Corporate Voles

A couple of decades ago, West Publishing (then Thomson West and now Thomson Reuters) made the move to the burbs, trading urban bluff dwellings for a monolith surrounded by square miles of blacktop on the open prairie. The reasons included space, cheap space, and more space (I am sure there were other reasons, too, but I am sticking to the obvious).

I started working there a little more than one decade ago, and the daily trip from the parking lot to the building is somewhat of an adventure. In the summer, the blacktop traps the heat and it feels like the hike back to the car is through Dead Valley. I swear I have seen a Fata Morgana or two over the years, lush oases mirrored in the pools of boiling air. In the winter, if you shun the shuttles to company so kindly provides, one can entertain oneself with juvenile games like spitting on the ground to see whether your expectoration will bounce off the ground with a clink because it gets there flash-frozen.

There are some hiking trails and colleagues claim to have seen coyotes while taking a stroll during lunch break. I believe them because I have seen  evidence in the form of paw prints and scat. After a rain storm one can see deer tracks in some muddy puddle along the trail. Wild turkey are a common sighting, too.

I come in early enough to park near to the building and I therefore do not have too much of a hike between car, building and back. Not too much opportunity for wildlife spotting, one would think, but there is plenty.

I mentioned the savage winters. Because quite a few of us early birds do shun the shuttle and because the company fears liability, it installed a heated sidewalk along the roundabout, protecting us from slippery mishaps. One interesting phenomenon can be observed because while everywhere outside frost gets a grip on the land in late November, it does not have a chance under the heated sidewalk. The outcome is that where the footings are not below frost level, adjacent structures, mostly abutting sidewalks, are raised by up to a couple of inches, which makes the heated walkway seem sunk in.

Sunk by the heat or lifted by frost? The voles don't care, they like the heat!

The other observation I made is the surprising level of critter activity along the edge of the flower beds next to the heated sidewalk. By the time the snow melts, a well established vole colony is in evidence. Think of it, they have condos with central heat on one side and a larder well furnished with delicious and nutritious day lily rhizomes on the other.

Voles have no respect for proper decorum or corporate plantings. 

Not sure if the pest control guys can do much to keep these rodents in check where conditions are so favorable. I secretly hope they can't because I find the vole colony highly entertaining. But if West is serious about ridding itself of voles, it should consider building an in-ground pool in the vicinity. Voles love the water, but they do seem to forget that they are not very strong swimmers ...

Trip to Portland, OR: Portland Area

I enjoyed a few jogs through Portland parks and along the Willamette River. Wile I did not have much time to look at native fauna and flora, here are some impressions.

I ran several times in Washington Park, which is home to the Hoyt Arboretum and the Portland Zoo. I was impressed with the old-growth spruce and cedars. Walls and bluffs are thickly covered with English ivy (Hedera helix). The latter is an invasive species, listed by USDA and Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA). While the ivy cover looks pretty it should not be forgotten that the plant is as destructive as Kudzu in the US South.

I did notice at least three varieties of wild geranium.

Willamette River is a large river, seemingly larger than my point of reference, the Mississippi at St. Paul, MN. But that is just by appearance, maybe because of its width: the record discharge for the Mississippi was 170 kcfs while that of the Willamette was 39 kcfs.

Orienteering Setting Afton State Park

Today I visited Afton State Park to mark the control locations for the MNOC May 16 orienteering meet. (see also this post on my running blog). A good opportunity to check on how nature is coming along as our early spring is continuing. I traveled about 26 km/16 miles and covered a wide swath of the park.

I saw quite a few deer, a good sized male turkey, a turkey hen, a pileated woodpecker.

Anemones were blossoming all over the place, I saw Wood Anemone Anemone quinquefolia and Sharp-leaved Hepatica (Liverleaf), Hepatica acutiloba, both from the buttercup family. Less pleasant and rather disturbing was the prevalence of the invasive species common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) throughout the park. Unpleasant, but not disturbing were a few patches of prickly ash, Xanthoxylum americanum.

Mellie was along for about half of the outing, she is a great companion in the woods. All in all, a good time out!