It was Earth Day

We’d planned to take a walk on this day, mainly because it was the only one in the week forecast to be decent.  Happy at the prospect of the temperature hitting sixty, we climbed in the car and headed for the Kesling Preserve.  Driving along a back route between New Buffalo and Three Oaks, we managed to find the small pull-off where there was just enough room to park beside one other car.

We’d never really explored the entire preserve, and began by walking in a direction we’d never walked before.  A short distance along a muddy trail, we came to a woodland meadow strewn with delicate ephemerals, mainly spring cress, I believe, combined with violets and swamp buttercups.

Nearby was a huge patch of marsh marigolds, a few of which had drifted over onto the meadow green.

In no time at all, we found ourselves walking along the bank of a beautiful river.  The water was moving.

Eventually we doubled back, walking beyond where we started in the opposite direction.  The trail turned away from the river and ran up a hill.  From a bluff we looked down into a ravine with many beech trees.  This is the kind of spot where trillium like to grow.  But it was too early to see them bloom.  From the banks, tributaries form, then meander around the bluff before flowing into the river.

At last we came to a black pool where the streams meet.  The stillness was illusory, a current driving out toward the river, burbling, where the ground dips low.

Soon the woods will be opaque with leaf, but on this occasion splashes of fresh green were precious to see.

Such was Earth Day 2020.