Beaver Brook Natural Area
November 23, 2019 by New Hampshire Garden Solutions

I couldn’t remember the last time I was at Beaver Brook Natural Area in Keene so last weekend I thought I’d take a walk up the old abandoned road to the falls that are at the end of it. As far as I can tell the old road was laid out in the 1700s and was abandoned in the early 1970s when a new highway was built-literally right across the existing road. Nature has been taking back what is hers ever since and the old road slowly gets narrower as the plants and trees grow in toward its middle where the sunlight is. It is kept open to the public as a nature trail and follows Beaver Brook, so named because of the beavers that once thrived here.

It was cold the night before and was still cold when I started out. Below freezing weather had created ice here and there on the brook, mostly in areas that don’t get much sun.

I like to come here because I can find things here that I don’t see anywhere else, like this smoky eye boulder lichen (Porpidia albocaerulescens.) Actually I see this lichen just about everywhere I go but nowhere else are its fruiting bodies (apothecia) so blue. The blue color comes from the way the light falls on the waxy coating that covers the black outlined apothecia and often when the light is just right the stone they grow on appears golden, which makes for a very beautiful scene.

Plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea.) Is another reason I come here. This is the only place I’ve ever seen it so when I want to see how it changes as it grows I have to come here. Today I discovered that it must be evergreen because we’ve had over a week of real cold weather, with nighttime temperatures sometimes in the single digits, and it was still as green as it is in May.

I like the crepe paper like leaves of this sedge. The prominent midrib, two lateral veins, maroon bases, and puckered look of the leaves are all used as identifying features for plantain leaved sedge. The leaves can be up to a foot long and an inch wide and I can’t think of another sedge that has leaves that look quite like these. I’ve read that it likes cool shady places where the humidity is relatively high. There is a stream just a few feet from where this one grows.

There are calm pools along Beaver Brook and this is one of them. It had a thin skim of ice along the stream banks but it still caught the forest in reflection.

Where the water splashed and dripped, icicles grew in long fingers.

In places the old guard posts and cables survive. These posts used to have to be hand painted black and white, one by one, all the way along this and every other road in the county. Of course it was a lot more open here then, when the forest wasn’t allowed to grow so close to the road.

The guard rails were a necessity on a narrow, two lane road. You didn’t want to drive into the brook because in places the embankment is quite steep. This is a view across the brook to the hillside beyond. There is a boulder fall there and when we get enough rain a stream runs down through and over it. On this day there was only ice.

The utility pole in the distance is broken off at the base and it leans precariously toward the brook. I think it will eventually fall into the brook if something isn’t done. It looks like it might be taking these two poles with it.

I’m not sure what these electric lines power but whoever receives their power from them must be frequently in the dark because every time I come here there are trees on the wires. In fact there are fallen trees all through here.

Here was a huge pine tree in the brook. It had fallen with its top pointing perfectly downstream. Whether or not it will dam up the brook is anyone’s guess but it looked to be about 100 years old and was big enough so I doubt the brook will be able to move it, even in flood.

Beech nuts and their husks littered the old road. There are lots of beech trees here and this seems to be a mast year, so the forest animals will eat well. Native Americans ate beech nuts raw but they contain toxins that can be removed by cooking, and they are said to taste better when roasted. Early settlers pressed the nuts and used the oil for lamp oil and as a substitute for olive oil.

In this light it was easy to see how the golden birch (Betula alleghaniensis) came by its common name. There are many of them here right alongside the road and they make a beautiful contrast on winter afternoons when the snow is deep blue in the shadows. These trees like it cool and moist and are often found near streams and ponds. They can also stand a lot of shade so a cool, shaded forest is perfect for them. Golden birch is also called yellow birch, and Native Americans tapped this and other birch trees for their sap, which they boiled down into syrup. They also made a medicinal tea from the bark.

We have several vase shaped evergreen ferns and a few species grow here. This one was a little flat but it was still green.

The two rows of spore cases (sori) growing on the underside of the sub-leaflets and the large brown scales on the bases of its stalks told me this was the evergreen wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia.)

Black raspberry leaves (Rubus occidentalis) provided some late fall color.

There was ice on the ledges and it wasn’t a surprise.

The groundwater that created the ice in the previous photo is slowly bringing down the ledges, which are weakened and shattered after close to 300 years of freeze / thaw cycles. This big rockfall could have killed anyone standing under it so I don’t get too close to these ledges anymore. Most of the stone here is feldspar, which is why it appears white in the photo. Feldspar is a soft rock when compared to quartz or granite and it can be split with a sledge hammer. When you strike it with a hammer it has a very unusual smell.

Beaver Brook cascades over ledges into a small, shaded pool that was once a popular swimming hole. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about how high the falls are; I’ve heard everything from 10 feet to 100 feet, but I’d guess that they are closer to 30 to 40 feet and maybe 50 if you include the part that isn’t visible in this photo. They’re big enough to make a roar that can be heard from a distance.

Up above the falls there is a small turn off; I guess you’d call it a rest area, where cars could have pulled off the main road. The guard posts seen in this photo would have stopped a car from tumbling into the falls, but just beyond the last one you could walk right off the edge and fall into them if you weren’t paying attention. That’s probably why I can’t remember my father ever stopping when he drove through here on our way to see relatives. I was what you might call a “handful” when I was a boy and he probably thought he’d have to fish me out of the brook if he let me out of the car. A few years back a teenage boy was fishing up here and fell in and was swept over the falls. He was lucky to come away with only some bruised ribs and a broken arm.

Right before the turnoff is a fairly good side view of the falls when the leaves have fallen. In fact I think just after the leaves fall is the best time to come here because you can see the falls from the old road, and that’s important if you happen to be a little too creaky to slide down the steep embankment to the brook. Soon it will be winter and the roar of Beaver Brook will most likely become a whisper under the ice for a while; some winters even the falls are muffled by the ice.

But for now you can still see the old no-passing lines in the road. I could do 5 posts on this place and still not show you all of the beauty found here, so if you live nearby I do hope you’ll pay it a visit. It isn’t far from the center of town, which makes it a perfect nature spot for anyone living in Keene.
It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. ~Scott Westerfeld
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Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen | Tagged Abandoned Plasces, American Beech Nuts, Beaver Brook, Beaver Brook Falls, Beaver Brook Natural Area, Black Raspberry, Boulder Fall, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Evergreen Wood Fern, Fallen Trees, Feldspar, Golden Birch, Ice Formations, Keene, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Plantain Leaved Sedge, Power Lines, Rock Slide, Smokey Eye Boulder Lichen, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods | 33 Comments
A lovely waterway to walk along. I’m guessing the plantain-leaved sedge likes a moist environment. I’ve seen it for sale in some native plant catalogs.
I think it likes high humidity, not necessarily wet roots.
I love the smoky eye boulder lichen! And what a lovely set of falls!
Thank you Clare. That is a beautiful lichen!
Looks like a nice spot. How long is this trail and what route do you take to access it?
You leave downtown Keene heading up Washington Street, and as Washington street turns to highway there is a sharp right and then an immediate sharp left that leads to Washington street extension. This abandoned section of road is at the end of that.
It’s just over a mile, I believe. Slightly uphill all the way.
Thanks, I think I can do that!
It’s easier than it sounds!
I like a waterfall so i wish that I could walk up that old road too.
If you can get down to the edge of the brook without breaking your neck it’s worth seeing up close.
That sort of thing gets harder to do every year.
Yes, I’ve noticed!
GREAT POST and AWESOME PHOTOS as always! It makes me feel like I am there.
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it!
Beautiful photos, Allen, and that is a good point about standing near or under rock ledges. All one has to do is be there once at the wrong time.
Thank you. Yes, I try not to get too close to ledges when I can help it.
…And what about beech nut gum? Remember it? Sure lots of lovely things to observe in the winter woods. Beautiful pics of the brook and falls, Allen!
Thanks Ginny. I do remember Beech Nut Gum and I thought of it when I was doing this post. I wonder why they called it that though. I don’t think of eating nuts when I’m chewing gum.
Beautiful photos and interesting as always, Allen.
Besides archeology, the N.A. fur trade is the subject I wrote about most, especially the North West Company, Scottish rival to the British Hudson’s Bay Company.
Lichens. In one of the NWC journals, the fur trader talks about eating them to stave off starvation on their return trip to Montreal from the Pacific Ocean. They called it “tripe de roche” (tripe of the rock). I don’t know what species it is.
As to the raspberries you mention, I am just about to finish a barb-wire fence around mine. There are also blackberries, the canes of which had made this old, one acre patch impenetrable until I cleaned it up.
Once I did that, my cows came in and ate the new raspberry growth along with the abundant buttercups that popped up. And, since I’m about to buy some sheep, I had to build the fence if I ever wanted raspberries and blackberries.
On Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 6:12 AM New Hampshire Garden Solutions New Hampshire Garden Solutions posted: ” I couldn’t remember the last time > I was at Beaver Brook Natural Area in Keene so last weekend I thought I’d > take a walk up the old abandoned road to the falls that are at the end of > it. As far as I can tell the old road was laid out in the 1700s and was” >
Thank you Ron. I see rock tripe (Umbilicaria mammulata) all the time. It grows on boulders here, usually near water, and we have a lot of them!
I’m surprised your cows ate buttercups. They’re a toxic plant that can cause mouth sores and gastrointestinal problems in cattle. I didn’t know they would eat rasberries either. Native Americans piled “fences” of blackberry canes around their settlements to keep out the unwanted. Maybe you should have done the same!
Ah, so that’s the species. Thanks.
Chileflora.com identifies it as creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens). Both of the following sources say and my daughter–in-law here has told me before that it is poisonous to livestock, but my cows eat it and suffer no ill effects. It blankets the floodplain of my creeks.
Its origin is Eurasia and Africa, but as you will see from these two sites, it is common and considered invasive in the PacNW and Northeast of the U.S.
https://www.kingcounty.gov/services/environment/animals-and-plants/noxious-weeds/weed-identification/creeping-buttercup.aspx
https://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/subject.html?sub=6291#maps
It seems we have a lot of plants here in s. Chile that you, as well as the folks in the Old World, have there. It tells me that wherever Europeans went they took their plants with them, by accident and design.
I wonder if you’d get sick from the cow’s milk after they’ve eaten buttercups. They’re said to be very toxic to humans. I see by the map that we have them here so I’m sure I must have seen them but we have so many small yellow flowers I pass most of them by. Identifying them can be very difficult.
Yes, Europeans brought many plants with them and, if you go by the small size and lack of space on their ships, they must have thought the plants were very valuable.
Good question! I have my two cows for lawnmowers, not milk. But, they can’t eat this year’s lush grass fast enough. This is why I’m buying sheep tomorrow.
I think just as many plants came as seeds stuck in the mud of the Europeans’ boots, etc.
I agree.
Interesting about the Native Americans’ use of cut blackberry canes as protective fencing. The blackberries here were brought from Germany perhaps as far back as the 1840s.
I have big piles of blackberries and raspberries that I cut in little pieces with a hand pruner. In this rain forest, it will take only a year or two for it to become good soil.
It takes them quite a while longer to break down here but I know that everything seems to be accelerated in a rain forest.
By the way, if you’d like to see some examples of rock tripe lichens just type “rock tripe” into the search box on this blog. I’ve shown it here many times.
For sure.
And, I will type it in. Thanks.
For sure.
I can’t find the search box.
It’s at the very top right of the opening blog page. If you’re using a reader I don’t know if it shows, but if you visit the blog online at https://nhgardensolutions.wordpress.com/ it will be there.
When we were kids this was the road to Granite Lake, where my Dad’s boss had a summer house that we got to visit sometimes. I want to say we often stopped in the turnout for a picnic lunch, but more likely it just happened once. A couple of years ago my sister and I visited the old turnout spot and found the remains of a campfire, some food wrappers and a blanket. I guess someone spent a little more time there than we ever did. Thanks for the visit.
The remains of the campfire are still there but it was a little cool for camping so I didn’t see anyone there.
It’s a great place for a walk!
What a wonderful place to explore, I loved the icicles formed on the brook.
Thank you Susan. It was a cold day but there wasn’t a lot of ice yet.