The funny thing is that nature is full of these sorts of things – objects that mimic much of our modern technology.  Or perhaps it’s more apt to suggest that our modern technology has taken many of its cues from examples found in nature.

Sometimes these examples are fairly simple.  Last winter, when Rebecca and I were out for a walk and my jacket suffered a zipper malfunction, she walked over to a stalk of burdock, grabbed some burs, and used them to close my jacket against the wind.  It was a Swiss gentleman, George de Mestral, who used the hooked design of the burdock bur to invent Velcro.

When I lead people on wilderness survival classes, they are often surprised to find that many modern conveniences are readily available in the woods.  We sip tea from straws made of reed, sleep on heated floors by burying hot stones in the ground beneath our blankets, and even enjoy fresh running water – straight from a spring.

When bow and turkey hunters venture out into the woods, they’re using tactics our ancestors learned from watching animals – namely the benefits of camouflage, which is the basis behind a leopard’s spots, a rabbit’s soft coloration, and the uncanny mimicry of many insects.  Even highly-advanced technology benefits from observing nature’s ingenuity.  The fluorescent wings of the African Swallowtail butterfly are giving researchers insight into creating more efficient LED lighting, and by studying the super-efficient flight of flies, scientists are creating micro-robotic replicas that could be used for surveillance.  Some futurists even suggest that the human species, with its growing interconnection via modern communication, is evolving into a unified network like a hive of bees.

As for me, I decided the next millennium was quite a way off, so when Rebecca wasn’t looking, I put up the applanatum shelf and set a few knick-knacks on it.  And to my relief, when she saw it, she liked it.

One of the most fascinating things about this one were the reports of the sonic boom — a house-shaking boom that some are saying didn’t arrive for 15 minutes after the fireball was visible. Now, by our calculations that’s a bit strange — 15 seconds would be a more likely arrival time, based on the height of our atmosphere and the speed of sound — but even a 15 second delay would be a remarkable experience.

Speaking of meteors and such, the Lyrids are here, and though they’re not the most active of showers, they can sometimes deliver bursts of 100 or more meteors per hour, so it’s worth taking a peek outside if you have clear night skies. Who knows? Maybe you’ll see a whopper like this one we saw last year!

Visit our Adventure Journal at Live the Juicy Life! to learn about this week’s nature adventures!

Yesterday, we did just that with some of the icicles that were hanging from our roof. We’ve seen icicles all our lives, and were used to seeing them from a single perspective — from a few feet away as we stood and observed. This time we got up close — really close — and looked at the end of an icicle as it dripped from the sun’s warmth. We had expected to find a sort of rounded tip of ice from which the water was dropping, but it wasn’t so. What we saw was a complex crystalline structure, grooved and angular and seemingly hollow-tipped. Its delicate beauty was nothing less than breathtaking.

This has us wondering — what other ‘everyday’ things around us would reveal amazing surprises if we took the time to look up close? Sounds like the beginning of a new quest . . .

The Leonids are coming, and it sounds like it’s going to be a big one this year!  With the new moon keeping the skies dark, all we have to hope for is a cloudless sky. Asia will get a much more impressive display — estimates range as high as 300 per hour — but we can hope for 30 or so, with the possibility of some wild fireballs thrown in to the display. Get up in the wee hours of the morning, bundle up, and head outside. It might just be a night to remember =)

Hopefully you’re not covered in clouds like we are, because if our experience of a couple days past is any indication, the Orionids could give us quite a  display this year. While coming home very late (after midnight) a few nights ago, the sky was suddenly illuminated by a bright green fireball streaking down from the sky — the largest and brightest we’ve ever seen. It moved very slowly through the sky, dropping out of sight below the horizon line. The picture above is not a real photograph (as you’ll quickly be able to tell if you’re familiar with constellations since the star field is just random dots), but is a re-construction made with a photo-editing program so that we could re-capture from our memories the vision of this amazing sight.

If you get clear skies, it might be worth it to brave the cold and sit for awhile, gazing upward. The Orionids are not known for a high volume of falls, but they do have a reputation for producing some spectacular fireballs, and for us, at least, that reputation is well deserved. Happy Viewing!

Visit our Adventure Journal at Live the Juicy Life! to learn about this week’s adventures, and visit Zen Inspired Self-Development to get an interesting perspective on the process of making movies.

While others are big enough to stand in –

And others are quite immense –

Many remain unexcavated, and could be sixty feet deep or more! It was interesting to consider the small ponds that had made their homes in the potholes, and it would be a fun project to document the life that calls these ‘pothole ponds’ home.

We also had other adventures at Interstate Park. We rescued a confused and exhausted goose that was running about in a local intersection– with some difficulty we caught it and took it down the riverbank. We also had some great fun climbing the cliffs.

Kenton on his way up.

Rebecca scouting her next move.

Interstate Park is definitely worth the visit — it boasts the highest concentration of these potholes in the world. We’d recommend a week-day visit if you can, however, as it is VERY popular, and the weekends can be extremely crowded. Do let us know if you pay it a visit!

This is one of the biggies, and tonight and tomorrow night are peak viewing times, the only ‘downer’ being the gibbous moon that will shed a little too much light on the subject.  You can expect to see a lot of falling stars — perhaps up to one a minute — and in the early evening, when the moon is still not interfering, you have a good chance of seeing ‘Earthgrazers’ — meteors that approach from the direction of the horizon, leaving long, bright, colorful trails.  They’re a real treat to see.  Find a good north vantage for prior-to-midnight viewing.  Enjoy!

If you haven’t already, it’s time to go out and see the Delta Aquarids.  They peak at the end of the month, but they’re active now — last evening we saw some great ones.  You’re fine going out any time that the sky is clear, but if you’re serious about things, go out in the wee hours before dawn.  The New Moon right now means that the sky is nice and dark.

Enjoy!

It was only later that we learned that this wasn’t a sundog at all, but rather a phenomenon called a 22 degree halo.  Sundogs are bright points that form on halos.  In fact, there are a whole mess of cool sun- (and sometimes moon-) associated rings, bright spots, and other visual amazements formed by ice crystals in the sky.   Here is a link to some great photos at Wikipedia.

This was an excellent reminder to us that it’s always good to stop throughout the day and look around ourselves.  There’s sure to be something interesting on the ground, over the horizon, or right up above us in the sky!

We were waiting for a special visitor that my brother and his wife had seen just the day before — that famous sucker of sap, the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.  But the sapsucker declined to put in an appearance,  so we had to console ourselves with observing the shallow holes the bird had created in the maple’s bark.

The whole affair got us pretty hungry, so after taking some pictures, it was time for our own maple sap feast — this time with highly concentrated maple sap drizzled over pancakes.  I guess we like maple sap too!