Erisman trail marking

Today was a memorial for a visionary woman I never got to meet. Adele Erisman was a wonderfully unassuming conservationist who gave most of her land, some 70 acres, to the Avalonia Land Conservancy before she passed away last year at the ripe old age of 104. By all accounts, I would have enjoyed her company, and she, apparently, liked mine, or at least the side of myself I reveal in my weekly natural history columns. If I didn't know her in life, I'm trying to make amends by honoring her memory as part of the work crew that marked a hiking trail on her preserve. I'd helped craft this loop trail, now delineated in blue, last spring. This year, we made certain that visitors could follow it without the necessity of having me as a guide. I suppose that makes me rather obsolete, but there are a few other secrets I've learned about Adele's place over the past year, and my photographs help preserve and reveal those discoveries.