Crown Hill Walk -- nonfiction

Here I am on the trail again. 

This time the walking group visited Crown Hill Park, a Jefferson County Open Space. The 242 acre park is fifteen minutes from my house. It has 9.5 miles of natural surface and paved trails, including 1.2 miles of paved trail around Crown Hill Lake. In the northwest corner of the park is Kestrel Pond, a certified National Urban Wildlife Refuge.

This truly is an urban wildlife refuge. The park sits on the border between Lakewood and Wheat Ridge, Colorado, in the midst of a human population estimated at almost 156,000.

Wheat Ridge High School is just beyond the northern limits of the park. In the background you can see the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The haze is from wild fires in the Pacific Northwest, some more than a thousand miles away. The jet stream (one of several upper air currents around the Earth) flowing from west to east carries the smoke across the mountains. The smoke then settles south along the east side of the Rockies compromising our mountain views and our air quality.

A gentleman just coming out of the wildlife part of the park, alerted us to the presence of a deer and her twin fawns ahead. The Mule Deer doe calmly grazed in the meadow as we walked past. In the background you can see electric lines, and just beyond the trees is Wheat Ridge High School and the rest of the city.

  

Kestrel Pond is fenced so that it can be closed to humans during nesting season. This spring  it was closed for the early days of these two fawns' lives.

More a wetlands, than a pond, Kestrel Pond is home to migratory water birds and shore birds.

In addition to the Canada Geese on the bigger lake, we saw these on Kestrel Pond. The bird in the upper left is a Killdeer. The two larger birds are American Avocets and the little brown bird is a Sandpiper.

Not to be outdone by the fauna in the wildlife refuge, the flora is abundant this time of year including a plant I did not recognize.

This is the Arrowhead plant, also known as Indian potato. According to the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service the Indian potato or Wapato (Sagittaria cuneata) is common and widespread from eastern Alaska east to Newfoundland and south to Texas. The tubers have a potato-like texture but more the flavor of water chestnuts when boiled or roasted to remove their slightly bitter taste when raw. Arrowhead tubers grow in muddy soil underwater and were harvested by Indians using sticks or with their bare feet (once freed, the tubers float to the surface to be gathered).

None of us knew of their special properties, though I doubt any of us were inclined to squish around barefoot in the mud to harvest them.

Another plant new to me is the Red Smartweed -- apparently an invasive species that's hard to kill out, but very pretty with its bright fuchsia colored flowers.





I love living here. Here I am in the midst of suburbia complete with decent public transportation, excellent medical facilities, ample shopping, and world-class entertainment venues and still have the natural world practically outside my front door.