connection

Golden Orb Weaver (Nephila clavipes) web successfully cornered this wasp nest at an abandoned camp east of Bayou Boeuf's mouth along Lac Des Allemands.  Wasps not using nest anymore.  "Check mate."  Perhaps some wasps survived.  The Orb Weaver's web spread across a wide opening adjacent to this corner.  The spider was dead and dried on the web, testifying to their silk's strength.  Curious of the timeline of these events.

Landscape Ecologist Richard Forman talks about a web of urban growth patterns, culture, natural systems, and our world's future through a bioregional perspective on human development.    See Max Cafard

New Orleans' Adventure Playground

 Black Cat Moving supports Parisite Skatepark.  "Affordable, experienced, and reliable. (504) 302 8598."

Parisite Skatepark has grown from a DIY Bring-Your-Own-Ramp park to an official New Orleans Recreation Development Commission recreation space. Interspersed throughout the permanent concrete ramps, Parisite sretains elements of an adventure playground, with loose parts all around - movable and available for interpretative use by park participants. 

loose parts at Parisite, large and small.

By Lady Allen of Hurtwood's standards*, there are two official "adventure playgrounds" that I know of in the US -- many more if you count informal spaces.  This lack of much-needed exploratory learning environments for youth  is connected to the liability insurance required for public play spaces: widely-recognized codes and standards (ASTM International) guarantee safety and longevity of play structures by describing approved construction materials, designs, and methods.  What are acceptable safe "best practices" for playground elements that are impermanent and open to interpretation, with risk as an essential park of play? 

Charlie Thomas in New Orleans, from the first Preservation Skateboards ad.  When static forms are a part of a playground, the flexibility of how we interface with these forms determines the possiblities for play.  Variation in form + imagination + flexible tools = infinite possibilities of interaction.

Enter skateboarding: a relatively brand-new form of recreation, it is the 3rd most popular teenage sport in the United States and sorely underrepresented in most parks systems.  Based in free-form creativity and exploration of our environment, some cities have even developed skatepark master plans (Seattle Citywide Skatepark Plan is a great example of this).  ASTM F2334-09 - "Standard Guide for Above-Ground Public Use Skatepark Facilities" specifies methods for safe skateable space, which can be moveable and open to interpretation.  By creating specifications for accepted replicability, these ASTM standards allow for municipalities to accept + insure skateparks instead of pulling out bulldozers in fear of someone hurting themselves.  By paying attention to ASTM Standards, Parisite Skatepark's DIY features were not demolished by the forces that be, and instead have been accepted by a recreation department looking for relevant ways to provide for local youth. 

Is it best to take something as organic, spontaneous, and alive as adventure play and codify it for acceptance?  How far can a "best practice" be stretched to balance invigorating, innovative, efficient usage of our world with safety?  I can't answer that. But if it is a means towards folks of all ages accessing otherwise-nonexistant physical, unprescribed, and interactive environments, I'm for it. 

Will free play keep humans from becoming cyborgs?  Not by itself, but it's a start!

*"There was a wealth of waste material on it and no man-made fixtures. The children could dig, build houses, experiment with sand, water or fire and play games of adventure and make believe." via Play and Playground Encyclopedia

moving water elsewhere.

best buds in the rain.

canal waters froze time. 

wetland flux

On a recent job we replicated flotants in open cisterns used to manage stormwater, primarily using driftwood to create a substrate for soil + plants to hold onto.  Dr. Thomas' mention of the change from floating marsh to swamp forest as woody plants root and take over reminds me of a recent trip to Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, in South Carolina just above Savannah, GA.  Shown in the photo below, cattails are involved in transforming this freshwater pond into a maritime forest -- as cattails fall, they fill in the swamp's depression and build soil as they break down. 

White Ibis rookery.  Scarlet Ibis are in the area as well but are more easily found around the Savannah Wildlife Refuge to the southwest.

mama gator, about 11' long.  We counted 12 young gators in the area, each about 30" long - swimming, basking, and resting in the shade. Note Typha (cattail) colonizing exposed mud.

About 2/3 of the Pinckney refuge is comprised of salt marsh and tidal creeks, where Ibis can be found eating.

Union, SC, Hwy 215

"Dinosaur Apocalypse, erase the human parisite"

So a few coyotes are all up in City Park, and have killed some peoples' pets, and its up on the news etc. Growing up, undomesticated animals regularly lead to injuries/deaths of my own + friends' pets. In many areas it is common knowledge that animals attack other animals.  I remember when an alligator ate  a friend's date's dog, while on a walk in City Park years ago.  In San Diego, lost cats are assumed to be coyote snacks, no big deal. [RIP Spot, gotta watch out for them possums]

I hope they don't attack a kid (which hasn't happened, but people are scared of it), in the same way that I hope a car doesn't run over a kid (which happens regularly, but driving is so convenient), or that someone isn't booted from their house in favor of a more financially stable resident (which I'm sure can be connected to all of this but its too early in the morning and you don't wanna read me rant).

Coyotes are invasive, and so is the human. Coyotes have a mechanism for handling excessive population density: fighting intruder coyotes, potentially to the death. Rumor has it that many coyotes were actually unsuccessfully brought to NO, to solve the invasive nutria problem, who were introduced in 1930's from S America for fur farming industry. But thats another story. At what point do we concede that people have changed the environment so much that many "invasive" species are actually "mismanaged" due to our own invasiveness, overdevelopment, and general messing with everything for our own benefit without expectation of repurcussions?? Our population is tipping the environmental seesaw down into the mud til it aint a fun game anymore and on the other end we are rocketing any non-human entities into space because its OUR game and THEY don't get to help choose the rules.

Thinking of situations in which animal (or plant, etc) populations have been accounted for as human populations expand. Like, wildlife crossing bridges, or even less after-the-fact*. What examples do you have, where human infrastructure and development has made ways for coexistence with the untamed world?

wildlife crossing at Banff Nat'l Park, Alberta, Canada (via Twisted Sifter link below)

 Amazing Animal Bridges Around the World, via Twisted Sifter
A History of Urban Coyote Problems, by Robert M Timm + Rex O Baker

*due to nature's resilience, achieved over millions of years, the repercussions of human actions often go without visibility for a long time (as viewed by such short-lived creatures as humans).  This means that the initial (often forseeable yet ignored) harm on the environment is sometimes passed on to unsuspecting populations in the future, or simply acknowledged in some way later on (such as creating landbridges over existing highways).  Any stats on how often wildlife bridges are constructed at the same time as the highways they try to mitigate?