The strom in the woods

Some shots from two walks- one Saturday night and one Sunday morning- assessing the damage from the storm around here.

Ground Hog Road blocked by two huge Locusts down.

Two sticks driven into the ground

Nope, not crossing there...

All right, Mom, I'm coming!

Laurie saw this from a distance Saturday... it was worse close up.

Ponding water because IPFW thinks all cover should be ripped out to make joggers and socceristas safe from hoods and perverts.

Here I'm going to editorialize yet again.  These poor trees were left when IPFW ripped out all the surrounding cover and destroyed the meadow that HAD been drinking up the rainwater flowing down from the clay-soiled woods.  They replaced the meadow with two terraced soccer pitches, built up with more clay pounded down by dozers and rollers and NO drainage put in.  It has destroyed the hydrology of the entire area, and could have been overcome by anyone with a third grade education who was raised in the country.  Because of this, the area at the foot of the soccer fields get saturated, and with the cover ripped out, these six trees stood no chance.  Anyone tells you Purdue is an intelligent, environmentally concerned outfit, YOU SHOW THEM the next couple of pictures.

Nuff said.

Going into the woods

Blockage #1- this one will take a while to move.  Took a while to go around...

Ahh, here's the other end..

Scrappy, as usual, steps in the water.  Sinks up to his butt, jumps out.

Oddly enough, though the small branches were mostly maple and locust, the individual leaves were nearly all pin oak.

I know it was old, dead, and hollow.  But it stood like a monument.

 I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

-Percy Shelley

This tree was massive... but parked on the top of a ledge...

Just before the bridge

Oddly enough, everything south of the bridge was okay, relatively.  Swamp checks out, too.

Going back up the trail towards home.  All lot of work and planning by IPFW put these trees in a position for this to happen.