Light Like Christmas Cookies

How perfect: a sunny Christmas Day, 50 degrees, and eight off-trail hikers who met through Meetup.com, for various reasons all of us free on Christmas afternoon to explore LaBarque Creek Conservation Area and Natural Area, 639 acres, almost all forested, including seasonal waterfalls on LaBarque Creek tributaries. This was our second annual Christmas Day hike; last year's was snowy, cloudy, and icy. This year's had the pale yellow light of Christmas cookies. Recent rains allowed us to see running streamlets with green-and-gold pools up to three feet deep. We found that the Conservation Department has been sawing down red cedar trees, an invasive, non-native species, so that natural Missouri dolomite and sandstone glades can restore themselves. The downed trees made our going rough at times. But we were out for adventure. Above you see our leader, Kim.

I am always at the end of the line of hikers, about 45 seconds behind the rest despite my best efforts. This is called "being the sweep," and it is a job: The "sweep" makes sure the number of hikers leaving the woods is the same number that came in. One of us slipped on wet rock and fell, but it wasn't me; unfortunately he landed on, and broke the screen of, his cellphone.

(Excuse me--I have to go--the kitchen mousetrap just went "snap"!)

Valley View Glades Natural Area

On Highway B near Morse Mill, in Jefferson County, is a conservation area called Valley View Glades. I hiked its trail late last year and vowed to return when spring came, because a glade in bloom is a marvelous thing to see.

Come on out soon. You needn't walk the 2.6 mile trail loop. The most amazing vistas in Valley View Glades are at the beginning of the trail, whether you choose to walk left or right. There really is a valley view. Here's more info and a map.

What's a glade? It's not that stuff in cans: It's an outcropping of rock and thin soil, just enough to support echinaceas, coreopsis and other wildflowers, on a south-facing hillside--a unique kind of ecosystem. Missouri's natural glades get clogged up by invasive red cedars, so conservationists cut down the cedars to preserve the glades' sunny openness and protect the habitat of special creatures such as salamanders who live in glades.

Should you want to hike the complete trail, it's very rocky most of its 2.6 miles. Bring water. I found my walking poles to be most helpful. You will stepping-stone across at least two pretty brooks.

Rare Pink Dolomite

Found this specimen while hiking the rocky 2.6 mile trail at Valley View Natural Area, in Jefferson County, 2 miles south of Morse Mill. It's one of the two areas in Jefferson County where dolomite glades, or rocky outcroppings, often south-facing and hot and dry, are preserved with controlled burns and cedar-tree removal -- the only way to preserve this once-common and precious Missouri natural feature. Glades support wildflowers and wildlife that thrive nowhere else (and are prettiest in spring). Cedar trees are invasives which entered the area along with mass settlement about 150 years ago, and they overtake glades and native oak-hickory forests unless they are stopped.

But we were speaking of dolomite. Even geologists don't agree on what it is, except that it's calcium and magnesium somehow mixed, and rarely there are pink examples of it, probably from being mixed with a little iron. A dryer-sized chunk of petrified mud had this chip broken off of it, revealing lovely sparkling stone bubbles (saddles) and glittering crystals.

I learned today that flipping flat rocks looking for creatures or fossils underneath them -- and not replacing them-- destroys the flora and fauna that lived in that environment. I was never in the habit of flipping rocks but now I know for certain that it's bad manners.