It’s a considerable stretch of the imagination to call this Sunday’s outing a “hike” – it was more a walk in the park, since it was at the UAA Campus and we walked mostly on sidewalks or in parking lots. But, it was still fun, regardless.
I told people that I would have my car parked as close to the intersection of 36th and Lake Otis as I could get it, so I found my spot and settled in with my book to await everybody’s arrival. Not very much time later, Mother drove up in her truck with Kelly in the front seat and Noel in the back.
With a few minutes to exchange stuff (there’s always stuff to exchange), get coats and whatnot organized, and hand out the paperwork I brought with me – and we were ready to start on our Walk of Trees!
I had a map of the campus with locations marked on it for the trees we were to see, a document that explained each tree’s Latin name, common name, characteristics and date of planting, and a few more informational pages just in case: all complements of the Alaska Division of Forestry, Community Forestry Program. More specifically, Patricia Joyner: she was my “contact” at the forestry division, and had helped me out greatly on putting this outing together.
Help also came from my own company; Tamas Deak, our landscape architect, had helped Patricia put this together oringinally, along with Ed Leonetti, our other landscape architect. Both of whom sit not three desks away from me, and both of whom were quite happy to give me all the information I could handle (and then some more).
The campus at UAA is really quite beautiful. You drive past it every day, but you just don’t really see it. For instance, did you know they have a geological display of various rocks (quite large ones, too) dating back several thousands of years in age, all with informational plaques telling you where they came from and who donated them?
The trees were all in their fall colors, which admittedly isn’t that impressive in this state. The flowers, however, were quite beautiful. We all had fun trying to identify them (they were not on my map, so I didn’t have any cheat-sheets for them). I am happy to say that I actually knew one that no one else did! I am the world’s worst gardener – ask anybody, they’ll agree – but this was one that lives at the zoo, so I was able to give it a name: Berginia.
Fall is the time for berries, and they were out in full force! We resisted as long as we could but finally couldn’t stand it anymore and started picking when we came across the Nanking Cherry bush, located back behind the automotive building. Noel had a poop-bag (unused, thankfully) in her pocket, so we filled it with barely enough room to close it off. She made jam that night and passed out jars to each of us!
It took us a good two hours to see everything we wanted to see, by which time we were hungry so we headed off to The Moose’s Tooth for some pizza.
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