Wintry Mix

Whatchoo lookin' at?

 8 February 2025

There's a coating of ice dripping down from the deck railings as I type this. It's the second time this week.

The first time was Thursday morning. While I was waiting for the freezing rain to turn to rain, I crunched around the yard with my camera.

There was another storm forecast for tonight. Ahead of it was a cloudy day that would barely be above freezing. I'd already signed up for the PFW hike at Plainsboro Preserve when Pete started asking around for a Saturday ride out of Pennington. Around bedtime I wavered for a moment, looked at the forecast again, and fetched my hiking boots from the closet.

Heddy, Jim, and Our Jeff made the same decision. The hike was led by CAT ferry buddy David G. In all the years since the Plainsboro Preserve opened, I've only biked past it, never gone in.

We set out on a wide trail that clearly used to be a road. We were next to a large lake. Right away we spotted fresh beaver gnawings.

Opposite the lake was a stream. I walked down to the bank to see if the pile of sticks was a lodge.

It appeared, for now anyway, to be only a pile of sticks.

We took a side trail out to a peninsula. I'd thought this was where my grad school friend had hidden a geocache, but it didn't match the picture I showed to David. The only reason I knew about the cache is that it's the blown glass balloon I sent her at the end of last semester. 

The surface of the lake was mostly frozen.

We doubled back and then followed a trail up a narrow berm. Off to our left was an orderly stack of freshly cut logs.  "OCD beavers," I explained. (I didn't get a picture; it wouldn't have come out well from where we were standing.)

Woodpecker holes!

David was telling me about his brief stint as a serious birder when he spotted what he said was a downy woodpecker way up in a tree off the trail. I asked him which woodpecker shows up at birdfeeders, because I get them once in a while. The ones I see are smaller than the one we were looking at, and I got downy and hairy mixed up in my head. Figuring I could pull up my Merlin app and find a photo, I reached for my phone. 

There was a text from Rose, one of my glassblowing workshop classmates. Campus would be closed tomorrow because of the impending storm, and our first day of the spring workshop was canceled. That would probably mean an additional Sunday tacked onto the end of the semester, one more Sunday off the bike. I never did open Merlin.

We turned onto a different trail, where we found a bat house. (This is a different one; the one we found wouldn't have photographed well.)

It was far over our heads. It took us a minute to figure out where the bats would enter. There were slats in the bottom wide enough for a bat to wriggle through but too big for a squirrel.

Somebody asked, "How many fit in there?"

I said, "Depends on how well they know each other."

To Heddy, I added, "It's an Air B&B: Air Bat and Bat."

She groaned, but at least I had something for the blog.

"You know where they get their furnishings?" I asked. "Bat Bat and Beyond." (Bed Bat and Beyond would have been much better.)

"I shouldn't put this in my blog," I added.

We came upon a grove of evergreens in rows. They remind David of his time in the Pacific Northwest.

Then we were back at the parking lot. David suggested I follow one of the trails behind the visitor's center to see if I could find the spot that matched my friend's picture. I wandered through a trail designed for kids, with little activity centers spaced close together, then turned onto another trail that led towards the lake. I didn't go far; it was clear that the cache spot was somewhere other than in this park.

On my way back, I saw a flicker of blue off to my left. A bluebird had settled on a tree trunk. I managed to pull my camera out of my pocket and get three quick pictures before it flew off.

I stopped to photograph another bat house that had better lighting around it.

"Did you find it?" David asked about the cache when I got back to my car. "No," I said, forgetting to tell him about the bluebird. 

I checked the text again and realized that the cache was at "Plainsboro Pond," not Plainsboro Preserve, and that Google Maps can't find a Plainsboro Pond. I think I might know now what my friend meant, but, in case any geocachers are reading this, I'm not saying.