In my college days some of my favorite records (you remember: those big, black plastic discs with grooves traced by needles to make sound) were the gunfighter ballads of Western singer Marty Robbins.  One of the songs was “Cottonwood Tree”—about a gunslinger who had to shoot a young poker player who accused him of cheating and then lost—fatally—in the ensuing fast-draw duel.  Too bad for the shooter, though:  He shot the son of the town’s “biggest man” and in spite of pleas of self defense ended up swinging from a branch of  a cottonwood tree that had grown nearby “waiting to take [him] away.”

Folks in the western plains typically appreciate the cottonwood tree as the largest shade tree they can find a hot summer’s day (for some the only tree they can find!).  I’ve seen them along rivers like the Platte and even along stream beds that are dry by mid-summer.  Here in Michigan the eastern version is known mostly for its “cotton snow” which fills the air in early June with reminders of the winter just past.  This comes from the catkins that unfurl earlier in the spring for pollination and then mature to  put forth an abundance of fuzz-shrouded seeds that the wind loves to cavort with.  Drifts of it pile up at curbsides and often scurry across streets and parking lots like ribbons of snow flurries in January.

Last week I was walking home from work and found myself in a cotton snow event that was made even more dramatic by convection currents playing across a parking lot.  I had taken my camera out to shoot some still photos of the leaves and fuzzy catkins, and discovered a whirlwind.  My camera having a video feature, I quickly switched modes in the hope of getting a clip of it.  And I was rewarded in having the little fuzz devil swirl toward me and then loop away to dissipate some thirty feet from where I was standing—my nature treat for the day.  So that clip became my first YouTube video, which you can view here—wind sound included!

Cottonwood fuzz devil

See you outdoors!

Dean