Yesterday, because it was the last warmly sunny one for a bit, I revisited a site I haven't been to for years, though I once went every spring because of the wildflowers in the woods, usually two overlapping, the relatively rare bloodroot and the everywhere Dutchman's breeches. I've been fascinated with the toxic bloodroot since I belonged to 4-H and attended a camp in Ponca State Park near Sioux City, the only other place I've ever seen it. I still remember the awe at the running red sap (which can destroy skin tissue) when the counselor pulled one up and cut the rhizome root (like iris). We were told it was protected because of its rarity.
So off to western Iowa's famous Loess Hills, a National Natural Landmark, publicized as being the only major loess site here to match China's, though Washington's Palouse district and the lower Mississippi valley also have these odd hills formed of very fertile, fine wind-blown silt piled up over the millenia, here running at the east edge of the broad Missouri River flood plain. I always think of them as great wrinkled beasts slumped against the land, as some of these photos demonstrate near Little Sioux, for the trees didn't obscure the landscape as they do most of the year.
It isn't as obvious as I had hoped, but this view, at the south edge of Pisgah, illustrates the peculiar terraces formed as regularly as Incan or Oriental but natural, the earth sliding down in wide, long stairs like the geological lines on a hiking map. Incidentally, Pisgah still has the The Old Home Fill-'er-up and Keep-on-Truckin' Cafe made famous by C.W. McCall's hit, "Audubon."
At the entrance of my destination, Preparation Canyon State Park, is one of the typical ridge spines that make those huge wrinkles in the hillscape, and some of those terraces are visible here before the eastern red cedar--actually not a cedar but a juniper--start.
An independent Mormon group in 1853 split off from Kanesville (Council Bluffs) and the main route to Utah from Nauvoo, Illinois, to head north to the Soldier River and settle at the park site, like a similar group that trekked up to my home county and built a canal west of Niobrara, to be mostly killed by the winter. The town originally was at the east edge of the very hilly park between Pisgah and Moorhead; I have never visited the Preparation Cemetery. I am fond of the park for its plunging trails into and out of deep ravines, though my niece, when she was little, was terrified by the woods--too much like fairytale nightmares--and we had to turn back to sunnier safety. However, on this very windy day, my knees were too clenched to go far, but this view illustrates the terrain, with some bloodroot scattered at the left.
And here is the beautiful little flower with its two odd lobed leaves (often likened to the liver shape), near the end of the season, many plants just having bare stems left. All the mottled green leaves around the bloodroot plants will shortly be hoisting upside-down pantaloons, hence the Dutchman's breeches name. Obviously, they will soon cover the forest floor. My timing and the season once was such that, as I said, I could see both on the same visit. But it was still worth a spring afternoon.
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