Our Environment: “Beating It from Providence” By Scott Turner
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Our family of four stopped the world for a few hours last Sunday afternoon.
We beat it from Providence to a sanctuary managed by The Nature Conservancy in Narragansett.
Parking the car in a small lot, we padded off through two modest meadows into a swamp.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWide rhubarb-like leaves of skunk cabbage covered the muck, framed by tall ferns that flanked the trail.
Red clover, wild geranium, rue and buttercups spread where sunlight reached the wooden boardwalk, which kept our tootsies dry above the wet ground.
Rachel is 21 and Noah is 19. Karen and I were thrilled that they wanted to join our adventure.
When I asked Noah what he thought of when I said the word, “buttercup,” he responded, “Build me up Buttercup,” the 1968 song by the group, The Foundations.
For me, I said the word conjured up the farm-girl/princess character, Buttercup, played by Robin Wright in the movie, Princess Bride.
Sunlight filtering through the tupelos lit-up jewelweed bunched by the trail. Also present was a good number of Jack-in-the-pulpit plants, where shade overtook the path.
For a wildflower, Jack-in-the-pulpit is uncommonly large. It features three leaves and below that foliage, a relatively big, cylindrical, hooded flower that is green with brown stripes. Jack-in-the-pulpit is an indicator that you are in rich, moist, deciduous woods and floodplain.
A good deal of bird sound came from surrounding vegetation, especially where it opened from swamp to scrub.
Several times we heard the “chewink” call of an Eastern Towhee. Once more common, Eastern Towhee numbers declined by 49 percent between 1966 and 2015, with the spread of subdivisions and clearing of scrubland, noted the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology,
We also heard the “pick-chick-a-whew” call of a White-eyed vireo. That’s not a cry we hear often, although we should have figured that it would emanate from the species’ preferred habitat of scrubby overgrowth.
Where freshwater collected in a marsh-like setting, we discovered blue flag, a native cousin of garden iris. The blue flag displayed slender leaves and a mostly-blue flower, with a stunning white-and-yellow vein pattern.
Karen and I knew the trail led to the ocean, but the kids didn’t. How fun it was to witness their surprise and wonder, as we passed beds of daisies in the open sea air, followed by hedgerows of Rosa rugose, the common rose of shorelines, introduced into North America from Asia long ago.
In some borders, the roses flowered pink. In others, the flowers were bright white. Close to the blossoms, the air smelled of their pleasant scent.
Like two sideways-moving sand crabs, the kids scampered down thin pathways to great stretches of stone smeared by white-rimmed waves. Shallow tidal pools featured cold, clear water in which we dipped our toes.
Periwinkles clung to crevices that filled and emptied with each wave. Mats of rockweed, the brown, bladder-rich seaweed, swayed between outcrops.
I saw Rachel step away to an adjacent headland, where she crouched, appearing to study the sea. Then she stretched and pirouetted at the same time.
This gathering of our family was something much bigger than its four individual components. I thought of the song, “Is That All There Is” crooned by Peggy Lee. The tune captures the human condition in just a few words, “Is that all there is, is that all there is? If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing…”
Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.
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