DauphinIsland,AL

The weekend started off with a severe storm system that wandered east, letting it's warm, humid tail drag slowly across Saturday. The weather did make for a good day to clean inside, so that is what happened.

Sunday was bright and crisp. Sarah and I wanted a little escape from Biloxi so drove over to Dauphin Island for a day hiking through the bird sanctuaries and around the beaches located on the island's west end. What is now the island's west end used to be the middle until hurricane Katrina chopped the island in half. you should look at it on google earth; as you're zooming in you see the island as one long strand, then once you zoom in closer the updated aerials show it broken in half. You can see where the western tip is slowly elongating; like a finger nail or a claw. It will be many years before the island reconnects, if even at all. Whether it reconnects or not, it was a beautiful day and I'm sure there are many more to come.

Controlled Burn

Saturday morning I received a text from my ecologist friend 'It's a burn day - check your email for directions'. I drove out to an area called Black Creek Swamp where they were burning a pine savanna. By the time I got there the fire had already swept through a majority of the site leaving the ground chard, logs smoldering and a dry heat surrounded every step I made. The tops of black titi and inkberry were left green and shiny; spring blooms still hanging on. While it looks like something awful may have just occurred, burning is part of the natural cycle for pine savannas. Within weeks new vegetation, bright green, will be popping out of the ground - being fed by the new surge of nutrients and space available to them.

The pictures only tell part of the story. Being there, feeling the heat and breathing in the smoldering ground is a more powerful experience than the sight of it.