Der Spreewald/The Spree Forest

People around here love to talk about the Spreewald and how fantastic it is. They say you can bicycle or stroll there, but that the best way to explore is with a canoe. So, I'd been dying to get my butt in a canoe! Thankfully, Lili came up with the genius idea of gathering her friends together for canoeing in the Spreewald as a way of celebrating her birthday! Wonderful idea!!







We had a great time. We had 3 kayaks and 1 canoe with 3 people in each. I found the kayak interesting because when I was in the rear position I had peddles with which to steer.

It was nice to be out in nature, especially on a weekend when I was writing a paper for Freshwater Restoration Ecology. It's one thing to read and write about waterbodies, but another thing to get to touch algae and look at big, leafy plants growing on the river bottom (these two are important characters in my paper, also known as cyanobacteria and submerged macrophytes, for those of you who want to learn big words).

Now, to give my honest opinion of the infamous Spreewald: it is nice, but no wild territory. The hand of man is written on every inch of the place, which gave me more of a feel of wandering through an amusement park than a forest. It's experiences like this that make me miss the United States. The more western parts of the United States, that is. I once had a professor at Au Sable Institute in Michigan tell this joke while we were taking a nature hike:

Prof. Bouma, "How do you figure out which way is north if you can't see the sun?"

Students' responses, "Look at the moss on the trees."

Prof. Bouma, "No, look for which direction a satellite on someone's roof is facing...because in Michigan there's always bound to be a house relatively nearby to where you think you are lost."

I actually did use the sun to help us navigate when we got a little lost canoeing. I want to thank my mother for teaching me how to read the sun. It's been a very helpful skill to possess, whether I'm in a foreign city or a forest.