Time for a Climb

I think it had been a year or more since I had climbed the High Blue trail in Walpole so last Saturday that’s where I went. It’s more of a walk than a climb but still, it’s enough to get someone with tired lungs huffing and puffing. It was another beautiful spring day and there is a lot to see there, so I was looking forward to it.

There are a lot of ruts in the old logging road that starts the climb and many of them still had rain water in them. Salamanders took advantage of the small ponds, swimming in them as these two did. New Hampshire has eight native salamanders including the red-spotted newt, and I think that’s what these were. The larva are aquatic and so are the adults, but the juveniles are called red efts and live on land.  They eat just about anything that is small enough, including earthworms and insects. As I walked on I heard the quacking of wood frogs and the trilling of spring peepers, so there is a lot of water in the area.

Coltsfoot plants (Tussilago farfara) were blooming by the dozens.

Striped maple buds (Acer pensylvanicum) are getting bigger each time I see them. They’ll be opening soon.

Hobblebush buds (Viburnum lantanoides) are going to bloom early this year, I think. Normally they wouldn’t open until May but these warm days are accelerating everything.

The early warmth has wreaked havoc on the maple syrup industry. The last article I read said one of the larger local producers was down more than 10,000 gallons below average. This shot shows how most of the big producers collect sap these days; with food grade plastic tubing.

It’s very simple really. The tapper drills a hole in the tree and the black piece seen above is inserted into the hole. The syrup flows through the blue tubing to the green tubing and from there to the collection tanks. Vacuum pumps are sometimes used to pull the sap through the tubing.

It’s nearly impossible to get lost up here with signs like these directing you.

It isn’t far to the summit but as slow as I walk, it takes a little while. I walk slow purposely as I’ve said many times before. Adopt a toddler’s pace and then you begin to see all the things in nature that you’ve been rushing past all these years.

Black knot grew on a young cherry tree. Infected stems swell up and produce hard black knots like those seen here. They will eventually become serious wounds and will eventually kill the tree, so infected limbs should be pruned off 2-4 inches below the knots and buried or burned before bud break the following spring.

Woodpeckers had been gouging out the wood of a dead birch.

This pile of shavings at the base of the tree showed that they had been working hard.

I saw that they were still growing corn here. When I first started hiking here this was a meadow full of wildflowers including orange hawkweed, which is hard to find.

I always wonder who gets the most corn, the farmer of the animals. I think that bears eat a lot of it. I’ve followed game trails away from the cornfield and have found whole stalks that have been dragged off. It takes strength to pull up a corn stalk and I doubt deer could do it.

Willows bloomed off in the distance across the cornfield.

Two or three red maples, all male flowered, bloomed along the trail side of the cornfield.

This is very stony ground up here with ledge outcrops like this one fairly common. I’ve always thought of features like these the bones of the forest.

This outcrop was mostly quartz and rock tripe lichen grew all over it. Rock tripe lichen (Umbilicaria mammulata) gets brownish and curls up when it is dry like these were. You can see the back of it , which is black and pebble textured in this photo. The Umbilicaria part of the scientific name comes from the Latin umbilicus, meaning navel, because of the way they attach themselves to stone with a single attachment point that looks like a navel. It sticks itself to stone by way of this single, navel like attachment point and the rest of the lichen hangs from this central point, much like a rag hanging from a peg. Rock tripe is edible and eating it has saved the lives of people who were lost and starving in the past. Though I imagine they must taste like old rubber, these lichens were a source of emergency food for Native Americans and saved the lives of many an early settler. Even George Washington’s troops are said to have eaten rock tripe to survive the brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777.

Running club moss (Lycopodium clavatum) is also called stag’s horn clubmoss. This plant gets its name from the way it sends out long, horizontal stems. All along the horizontal stem erect stems form at intervals and roots form where it touches the ground. All of this happens under the leaves so it can be difficult to tell this club moss from others. I can’t say that these plants are rare here, but I don’t see them too often. For you people who have the app, Google lens identifies it as stag’s horn clubmoss.

The remains of an old foundation always make me wonder about the people who once lived up here. It’s easy to forget that just one hundred years ago most of these hills were cleared and used as pasture land. Once the industrial revolution happened people left the farms to work in the mills and ever since the land has been going back to forest.

These people worked hard, whoever they were. This stone wall runs off into the distance as far as the eye can see.

The pond that lives up here already had duckweed growing on it. And it was full of singing frogs.

I’ve seen these what I think are insect egg cases before but I’ve never been able to identify them. If you’ve ever seen a Tic-Tac candy mint, these are the same size and shape that they are. In other words, quite small. Google lens kept trying to identify the shrub instead of them. Apparently it couldn’t see the egg cases.

The sign at the overlook lets you know how high up you are…

…and the view is always blue, hence the name High Blue. The view was a little hazy but I could see the ski trails over on Stratton Mountain in Vermont, which is just across the Connecticut River Valley. I was surprised to see snow on them, because where I was sitting it was about 74 degrees. Far too warm for this early in spring but as anyone who spends much time in nature knows, you have to be at peace with what nature gives.

A beautiful life is not a place at which you arrive, but the experience you create moment by moment. ~Lebo Grand

Thanks for stopping in.