoing succession. Several Indiana threatened or endangered species resident there. Sycamore has about two miles of boardwalk going through the area. The really good news is the State of Indiana has named the Beanblossom corridor a Bicentennial Natural Corridor and has committed up to $1,000,000 in matching funds for further acquisition in the area. Not too shabby.