When was the last time you left the comforting lights of your home or campfire and stepped into the darkness? Familiar places take on a mysterious look. Colors vanish and the world closes in as your view becomes limited. You begin to depend more on your ears as your eyes fail. It can be a little spooky, and yet adventurous. Ever since that first campfire man has become addicted to light. We don't feel comfortable outside of the illumination of electric lights, flashlights, or fire. The darkness has become a foreign, forbidding place.

Most people associate butterflies with flowers, watching them tranquilly sipping nectar like royalty. However, you may also see butterflies hanging around less savory food.

By: Steve Roark
Volunteer Interpreter: Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
With all the rainfall we’ve had, clouds have been pretty common of late. And when you look up at fluffy clouds suspended in the sky, you naturally think they do not weigh much since they are literally floating on air. But taken as a whole, there is a surprising amount of weight hanging up there.

Driving down the road you may enjoy seeing pasture and hay fields full of lovely yellow flowers, which are buttercups. While I agree they create an attractive scene, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing in that they are toxic if eaten by livestock and compete with the grass for nutrients, sun and other resources.

We all enjoy the thrill of seeing large wild animals such as a deer or bear, but imagine the adrenaline buzz if you could have seen some of the extinct animals that fossil records indicate once roamed our area not so long ago.

Hand washing has certainly come to the forefront these days, and rightfully so. The experts say frequent and thorough hand washing is the most important thing you can do for defense against Covid-19. And it’s been an important health action for many decades, but this hasn’t always been the case. For thousands of years people were getting sick or dying from contamination spread by unclean hands, but no one knew anything about bacteria or viruses and such. The first glimmer that clean hands were a big deal occurred in 1847 in an unusual manner.

By: Steve Roark
Volunteer: Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
Beautiful spring mornings are often accented with the distant sound of woodpecker drumming. During this time of year, the males use drumming on trees and even metal roofs to announce their territory and attract a mate.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is an interesting plant found in rich, moist, forested areas in deep hollows and drains. East and north facing lower slopes are its favored habitat, where it can be pretty prolific

Ginger has a stem (called a rhizome) that grows low along the ground with pairs of heart shaped leaves sticking up through the leaf litter. The leaf stems are very hairy. If you scratch around under the leaves in the spring you may find a brownish purple flower with three petals. If you break off a piece of the rhizome it will have the strong smell like ginger.

Utility Services are what makes our homes comfortable, providing electricity, water, sewage disposal, etc. It’s easy to forget that these services are provided through wires and pipes that are overhead or below ground. When trees are planted near these lines there could be trouble in the future, so think before you plant. Here are some things to consider.

A bonus for getting out into the woods in early spring is enjoying those wildflowers that bloom while everything else is still asleep and dead looking. There is a short period when the ground warms a little and the forest floor is still receiving full sun that these early flowers, called ephemerals, manage to grow, bloom, produce seeds, and then die back in a short time frame. To pull this off they have a growth cycle backwards from other plants.