I could see some beautiful trees along the river in Keene from the highway but the only way I could get close enough for photos is to follow this rail trail to them. This is the rail trail I’ve walked since I was about 8 years old, so I know it well. Back then the Boston and Maine Railroad tracks ran through here, and I loved walking the tracks. Though you can see a lot of bare trees in this shot they weren’t all bare. I actually saw a lot of color out here.
There were some pretty trees and shrubs quite far off in the distance that I couldn’t identify.
This one was a poplar. They’re common out here now but I can’t remember seeing any when I was a boy.
Staghorn sumacs are also common. In the fall they have beautiful scarlet leaves but most had already fallen.
There are lots of sumac berries out here as well but I think these were smooth rather than staghorn sumac berries. They weren’t quite fuzzy enough for staghorn sumac fruit.
A large flock of robins was eating sumac fruit but there will still be plenty left in the spring. Usually nothing touches them until spring, but I don’t know why. I’ve always wondered if the migrating birds ate them when they came back. Of course robins used to be migrating birds so maybe it was they who ate them in the spring.
There are lots of many different kinds of fruit found along this trail, including the beautiful berries of Virginia creeper. This is where I first realized exactly how much natural food there was for birds. My grandmother always feared they would starve even though I told her there seemed to be plenty of food for fruit and seed eating birds.
I was surprised to find asparagus growing here so apparently humans can find food here too. There were two plants.
Blue wood asters were seen here and there but even they are coming to the end of their bloom time.
The always beautiful and always surprising blue of the black raspberry can be found all along the trail.
Here was some color; a huge maple. Unfortunately it was the invasive Norway maple (Acer platanoides.) These trees are native to Europe and hang on to their leaves longer than our native maples.
This tree had a lot of tar spot on its leaves. Tar spot is a fungal disease caused by three related fungi, Rhytisma acerinum, Rhytisma americanum and Rhytisma punctatum. Though it looks unsightly it doesn’t cause any real harm to the tree. It is usually found on Norway, silver and red maples.
The easiest way to check that a tree is a Norway Maple is to break a leaf stem (petiole). Norway maple is the only one that will show white, milky sap in broken leaf petioles. Native maples have clear sap.
A wasp nest had fallen out of a tree. I couldn’t imagine how long and how many wasps must it have taken to build such a thing. It was quite big and beautifully marbled. It looked like sedimentary stone.
This bridge was built in 2017 so it would be safer for people to cross one of Keene’s busiest highways. I haven’t used it much but a lot of people do, especially college students.
The patterns inside the bridge are a bit mesmerizing. Some of them are actually optical illusions. In fact if you see the bridge from the side it looks nearly flat and level.
I saw some beautiful oaks after the bridge. The color of them this year is beautiful enough to make you gasp.
But though it was hard to ignore the beauty of the oaks these are the trees that drew me here. They can be seen from the highway but I still couldn’t get close enough to be able to tell what they were. They could be maples, able to hang onto their leaves due to the warmth of the river water. I noticed all the red maples along the highway, which normally turn red in fall, turned this color this year. My color finding software sees orange but I see something that’s impossible to describe. More like tan.
There was a small grove of birches by the bridge. Gray birches (Betula populifolia,) I think.
I wondered how many times I had walked by this beech tree without seeing it. There was no missing it on this day.
Eventually you come to the old Boston and Maine Railroad trestle. When this was built there was nothing here; it was just another trestle in the middle of the woods, and it was a boundary for me when I was a boy. I grew up just behind and to the right of where I stood when I took this photo and back then there were no boards on the deck as there are now. There were railroad ties with gaps in between and if you fell through you’d be in the river, so it took a few years for me to muster the courage to cross it. I was probably 8 or 10 when I expanded my world by finally crossing it. Once across I thought, if I wanted to I could walk all the way south to Florida, but I made it only as far as the next town down the line.
The small wooded area I once played in was one of the more colorful places along the trail.
The Ashuelot River bank was colorful as well. This is a moody stretch of river; I’ve seen it quickly rise in spring to overflow its banks. Luckily our house was never flooded but each spring was a nail biter. I still get nervous when I see a river at bank full.
How strange was this? As soon as I crossed the river some of the maples still had their leaves, and some of the oaks were still green. It was like a jungle and totally different from when the trail started. If you scroll back to the beginning of this post you’ll see what I mean. I can’t explain it.
And mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) grew in great drifts here. I think I could cut arm loads of it without putting a dent in the huge colonies of it. I’m very interested in this plant but I don’t think I need armloads of it. Still, I’ll be back in the summer to collect a few plants. It’s a dream machine, this one.
I saw an old friend, still beautiful even though it was busy with seed production.
A bumblebee slept on a goldenrod blossom. If there is anything more true and right and good than a bee sleeping, or even dying on a flower I don’t know what it is. The flower needs the bee as much as the bee needs the flower and together, they are one.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
~John Muir
Thanks for stopping in. Have a safe and Happy Halloween.
So many beautiful scenes of autumn and autumn color! The asparagus was an interesting find. I remember finding a patch of wild asparagus in Connecticut one year.
Wasp and hornet nests are works of art. My aunt and uncle allowed a hornet nest to grow on one of their living room windows one year. As a child, I remember looking into the half nest through the window with fascination. I could see the colony at work.
You were very lucky to get to see inside a hornet’s nest like that. That’s something I’d love to see!
I had an unusual aunt and uncle. They were also friends of Edwin Way Teale.
Wow! Unusual is good!
I delight in your rambles.
I live on 8 acres in Ontario that I am allowing (and nudging) to revert to wild land. I planted stag horn sumac near the screen porch of my home and watch the birds chow down the seeds . I too always thought they only ate them in desperation in the late winter. The returning robins and starlings were the most obvious in years past. This year we had eastern bluebirds in our nesting box for the first time. Raised two broods. They fed heavily on the 2019 seed that remained while raising their young alternating with diving down from the low sumac branches to the lawn to catch insects. Tickled pink (blue?) to have them within 15 feet (4.5 metres) of us. Also have seen waxwings, starlings and I believe goldfinch working the heads and nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, chickadees working the bark. Covid has led to much more armchair birding from the screen porch, especially since we installed glass in every other window for optical clarity.
Your whimsical recollection of the nerve it took for you to challenge the railway trestle flung me back to my free-range childhood on a southern Ontario farm. There I rambled free and met the challenges (like crossing a pasture with an Angus bull, known to be grouchy). How I wish today’s children had the opportunity to explore and take risks in nature unsupervised and free of hovering anxiety ridden parents who see kidnappers and hostile nature in every nook and cranny.
Thank you Mavis. How lucky you are to have bluebirds! I rarely see them, in fact I think I’ve only seen them two or three times in my lifetime.
Interesting how many birds eat the staghorn sumac fruit. I don’t blame you for putting glass in your porch.
I think I’d rather face a trestle than a bull. Good for you!
I couldn’t agree more with your thoughts on today’s children. I’m glad I let my son and daughter roam at will.
As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the post. You say you plan to collect some mugwort and all I can say is DON’T PLANT IT ANYWHERE! Where I live in Manchester it’s a horrible, impossible-to-get-rid-of pest. Research confirms that.
Thank you Elaine. Yes, I’ve read that mugwort is very invasive so I don’t plan on planting it anywhere. I’d collect it while it was flowering, before it sets seed.
It is good to see that the trestles are well maintained and being used. You found some delightful delicate colour on your walk.
Thank you. When I was a boy you could sit on this trestle all day and not see a soul but now it’s almost like a Manhattan sidewalk so it sure does get a lot of use. Most of them though, see little use.
You live in such a lovely area, Allen. Thanks for sharing all its beauty with us. Don’t miss the full moon tonight!
It really is a great place for a nature nut to live Ginny and I consider myself very fortunate to have been born here.
I’m looking forward to seeing the moon but I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop shivering long enough to get any shots of it. It was 22 degrees here this morning and yesterday we had snow!
Thanks for the sharing your mugwort experiences. I’m happier to learn fresh is best.
It may not be that way for everyone. I can touch live plants in the morning and have very vivid dreams that night. It doesn’t seem to happen with dried plants though, even though everything I’ve read says it should.
So glad you found your fungus-free mugwort.
If I saw your mystery orange-tan trees down here I would guess hornbeam or hophornbeam. Not sure if you have them up there.
I believe your “Virginia creeper” is actually thicket creeper, Parthenocissus inserta, because the fruit are on stems that branch very dichotomously (in even pairs). Virginia creeper has a central stem with side branches, more like a cluster of grapes. Both are common, though Virginia is a better climber, and thicket is more likely to set fruit, I’ve read.
Thank you Sara, I’ve never heard of thicket creeper but I think you might be right. The leaves look a little more toothed as well.
We do have hornbeams here, especially American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) but they don’t get as tall as these trees were. I did find a hophornbeam along the river north of town but I’ve never seen them in this area. That doesn’t mean these trees couldn’t have been them though. I wish I could have gotten closer.
I’m not sure the mugwort was fungus free. I didn’t see a single blossom or sign of a blossom on what must have been thousands of plants.
Thicket creeper often has shinier leaves, and often has longer stems on the leaflets.
You have photographed the mugwort blossoms; that’s all they do, a little bit of brown or tan at the end of tight green phyllaries. Though they might be fruiting there; it’s extremely hard to tell the difference without a very close shot: more tan at the tips and tan instead of green on the phyllaries when fruiting.
I have seen photos online of what looked like actual petaled flowers but as you say it is very hard to tell when they’re so small. I’ll keep watching.
Of all the fascinating trestles you feature on this blog, I do believe this is the infamous trestle of our miss spent youth. Some interesting history here, No?
Yes, that’s the one. Even before you came down the tracks I spent a lot of time on and around that trestle.
Thanks for your good wishes and for all the colour you found, It cheered me up a lot. I loved that footbridge too.
You’re welcome Susan, I’m glad it cheered you up!
More mugwort! I share an interest, and to make sure I’ll have my own garden of remembered dreams next year, I’ll sprinkle Artemiesiaa vulgaris seeds onto warm spring earth. The folklore instructs stuffing your pillow with the dried plant, and when you wake, you’ll relive all dream adventures. I suppose nightmares will surface too. No sleep required to conjure those in this year of 2020.
How lovely to see the long open paths, the napping bee, and the light in the clover blossom. All treats today, this Halloween, thank you.
You’re welcome Lynne. I brought home some leaves and dried them and learned that only the fresh leaves seem to work for me. The dried leaves, even burned as incense, did nothing as far as I could tell. Now that I’ve found an abundance of plants I hope to experiment a little more next year. I have read that, if you have nightmares it will amplify those as well.