Summer Camp with Fresh Air Family
Do you know about Ruffner summer camps? For the months of June and July, Ruffner Mountain in partnership with Fresh Air Family will present nature-inspired summer camps for ages 3-5 and grades 1-6. For more information see the flyer below or visit http://www.freshairfamily.org/#!ruffner-mountain-camps/c1jrw.
Spend the summer with Ruffner!
New and Improved: Irondale Trailhead
Here's another shot from our staff trail work day last Thursday. We cleared a whole lot of invasives like privet and wisteria, installed a new gravel pathway and raised bed for gardening, and soon, we will add three new insect condos built by the inimitable Jon Woolley (@littleforest_). If you happen to find yourself in Irondale, driving or cycling down Ruffner Road, be sure to check out the new trailhead. Our new design will reduce the impact of automobiles (call it the "tireprint") on the trailhead environment while promoting biodiversity of the native flora and fauna. Healthier wildlife means happier hiking!
Tomorrow! Night of the Fireflies
If you are a Ruffner or Sierra Club member and plan to attend, please fill out the form below. Non-members, scroll down to sign up!
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 1, Ruffner Mountain members will have the chance to see one of the year's most spectacular outdoor phenomena, the annual synchronous firefly event. Every spring, in late-May to mid-June, fireflies biolumenesce as part of their regular mating ritual—the males flying and flashing as a display to the females, who remain stationary and flash. The resulting light show is unlike any other.
We will meet at Ruffner Ball Park entrance at 7PM. This event is open to all Ruffner Mountain Members.
To become a member, click the button below that's right for you
The Great Southern Brood
“……there was a numerous company of Flies, which were like for bigness unto Wasps or Bumble-Bees, they came out of little holes in the ground, and did eat up the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers;……”
“……there was such a swarm of a certain sort of insects in that English colony, that for the space of 200 miles they poysond and destroyed all the trees of that country. There being found innumerable little holes in the ground, out of which those insects broke forth in the form of maggots, which turned into flyes that had a kind of taile or sting, which they struck into the tree, and thereby envenomed and killed it..”
The excerpts above were taken from accounts by New England Colonists in the late 17th century. The shock of encountering the deafening blanket of the cicada's call for the very first time must have shaken the colonists, wary of so many new sights and sounds in the New world.
The image that you see above is of a 13-year periodical cicada of Brood XIX. In May of 2011, cicadas from this particular group began to emerge all over the Southeast, Alabama included. By June, the cicadas had begun to die off en masse.
Periodical cicadas are divided into 13-year and 17-year groups, each corresponding to a particular "brood." Broad XIX covers almost all of the Southeast, including Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, South Carolina, and Virginia. The immature (nymph) cicada finds roots on which to feed underground and will spend anywhere from 2 to 17 years feeding and tunneling below the earth's surface. Upon emergence, the nymph quickly finds and attaches itself to a tree to begin sloughing its exoskeleton. When the nymph has fully freed itself, it begins its new life as an adult cicada and the process starts all over again!
Your next chance to see, or hear, Brood XIX will be in 2024. For now, they wait below the surface, till they emerge to sing their song once more. In our fast-paced world of instantaneous connection and ephemeral pleasure, we should consider the time-scale of the cicada, its rhythms and reliance on the earth itself as time-piece.
The Common Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)
Wild South & Ruffner Mountain Present: Wrenched
Edward Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies and anarchist political views. His best known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire.
The film Wrenched captures the passing of the monkey wrench from the pioneers of eco-activism to the new generation which will carry Edward Abbey’s legacy into the 21st century. The fight continues to sustain the last bastion of the American wilderness – the spirit of the West.
On Friday, May 20 at 7 p.m. Wild South and Ruffner Mountain will proudly present an exclusive screening of the film, Wrenched. Tickets are $10 online (which includes one drink) and $15 at the door (no drink ticket included). All proceeds will be donated to Wild South and Ruffner Mountain. Seating is limited to 40 so purchase your ticket now to secure a seat!