Snowden, Where Shinrin-Yoku Awaits You by Janet Rogal

Finding the right place to volunteer as a Texas Master Naturalist trainee can be a daunting task. You know you need to complete your 40 hours of volunteer work for certification, you want to follow your interests, and you want to feel like you are making a contribution to the environment with your newfound and exciting knowledge. The Snowden Tract on the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve (BCP) is where I started and completed my 40 hours for certification last year. However, more than a year later, I still eagerly wake up nearly every Wednesday morning  to volunteer there, no longer thinking about how many hours I need because Snowden beckons me to return. It is the sound of the wind in the trees, the red- shouldered hawk that circles above calling out, the palette of plant colors, the smells of the ashe juniper and leaf litter on the forest floor with mycorrhizal fungi thriving beneath, stretching their long fibers and occasionally producing mushrooms, the moss covered rocks in the small stream, bluebonnets, the bright red flowers of the cedar sage on the forest floor, Mexican plum and redbud in bloom, a rare madrone tree and marbleseed plants, the seasonal flowers, the colorful fungi on tree branches, the insects and butterflies pollinating the plants and trees, and the quaint little Snowden house with the long covered deck wrapping around that keeps me going back to that unique place. It is a hidden gem, a place where you can feel all of your stress disappear and a place where  time stands still. It is the shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, that Jeremy Hull of the BCP who gives us our work assignments for the morning tells us about.  However,  most of all it is sharing this experience with the amazing people who volunteer or work there that keep me going back to Snowden.

My first job at Snowden was to help remove the invasive ground cover, vinca, with Jeremy Hull and Johanna Arendt. Jeremy talked about how this was a very big job and would take a long time, and for almost as far as the eye could see there was a carpet of green vinca, a native plant of Western Asia and Europe that chokes out the native Texas plants and spreads profusely under the shade of trees.  Johanna gently removed sleeping scorpions from underneath the landscape fabric that had worked quite well in halting the growth of the vinca, and we dug out vinca for two hours filling tall yard paper bags to the brim, but there was still a lot more to go. I must confess, I had some vinca in my yard, so the next day I set about to rip it all out! It was January and quite cold the next time I worked at Snowden, and Jeremy showed us the Frost Weed behind the Snowden house with its white twisted ice fibers leaking out of the lower stem looking like white cotton candy. We spent nearly every Wednesday morning that Spring weeding and removing invasive species. There was so much to do and so much to learn, with a vast  diversity of plants, and the ladies, I have dubbed “the NPSOT Queens” (Native Plant Society of Texas), were there possessing such vast knowledge of plants that your head would spin. Yates Barrera, Katherine Walsh, Jackie O’Keefe, and Kathryn Teich, who was also in my Texas Master Naturalist class along with our other classmate Robbie Sherfy, a master gardener, are all able to identify and talk about the unique characteristics of native and invasive plants. When one person cannot identify a plant, a discussion ensues with, “Maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that”. Jackie and Kathryn rattle off plant names in Latin. Robbie comes up with some humorous acronym or tells us a story.  If they are still debating, the ladies go to Jeremy or Katherine or Yates who will most likely know, and a final resource is of course the iNaturalist app. It soon became clear that because of my love of plants and yearning  to learn more about our native plant species, Snowden was a perfect place for me to volunteer. Besides, who wouldn’t want to spend time with like-minded, knowledgeable, and friendly people. Maybe it’s the shinrin-yoku experience as well that keeps us all coming back.

Yates Berrera is a venerated member of the group who has been volunteering at Snowden for ten years now.  Johanna and Jeremy have both said that they have learned a lot from her. Yates had been volunteering at a few different places on the BCP when she received a request  to organize some books at the Snowden house. As she was fulfilling that request, she noticed that the garden around Snowden needed attention, and the BCP readily accepted her offer to work there as she is an experienced gardener and a member of NPSOT. She had a vision that Snowden could be a good example of a native garden that the public could see and be inspired by to plant native plants in their own yards in Austin.  She began bringing out native plants from her yard to plant around the Snowden house. Soon she was joined by other volunteers who also bought their plants, and together they enhanced and overhauled the lovely gardens that are there today.  Katherine Walsh joined with some of the early volunteers, and she and Yates are usually side by side working together. Yates is considered the “primary initiator” of the Snowden garden. When the BCP first purchased the Snowden property, it had quite a few non-native plants, and since it was at one time a 220 acre working cattle ranch, it has taken years to clean up old farm equipment, barbed wire, piles of nails, broken tile, vegetables like leeks, ochre, and asparagus, and a stand of bamboo. At one time there was a bait shop that people could drive up to and get fishing bait, where they most likely went to Volente to fish in the lake. Today the old bait house is a nice storage shed for garden equipment. Although there was a lot to clean up and still is, Aletha Snowden, 1930-2011,  former owner of the property, was an avid gardener and bird lover and a member of the Anderson Mill Gardening Club. Her obituary testifies to her rich life where her gardens and landscaping were, “marvelous creations that delighted the senses and provided food and shelter for birds and other wildlife.” She was a strong woman who “hunted Nazi spies in the storm sewers of Lubbock” and “survived a rattlesnake bite while protecting her grandson”. [htttp://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?n=aletha-snowden]

Yates says, “We need more volunteers!”

Besides gardening, Jeremy Hull, Community Liaison Supervisor for Travis County Natural Resources, has given us many other tasks. We have all learned so much from Jeremy. He is charismatic and willingly shares his knowledge of plants, animals, birds, land management, and other topics with us.  Some of our other jobs have been to stain the new bridge over the creek,  work on a project to label the plants in the garden, clean out and organize the old shed, put together picnic tables, regularly clean out the small pond, and my favorite: seed collection. During seed collection, I try to stick close by to the NPSOT queens as they will be enthusiastically identifying plants along the way. Kathryn Teich will often lead me into dense underbrush where we may need to crawl on our hands knees to get through the undergrowth and work our way around Ashe Juniper branches. One day we found a large dense group of Shin Oaks that don’t get much over 5 feet and are a perfect breeding ground for the Black Capped Vireo. I marveled at a tall tree along the old farm road and we found it to be an Escarpment Cherry with its baby trees surrounding it. We saw numerous fossils on what is fondly named fossil hill and talked about how this land was once covered by a vast shallow sea about 250 million years ago. Mountain pinks, twistleaf yucca, and native grasses grow in the dry limestone soil up there, and the hills are graced with the long sweeping stems of Nolina. We found a deer skull and saw animal tracks and scat. Mika Geiger had brought her camera that day to capture macro photos of insects and on the way back stumbled upon earthworm castings. Not knowing what it was, I used  the iNaturalist app which identified it as horse manure! When Jeremy saw the picture he knew what it was, and we all had a good laugh about that. The seeds we collect on seed collections days are planted in the early Spring in the expanding garden around the Snowden house. After a NPSOT plant rescue, Jannelle Imkin and others brought some plants to Snowden. I helped Jannelle pick out a special place to plant a small fern and we check on it every week. One week she brought out rare orchids called ladies tresses. One of them was in bloom, and she was delighted to show it to us as she cupped it in her hands. Her joy was infectious.

The Snowden house is also a perfect meeting place for many activities. NPSOT has given classes there. The boy scouts and girl scouts have congregated there to learn about the native gardens. Last year there was a well attended raptor talk and demonstration arranged by our chapter. Just before the holidays last year, Johanna put together a fun holiday nature craft workshop with nuts, leaves, and stems found at 

Snowden.  We also had our chapter’s recent board retreat there. Part of the MycoBlitz study, a joint study on mycorrhizal fungi with the BCP and Northern Arizona State University, was conducted at the Snowden tract with samples from all over the BCP stored in the Snowden house refrigerator, so over the years the Snowden tract has become a jewel in the BCP crown. Here is what the BCP says about the tract:

“The Snowden tract is a special place on the Travis County BCP. The family the county purchased the land from was passionate about native plant gardening and birding and wanted the land to be used to continue to educate the public. To make that goal a reality the grounds around the Snowden House have been transformed into native plant gardens with over 100 different species by a dedicated group of volunteers, and the house serves as a hub for our volunteer program and kickoff point for guided hikes and volunteer workdays. The tract just has great energy, and you never leave Snowden feeling worse than when you arrived.”

Yes. you never feel worse. You leave with a smile on your face and peace in your soul because you have experienced the magic of shinrin-yoku at Snowden.

Many thanks to Jeremy Hull for sharing his knowledge about and experience at Snowden for making this blog possible and Yates Berrera for her invaluable inspiration and work in the garden.