Category: Unbound

Trade in your coat for a swimsuit and your hand lotion for sunscreen—it’s finally time to come out of hibernation. We’ve compiled the best ways to take advantage of the warmer weather on the water: a kayak race down the Rivanna, fly-fishing for novices and, of course, a lazy river float. We’ll see you on the water.

While the average person can distinguish a bluebird from a cardinal and a duck from a goose, bird-watching hobbyists, called “birders,” revel in the vastness of the avian world.

“There’s a real excitement when you’re out birding,” says Myrlene Staten, membership chair for the Monticello Bird Club. “It’s like a great game of hide-and-seek.” The 165-member club, established in 1986, meets monthly at the Ivy Creek Natural Area and offers something for everyone—presentations by notable speakers, bird walks, field trips to natural areas and then some.

More than the activities, it’s the camaraderie of fellow birders that draws people to the community, and the love of sharing what they’ve seen of the Earth’s 10,500 species. Many in the club are certified Master Naturalists, but it’s a recreational pursuit accessible to people at any level, starting right in their backyard. It can be as simple as a stroll through the woods, looking up, or a thrilling hunt for more exotic species.

“There are degrees of birding,” says Doug Rogers, MBC president. “Some people focus on hearing the bird calls, some like to spot the birds with binoculars, and others try to photograph what they find.” (Rogers’ specialty is capturing images of birds in flight.) Many birders keep a “life list” of every species they’ve ever seen, including location and time of year, and they note the number of “life birds” (first time seeing a bird species) spotted on a particular outing.

Staten, who was attracted to birding after observing a gorgeous tropical motmot in Costa Rica, says it’s a holistic activity that appeals to young and older folks alike. “It’s a stimulating hobby in so many ways—you’re listening, watching, getting exercise—and it helps to study birds to know what you’re looking for, so it keeps you mentally sharp as well.” She takes online classes and reads bird books to be able to quickly identify what she sees.

Few birders will name an absolute favorite, but Rogers contemplates the existential. “If I wanted to be a bird, I’d be one of the gulls,” he says. “When you see them soaring, it looks like they’re having a really good time.”

 

Early birds

Sixteen-year-old Baxter Beamer, president of the Blue Ridge Young Birders Club, says the breadth of the hobby is virtually boundless. “I haven’t tried a form of birding that I don’t like,” he says. “There are so many ways to get into it.”

The club is for birders up to age 17, run by and for the youth members, and provides an entry point for learning about bird species and conservation through meetings, field trips, camps and competitions.

Beamer especially favors hawk-watching and is an official counter for the Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch at Afton Mountain. “They let us sit up there and we bring teles- copes and binoculars and cameras,” he says. “It’s a major flyway for raptors.”

The club is also involved in local bird-related issues, such as lobbying the Brooks Family YMCA to mitigate the recent problem of birds crashing into the large glass walls of the building.

Ezra Staengl, a 14-year-old who has been a club member since he was 9, won a bronze medal in the 2017 American Birding Association Young Birder of the Year competition using photography and writing from his birding blog, Birds and Buds. “In second grade I read about the decline and comeback of the peregrine falcon, and I realized that they lived right in my area,” he says. “I love falcons, and now I see quite a lot of them.” LM

“Come on, guys, cheer on your bowler!”

The prompt sends a wave of encouragement from the fielders as one of the bowlers for the Charlottesville Cricket Club gets a running start and uses a round-arm action to hurl the leather-bound ball down the dirt pitch toward the heavily padded batter at the other end. The ball sails past the batter and hits the wicket. The team erupts in cheers, because if this were a real game, the batter would have been out.

The club’s first practice session of the season in early March at Darden Towe Park consisted of an hour spent prepping the field, located directly behind the Little League diamond on the north side of the park, catching practice, then a practice game with several bowlers and batters taking turns at the pitch. The club, formed in 2002 by Dr. Prabhakar Reddi, has been using the county park as its practice and game space since 2008. Vice captain John D’Costa, who played cricket while growing up in India, says they are thankful the county helps maintain their pitch, which is a 22-yard-long dirt rectangle.

During the practice, several batters rack up runs by hitting fours and sixes. A four-run hit means the ball touches the ground before bouncing over the field’s boundary in any direction (unlike baseball, a batter can hit the ball forward, backward and to either side). A six-run hit occurs when the ball sails cleanly over the boundary line.

Similar to baseball, if a fielder for the opposite team catches a hit in the air, the batter is out (one of 10 ways a batter can get out). But the similarities end there; there are no bases to run in cricket. Two batters stand at the opposite end of the pitch near the wooden wicket stationed in the ground, and when a ball is hit (anything other than a four or six) the batters can run from one end of the pitch to the other. If both batters make it to the other end, that’s one run. They can run back and forth as many times until the ball reaches the hands of the wicket-keeper.

Cricket is the national sport of England and thus is “like religion” in India, which was ruled by England for 200 years, D’Costa says. The members of the Charlottesville cricket team come from several countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Australia and the West Indies. Many are grad students or work at UVA, and the roster varies year to year. But whenever they come to the cricket field, the players “forget where they are,” D’Costa says.

The ultimate goal is to send some of the Charlottesville players to the U.S. national team tryouts to compete on an international level with the best teams in the world. For now, the Charlottesville players enjoy the camaraderie at weekly practices and 12 games during their season, which runs from late March through September. But they’re always looking for more members—whether someone has never set foot on a pitch or grew up with a cricket bat in hand. The club is also starting a league on Saturdays in which anyone interested in learning the sport can play with a tape tennis ball, which is safer. The players hope to pass on the love of the sport to the next generation, so that cricket in Charlottesville and the Mid-Atlantic Cricket Conference grows.

“This is something that I love to do,” D’Costa says. “I grew up with this, and I want the first generation to take it over in the future. I give my heart for this.”

Park place

Darden Towe Park comprises 113 acres and includes a Little League baseball field, three softball fields, four multi-purpose fields for soccer, lacrosse and football, four tennis courts and 3.8 miles of trails.

As you drive the around the northwest side of the park, you’ll often spot outdoor-lovers in colorful life jackets loading kayaks into the Rivanna River. On the opposite end of the park, follow the sound of barking to the one-acre dog park, which seems to always have at least a couple of furry friends enjoying the fresh air.

Between Shenandoah National Park, Ivy Creek and Ragged Mountain (among others), there are (seemingly) more than enough natural attractions in our area. But we can’t overlook Charlottesville’s proximity to other noteworthy nature spots. Here are three we’re crossing off our list this season.

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

1800 Lakeside Ave. (Richmond)

This living museum offers more than 50 acres of gardens, from the whimsical (a thatched-roof cottage is the centerpiece of the conservatory) to the contemplative (Asian Valley, which houses plants and trees native to Asia, provides moments of reflection). Don’t miss the Cochrane Rose Garden, which boasts more than 70 varieties of roses from nurseries in France, Italy, Germany and England.

Edith J. Carrier Arboretum

780 University Blvd. (Harrisonburg)

Combining 33 acres of botanical gardens and 92 acres of forest, this Shenandoah Valley arboretum serves as a living laboratory for students of James Madison University, where it’s located. The grounds fulfill purposes of research, teaching and demonstration, as well as a brilliant display—natives, non-natives, an oak hickory forest, a lowland swale, herb and rose gardens, a pond habitat—for visitors.

Williamsburg Botanical Garden

5537 Centerville Rd. (Williamsburg)

Located at the center of Freedom Park, Williamsburg Botanical Garden stuns with 15 separate botanical areas, from a monarch butterfly waystation and wildflower meadow to three wetland areas and a bulb garden, which houses 15 kinds of daffodils that bloom from January to April. Sign up for a workshop and learn to garden with rocks, grow vegetables, understand snakes and more.

Ralph Sampson, Dawn Staley. Malcolm Brogdon, Tiki Barber. Leah Smith. It’s no secret that many storied athletes have graduated from the University of Virginia. What may not be as well-known, though, is that athletes (of both the varsity and casual variety) don’t spend all their time at venues like Scott Stadium, the John Paul Jones Arena or Davenport Field. There are plenty of lower-profile outdoor spots on Grounds where anyone can enjoy a game of pickup soccer, basketball, football or softball—and who knows Hoo you might run into.    

Now that they’ve had some time to recover from the premature and disappointing end to their 2017-18 basketball season, Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome or Isaiah Wilkins might be up for joining you in a game of H-O-R-S-E on one of the Dell basketball courts, located near Ruffner Hall on Emmet Street.

It was recently announced that two-time Super Bowl champ and UVA alum Chris Long is the featured speaker for this year’s Valedictory Exercises. But before he takes the stage on May 18, maybe you’ll find him tossing the pigskin around at Carr’s Hill Field, three acres of artificial turf on University Avenue.   

Washington Nationals first-baseman and former Virginia baseball standout Ryan Zimmerman won’t have much time to spare now that the Major League season has begun, but who’s to say he wouldn’t be up for a little batting practice at Copeley Field on Massie Road (across from the North Grounds Recreation Center) if he’s on Grounds come fall?

Sure, Danielle Collins recently defeated five-time Wimbledon winner Venus Williams at the Miami Open, but if the one-time Wahoo and two-time NCAA national singles champ has a break between WTA events, she might swing by her former home courts at the corner of Emmet Street and University Avenue and give you a few pointers on your backhand.

The next time Olympian, FIFA World Cup champion and two-time Hermann Trophy winner Morgan Brian is in town, the UVA First-Team All-American probably wouldn’t be opposed to joining a game of pickup soccer at Mad Bowl, the three-acre natural grass field behind Madison Hall that was one of the university’s original playing fields.

The photographer Robert Llewellyn looks at things differently than you and I. While we might point out the colorful crocuses that dot the snow-covered front lawn of his Earlysville home, Llewellyn really sees them. And he wants to be certain a visitor does too, bending down to point out the particulars of yellow stamens and purple petals.

There’s something professorial about the 72-year-old, who’s made it his business to photograph the minutest details of flowers, seeds, trees and forests, among the myriad other subjects he’s carefully examined over the course of 35 books.

“We’re only here to visit the trees,” Llewellyn says as he moves from one room to another in his airy home studio. “They were here way before humans; they’re hosting us.” He places what appears to be an ordinary piece of bark on a table below a large window lined with crystals of different sizes and shapes that he’s currently using in conjunction with circuit boards to create images of cities. When he turns the wood over, it becomes something else entirely: a foreign land covered with a maze of tiny trenches that bark beetles dug as they laid their eggs. When the eggs hatched, Llewellyn explains, the beetles burrowed out.

“Notice how none of them cross,” he says, clearly in awe of the trench trails, and then he points out the small holes in the wood through which the insects eventually surfaced.

Llewellyn pauses at the thought of this, and then asks, “What would you see if you were looking at the world for the very first time? What would you smell? What would you hear?”         

He says everyone should collect something because doing so compels us to “really see the world,” to develop the skill of observation (“you see the things you choose to collect everywhere”) and changes how we view the planet. Anything Llewellyn himself sees is fodder for his work (he laughs at the memory of nearly being run over in a downtown Charlottesville crosswalk, where he’d lingered too long to photograph cracks and circles on the pavement). And although he dislikes using the word “work” to describe how he’s made his living for nearly 50 years, the teacher in him can’t help tossing out a quote by Michelangelo: “If people know how hard I work to create my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”

But as numerous critics have pointed out, Llewellyn’s photography is wonderful, such as the large image of a snapper’s eye, just one of the photographs in his studio that demand a closer look. When asked about it, Llewellyn admits that his wife, Bobbi (a psychotherapist), bought the fish at Whole Foods (“It cost about $30,” he says, still somewhat outraged), and brought it home one evening for dinner—eyes, scales and all. Before cooking the snapper (“Martha Stewart says you’re supposed to leave the scales on” when you prepare it, he reports), Llewellyn shot the photo, which hangs near a large table covered with small skeletons, bones and skulls.

When you look around Llewellyn’s vast studio—at the carefully organized and displayed raw materials from past projects and those currently in the works; the precise, stunning photographs; three enormous computer monitors; large light tables; a Wimshurst electrostatic generator that he enjoys demonstrating—it’s all a bit overwhelming. But to Llewellyn, who’s about a year into a project that looks at our planet, something he calls the Orb Project (“since we live on one floating in vast space, spinning 17,000 miles per hour”), it’s home; the place where many of the “things that have called out to me” over the years are always within reach.

Picture perfect

“Being a photographer is quite simple,” says Robert Llewellyn. “You start with a frame. You then must decide what to put in the frame and what to leave out. You also must decide where to put things in the frame. Things at the edge create tension. Things in the middle create calm.” Llewellyn offers the following advice to photographers who want to expertly frame what nature has to offer.

The best time to photograph outdoors: “You can make a photograph no matter the time of day or the weather. Some say you cannot make good photographs at noon on a clear day. Well actually, if you look straight up you find, say, an awesome backlit forest canopy. I like to go out in what people call ‘bad’ weather—rain, snow, freezing rain, fog, wind, clouds, whatever. Play the conditions, as they say in sports. The landscape changes with the weather and seasons. The Norwegians say, ‘There is no bad weather, only bad clothes.’”

Photographing wildlife: “Sit in the rain all day and wait for wildlife to appear. Actually, except for puppy dogs and kitty cats—although I am not sure about all the cats—animals do not like humans and will run away or bite you. Real wildlife photography is an enormous skill that I greatly admire. It usually requires thousands of dollars in telephoto lenses. You may have to wait days to get the image you want. You may wait days and get nothing. Having said all that, go into the wild and see what happens; what finds you. And be ready. You may only have a moment.”

Capturing landscapes: “I have heard there are rules of composition. My personality does not resonate with rules. Go out and see what calls out to you. It will wave, ‘Over here, do me.’ The test is: Would it hurt if you left it? Then explore it with your camera, with no idea what the image will look like. Make lots of images. You learn from each one. And you grow. Lie on your back. Crawl on your belly. The photograph you will like the most is the one you could not have possibly imagined. Be wild. Be bold.” SS