July ended much as we’d expect it to; sunny and hot. But after a month or more of hot rainless days everyone, especially farmers, is hoping for rain. The weather people said that rain showers would pass through last Friday night and we did get a little, so on Saturday morning I decided to climb Mount Caesar in Swanzey. I was hoping that a few showers might help some mushrooms grow because it was about this time last year that I saw a beautiful violet coral fungus, easily one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in nature. The above photo shows the start of the trail between two dry stone walls. If I was a farmer in the 1700s and I wanted my cows to follow a certain path I would have built walls on either side of it too.
There was a hole dug recently under one of the walls. It looked plenty big enough for a family of bobcats but I didn’t see any signs of activity.
There is a meadow here, made when the town decided to clear cut a large swath of forest. I find many wildflowers here that I don’t see anywhere else, like slender gerardia (Agalinis tenuifolia) and Canada St. Johnswort (Hypericum canadense.) Two different native lobelias grow here as well, pale spike lobelia (Lobelia spicata) and Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata.) This spot has seen full sun and 90 degree F weather for quite a while now, and only the toughest can take it.
I keep trying to explain in words how small some of the flowers are that appear in these posts but a picture is worth a thousand words, so I took a photo of a lobelia flower sitting on a penny. It is from an Indian tobacco plant, which is one that appeared in my last post. A penny is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter.
As much as I’d like to I can’t stay in the meadow all day, so up we go.
There will be stops along the way so I can catch my breath and admire things like these fairy stool mushrooms (Coltricia cinnamomea.) They are very tough, leathery little things that seem to have shrugged off the lack of rain. I like their concentric rings. Their cap is usually very flat and with their central stems they remind me of tiny café tables.
Bark full of tell-tale holes from a yellow bellied sapsucker were about all that was left of a birch log. Many other birds, insects and animals sip the sap that runs from these holes and they are an important part of the workings of the forest.
A cluster of young fungi grew on the birch log. I’m not sure of their name but I was surprised to see them. It’s been dry enough to make mushrooms a rare thing this year.
The starflowers (Trientalis borealis) have gone to seed and this tiny seed pod was just opening, as you can see by the hole at the top. These chalky white seedpods are so small that this one would have fit inside the lobelia flower that we saw earlier with room to spare. I like how they look like miniature soccer balls.
Other small things along the way were these red British soldier lichens (Cladonia cristatella) growing with some trumpet like pixie cups (Cladonia pyxidata). Lichens like water so I was surprised to see that these examples looked so fresh.
The trail at the bottom of Mount Caesar starts out as bedrock and that’s also how it ends. This mountain is really just a huge mound of solid granite with a thin coating of soil covering it.
The views were what I expected them to be; hazy on such a hot, humid day. I had hoped there would be a cooling breeze up here but hardly a leaf stirred. Not only that but the lack of shade made it feel even hotter than it did down below.
Off in the distance on another hill I saw a large sand pit that I’ve never noticed before. Swanzey is built on sand and gravel and digging it up to use elsewhere is thriving business. Surely an operation as big as this one has been there for a while, but I’ve never seen it.
Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey could be seen through the haze. At 3, 165 feet its summit rises another 2,203 feet higher than where I was standing. It was much too hot to even think about climbing that one but I’d bet that there was a cool breeze up there.
Everyone in this area has heard of Tippin rock, the forty ton glacial erratic that sits on the top of Hewe’s hill one mile to the south, but I doubt many have heard of the rocking stone that sits on the top of Mount Caesar. I’ve seen this big stone many times but hadn’t really paid much attention to it until a friend sent me a photo from 1895 with a caption calling it the rocking stone. It’s probably about a quarter the size of tippin rock but I didn’t try to rock it.
I was surprised to see a building along with the stone in the old photo with a caption calling it “the pavilion.” I wonder how many teams of horses or oxen were needed to get all that lumber to the summit, and I also wonder why a building was even needed up there. It looked old in 1895 so it must have been there a while. There was no air conditioning then so maybe people climbed to the summit hoping to find relief from the heat by sitting in the shade of the pavilion. Maybe they had picnics up there; picnics were popular then. Or maybe they were tired of getting caught in thunderstorms and built a shelter, I don’t really know. I don’t even know who “they” would have been. I wandered all over the summit, using the shape of the stone as a guide, but I couldn’t find a trace of the building. Not a board, not a nail, nothing. Time has erased it completely.
I’m sure that people must have climbed these hills to pick the blueberries in 1895 as they still do, but I hope they had better luck than I did. It’s so dry up here this year they’re turning into hard, withered stones.
I couldn’t leave without a visit with my friends the toadskin lichens (Lasallia papulosa.) Their gray color told how dry and potato chip crisp they were but lichens are nothing if not patient, and they will sit here for eons if need be, waiting for rain. Some show an entire solar system on their faces and how fitting that is.; lichens have been flown into space and have survived more than two weeks in the void, leading many to believe that they are immortal.
Toadskin lichens have warts called pustules and on the back of the lichen there is a corresponding pit for every pustule. The black dots are its fruiting bodies (Apothecia) which are tiny black discs with a sunken center that makes them look like a bowl with a thick black rim. The way that they sit on the body (thallus) 0f the lichen makes them look like they’d blow away in a breeze, but they are attached. If I could magnify them enough we’d see clear to brown muriform spores in each apothecia. Muriform means they are “wall like” with internal cross walls that make them look as if they were made of brick and mortar. What strange and fascinating things nature will show us if we just take the time to look a little closer.
I never did find the beautiful violet coral fungus that I hoped to see but I saw many other things that made this climb worthwhile, including this fan club moss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) that grew into double hearts.
May your dreams be larger than mountains, and may you have the courage to scale their summits. ~Harley King
Thanks for coming by.
Your fungi are so much more interesting than ours. I can’t wait to explore Vancouver next year and check them out there.
It should be a lot of fun. We have a huge variety of fungi and they probably do too.
Hopefully there will be plenty of time for walking and we are flying back to Toronto for a few days at the end of the holiday too.
How cool that it was almost to the day that you made the climb and the photo was taken! 121 years has erased all trace of the cabin but the spot remains wonderfully untouched. I’m loving the heat!!
Thank you Martha. I forgot that the photo was dated. Odd that August 10th marks exactly a year that I’ve been at my new job!
I’m not loving the heat but I’m getting used to it.
Thank you for the tour! Always enjoy seeing that area again.
The goblets on those British Soldier lichens may be quite good at capturing moisture condensing out of the air overnight.
I remember cool breezes up on the top of Monadnock. What a view! We have mostly dry heat in summer here, nothing compared to east coast humidity. It can be 45 in the morning, and hit over 90 by late afternoon.
You’re welcome Lavinia, and thank you. Yes, I think most lichens probably get a lot of moisture from morning mist and heavy dew.
I haven’t climbed Monadnock in quite a few years but I have fond memories of it too!
Lately we’ve been having the same weather that you mention, except we’ve also had oppressive humidity along with the 90 degree temps. 90 degrees seems excessive for Oregon, but it could be that I have a false impression of the state.
Our summers are typically hot and dry, and have been getting warmer with more days in the 90s or low 100s. The hottest I have seen is 112 as measured on the porch thermometer, back in 2009, I think may have been the year. Last year we had many days in the 90s. It depends on where one is. We are are in the Cascade foothills on the Willamette Valley side. The coastal regions are generally cool, like the northern California coast. Other areas, especially the high desert east of the Cascades, can really cook in summer. This summer has been quite pleasant, with most of our 90s+ degrees days in April. That really confused many plants.
Thank you Lavinia. I guess I’ve always thought of Oregon as like Washington and had no idea it got so hot there. It seems like we’re all getting hotter from year to tear, and drier too.
Our plants are getting confused too!
That fan club moss is remarkable, amazing shape.
It’s my favorite club moss.
Your photos are gorgeous! I have been to New Hampshire and few times and it is beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing and warm greetings from Montreal, Canada. 🙂
Thanks very much Linda. I’m glad you have fond memories of New Hampshire. I’ve never been to Canada but I know you have some amazingly beautiful country there as well.
I’m glad you’re enjoying this little piece of the state!
I wonder how much/ how little moisture fungi and lichen need to grow. For you to have seen as much fungi and fresh looking lichen as you did after such a hot summer must mean they need very little to trigger growth and the development of fruiting bodies.
The old photograph of the rock and pavillion is fascinating; I can imagine a large party of friends and family struggling up the mountain path with baskets of food and then sitting in the pavillion admiring the rock while they ate!
Thank you Clare. I think the toadskin and rock tripe lichens on the summit must get by on mist much of the time. It can be very misty up there in the early morning, and the plants look like they’ve been through a heavy dew.I’m not sure what triggers growth lower down but we did have some weak showers roll through. They only dropped about a quarter inch but everything helps.
I didn’t think of it until just now but the pavilion could also have been for camping in over night. There were and are bears in these woods and there were probably even more back then. Staying over night on mountain tops was popular then for some reason. Even Henry David Thoreau did it.
Rather them than me! I’m glad there are bears around but I don’t particularly ever want to meet one.
9 out of 10 times it would run away but there’s always that one that might not, and I’d want something between me and him.
Yes – me too!
Allen, You are right about the prevalence of sand and gravel in Swanzey — whence our stratified drift aquifers, and fast-growing white pine stands. The excavation site depicted is off Carlton Road, and was first opened in the late 1950s for use as fill for constructing the bypass around Keene. Today’s “Whitcomb Road” follows the original haul road from this excavation. The sand is too fine for many applications, but it continues to be mined for 10-20 weeks/year for use in wintertime road-sanding, etc. The view of it from Mt. Caesar becomes clearer every year as the pit expands, despite the ever-rising deciduous forest on the slopes of the “mountain.”
Thank you for that Richard, I didn’t know any of it.
I’m still surprised that I missed something so big for so long!
The pavilion was interesting, especially the way that they held one end up with a rock. Back in those days people didn’t have the electronic entertainment of today, so things like picnics, or just getting out in the woods were a popular way of spending a day.
It was the same here, Lake Harbor Park was the site of a posh resort that catered to the rich from Chicago until it burned down and was never rebuilt, because by then, people’s idea of entertainment was already changing.
I really like the photo of the lobelia on the penny, you normally tell us how large something is that you’ve photographed, but I guess that it doesn’t sink in until I see it.
It’s a shame that you didn’t find the violet coral fungus, I remember how beautiful it was. But, you did find plenty of other interesting and beautiful things. Although, as hot as it probably was, you’d have no trouble getting me out of the meadow and into the woods for the day. Loved the views from the top, despite the haze.
Thanks Jerry! I think all 4 corners of that pavilion were probably held up by rocks. They didn’t have to haul them up there. I remember my grandmother talking about how great the picnics were but we never had one.
It’s tough to get any idea of scale from a photo and I should be more diligent about showing something people can relate to. I saw flowers falling off the lobelias and that’s what reminded me.
It was nice and shady in the woods but not a lot cooler. I was drenched by the time I reached the summit. Someday I’m going to climb a hill and the views will be perfect, but I don’t know when. It hasn’t happened yet!
This is one of my faves of your posts. Strange, as there are no really fabulous flowers, ponds, etc. but I’m on the walk with you all the way, and noticing many small things I might not have on my own. Plus, I am intrigued by the rocking rock, and I love stone walls, especially the rough and tumble kind!
Thank you Cynthia. No, there wasn’t much exciting to see on this climb but it was a pleasant one. I like stone walls too, and I always try to figure out how much care went into building them. Most were literally thrown together.
Glad you got your climb in on Saturday, even if it was pretty warm. Hopefully the rain of the last few days will help. Love the quote!
Thanks Laura. Yes, the rain is very welcome. I hope your ponds are re-filling.
The ponds so have an inch or so of water, unfortunately, it didn’t come soon enough to save any of my fish.
That’s too bad. I hope they weren’t expensive fish.
Extremely decent pictures… much obliged for your endeavors with the goal that we can enjoy,what you saw…i like it…
Thanks very much.
Reblogged this on Poltrack Pix.
Thanks very much.
Once again you’ve shown me a world that I’ve missed on my walks through New Hampshire trails. I’ll definitely take my macro-lens next time I’m out.
Thank you John. It’s amazing what you can see when you’re looking through a camera lens!
Sorry it was so hot but thanks for your efforts so that we can enjoy,what you saw.
You’re welcome, and thank you. Heat seems to be something we need to get used to now. I don’t remember a summer as hot as this one.