Rail Trail Discoveries

I’d heard rumors about more rail trail improvements going on here and there, so I thought I’d go and see how they were coming along. This trail, for local people who’d like to follow it, runs between the Ashuelot River and Eaton Road in Swanzey. I had also heard that there were also some serious washouts along this trail during the heavy rains and flooding last summer, and I hoped that part of the rumor wasn’t true.

The first improvement I noticed was that the drainage channels had been cleaned out. This was good and bad, because though the water would flow better, the cleaning out had widened the ditch I had to cross over. I stood at the top of the hill you see on the right, wondering what the best way was for me to get to the other side. I thought about running and jumping but then I decided to just walk down the hill and step over the ditch. Unfortunately when I lifted my right foot to step over it my left foot slipped in the mud and I landed with a splash and both feet in the water.

As I stepped up out of the ditch I noticed this boulder in a hazelnut thicket. I thought it was odd that I had never seen it before since I come here to get photos of hazelnut flowers in spring. Even more puzzling was the round spot on it. I couldn’t tell if it had been painted on or if it was natural. Back in my rock and mineral hunting days I split open a honeydew melon size rock that had a large, perfectly round spot in its center that looked just like this, caused by iron deposits I believe. I saved that rock and still have it but this one was too big to carry.

Christmas ferns are flattening themselves against the earth for warmth as they do every year. They’ll stay green under the snow all winter and were named “Christmas” ferns by early settlers who brought them inside in winter. The long, cold, dark winters and several feet of snow must have been hard for them to bear. I would imagine that any green growing thing would have lifted their spirits.

Raspberry leaves lit up this day. Because of the blueish stems I believe this is a black raspberry.

Neat rows of small holes told me a sapsucker had visited this maple tree. Sapsuckers are in the woodpecker family. When sap is running many other birds, bats, insects, and animals sip the sap that runs from these holes, so they are an important part of the workings of the forest. This tree has problems with rot and looked to be ready to fall over, so I doubt much sap will weep from those holes. I usually see sapsucker holes on wild fruit trees. These may be the first I’ve seen on a maple.

The washouts proved to be reality rather than rumor, and this was a big one. What happened was, for the first time in 150 years the stone box culvert under the trail couldn’t handle all the water trying to flow through it at once and the force of the water washed soil away.

For those who have never seen one, this is a photo of a box culvert taken a few years ago. The railroad would put down a thick granite slab for a floor, then add two side walls and a roof, and then pile massive amounts of gravel and packed earth on top of the culvert to make a level bed. Length depended on the width of the railbed. They’re built to last; beyond sturdy, and I’ve never seen one fail. But the railroad engineers didn’t have a crystal ball and they had no way of knowing what type of storms there would be in a century and a half into the future. Today we don’t have to see very far into the future to know that we’re going to have to re-think a lot of our infrastructure. Culverts of any kind should be a priority because there is a lot more water trying to flow through them now and they can’t handle it.

If you see a stream that seems to come out of nowhere when you’re on a rail trail you can be sure there is a box culvert right under where you’re standing. The stream seen here is maybe 30 feet below the rail bed so you can imagine how much soil had to be brought in to raise and level it. Box culverts were built on site by stone masons using granite taken from nearby ledges or boulders and they were built according to how big the stream was. The one in the previous photo, which is the one this stream runs through, is about 2 feet square.

And there are a lot of box culverts along this section of trail.

Here was a huge washout that didn’t affect the trail because it was on the far side of a deep ravine. It was interesting because I could see how sandy soil had been deposited on top of a bed of gray clay. Clay deposits on the banks or beds of rivers are called alluvial deposits. Since the only way that clay could have gotten there was to be deposited by the river, it shows that the river channel was once quite far from where it is now. Time and pressure will eventually turn the clay into shale.

I’ve heard all kinds of opinions on how long it takes to build up an inch of topsoil (100-1000 Yrs.) and in the end I doubt anyone really knows for sure because the rate depends on many different factors. But for the sake of argument I’ll say 500 years. From where I stood it looked like there was about 4 feet of topsoil over the clay bed, so 48 inches X 500 years = 24,000 years since that clay last saw the light of day. Of course that is provided the area wasn’t disturbed by man. If someone trucked all that soil in at some point that changes the whole scenario but it’s safe to say it has been there a long time. Closer to where I lived along the Ashuelot there was an exposed clay deposit in the river bank. I used to dig the clay and make all kinds of things with it but of course I had no way to fire it so it all just crumbled away.

I saw the first good example of a maple dust lichen this year. Some lichens wait until cold weather to really show themselves but I don’t know if this is one of those. This lichen’s appeal is in its simplicity; just a pale greenish body with a white fringe around it; simple beauty. The white fringe is called the prothallus and seeing it is a great way to identify this lichen. Though named the maple dust lichen it grows on several species of tree.

Script lichens are visible year round as white spots on trees but only when it gets cold enough do their squiggly apothecia appear. They’re usually black against the body but these were on the gray side because I think they had just appeared. I’ve wondered for years why some lichens, ferns, mosses and even some fungi wait until winter to release their spores. There has to be some benefit in it but I’ve never been able to even guess what it is. Figuring that out would be a nice feather in a biology students cap, I would think.  

I tend to notice delicate fern moss more than others at this time of year because they always look bright orange. That’s due to color blindness, so I always have to ask my color finding software what color it really is. In this case it says yellow-green. From a distance I thought it was tree skirt moss, but it fooled me in that way too.

It’s easy to see how the shagbark hickory tree got its name. There are quite a few of them growing along this trail. These two were quite young; too young to drop nuts, I would guess.

And here was another trail washout, bigger than the first. I’m not sure who is responsible for repairing things like this but they have quite a job ahead of them.

It’s a long, long way down to the river from up here and that’s quite a pile of rubble and trees that washed away in the flooding when all the rain tried to get to the river. Every brook, stream and trickle eventually finds its way to the Ashuelot River in this part of the state, and the Ashuelot eventually empties into the Connecticut River which in turn empties into the Atlantic Ocean, so we’re sending a lot of soil to the sea.

Ocher Bracket Fungi grew on a log. Though these bracket fungi resemble turkey tails in shape and habit they don’t show the same color variations. The versicolor part of the scientific name of turkey tails means many colors, and these brackets had only various shades of a single color, which was a kind of yellowish brown.

As I always do when I follow this trail, I saw lots of partridge berries and I surprised myself by being able to get a shot of this pea size berry’s two dimples with my cell phone. The dimples are left by the plant’s two flowers, which share a single ovary. I find this little ground hugger’s leaves very pleasing; they always look like hammered metal.

The ovary found at the base of the flowers, as can be seen here. When the ovary becomes a berry, that berry grows around the base of the flowers, which leave dimples in it. This is an unusual arrangement; the only other plant I know of that does this is the fly honeysuckle, which is one of the first shrubs to bloom in spring.

This sign wasn’t a big surprise.

I had heard that some of the rail trail trestles were being re-decked and that’s what was going on here. This work is all done by volunteers, many from snowmobile clubs, so they deserve our thanks. (And our donations if we can afford them.)

It looks like they’re using 4X4 lumber to re-deck this trestle, so that should last a few years. It looked like they were about half done with the decking, but then they’ll also have to replace the guard rails along the sides, which keep people from falling into the river. Since they can probably only work at this on weekends now that it gets dark so early, I think it will be a while before I cross this trestle again. If I kept following this trail in this direction for a few more miles I’d walk right behind the house I grew up in in Keene.

Here were the old guardrails.

I wanted to get a shot of the river from the trestle but that wasn’t going to happen on this day so I had to settle for this shot. The way the river rises and falls so quickly these days makes it hard to know exactly what “normal” is anymore. Raging or placid, I can always count on is its beauty.

The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. ~Chinese philosopher

Thanks for stopping in.

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Big Changes in the Deep Cut

It has been nearly a year since I last visited the man-made canyon on the deep cut rail trail up in Westmoreland, because the last time I visited there had been a rockslide in the southern end of the man-made canyon and it had flooded the canyon badly. The northern canyon seen here remained mostly untouched.

I say mostly untouched because rock falls were also happening in the northern canyon. If you look closely up ahead on the right side you can see a caution sign, there so snowmobiles don’t crash into the rock fall in winter.

The largest stone seen here is about half the size of a Volkswagen beetle, and it surely would have crushed one if one had been there when it fell.

Above the rock fall is a scary scene, because huge stones have detached from the wall and are ready to fall. You can see marks from the old steam drills and the stone has come loose from the face of the canyon along the line of one of the drill marks. This is a dangerous situation that I will stay away from until that loose, car crushing stone has fallen.

The reason so many stones fall is because there is a lot of groundwater here. The water seeps into any crack in the stone and when it gets cold enough it freezes and expands, and ever so slowly the stones are pushed apart. Eventually they fall, but this never would have happened when the trains were running because the railroad would have regularly inspected the route.

Though some features, like that beautifully built retaining wall on the left, need little maintenance the drainage channels that run through here need regular cleaning of leaves, silt and branches or they dam themselves up and flood into the trail. This has happened in several spots along this section of trail. There is a lot of water here and if it doesn’t have a way to run off, it causes problems.

The reason I started regularly coming to this place is because I found plants here that I couldn’t find anywhere else, like the wild chervil seen in the photo above. Its leaves were still nice and green and I think that was because there hadn’t been a frost here yet. This place has its own weather and usually runs about 10 degrees cooler, but on this day it was warm and so humid the camera lens kept fogging up. I was also swatting mosquitoes in November, which was a first. Wild chervil isn’t the same as the cultivated chervil used to flavor soups so it should never be eaten. In many places it is called cow parsley and it closely resembles many plants like water hemlock that are extremely poisonous. It’s a good plant to admire and just leave alone.

I saw some late fall oyster mushrooms on a log. On this side they had just appeared and were whitish colored…

…and on the other side of the log they had some age and had darkened. These mushrooms almost always form in overlapping groups. They are sometimes said to be the last mushroom seen before winter but there are many others that fruit in late fall. Though I didn’t show them here the gills are yellow to yellow orange. When quite young they also have a yellowish color where the cap meets the stem and that is the “glow” seen in the previous photo.

There are lots of ferns here, including the evergreen wood ferns seen here. These ferns are true evergreens, holding on to their green fronds under the snow until spring.

If you’re interested in knowing what fern it is you happen to be seeing a good guide book is Identifying Ferns the Easy Way: A Pocket Guide to Common Ferns of the Northeast by Lynn Levine. When I bought it, it was $10.95, which is a low price for a guide as good as this one. One of the things she explains in detail is how to use a fern’s spore case locality on the leaf to identify it.

On another log there were some brown cup fungi growing on a log and they must have been tasty because something, probably a squirrel or chipmunk, had been nibbling at them.  According to Michael Kuo at Mushroom Expert. Com these are among the most difficult fungi to identify. I call them brown cup fungi because they are brown and cup shaped but they could be one of several different species.

I looked up to the rim of the canyon and there was a young beech so bright against the background trees it looked to be on fire. Though the walls of the canyon look barren at this time of year in summer they are lush and green, with masses of violets and other flowers growing anywhere they can get a foothold. It transforms itself into a beautiful Shangri-La.

One of the most unusual things I’ve found growing on these walls is algae. Even though what you see is colored carrot orange it is called green algae. Over about a dozen years it has grown to about twice the size it was when I first found it and has even started growing on the opposite wall of the canyon. I keep hoping I’ll see it producing spores but I haven’t yet.

I found lots of beech drops here. They grow near beech trees and are a parasite that fasten onto the roots of the tree using root like structures. They take all of their nutrients from the tree so they don’t need leaves, chlorophyll, or sunlight. Beech drops are annuals that die off in cold weather, but they can often be found growing in the same place each year.

Tiny pinkish purple flowers with a darker purplish or reddish stripe are the only things found on a beech drop’s leafless stems. On the lower part of the stem are flowers that never have to open because they self-fertilize. They are known as cleistogamous flowers. On the upper part of the stem are tubular flowers which open and are pollinated by insects. The flowers seen here never really opened, possibly because it is so late in the season. I usually find them blossoming in September.

I was surprised to find leaves on this young maple. I think it was an invasive Norway maple, which hold their leaves until most other maples have dropped theirs. Their fall color is yellow as well. The real test is to break a leaf stem. If it has white latex rather than clear sap it is a Norway maple.

These leaves had a good case of powdery mildew. Like tar spot, which is another leaf attacking disease, it is unsightly but it doesn’t harm the health of the tree.

Since I knew how wet the trail ahead was, and since I wasn’t going “thru,” I skirted the sign so I could see what had been done over the summer.

The answer was, not much. They had broken up the huge stone slab that had slipped off the hillside though, so that was a start. I had spoken to one of the people who were going to do the work so I know there are big plans for the place. I’m guessing they’re waiting for the ground to freeze so the heavy equipment doesn’t destroy what is left of the trail. In this photo you can see by the stone standing upright how thick the slab was. When it slipped it came to rest in the drainage channel, plugging it tight and flooding the trail.

There were three of these huge slabs of rock along this section of trail and now there are two. If the others let go and slide into the trail I hope I’m not here when it happens. This shot of one of the two slabs still left gives you an idea of how big they are. You could park a Volkswagen beetle on this one. In winter they are covered in sheets of ice about 6 inches think, and I always hoped the ice wouldn’t give way when I was here in the winter. That the stone would let go and slip never crossed my mind. It must have made quite a rumbling sound.

This view gives an idea of how thick the slabs are; I’d guess about 18 inches. The slab of rock that fell was about the same thickness as what is seen here but it was bigger, if I remember correctly.  It was also covered in ice when it fell. The green you see here and there in this shot are great scented liverworts. There was a lot of water between us so I couldn’t get any closer.

For the first time since I’ve been coming here I found great scented liverwort growing in soil beside the trail. I’ve always liked its reptilian appearance and its clean, fresh scent. I hope it continues to grow in this spot but it is a very fussy plant that will refuse to grow if the conditions aren’t right. It demands clean, unpolluted water, for instance.

Also for the first time, I saw a yellow jelly fungus growing on a leaf. Or it might have grown through holes in this beech leaf. I’ve never seen them grow on anything but wood. There is always something unusual to see, every time I come here.

I had to reach out and run my hand over this white tipped Hedwigia moss. It seems more animal than plant and it begs to be petted. When it looks like it does in this photo it is at its optimum; it has had plenty of water and is good and healthy, and is at the top of its game. When dry it looks completely different. The white tips are caused by young leaves that have no chlorophyl. They turn green as the age.

I’ve never shown you how I get into the canyon. This is the view just as you come out of the canyon, looking toward the road, so we’re leaving rather than arriving. The ice climbers who come here kindly built boardwalks to get over the washouts that get bigger each year. You really have to watch your step through here because after the heavy rains of last summer the washouts have become deep enough in places to break a leg if you fell into one. When I’m moving through here I walk slowly and keep my eyes on the ground at all times. Just off to the left of that nearest boardwalk there is a washed out hole that could swallow a car.

There are seeps in this area as well, and this one had an iridescent sheen on it. Seeps are groundwater that lies on the surface like a huge puddle, but they never freeze no matter how cold it gets.

Looking forward, it will be nice to have the trail restored to its former condition with working drainage channels so it is not so muddy here, but for the next few months this will be a good place to stay away from.

It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. ~Scott Westerfeld

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving Day. Thanks for stopping in.

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By a Pond

You might think I’m trying to flood you out with so many watery posts lately but the truth is where there is water there is life, and even when I don’t show it in a post I’m never far from it. This place, a pond in Marlborough New Hampshire, is special because it is about as close as you can get to true wilderness. It’s a place you come to listen rather that speak; a place you come to when you want to be taught by nature. It is also special because of the many unusual plants that grow here. None of them are truly rare but some are hard to find and / or get close to. That means that the things you’re about to see in this post aren’t the kinds of things you’ll find just kicking around on the side of the road.

One of the plants that is often hard to find, and especially hard to get close to, is wild calla or water arum because as its name suggests it is a true aquatic and grows in water. Here though, there are large areas of sphagnum peat moss that grow out into the pond from shore, so if you’re careful you can get close to the plants without getting too wet.

I’ve found this plant in just three places, and this is the only time I’ve been able to get this close to it. It is an arum like skunk cabbage or Jack in the pulpit but unlike those plants water arum has a spadix that is easily seen. The spadix is the club shaped part that carries the tiny white flowers seen here. Arums have a spathe as well as a spadix and in this case the spathe is the white leaf like part. The flowers will be followed by green berries that will eventually turn bright red. An odd fact about this plant is how its flowers are pollinated by water snails passing over the spadix. It is thought that small flies and midges also help with pollination, because the odor from the tiny blossoms is said to be something that a fly might like.

There was a time I would have walked across this fallen tree without hesitation but these days I know I’d better just stay on the trail so I skipped it and went around. You can see all the wild callas growing down there. They were why I wanted to find a quick way down.

As I was sliding down the hill to get to the wild callas I passed a good stand of bunchberry still in bloom. I didn’t see them at the time but I can see in the photo that many of the flowers had already formed berries, so maybe this year I’ll be able to show you the bunches of red berries that give the plant its name. This is just about the biggest colony of bunchberries I’ve seen. They seem to love the mossy hillside.

I’ve never seen so many painted trilliums growing in one spot before and I was happy about that because it’s my favorite of the three that grow in this area.

Many of the trilliums had been pollinated and were showing seed pods, which I was also happy to see. They’ll turn bright red as they ripen. As far as I know painted trilliums are the only one of the three that have a seed pod that stands up on a stem as this one does. Red trillium seed pods are sessile (sit right on) the leaves without a stem and nodding trillium seed pods hang under the leaves, just as the flowers do.

I’ve never seen so many goldthread plants growing in one place either. They’re the ones with three very shiny leaves. Their small white flowers passed about a month ago. The other plants in this shot are Indian cucumber root seedlings.

And here is an Indian cucumber root plant fully grown and flowering. I saw lots of them here as well. In fact everything here seemed to be thriving. These plants grow in two tiers of whorled leaves and the unusual flowers hang under the upper tier of leaves as can be seen here. If you don’t understand how whorled leaves work the lower tier of leaves seen here shows a perfect example of a whorl. The plant gets its name from the small white root, which has the shape and flavor of cucumber. Native Americans used Indian cucumber roots as food.

The unusual flowers of Indian cucumber root have 6 yellowish green tepals, 6 reddish stamens topped by greenish anthers, and 3 reddish purple to brown styles. These large styles are sometimes bright red- brown. Each flower will become a shiny, inedible dark purplish black berry. These plants like to grow under trees in dappled light, probably getting no more than an hour or two of direct sunlight each day.

Hobblebush isn’t normally a ground hugging shrub unless there are deer in the area. Since every plant I saw looked like this one I’d guess that there are a lot of deer (or maybe moose) here. Every plant had been pruned back so hard they looked like vines.

It looked like whatever was eating the plants was also eating the unripe green fruit. These berries will ripen to red and then purple black if they are left alone.

A dead pine rose up out of the water like the skeleton of some ancient beast. It was interesting to see how all the limbs had grown mostly on one side, which was the side that received the most sunlight. Sunlight is also heat and heat falling on the trunk stimulates cell growth. If the back side of the tree is in the shade the tree “knows” that there is no point in growing branches on that side because they won’t receive any light and will just die off. Since a tree is all about turning sunlight into food, it’s going to grow all of its photosynthesizing leaves or needles where the sunlight is. If you walk around a pond or even a clearing in the forest you’ll see a lot of one sided trees.

Some plants can tolerate more shade because they have larger leaf surfaces. More leaf surface means they can gather more light. The hobblebushes we saw earlier are like that and so are the pretty little blue bead lilies seen here. But nothing, not even mushrooms, can grow in the dark, so even plants that grow in deep woods will get an hour or two of sunlight each day. That’s why, when I see a sunbeam shining on a spot in a forest I always go to where it falls to see what plants or mushrooms are growing in its light. There were lots of blue bead lilies spotted here and there throughout these woods, and that told me if I sat there and watched long enough I’d see sunlight falling on each spot. These plants are named for their beautiful electric blue berries that will follow the flowers.

This pond has a small earthen dam that controls its outflow and in the outflow stream were many native blue flag irises. They and all of the flowers here seem to be having an extended bloom. Possibly because of the two or three cool, damp days we seem to have each week.

There must have been a hatching of chalk white corporal dragonflies just before I came, because there seemed to be hundreds of them flying around. Some would rest as this one did, on stones or plants, but not for long. I never knew how aggressive these dragonflies were until I saw them chasing off beautiful blue slaty skimmers, which I’d like to get a photo of. Things will calm down after a while and the chalk whites will start to fade away so the slaty skimmers and others can have their turn in the spotlight, and then maybe I’ll get a shot or two of them.

The big red “cinnamon sticks” that give cinnamon fern its name have appeared.

Of course, this has nothing to do with cinnamon. What someone thought looked like a cinnamon stick is actually the fern’s fertile frond, and if you click on this photo and look closely you’ll find that it’s covered with many thousands of tiny, spherical, spore bearing sporangia. You’ll also find that I was a bit late because most had already opened and released their spores to the wind. These spore cases are so small the only thing I can think of to compare them to is the head of a common pin. There aren’t many cameras that I know of that can get a photo of them, so what you see here isn’t something you’ll see very often.

I suppose I’ve always kept my eyes on the ground because for me, that’s where the most fascinating things were. Since I didn’t “do” birds when I was young there was no real point in looking up at tree branches so instead I admired their roots. Some tree roots on well-traveled trails come with a story, or more accurately a question, like how many thousands of footsteps does it take to sand one down until it looks like a craftsman has taken it to his shop and made it as beautiful as it can be, and then put it back again?

There are a few lichens also growing here. This one is either pink earth lichen or bubblegum lichen, I’m not sure which. Both have what look like tiny balls of pink dough stuck on a match stick, but on bubblegum lichen the length of the stalks that the plump pink apothecia sit on are longer than they are on pink earth lichens. Both are rarely seen in this area but when I do see them they seem to always be growing near blueberries and sweet fern, as these were. I look for the whitish crusty thallus or body of the lichen, which grows on the soil surface; usually in dry, sandy places. They seem to prefer undisturbed ground in full sun.

Being in a place like this shows you how much you can learn from nature if you let nature lead. And it will lead; before you move on from what you’ve been looking at, just look around. You’ll almost always find that, from where you stand you can see all sorts of interesting things to go and see next. There is no need for a plan. Just let nature lead you from one beautiful and / or interesting thing to the next just as a child would, and you’ll see things you hadn’t even imagined. On this day I originally went to the pond planning to spend 15 minutes or so checking to see if the sheep laurel were blooming. They weren’t in bloom that first day but the place was so peaceful and filled with interest, I ended up staying for most of the day.

When you gaze out on a quiet, peaceful meadow, next to a still pond, under a motionless blue sky, you wonder how the noisy, busy cacophony of life could have arisen from such silent, motionless beginning. ~Anonymous

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A Wildflower Walk

A couple of weeks ago I took a walk down an old road I had never been on and was amazed by all the wildflowers I found there. There was a river nearby and since it was the Asuelot River that I grew up on, I felt as if I had come home. I had never been along this section of it but I felt as if I knew every inch. The river was high; high enough to flood some of the open meadows along its banks.

Watercress grew in the shallows. This plant is edible and is said to have a kind of peppery bite but since it grows in water I’d never eat it. These days you never know what pollutants might be in the water, and when I was growing up parts of this river were terrible. We’ve done a great job of cleaning it so now even trout swim in it once again but for me, it’s hard to forget what we did to it in the past.

There were turtles. There are always turtles. My grandmother called them mud turtles but I think most of our turtles are either painted or snapping turtles. I haven’t seen any of the big snappers yet. They’ll come along in June when the females lay their first batch of eggs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this spot was full of them.

Though the old road looked like it had a wall of growth on either side I knew there were game trails and other places where you could get through. The reason the edge of a forest always looks like an impenetrable wall of growth is because that’s where the most sunshine is and the plants, shrubs and trees compete for all the sunshine they can get. The forest never seemed like a wall to me when I was a boy; it was more like a mirror. I felt at home there and knew I belonged as much as the trees, plants and animals did.

One of my favorite mosses, cypress leaved plait moss, grew on a log. I like the way it seems to reach out and explore new areas of the logs it grows on.

Plaited means braided, and a closer view shows that it is a good name for this moss, because that’s just what it looks like.

Coltsfoot plants were still blooming when I was here and they’re still blooming now. All the spring flowers are having an extended season due to the cloudy, cool weather we’ve had.

There were thousands of bluets here and these were the deepest blue I could find. They’re very cheery little things that everyone is happy to see each spring.

The first strawberry blossoms were appearing when I was here. Now I have hundreds of them blooming in my yard. In June the plants will bear some of the sweetest, juciest strawberries you could hope for. Unfortunately, they’ll also be some of the smallest strawberries ever seen. It takes a while to pick a handful.

It’s a good year for violets and I found many of the first I had seen in bloom here.

The cooler spring weather has meant that fern fiddleheads just go on and on slowly, in no hurry to reach adulthood.

Sedges also had an extended bloom but now grasses are taking their place. In this example many of the butter colored male flowers of this Pennsylvania sedge had given up the ghost and hung shriveled against the stem, but the wispy white female flowers still waited for the wind to bring them pollen from other plants.

The first butterfly I saw this year was this eastern tailed blue. I waited for it to open its wings so I could get a shot of their beautiful blue color but it refused to open them. I knew if my shadow fell on it, it would fly away but I thought if I could put just the tiniest sliver of shadow on it, it might open it wings. Carefully I moved until just a whisker of shadow fell on it but that’s all it took; it opened its blue wings and flew off before I could get a shot. I also saw a mourning cloak butterfly here and heard an amazing chorus of birds, including finches, warblers, wrens, and eastern phoebes.

Wood anemones were tucked in everywhere. I think of all the flowers I’ve gone here and there looking for and here they are, all in one spot. The only thing missing is spring beauties, but they could be here too. It’s possible I just haven’t found them yet.

I came to a clearing and there was the Ashuelot River in full view. I thought about how, when I was a boy of 8 or 9 years old this river was a barrier, but as soon as I found the courage to cross the train trestles alone my world expanded. It suddenly opened up and seemed vast and there I was, free to explore it. The first places I explored were just like this place and the world became my playground. All children should have a chance to run free and learn from nature in places like this. It was a wonderful place to grow and discover so many new things.

Dormant buds under the bark will break (or erupt) when or if something happens to the terminal bud, which in this case was an entire tree. The beavers here did exactly what my grandmother did when she pinched out the growing tip of her geraniums to make them bushier. I became interested in the study of botany by wondering about such things, and that’s why I’ve always thought that nature was the best teacher a child could have. The wonder of nature is in its ability to teach us something new each day. I was an empty jar, and nature filled me to overflowing.

Walt Whitman said “There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became, and that object became part of him.” Since it flowed just a few yards from our house the first “object” I looked upon was the river. As I grew older I felt as if I had found a magical painting that I could step into; an artist had painted a beautiful earthly paradise and here I was walking through it. Nature taught me to see and appreciate the beauty of life. It showed me the worth of silence and the meaning of serenity. Nature became my teacher, friend, and companion. I had plenty of childhood friends but, as author David Mitchell wrote, “Trees are always a relief, after people.” Before I had ever heard the word solitude I seemed to crave it, and here along the river is where I found it.

This particular slice of paradise was populated by more trout lilies than I had ever seen growing in one place. They weren’t all in bloom but there were many thousands of them.

On this flower the big, reddish anthers were just starting to produce pollen.

This shot is of the trout lilies covering the forest floor for as far as the eye can see, and they did this along both sides of the old road. There must be millions of plants here and I’m sure they’ve been here for a very long time. Since a trout lily colony can last 300 years or more they might even have been here when this area was first being settled.

The flowers were the biggest trout lily blooms I’ve seen; possibly 2 inches across. It’s obvious where the “lily” part of the plant’s name comes from, and the mottled leaves in this shot show where the “trout” part of the name came from.

Shadbushes were everywhere out here, some in full bloom and others just starting. Since they melted so well into the surrounding vegetation they were hard to get a good shot of.

I left the old dirt road and walked a little on the main road, where I found mother goose sleeping on her nest of cattail stalks. I wasn’t too far away when I took this photo but she seemed fine with my being there. I’ve read that Canada geese are in the top tier of parents in the animal world so I’d guess it would take quite a lot to get her off that nest. I went back a few days later to see if the eggs had hatched and two or three people told me that nine goslings were now swimming peacefully beside their mother. May they all live long and bliss filled lives.

Must we always teach our children with books? Let them look at the stars and the mountains above. Let them look at the waters and the trees and flowers on Earth. Then they will begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real education. 
~David Polis

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

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Thinking Spring

Last Monday I felt that burst of love for the out of doors that I always feel at this time of year, coming in the form of what is known here as spring fever. It’s love, happiness, and a bit of madness all rolled into one, and it makes me ache to be outside. It was a beautiful day; partly sunny and warm at 46°, so I went to the skunk cabbage swamp to see if there was any sign of them yet.

All swamps come with challenges and walking into one is where the madness comes into play. In this swamp there are a lot of hummocks to negotiate and you can either jump from hummock to hummock or walk between them and hope you don’t get your feet wet. I got one foot wet even with waterproof hiking boots on when I sank into the mud over my boot top. But that didn’t matter; my hummock jumping days are over so I expected to come away with wet feet.

One of the hummocks had this curious bright green plant growing on it. I don’t recognize it but it must be tough. The leaves resemble basil but obvously it can’t be that.

And there were the skunk cabbages, coming up through the snow. Through a process called thermogenesis a skunk cabbage plant can raise its temperature to melt through ice and snow. They’re very determined once they feel the pull of spring and will even melt their way through frozen soil.

Here was one I could get a little closer to. It displayed something I’ve wanted to show here for a few years now and that is how, when it first comes up, the skunk cabbage spathe is enclosed in a gray green, pointed sheath.

If you look closely where the sheath has opened you can get a glimpse of the splotched maroon and yellow spathe inside. This is the first time I’ve been able to get a shot of this. There are those who think that the gray green sheaths enclose leaf buds and I thought so too years ago, but this shows otherwise.

The thin sheath quickly rots away, almost liquifying, leaving the spathe to slowly expand and open. Inside the spathe is the spadix, which holds many tiny, greenish flowers. There are few insects around at this time of year but some do eventually enter through the split in the spathe; whether to pollinate the flowers or to just warm up isn’t known. The flowers, much like those of wild ginger, which is another very early bloomer, could be self-pollinating. The pea green leaf buds will show themselves before too long.

A little further in there was the open water of a stream, and two unseen ducks startled me when they exploded from the swamp, quacking loudly and flying as fast as their wings would take them. You can find many different creatures around open water in February because in a normal winter open water is scarce.

Skunk cabbages can grow in standing water as these show, but the one on the left came up too early and was blackened by the below zero cold we had. These plants are tough but there aren’t many spring plants that can stand that kind of cold for long.

One of the animals enjoying the open water of the swamp is the resident beaver, who has been busy cutting trees and dragging them off. This one was a red maple and there wasn’t a sign of it left; no log or branches.

Here was the log from another tree a beaver cut, red maple again with a lot of the outer and inner bark chewed off. How they can drag away logs this big is beyond me. I know they cut them into pieces but stll, a log of this diameter even just two feet long is heavy. Maybe they just roll them into the water and float them off like the lumberjacks used to do.

We pass right by beech buds, never giving them a second look, but as soon as it is warm enough the stronger sunlight will stimulate their growth and they will open and become one of the most beautiful things in the forest. For a time, it looks like silvery-green butterflies have landed on every twig. It’s hard to believe that all the current year’s growth for this particular branch is inside that little bud, but it is.

I was surprised to find maleberry growing here. I think this was the first time I’ve found it not growing on a river or pond bank. The seedpods shown here formed last July or August and will release their seeds by the end of April.

I’ve always liked finding a pile of last year’s leaflets from a cinnamon fern but I’ve never really known why. They just please me somehow, and it’s easier to just leave it at that than it is to wonder why. They dry on the stem in the fall and then slowly fall into a pile at its base, with the one at the very tip the last to fall.

Bracken ferns weaken at the base of the main stem and the whole plant just keels over. The fallen leaves have at times reminded me of miniature dinosaur skeletons, but I suppose it must depend on mood. On this day they just looked like bracken fern leaves.

I found a few goldthread plants here and there, still with last year’s shiny green, three lobed leaves showing. These little plants are evergreen and must get a jump start on photosynthesizing. Their pretty little flowers, which have golden petals that look like like tiny spoons full of nectar for insects to drink, will appear in late April or early May. Getting a good photo of the flowers is always a challenge, which means it’s a flower you can lose yourself in. I recommend doing so as often as possible; there is great peace to be found there.

A colony of American wintergreen grew beside a tree. Though the plant is an evergreen it doesn’t photosynthesize in winter so it doesn’t need green leaves. In fact, many evergreen plants have purple leaves in winter but they’ll be greening up before too long. This plant is also called teaberry and checkerberry because of its minty, bright red berries. I saw where these plants had once had berries but it looked like the turkeys had gotten them all.

Every year in early spring I come across what I see as orange delicate fern moss. I’ve always brushed it off as colorblindness, thinking “That moss is green but I see it as bright orange. Strange.” But the thing is, according to my color finding software, it really is orange. That’s what colorblindness can do; it can make you unsure of almost any color you see. But there is good news for the colorblind. Color correcting glasses are down to $119.00 per pair on one website and after taking a simple online colorblindness test, you can get yourself a pair. You can choose from several styles and if they don’t work for you, you get your money back. Also, there is an app called “Colorblind Pal” for Android users and the color finding computer software I use is called What Color? I know there are a lot of us out there so I like to keep the information I’ve found up to date. I hope it helps. Those are deer droppings on the moss. I saw a lot of them here. I’d guess that the deer are coming to drink from the open water.

According to the calendar spring is more than a month away but I’ve never paid much attention to calendars when it comes to seasons. I’ve always let the land and the plants and animals on it tell me when spring is here, and there are already a lot of signs pointing to it. We could still see some cold and snow but each day that passes makes that less likely. Once we get through mid-March winter’s back is broken, but I think it might happen earlier this year.

Spurred on by the skunk cabbage sightings, I went to see how the hazelnuts were doing. They too had heard the whisper of spring, and the catkins had elongated and become flexible. In winter they’re short and stiff but a good sign that they’re preparing for spring is when they loosen and flex, and start to dangle and blow in the wind. I didn’t see any of the tiny female flowers and that was good, because we could still get some below freezing nights and that might finish them off. It’s too early for the more tender spring flowers to appear so as much as I’d love to see them I hope they aren’t tricked into blooming by this February thaw. Something I noticed while taking this photo was spring birdsong, including that of red winged blackbirds. They’ve come back about a month early but I’ve read that we could see more cold a week from today, so I hope they’ll be able to stand it.

Go to the winter woods: listen there; look, watch, and ‘the dead months’ will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest. ~ Fiona Macleod

Thanks for stopping in.

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Exploring Along Beaver Brook

Toward the end of November I decided to take a walk up the old abandoned road that leads through the Beaver Brook natural area in Keene. I hadn’t been there in a while and since I had just tangled with Covid I thought the slight gradient of the old road would let me gently test my lungs and make sure they were still working as they should. Surprisingly I didn’t get winded at all; good news I thought, considering all I had heard about Covid.

I saw many beautiful things there that day but I would have been happy just seeing the mosses. They always seem so much greener and more vibrant in colder weather.

The brook was rushing along, not quite as high as I had imagined it would be but still with a bit of a roar to it. It has many voices, this little brook. In summer it becomes tame and moves slowly, giggling and chuckling shyly as it spills over the rocks in its bed. In winter it often becomes nearly mute, its voice muffled by a covering of thick ice. It can still be heard, but as if from a distance. In spring and fall, due to snow melt or excessive rain it swells up and shouts, sometimes with a deafening roar. Only one thing about it never changes, and that is its beauty.

There are a few pretty views along the brook and this is one of my favorites. I hadn’t gone there that day with a blog post in mind but I had a cell phone camera and the small Olympus I use for macro photos and in the end, I was glad I had brought them.

Of course, I had to stop and see my old friend the smoky eye boulder lichen that lives here because it is a beautiful thing. Both the way the light falls on it and the color of the thallus or body of the lichen make it stand out from other examples I’ve seen. Why it has this golden, orangey brown color I don’t know, and I also don’t know why the fruiting bodies always seem so blue or lavender when they are usually gray. It has to be the special way the light falls on it in this particular spot. Seeing it again is always like finding a jewel.

The squiggly black apothecia have appeared on the script lichens, as they always seem to do in the cold weather. If you look at them extremely closely, they look like the body of the lichen has been torn or cut open, and they erupt from it rather than sitting on it. But whatever happens when they appear, they leave no trace when they disappear. If you come here in warmer months all you will find are the white / gray body of these lichens, like spots on the tree’s bark.

I stopped at what I call the boulder fall. I’ve found mosses here that I’ve never seen anywhere else.

And one of those mosses is the pretty little rose moss. This moss likes limestone and since this area isn’t rich in limestone it always leaves me guessing. Somehow two or three of the boulders must have at least some limestone in them. I first found this moss on just one stone years ago and now it is on at least three of them, so it must be happy here.

Another rare moss that grows here is the glittering wood moss, also called stair step moss because of the way new growth comes up out of the midrib of the previous year’s growth. It looks delicate but I’ve seen it encased in ice in winter and still looking fine in spring. Not surprising since it can withstand conditions in the Arctic tundra. It sparkles in the light so “glittering” is a good description.

For years I’ve thought that snow load was what made our evergreen ferns splay out on the ground but this year we have no snow and they are still hugging the ground, so that theory has to be let go of. I recently read this on Westborough Massachusetts Community Land Trust page: “When the green fronds are on the ground, warmth from the earth keeps them warmer than they would be if they stood up in the wind and cold air. The fern’s stems weaken near the ground in autumn, helping the fronds to fall over.” That does make sense but I wonder where that information originally came from. I believe the fern in the photo is a marginal wood fern, but I didn’t check for spore cases.

A big old red maple tree had fallen and someone had come along and cut off all its branches. This tree had target canker but that doesn’t kill trees, as far as I know.

Target canker won’t kill a tree but it can certainly keep one busy by causing its bark to grow in circular patterns of new, thin bark plates, which helps protect it from the canker. According to Cornell university: “A fungus invades healthy bark, killing it. During the following growing season, the tree responds with a new layer of bark and undifferentiated wood (callus) to contain the pathogen. However, in the next dormant season the pathogen breaches that barrier and kills additional bark. Over the years, this seasonal alternation of pathogen invasion and host defense response leads to development of a ‘canker’ with concentric ridges of callus tissue—a ‘target canker.’” You can see the pattern of new, thin bark plates the tree grew each year in this photo. I count at least ten, so that means this tree fought off the invader for at least ten years. There are some things which once seen can never be forgotten, and target canker is one of those.

I saw what I think was a white cheese polypore on a fallen branch. It grows on hardwood logs and causes white rot, and gets its common name from its scientific one (Tyromyces chioneus). Tyromyces means “with a cheesy consistency,” and chioneus means “snow white.” These mushrooms are big enough to be seen from a distance and when they are fresh, they have a pleasing fragrance that some think is like cheesecake. Mushroom Expert. com says it is “just about the most boring mushroom going,” but it is a winter mushroom and I’m always happy to see mushrooms in winter. There is also a blue cheese polypore and a green cheese polypore.

From boring to beautiful; this must be the most colorful display of turkey tail fungi that I’ve seen. It was beautiful, with its many different colors all in the same growth. No matter how many times I come here I always see something I’ve never seen before, and that is why it pays to revisit the same places again and again.

I was surprised to find a little ice on the ledges. It has been cold some nights but all in all this has been a very mild winter so far. I doubt there is any ice to speak of in the deep cut rail trail where ice climbers usually practice.

This is one of my favorite reasons to visit Beaver Brook; to see what I call the “disappearing waterfall,” because it only appears when we’ve had enough rain to get it going. It’s a beautiful thing and in the spring, I’ve seen people standing in line waiting to get to the spot where you can get the best photo of it.

I saw two splotches of color on the end of a log and I thought I recognized them.

As I thought, they were wrinkled crust fungi (Phlebia radiata) but they weren’t quite as colorful as others I had seen. I suspected they were young examples which might change as they aged, so I decided to return in a week to see if they had. These winter fungi are rare in my experience and well worth a second look.

This photo of a wrinkled crust fungus I took years ago shows what I was hoping to find upon my return but no, the fungi in the previous photos hadn’t changed at all. A quick online search showed that they can be very beautiful like this example or rather plain like the previous example. Like many things in nature, finding them is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and paying attention. Unlike some fungi it’s hard to predict where or when they’ll choose to grow, though they do seem to like cold weather.

And speaking of being in the right place at the right time; as I was leaving Beaver Brook after my second look at the wrinkled crust fungi the afternoon sun decided to shine right up the brook. It was something I had never seen happen before and it seemed like a final, beautiful exclamation point to mark the end of my journey through a place filled with beauty.

Look at places no one looks at, so you can see the things no one sees.
~Mehmet Murat ildan

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By a Stream

We’re having another one of those strange, almost snowless winters so far this season but even though it hasn’t been snowy it has been cold enough for ice to form, so in early December I decided to visit a stream near my neighborhood. Last year I found beautiful lacy ice all along it but this time as you can see, there was no ice.

There was frost on the lawns, so I thought for sure there would be ice on the stream.

A little neighborhood pond had a thin film of ice on it.

But there was little to no ice to be found here at the stream. No matter; there are always interesting things to see, like this pronounced meander in the stream. When I first started coming here it was nothing like this but over the years flooding has dumped a lot of sand and gravel in a pile over there on the left, forcing the stream to move more and more to the right. As it moves it washes soil away from tree roots and many trees have fallen.

I stopped to admire some beech leaves. The beech is a tree that gives beauty to the forest all year long.

I also saw some colorful turkey tail fungi on a stump. Part of their scientific name is versicolor, and it’s a good one. I’ve seen these come in pink, orange, blue, purple, and everything in between. They’re one of the most colorful fungi I know of and winter is a good time to find them. As far as I know no one has ever discovered what causes their many variations in color.

I looked back to where I had come from and saw how the stream meander is slowly cutting into the hillside and washing it away; a mountain slowly turning to sand. I thought the low sun falling on the green plants was a beautiful scene. It showed how, around every corner, there is the very real possibility of finding staggering beauty of the kind we’ve never seen. We need to learn to stop and let the beauty of life seep into us until it fills every part of our being; until the word Hallelujah comes to us naturally, without a thought.

One of the things I come here to see are the tree mosses. When I first started coming here there was a group of maybe ten plants right at the water line but now, they have grown away from the stream and there are hundreds of them. They must like wet ground because this place floods regularly and they often spend part of their life underwater. They’re beautiful little things and I’d like to see them in more places but so far this is the only place I’ve ever found them.

This unknown creature grew on a tree and though I was sure I had seen it before I couldn’t remember its name. It looks almost like a crustose lichen with an area of something else growing through it but I can’t imagine what that something else would be. In the end I decided it didn’t matter. Memories are like dogs that come when you call them but otherwise lie silent and still. Sometimes they don’t come at all, and seem so far off I can’t tell if they are even there anymore. The effort it takes to recall them doesn’t seem worth whatever limited value they may have. They are like things stored in the attic; not worth climbing the stairs to see, but seemingly still too precious to throw away. They sit gathering dust but one day they will have to go, so why bother adding to the pile by gathering up more of them? Let each day start fresh and shining brightly, unobscured by the film of dust that is yesterday.

This is a two-part post; what you’ve seen so far happened one day and what you will see from here on happened on another. Luckily the sun was shining brightly on both days. I would have loved to have been able to see it the way this NASA photo shows it.

On the second day I went to the stream, about three weeks later, there was ice. Strangely though, at nearly 40 degrees F. this day was warmer than the first.

Last winter when I came here, I found beautiful, lacy ice covering the surface of the stream but this year I saw mostly splash ice. Splash ice forms when running water splashes droplets up on cold surfaces, where they freeze almost immediately. It can be beautiful; all of what we see here is splash ice.

Ice curtains along the banks showed how the water level had dropped, with ribbons of ice forming at each different level.

This view is looking down on ice similar to that in the previous photos.

This ice sculpture grew on a twig that hung out over the stream.

This very thin, clear pane of ice had water droplets hanging from its underside.

This ice reminded me of the bullseye glass windowpanes you can still see in very old houses. Before modern glass making came along glass windowpanes were blown from a gob of molten glass that was spun at the end of the blowpipe until it formed a large disc. Rectangular windowpanes were cut from the disc with the outer, thinner, clearer panes sold to the wealthy and the inner, thick, wavy panes with the pontil mark bullseye in the center sold to the poor. You couldn’t see anything out of them but they did let in light and that was what was important. I can’t even guess how this ice would have formed to look just like them.

Neither can I explain why this bit of dead grass had a ray of sunlight falling on it.

I’ve heard that very white ice is white because it has a lot of oxygen in it, so maybe all the bubbles in this piece go along with that theory. It must have gotten very cold very quickly to freeze bubbles in place.

The only thing you can expect from ice is the unexpected, because no two pieces will ever be alike. Ice helps teach us that we should go into nature with no expectations and just enjoy what we see.

On the way home this scene looked more like March than December. Now into January without plowable snow in my yard, it looks to be another unusual winter. I hope you enjoyed coming along through the snowless woods. In a normal winter we wouldn’t have been able to go without snowshoes.

The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world. ~ Zhuangzi (c. 369 BC – c. 286 BC)

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Cranberry Meadow Pond Trail

I’ve wanted to visit the cranberry meadow pond trail in Peterborough since it was built a few years ago but somehow, I never made it. It isn’t far, just a half hour away to the east of Keene, so last week I decided to finally go and see it. Since this is in a county other than Cheshire County where I live, this trip was part of my new branching out plan. The trail begins with a raised boardwalk through a wetland.

On this day the wetland the boardwalk crosses was very wet but I could tell by red maples standing in a foot of water that it isn’t always this wet. It looked like the stream that runs through here flooded from heavy rains we had a few days before. What a beautiful day it was.

The boardwalk is sturdily built and wide enough for two people to pass. Building it was obviously a lot of work, so hat’s off to the builders. I think it was built three or four years ago, and it has stood up well.

At the end of the boardwalk were planks to help get you through the muddy spot. There are many muddy spots along the trail so you should wear sturdy, waterproof hiking boots if you come here. You can also see in this shot a blue diamond blaze on the tree ahead. The trail is well blazed with these markers.

But really, on this section of trail you don’t need blazes because you’re simply following a steam to its source. Since I’ve been following rivers and streams for all of my life it seemed obvious, but for someone who hasn’t done that maybe the blazes are a good idea.

I saw what I can only describe as tenderness being displayed by a family of cinnamon ferns, but that’s just my interpretation. Cinnamon and interrupted ferns are usually the first to show their fiddleheads in spring.

There were lots of striped maples (Acer pensylvanicum) here that had reached a good age. I don’t see many large striped maples like these. The bark gives their name away.

There were lots of beech trees, too. I looked for the arching of buds that signals bud break, but saw just a few getting ready.

In case you don’t know what bud it is you’re seeing someone has marked the tree for you. They didn’t bother with the Fagus grandifolia part of the name though, which is probably a good thing for the tree.

At this point you have to cross the stream. It’s always nice to have the laughter of a stream to keep you company on a walk through the woods. This one is very easy to get close to over most of its length and that made an enjoyable walk even more so.

Stone walls hint that this was once pasture land, and the young age of most of the trees found here confirms it. This was a common “thrown” or “tossed” wall, built only to get the stones out of the way as quickly as possible. Though they often followed boundary lines they weren’t built for pretty. It was hard, back breaking work but if you wanted to grow crops it had to be done, and with our short growing season, the sooner the better.

There are some huge boulders here and there, some with polypody ferns and others with rock tripe lichens growing on them. This one was covered with mostly moss and a few trees. If you pay attention to the plants and trees that choose to grow on boulders like this one you realize how shallow their root systems must be. There can’t be more than an inch of soil on some of the big stones, but it is enough. Mosses usually colonize first and soak up rain water like a sponge, and then the larger plants growing near or with them benefit from their slow release of water. I’ve even seen dandelions growing on stone, even though they have a root like a carrot.

There were some nice reflecting pools in this little stream. It’s amazing how moving water can appear so still sometimes. Several times I thought of my father on this hike because he loved to fish for brook trout in places like this. Actually I’ve always thought his love of fishing was secondary to his love of simply being in places like this.

Here was another muddy spot. No trouble at all if your boots are waterproof.

I saw a tiny yellowish smudge on a birch log. The camera’s zoom brought it closer and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It was a pretzel slime mold (Hemitrichia serpula) producing spores. The furryness or fuzziness of it is what shows that it was in the fruiting stage, actively producing spores. If I had found it a day or two earlier it would have been in its plasmodial stage, shiny and smooth like plastic. I had been hoping to see one for years, so it was an exciting find. They are usually small; all of what you see here fit in what was maybe a square inch of space. If you’re interested there is a good short video explaining what this slime mold is all about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2RguYFuiM8

The trail started to climb uphill, but not steeply. This is the part of the trail where you leave the stream you’ve been following.

Once the trail leveled off again it was easy to picture it as pasture land. All the trees were very young.

There were some old grape vines growing up into the treetops. River grapes most likely, but they might have been Concord grapes, which also grow wild here. Before we started cultivating them and training them, this is how grapes grew naturally. They seek as much energy giving sunshine as possible and this leads them into the treetops. If you are mindful of how valuable sunlight is to plants when you walk through the woods, you’ll see all the various ways they maneuver themselves into position to recieve the most light. They all have different strategies that they have developed over who knows how many years of evolution, and some might surprise you. Plants that don’t climb, like native hobblebushes for instance, have developed other ways of finding light. They grow large, light gathering leaves. Other plants grow taller and lean into the light to get their share, just like that bean plant you probably grew on the window sill in first grade did. By the way, you were supposed to be learning about phototropism in that experiment, so I hope you were paying attention.

And here was the source of the stream; Cranberry meadow pond. Though I met quite a few people on the trail, which was a surprise on a weekday, for the most part you have the place to yourself. The pond is large and does have at least one house on it that I saw, and there is more building going on nearby. Since I had to see everything there was to see I dawdled and was here for about two and a half hours, but I think you could easily get to the pond and back to your car in an hour. But you’d miss a lot if you did, so dawdle a little. The trail map says it is one mile to the pond from the parking area but my phone said 1.3. Either way it isn’t much. You can go on from here all the way to the top of Pack Monadnock Mountain, another 1.2 miles, but I stopped here at the pond. When mushrooms start appearing I’ll be back because I have a feeling that this will be a great place to find them.

I saw one of the oldest, gnarliest blueberry bushes that I’ve ever seen here. It had a girth on its lower trunk as big as my leg. This scene showed how you can often pick the most blueberries from a boat. Ponds and lakes in this region have wild blueberry bushes growing all along their shorelines.

And the old blueberry was loaded with buds. When young, blueberry buds are bright red but as they grow in spring they swell up and lose their red color.

I saw beaver damage on trees all the way up here and here was the source of it; a large beaver lodge. It’s hard to find a pond or river in New Hampshire that doesn’t have beavers in it. What surprised me most here was the lack of damming of the stream.

There’s the beaver lodge again, just to the left of center out on the shoreline. This view also shows a small very flat island, which could be a bog mat made of peat mosses. I was surprised that I didn’t see any cranberry plants here but since most of the trail was wooded, I shouldn’t have been. They like full sun.

If you’re a lover of solitude this is the place for you, but if on the other hand you want to have a family picnic this would be a great place for that, too. The land the trail is on is privately owned and the land owners graciously allow public use, so the best way to keep it open is to always leave it as you find it. You can find out more about the trail and download a trail map by Googling “Cranberry Meadow Pond Trail, Perterborough, NH” or by clicking on the underlined text.

Pleasure is spread through the earth in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find them. ~William Wordsworth

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A Showery Day in April

I find the most satisfying times I spend in nature are when I go with no expectations. When I just go and see what I can see without any preconceived notions, I get the most out of it. So with that thought in mind I went to the Ashuelot River in Swanzey on one recent showery day. It was a good choice because I knew if it rained, I could get back to the car without getting too wet. The way the clouds looked I doubted that I would be there long.

The river was tame and had nothing much to say. Surprising, since the last time I came here to get photos of waves, it roared. It was out of its banks here for part of the winter and flooded parts of the area that I’d be visiting, so there was no telling what I’d see on this day.

The first thing I saw was a beautiful mussel shell tangled in the weeds. All the colors of a rainbow were in it and as I see it in the photo, I wish I had brought it home. There are lots of mussels in this section of river and the raccoons come down to the shore at night to enjoy them.

There was another shell, but what I was really taking this photo of were the interesting patterns in the sand. I’d guess that the lighter sand was drier than the darker but why it wasn’t all drying at the same rate was a mystery. What was not a mystery is why the sand was here. The river seems to flood more area each year in this spot and the silt gets deposited higher on its banks.

The water had just receded from this spot and here already were green spring shoots.

The wind had blown all the stuffing out of a bird’s nest. It was some type of fabric and I wondered where the bird had found it all.

The mosses were in many shades of green.

And the oak leaves were in many shades of brown. They were beautiful, as if they had been sculpted. I thought, if I could make a mold by carving an oak leaf into a block of wood, and then get a thin sheet of copper and hammer it into the mold, I would have a copper oak leaf. Then if I curled it and painted it just so, I could have a fair representation of what I see here, and I could see it every day. But then I thought, maybe what makes things like this so special is that we can’t see them every day. We just happen to run into them now and then and that’s why we stop and see, and admire and learn.

This was a bit unnerving. Silt on the trail meant that the river came up over the land here; the first time I’ve seen it happen. This bit of land is a small peninsula that juts out into the river and points like a finger downriver.

There is a huge old maple tree here that first lost one trunk and now it has lost the other. Woodpecker holes and lots of fungi tell the story.

I saw quite a few maple dust lichens growing on a muscle wood tree (Carpinus caroliniana.) Muscle wood is also called American hornbeam, and its wood is very dense and hard. It loves to grow by rivers and streams but it is short lived. I rarely see trees that are much bigger around than my leg, in fact. This one was just about that size but was leaning badly and will probably fall soon. You can see how its “tendons” ripple beneath its “skin” to give it its common name. It is also called blue beech and I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen maple dust lichens (Lecanora thysanophora) growing on one.

The rough looking seedpods of witch hazel are everywhere out here. Something I’ve always wanted to see (or hear) is witch hazel seed pods exploding. They explode with force and can throw the seeds as far as 30 feet. I’ve read that you can hear them pop when they open and even though I keep trying to be there at the right time to see and hear it happening, I never have been.

A burl on a tree reminded me of all the beautiful things that can made from them. Anything made from a burl will be beautiful but also quite pricey. I’ve seen huge antique burl bowls that were just amazing but they were also valued in the thousands of dollars. Scientists don’t fully understand why it happens but burls are thought to grow on trees that have been weakened by stress or damage. Once the tree’s defenses have been weakened insects and/or fungi can attack and cause the abnormal growth. I don’t know how that could follow with this young maple though. I suppose it might have been stressed but I didn’t see any damage.

Slowly, the river is cutting off the tip of the finger. From here on I’ve seen this entire tip of the peninsula under water a few times but there was a time not so long ago when I could walk right through here all the way to the point. Over across the water where all the silt is now thousands of violets used to bloom, and it was a shaded, beautiful spot where people liked to fish. Now as the river slowly erodes it away, it looks more waste land than the idyllic spot it once was.

Here is a view of the end of the peninsula completely under water after heavy rain in 2019. Each time this happens more of it goes.

The beavers had been busy, as they always are. They keep wounding this tree but have never cut it down. You can see this same tree to the far left in the previous photo. The beavers had chewed on it then, too.

There were either blue flag iris or cattails growing in the mud. Since I didn’t see any of what looked like last year’s cattail stems, I’m going to assume they’re irises.

A branch split away from this tree and revealed that it was completely hollow. It is just a shell with nothing inside so it won’t take much of a wind to blow it down. It’s amazing how many standing trees are completely hollow.

A large fugus lay on the ground by the hollow tree but I couldn’t see anywhere on the tree that it might have come from, so that was another mystery for this day.

The river had carved the sand in strange ways here. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like that.

This walk I thought, was like walking through an art gallery. The muscle shell, the patterns in this stone, and the way the river carved the sand were all beautiful, and I was grateful to have seen them. I can see a day in the not-too-distant future though, when the river will probably swallow all of it.

Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour. ~Walt Whitman

Thanks for coming by. Have a happy Easter!

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Early April Flowers

Since violets don’t usually bloom here until the end of April, I was surprised to find them so early. I was doubly surprised to see that they were white wood violets (Viola sororia albiflora) because I see maybe one white one for every hundred blue / purple ones. I’ve read that the American Violet Society says that the white ones are just white versions of the common blue violet (Viola sororia.) A kind of natural hybrid, I suppose. They’re prettier in my opinion, with their dark guide lines that help insects find the prize.

That ancient plant the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) has bloomed. They are members of the dogwood family but you would never know it by the tiny flowers, each one about an eighth of an inch across. The entire flower cluster seen here is barely an inch across. Though I’ve never seen it they say that each flower will become a small red fruit.

It is the fruit of the Cornelian cherry that is the reason it has been used since ancient times. Man has had a relationship with this now little-known shrub for about 7000 years, and we know that from finding remains of meals from the early Neolithic period that included cornelian cherry fruit. They usually bloom at about the same time Forsythias do, but they are seen in the form of small trees rather than the shrubby form of Forsythias. From a distance it might be easy to mistake one for a dwarf crab apple when it wasn’t in bloom.

So far, I’ve seen just two magnolia blossoms, this one and a white one that had been nipped by frost. So far it seems like spring is moving very slowly because of the still cool nights. Days are running in the high 50s F. lately and showery to partly sunny for the most part.

Hyacinths have come along now, and they always seem to me to mark the midway point of the flowering bulb season. They’re very beautiful and one of the most fragrant of all the spring flowering bulbs.

All of the sudden there are daffodils everywhere. In the last flower post I did I showed some that had been hurt by frost but these were untouched. According to the National Trust in the U.K. the daffodil’s drooping flowers are said to recall the story of Narcissus bending over to catch his image in a pool of water.

The local college has some very early tulips. They stay small but after a while will have yellow along with the red in the blossoms, if I remember correctly.

Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica.) is a scilla size flower that is one of my very favorite spring flowering bulbs. I tried to find them years ago and had a hard time of it but I just looked again and they now can be easily found through most spring bulb catalogs. Still, even though they’re easy to find now I never see them. I know of only this one place to find them and they are very old, coming up in the lawn of a local park. Though the catalogs will tell you that the blue stripes are found only on the inside of the blossom they actually go through each petal and show on the outside as well. I think they’re very beautiful.

Johnny jump ups (Viola) are blooming by the hundreds now. I chose this as my favorite on this day.

The cool weather is being good to the coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) plants. I see more and more blossoms but not a single seed head yet.

This dandelion blossom was just waking up, and I put it here so those of you who don’t know could see the difference between it and the coltsfoot blossom in the previous photo. In truth the only thing they have in common is the color. Size, shape and growth habit are different but the easiest way to tell the two apart is to look at the flower’s stem. Coltsfoot stems are scaly and dandelion stems are smooth.  

Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) are growing about an inch per day when the sun shines, and if you look closely, you can see tiny flower buds all ready to get started. These are the tall, old fashioned bleeding hearts that die back in the heat of summer.

Raindrops were being cradled lovingly by the new growth.

Skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) are looking more cabbage like each day, but you wouldn’t want to eat them.

I’ve been looking for some moss spore capsules to try out my new camera on and apple moss (Bartramia pomiformis) obliged with its tiny round capsules, fresh out for spring. Reproduction actually begins in the late fall for this moss and immature spore capsules (sporophytes) appear by late winter. When the warmer rains of spring arrive the straight, toothpick like sporophytes swell at their tips and form tiny green globes, so their appearance is a good sign of spring.

Each spore capsule is about 1/16 of an inch in diameter. Tiny, but after a few failed tries the new camera was able to do the job. The pointed part seen is the calyptra, which is a hood or cap which covers the lid-like operculum. The calyptra falls off first as time passes and the spores ripen, and finally when the spores are mature the operculum comes off and the spores are released to the wind.

Here is an apple moss spore capsule against a U.S. nickel. I tried to find the height of the date text on a nickel but had no luck. It is safe to say that it’s very small.

Though the male catkins are looking a bit tired the female flowers of American Hazelnuts (Corylus americana) are still going strong.

Hobblebush buds (Viburnum lantanoides) are opening but you’d never know it unless you had watched the hard mass that was there in winter slowly soften and begin to expand. Still, even at this stage it isn’t much to look at, and it might be hard to believe that in about a month it will be one of our most beautiful native wildflowers.

It is indeed hard to believe that the unshapen mass in the previous photo will become something as beautiful as this, but come mid May the woods will be full of wonderful blossoms like this one. Hobblebush flower heads are large-often 6 or more inches across, and are made up of small, fertile flowers in the center and larger, sterile flowers around the outer edge. All are pure white. I can’t think of a better reason to walk through the woods in spring.

I haven’t seen any of the feathery female flowers of the elms (Ulmus americana) yet but I’ve seen plenty of the male flowers like those shown here. Male flowers have 7 to 9 stamens with dark reddish anthers. Each male flower is about 1/8 of an inch across and dangles at the end of a long flower stalk (Pedicel.)

Male (staminate) box elder flowers (Acer negundo) are just showing in the recently opened buds. Once they begin to show like this things happen fast, so I’ll have to watch them.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) buds are showing color, so it won’t be too long before I can smell their wonderful fragrance again. It was my grandmother’s favorite wildflower because of that scent. Several Native American tribes considered the plant so valuable it was said to have divine origins, and I think she must have thought so too.

Trout lilies are up but so far leaves are all I’ve seen. The leaves always appear before the small yellow, lily like blooms. It won’t be long.

I was lying on my stomach at the edge of the woods trying to get this photo, just a few yards from one of the busiest highways in Keene, when I heard “Sir, is everything all right?” I looked up and found a young Keene Police officer looking down at me. I assured him everything was fine, thanked him for his concern, showed him the first spring beauty blossoms he had ever seen, and off he went. I thought afterwards that he had closed his car door, walked down an embankment full of crunchy oak leaves and stood right there beside me, and I hadn’t heard a thing. This, I thought, is a good example of becoming lost in a flower. I could imagine by his look of genuine concern what must have been going through that young officer’s mind. It can’t be every day that a policeman sees someone lying motionless in the weeds beside the road. At least, I hope not.

If you are lost inside the beauties of nature, do not try to be found. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

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