Things I’ve Seen

This post won’t be as cold as the last one from the Westmoreland deep cut but you might still want to keep your sweater on. It’s -10 F. as I start this post but the above photo of the outlet on Half Moon Pond in Hancock was taken on a balmier 20-degree morning just after an ice storm. We’ve had a few of those as well.

I think I’ll remember this winter as one of near constant ice. It is everywhere and seems to cover everything, as this poor lowbush blueberry shows. The ice is keeping me from climbing any hills and making me check to see if I have my micro spikes any time I go outside.

I took a few steps out onto the ice of Half Moon Pond without spikes on and found it so slippery I thought I’d have to drop to my knees and crawl back to shore. It was all I could do just to stand still but the skaters loved it. One even had a sail, so the wind did all the work. If you need wind, this is the place to come. Sometimes the wind will scream across the pond with enough force to nearly tear a half open door right off its hinges. It howls through here and makes a howling sound, just like in the movies. I always wonder if Native Americans were afraid of places with howling winds and twanging ice like this place has. When that ice starts in with its creaking, twanging and pinging it can sound downright eerie, but you do get used to it.

I decided to stay on shore where I could stand upright and marvel at the designs in the ice. I can’t imagine what would have made such strange shapes.

Before the pond froze over as each wave reached the frozen sand on shore its leading edge would freeze and over time all the frozen wave edges intertwined and created these rope-like structures. This was the first time I had ever seen this happen.

I tried a few times to show the way the ice on the trees reflected the light in colors, as if millions of tiny prisms lined the branches, but though it’s an easy thing to see making the camera see it is not quite so easy. That’s too bad because it can be one of the most beautiful scenes found in nature in the winter.

In a recent post I did on buds I told how the bud’s scales protected the bud from water and ice infiltration, but after seeing something like this it always amazes me that the buds can survive at all. The new leaves and flowers that appear in the spring though, show that they’re a lot tougher than we might think.

Not a single bud or branch can escape ice like this. Anything over a quarter inch in ice thickness starts bringing down branches, and the branches bring down power lines. That’s why an ice storm can be such a terrible and beautiful thing.

The ice I could get close to looked quite thick but I didn’t see too much damage from this storm. I saw just a few smaller limbs down.

I saw a long-necked dinosaur eating an oak leaf in a frozen puddle.

This was the scene in another puddle. I can’t imagine how such things happen. It’s as if the skin of the ice is disappearing and leaving behind its skeleton.

Little bluestem grass looks so fragile, but here it took a plow full of heavy wet snow and didn’t flinch. I love to see a field full of little bluestem in the snow.

This is another failed attempt at showing you all of the colors that shine out at you from an icy forest. One day I hope to capture it because it’s a very beautiful thing to see. It’s one of those things in nature that make you just want to stand and look and marvel at the incredible beauty that surrounds us.

But most times, rather than just standing and looking into the woods I like to go into them, because things like this are much easier to see. This is one of the reddest examples of red bark phenomenon that I’ve ever seen. The color is caused by algae growing on the tree bark, and it being studied by scientists all over New England. It isn’t always red; it can be orange as well. It affects all kinds of trees, both conifers and deciduous, and many different species. It can also appear on stones and is even present in many lichens. So if you see a tree with red bark there isn’t anything wrong. It’s just algae looking for a place to perch. What might be wrong I’ve read, is what is causing the algae to want to perch on tree bark in the first place. It is a relatively recent phenomenon, happening within the last 20 years. Some think climate change, others simply don’t know. I notice it more and more, especially on eastern hemlock trees.

NOTE: A knowledgeable friend tells me that this red bark could also be the tree’s “under bark” which can become exposed when woodpeckers go probing for larvae on a tree. I’ve never heard of this so I’ll have to look more closely next time I see it. If this was done by a woodpecker that was a determined bird, because it was a very large area on the tree.

Here was something I had never seen; a large hemlock scar had healed nicely but it was covered with white frost, while frost couldn’t be seen on any other part of the tree. It’s something I can’t explain. Maybe the bark of the healed wound was moister than the older, thicker bark that surrounded it. Somehow, something attracted the frost.

One of the many things I see in winter is how the sun has heated a leaf or a twig enough so it melts itself down into the snow. This was a hemlock twig, which was barely larger in diameter than a piece of cooked spaghetti. How so much heat can be absorbed by what is a relatively small area is unknown to me, but I see it happen all the time.

I saw a strange something or other on a tree and though I had a feeling that it must be a lichen, I wasn’t sure. I had never seen anything like it so since I have a friend who has literally written the book about the lichens in his area, I sent him photos. He almost immediately identified it as Trypethelium virens, which I later found out is called the beech sucker or the speckled blister lichen. They grow on beech trees and the best time to spot them is in the winter, so that’s another good reason to go into the woods in winter. It’s a pretty lichen that was quite large and easily seen; maybe 2 inches across.

I found a curious little forest sprite face peeking out from the fringe of this example. From what I’ve seen online the appearance of this lichen can vary by quite a lot.

I went to the Ashuelot falls to get some shots of ice pancakes but I was too late. The river had frozen over and all I saw were icebergs at the floor of the falls. It was still a worthwhile trip though, because the water going over the falls looked like honey in the sunlight.

While at the river I saw black locust seed pods blowing around on top of the snow. They always seem to fall from the trees in the winter so there was nothing remarkable about that. What is remarkable is how such a big tree can come from such a small seed. They can’t be much more than a quarter of an inch long. They are obviously in the legume family along with beans, peas and so many other plants.

I’ve always loved how the white snow makes water look so dark in winter, so I hung by the side of this dark pool long enough to almost make me late for work. Of course I tried to get that perfect photo, and never did.

This last shot is from nearly the same spot as the first one in this post. It shows the difference over the course of almost a month and surprisingly, except for the addition of a little snow in this last shot, it didn’t change that much. Since we’re supposed to be in for a good old fashioned nor ‘easter today, it may change quite a lot. Stay warm and stay safe, wherever you happen to be.

Nearness to nature keeps the spirit sensitive to impressions not commonly felt, and in touch with the unseen powers. ~Charles Eastman

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Some Fall Color

Some of you who came here expecting to find flowers might be a little disappointed but I’ve been taking a lot of fall foliage photos and I need to put them in a blog post, otherwise I’ll still be showing them in December and everyone will be confused. On this day I wanted to take just a short walk by the Ashuelot River to see if the cinnamon ferns had changed into their beautiful fall pumpkin orange color yet, but everything was so beautiful, what started as a short walk turned into a complete blog post. Sometimes it seems as if nature just throws itself at you and this was one of those days.

Not only was the forest beautiful, the weather was as well. So far we’ve had a very warm October and that has meant that the leaves are changing later than they usually do, so this might be an extended fall foliage year.

I saw a few orange cinnamon ferns but most hadn’t turned yet, which is unusual.

Turtles were even out, still soaking up as much of the weakened autumn sunshine as they could. These were painted turtles, I think. It’s unusual to see them in October.

Other creatures were active as well. Do you see the great blue heron walking along the far shore? It’s over on the far left, just by the last tree on the left side.

The big bird was hungry and on the move. Here it approaches a fallen tree from the left. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to watch the heron or the trees so I stopped to get shots of both.

But then it saw me and froze. I thought it would stay that way but it continued on, very slowly.

I hoped it would see a fish or a frog but it didn’t catch a thing while I was there. I know there are still frogs to catch because I scared a few into the water while getting these photos.

I’ve watched enough blue herons stalking food to know that this wouldn’t be over soon, so I moved on.

When I left it was watching what I was doing rather than looking for food.

I had leaves to see, so I left the bird alone. I didn’t come here looking for colorful foliage but since the trees surprised me by being so beautiful already, I stayed. My color finding software even sees salmon pink in this view.

They were beautiful no matter if you looked forward or back.

I liked this view but it might have been better if if duckweed hadn’t covered the blue of the water.

It was hard to watch where I was going instead of looking up.

The branches on the old sunken tree still looked more like the ribs of a a sunken ship.

The way these polypores were spaced on this tree made me think of squirrel steps.

The forest glowed and beckoned, so I had to go and see. I love walking into scenes like this that have such soft, beautiful light.

I found a fine old American hornbeam, also known as iron wood or muscle wood (Carpinus caroliniana.) The latter name comes from the way it looks like tendons are rippling under its bark. It is common along our rivers but seeing one this big is not common because these trees don’t seem to live long. Low down on its trunk I can see a good example of a maple dust lichen (Lecanora thysanophora) in this shot that I didn’t see in person. It’s that light grayish spot. The tree also had lots of spidery Frullania liverworts on it. They are the darker blotches. They like places where the humidity is high, like here along the river.

New England asters bloomed here and there but they won’t last too much longer.

Many asters looked more like these.

Well there wasn’t peak color here yet, but when leaves start turning they can do it quickly and most of these have started. Sometimes in just a day or two a tree, especially a red maple, can change from green to red or orange so you’ve got to be on your toes if you want to catch them at thier most colorful. I hope you have plenty of color where you live, if not from leaves then maybe flowers. I’m still seeing flowers here so there should be at least one more flower post soon.

The fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light. ~Malcolm Lowry

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A Winter Walk in the Woods

Last Saturday was cold but clear with wall to wall sunshine. I decided to take a walk along the Ashuelot River in Keene to see if it had frozen over and was surprised to find that it had frozen over the whole length of the distance I walked.

It looked more like a pasture than a river.

I saw some strange animal tracks on the ice but I couldn’t get close enough to find out what animal they were from. They might have been from a rabbit or squirrel.

Wool grass (Scirpus cyperinus) likes wet places and grows here and there on the riverbank. Though its common name points to a grass this plant is actually in the sedge family. It is also called bulrush. Its seeds are eaten by waterfowl and muskrats will eat its roots. Native Americans used this plant to weave mats, bags and other utilitarian objects. I like its drooping habit.

Something that sets my blood racing at this time of year is bare ground, and I’m seeing more of it wherever I go. The sun gets stronger each day and no matter how many storms we have or how cold it is the snow will melt, starting on southern exposures. You can also see in this shot how the snow on the trail had been packed down by many feet. The going was easy as long as I stayed on the trail.

There were strange looking ice formations on the surface of the river.

There was some snow built up on the bent tree that lives out here. This tree never seems to get any larger.

I thought the beavers might have finished the job they started last fall on this huge oak tree but they’ve abandoned it. Girdling means that the bark has been removed around the entire tree and since the inner bark (cambium) is what carries nutrients and moisture to the crown, a tree cannot survive without it. Anything above the girdling will die.

It really is amazing what beavers can do with their sharp teeth. From what I’ve seen no wood is too hard for them.

I saw a girdled smaller tree and I can say for certain that this was not done by a beaver. I don’t know why anyone would do this unless it was the Keene Parks and Recreation Department wanting to remove trees along the trail. Girdling has been used to remove trees for thousands of years and the Native Americans who once lived and fished in this area surely used it to clear land. Once the trees died and fell on a piece of land the brush and trunks would be burned and the resulting wood ash and whatever rotting wood was left helped to fertilize the land for farming. Girdling is still used by foresters, horticulturalists and land owners today.

I saw many trees that had fallen naturally out here. In fact I see them wherever I go and most of them are white pines and red maples.

I was stopped by the bright, orange-brown color of a blueberry branch in the sunlight. I should have gotten a shot of its small red buds as well.

The sunlight was also caught in the trees and it was so beautifully golden against the deep blue of the sky.

I saw lots of oriental bittersweet berries (Celastrus orbiculatus) still on plants, and that’s a good thing. It means the birds aren’t spreading its seeds around.

Oriental bittersweet vines are as strong as wire and don’t expand as whatever they wrap themselves around grows larger. The alder with bittersweet wrapped around it in this photo will eventually be strangled to death unless something is done.

When it gets cold dark, almost black spots appear on the bark of trees. They are really there all the time but are kind of a lighter reddish color and not quite so noticeable at other times of year when there are so many other things to see. Those who think they’ve never seen a liverwort might want to stop and take a closer look at these dark, lacy blotches because they are Frullania liverworts, one of the few liverworts that can thrive in dry places.

There are about 800 species of Frullania liverworts and many grow as epiphytes on the bark of trees and shrubs where the humidity is high. Epiphytic plants take nothing from the host plants they grow on, so this liverwort does no harm to trees. Its leaves are very small and hard to get a good photo of.

Something not quite so pretty as the frullania liverwort is the beech scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga) seen here. Excessive feeding by this scale insect causes two different fungi, Neonectria faginata and Neonectria ditissima, to produce annual cankers or blisters on the bark of the tree. The continuous formation of lesions around the tree eventually girdles it, resulting in canopy death.

You know it’s cold when pine sap turns blue, and we’ve had a cold February. It was about 25° F. (-4° C) on this day.

Yes it was cold but it was also a beautiful sunny day so I stood on the bridge for a while listening to the silence, which was broken only by birdsong and the occasional cracking of river ice. It would have been easy to lose myself and stand here for longer than I did but you have to watch that in winter because frostbite can be a possibility and once you stop moving you cool off fast.

On the way back I thought a contrail looked much like what smoke from a campfire might have looked like long ago. It wasn’t hard to imagine Native lodgings out there somewhere; archeological digs have shown Native Americans were here at least 12,000 years ago.

I decided to check on Ashuelot falls before leaving. They were all splash and foam and remained thawed for the most part.

There were some huge ice formations here and there though. This one looked like the arm and paw of a gigantic polar bear.

Above the falls I saw these strange tracks on the ice. They were big, easily as big as my hand, and I wondered if they might be moose tracks. Moose are occasionally seen in this area. They have even walked through Keene neighborhoods and down city streets. They also occasionally fall through the ice and it’s quite a job getting them back on dry land. An adult male moose can weigh over a thousand pounds.

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; be not discouraged – keep on – there are divine things, well envelop’d; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. ~Walt Whitman

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More Fall Color

I had three days off due to the Columbus Day holiday but a heavy cloud cover decided to park itself over the entire region, so most of the photos you’ll see here were taken under gray skies. But this makes things interesting for me, because there is a long running argument that says colors “pop” better on cloudy days than they do on sunny ones. For me it depends. If the sun is behind me and I’m looking at the sun shining on the foliage the scene can be very beautiful, but on cloudy days you don’t have to worry about where the sun is. The colors still “pop” but in a different way, as this view from Howe Reservoir in Dublin shows. Mount Monadnock would have shown in the background if not for the low clouds.

I moved along the shoreline of the reservoir trying to get shots of the best color. An Asian couple did the same, taking selfies with their phones, presumably because the people back home would never believe this. Actually I’ve heard that there are people who think it couldn’t be real; that the colors had to have been faked somehow, but then they came here and found that nature can indeed be pretty colorful.

We still haven’t reached peak color yet so many trees like oak and beech are still green. It seems to start in swaths or pockets throughout the forest before finally the entire forest is ablaze with colors of every hue. I watch the hillsides that surround Keene and when they are showing quite a lot of color that’s my signal to start climbing and try to photograph it from above. So far I haven’t had much luck but I keep trying. My breathing is ragged this year so I’ll probably only get one try. I’ll try to make it a good one.

Birches tend to grow in groves, often mixed in with other species, so it’s hard to isolate a single tree to show you their fall leaf color, but this one conveniently leaned out over the water all by itself. They don’t vary much from the clear yellow that you see here, although I have seen red and orange leaves on birch trees occasionally.

In the fall blueberries come in yellow, orange, red, and the plum color seen here. They grow wild around our lakes and ponds. I can’t think of a single body of fresh water I’ve been on in this state that didn’t have blueberries on its shores. They are very common and their numbers are staggering.

In the last fall color post I showed some cinnamon ferns that were orange. Usually their cousins the interrupted ferns (Osmunda claytoniana) also turn orange but this one at Howe Reservoir was bright yellow.

Sometimes just a single tree seems enough.

But a single tree can never match the beauty of an entire forest wearing its fall colors. The asters were a bonus.

Red maples (Acer rubrum) don’t mind wet feet so they are often found it wet places, and that is why they’re also called swamp maples by many people. In fact some swamps are called red maple swamps. As this view into a swamp shows they come in various shades of yellow, orange, red and are one of our most colorful fall trees. They’re also called soft maple and scarlet maple. These trees can get quite big; the largest known red maple lives in Michigan and is 125 feet tall with a circumference of over 16 feet.

Both main roads and back roads are getting colorful now.  You don’t realize how many people come to see the foliage until you drive a road like this one. Usually you can walk on this road and not see a car all day, but on this day it was like a super highway. I had to wait a while to get a shot with no cars in it.

False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) had colorful leaves but no berries. They get eaten fast and I haven’t been able to find any ripe ones yet this year.

I still haven’t seen any scarlet poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) leaves but I did see some that I thought were pink. Unfortunately my color finding software sees the sky reflected off the leaves and thinks the few leaves in the lower right corner are several shades of blue.

Wild river grape leaves (Vitis riparia) turn yellow in the fall and this is a great time to find them because they stand out better now than at any other time of year.

I couldn’t let a warm and dry fall day go by without visiting the Ashuelot River. I started in the northern part of town and sure enough the tree that always changes before all the others had done it again. I can’t get close to it so I have no idea what it is, but it’s always early.

After visiting the northern part of town I visited town center at Ashuelot Park. This stretch of river is one of my favorites in the fall because the banks are lined with colorful maples. You have to come here relatively early though, because many maples change early and that means they drop their leaves early. In a week or so when I’m at other places admiring colorful foliage the trees here might be all but bare.

The falls over the old Colony dam on West Street turned to molten gold in the afternoon sun.

One of the reasons I love to come here at this time of year is because of the way the afternoon sun sets the trees ablaze with color. It’s beautiful and seeing people just standing and staring or taking photos is common. One girl with a camera told me she comes here every day. It’s a place people come to immerse themselves in the beauty of fall.

But which is more beautiful, the sunlight coming through the trees or falling on the trees? I can never decide so I always get shots of both. The colors are amazing no matter how you look at them.

I’ve been looking at this shot of a turtle on a log for nearly a week now, trying to think of what I wanted to say about it. What a lucky turtle is about all I can come up with. Not profound maybe, but I wouldn’t have minded spending some time on that log myself. I can’t imagine being any more immersed in nature than that.

I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the apple tree, and a butterfly flitted across the field, and all the leaves were calling. ~Richard le Gallienn

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A Rainy Day on the River

Last Saturday it rained most of the day but Sunday had hit or miss showers so I hoped for the best and went for one of my favorite walks along the Ashuelot River in Keene. It was a damp, humid day.

I’ve known this section of river all my life. I used to fish here at the dam when I was a boy and they still fish for trout, pickerel and sunfish here today. All I ever caught were perch and dace but the river was a lot dirtier in those days. This dam is known as the Faulkner and Colony dam because it was built around 1777 by that company to power their mill. A few years ago there was talk about removing it to open up the river and another idea would refurbish it to generate power but I haven’t heard anything lately about either idea. I like the thought of restoring the river to what it once was without any dams on it. Two other dams have been removed in the past 20 years; one in Swanzey and one in Hinsdale.

Twelve Native American sites have been found along this section of river so far. At least one site dates back 10, 500 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these trails were originally made by the Natives, because they hug the river closely and have many good fishing spots along them.  The word Ashuelot means “collection of many waters” in Native American language and many small tributaries pour into it throughout the area. The Ashuelot in turn, empties into the Connecticut River before it finally finds its way to the Atlantic.

Arrowwood viburnum berries (Viburnum dentatum) were ripe along the shore but hadn’t been touched by the birds.

Elderberries on the other hand, were being eaten the minute they ripened. There were green berries and half ripe red berries, but no fully ripe purple-black berries on this bush. I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand why birds choose to eat what they do. We still have staghorn sumacs full of last year’s fruit, and what’s wrong with viburnum berries?

Meadowsweet (Spirea alba) still blooms alongside rivers and ponds but its cousin steeple bush (Spirea tomentose) has finished. Native Americans used both plants medicinally.

Tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) was ready to call it a summer. The leaves on this plant sometimes turn a beautiful purple color at the end of summer. Some Native American tribes used this plant to treat nosebleeds and others used it as a spice. It likes to grow in disturbed soil near water.

The most popular spot for turtles in this part of the river is the end of this old log. You can almost always see a turtle or two on it at any time of day so it’s a good place for children to walk. When I was a boy it seemed like this place had everything a boy could want, and I spent many happy days here.

In places the trail widens enough so that 4 people could walk side by side, but this width doesn’t last. On most of the trail 2 people side by side is more like it.

The prize for the most unusual thing I saw on this day has to go to what I think is a bleeding tooth fungus (Hydnellum peckii.) This large fungus gets its common name from the many droplets of blood red liquid it exudes when young. Though some of the droplets on this example were red most were more amber colored. The “tooth” part of the common name comes from the spines on its underside. The liquid the fungus oozes contains a chemical called atromentin, which has anti-bacterial and anticoagulant properties.

Here is a look at the mushroom under LED light, which shows that most of the droplets are not red. Because of the color of the liquid and the fact that I found it growing on a tree rather than on the ground I question my identification, but I can’t find another mushroom that “bleeds” and grows on trees. If you know of another species that does this and grows on trees I’d love for you to tell me about it.

A large tree had fallen into the river on the far side. This is a fairly regular occurrence and it always reminds me that, however slowly, the river is always getting wider. It was also quite high due to all of the rain. I think we’re up to about 10 inches in three weeks, according to the rain gauge where I work. This is after a moderate drought in the first half of summer and the dry land has been sponging it up fairly well until lately. Now there aren’t many places for more water to go. Even the forest floor has standing water on it in many places, so we need a dry spell. As I write this it’s pouring rain yet again.

Something had been munching on the starflowers (Trientalis borealis.) The Trientalis part of the plant’s scientific name means “one third of a foot” in Latin, and that’s just about how tall this pretty little plant gets. The spring woods wouldn’t be the same without its white star shaped flowers. This one had a seed pod; you can just see the tiny white dot between the leaf at 12 o’clock and the one at 1 o’clock.

Tiny starflower seedpods always remind me of soccer balls. They’re just about the same size as an air gun BB. The few brown seeds inside need a cold period to germinate and will not do so until the fall of the second year. Ants and other insects “plant” the seeds.

I saw some colorful turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor,) the first fresh ones I’ve seen this season. I’m hoping to see lots of blue and purple ones this year.

Woodland agrimony (Agrimonia striata) looks almost like goldenrod from a distance. The small yellow flowers grow on long spikes (racemes) on a short, knee high plant.

Woodland agrimony is said to be rare in New England and I believe it because this is one of only two places I’ve ever seen it. It grows in the shade near a tangle of many other plant species. It has been used medicinally for thousands of years dating back to at least ancient Egypt. Though the plant is said to be native to the U.S. and Canada I can find no information on how it was used by Native Americans, and that’s unusual. It is also called roadside agrimony.

Blue vervain (Verbena hastata) is one of my summer favorites, mostly because it dresses in my favorite color. This is another plant that loves water and it grows near ponds and rivers, and even wet roadside ditches. The bitter roots of this plant were used by native Americans to relieve gastric irritation, as an expectorant, and to induce sweating. The seeds were roasted and ground into flour by some tribes, and others dried the flowers and used them as snuff to treat nosebleeds. Natives introduced the plant to the Europeans and they used it in much the same ways.

One of the reasons I wanted to visit this place was because I had seen narrow leaved gentians (Gentiana andrewsii) blooming in Nelson the previous week and I wanted to see if the closed or bottle gentians (Gentiana linearis) were blooming. Not only were they not blooming, they were barely budded. Narrow leaf and closed gentian flowers look identical, so you have to look at the leaves carefully to tell the difference. These leaves are wider and have a different overall shape than those of narrow leaf gentian.

The trail narrowed and got muddy after a time, but I was too busy enjoying all the wildflowers to care.

One of the wildflowers I saw was spotted jewelweed (Impatiens capensis,) which gets its name not from its orange flowers but from the way raindrops sparkle like jewels on its wax coated leaves.

I turn around at this little bridge because not too far beyond it you come to one of the main roads through Keene, and I didn’t need to see it again. Though this was a wet walk I made it all the way back and never did get rained on. It always does me good to be close to the river. I always come away feeling recharged, as if the 12 year old me has joined the me of today. I think that must be mainly due to the memories, because there isn’t a bad one to be found here.

The song of the river ends not at her banks, but in the hearts of those who have loved her. ~ Buffalo Joe

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A Day on the Ashuelot River

The word “Ashuelot” is pronounced Ash-will-ot if you’re from this area or Ash-wee-lot if you’re from away. The word is a Native American one meaning “collection of many waters.” For years I read that the word meant “the place between” but that didn’t make a lot of sense. “A collection of many waters” makes much more sense because that’s exactly what the river is. Wandering the banks of the Ashuelot is something I’ve done since I was too young to even retain the memory of doing so, and I do it often. On this day I was happy to see that the ice shelves had melted and the sandy / stony shoreline was back. The river has been very high for over a month and it’s good to see it finally ready to absorb the next big rain storm, which should come sometime in April unless that month has gone haywire too.

I stopped to admire some ice formations and take some photos so I wouldn’t have to try and explain how cold it was. Actually it wasn’t bad in the sunshine when the wind wasn’t blowing but it was blowing almost constantly along this stretch of river, so it was a day to be wrapped up like you would be in January.

The ice had formed discs on every twig that was in the water and this was remarkable only because the ever splashing water usually forms icy tear drop shapes on the twigs. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen these disc shapes here before.

Here is what I’m more used to seeing. Ice baubles I call them, but there weren’t many to be seen. They happen because of the way the current makes the water constantly rise and fall along the shoreline, so one second the twig is in the cold air and the next it’s under water. The runoff freezes and layer by layer and an ice bauble is made. It reminds me of dipping a wick in melted wax over and over again to make a candle.

This is where I come to practice my wave catching skills but there were none to catch on this day because the water was too low. It has to be at just the right height for good waves to form. Too low or too high and there are no waves. I took some photos anyway though, because the water looked like satin as it poured over the unseen stones that cause the waves.

Oak leaves huddled together as if to warm each other in the chilly breeze. I love the warm, orangey brown color of last year’s oak leaves, but I won’t be sorry to see them finally fall.

The oak buds seemed to be swelling a bit but it was hard to know. Oaks are one of our latest trees to leaf out in spring.

I saw a chubby little bird in a bush which looked like it was hoping I wouldn’t see it. I think it was a dark eyed junco but I’m not 100% sure of that. I see these small dark colored birds feeding in flocks along roadsides where the snow has melted away from the pavement , exposing the soil and grass. I’ve read that dark eyed juncos come here as winter sets in and leave in spring, so they must like the cold. There are said to be about 630 million of them from Alaska to Mexico, and all across the U.S. from coast to coast.

I wondered if the juncos were eating the sumac seeds so I had to look it up. Apparently they eat smaller seeds like those of grasses, lamb’s quarters and the like, and in warmer months they also eat insects. Robins, blue jays, grosbeaks, ruffed grouse, cardinals and other larger birds eat the sumac fruit, but it never disappears here until spring.

I went to visit the Ashuelot Falls on West Street in Keene. I used to fish here quite often when I was a boy but back then the river wasn’t as clean as it is now so I didn’t catch that many fish. An occasional perch or dace was about it but that was fine, because my being here really didn’t have much to do with catching fish anyway. I’d let a forked stick hold my pole while I explored the river bank. Now they catch trout here, I’m told.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to see ice pancakes in January but this was March, so I was surprised.

Ice pancakes form when the river foam stirred up by falls or other turbulence comes together into a misshapen lump. As the current moves the misshapen lumps they bump and jostle each other until all the rough edges are shaved off and they’ve become round like a pancake. Then they begin to freeze and their edges build up into rims.

Here is what an ice pancake looks like when it starts life, before its friends smooth out all those angles.

Canada geese waded in the shallows. More and more of them are returning to nest and raise their young in the reed beds along the river. There is always one lookout standing tall while the others preen, sleep, or eat and they count on their lookout to sound the alarm. I wondered if most of these birds even knew I was there.

My pointing the camera at them was too much for one or two of the geese and they swam off quickly.

Normally a river gets deeper as you go toward its middle but a sandbar has grown here, so the water in the middle is quite shallow. Not good for navigation but the geese know they can stand here rather than swim and they take advantage of being able to rest while still in the water. The shading from dark to lighter brown in this photo shows where the sandbar is.

A maple tree had been pecked full of holes by an unseen woodpecker.

I didn’t have to see this woodpecker to know it was a pileated woodpecker, which is our biggest. Its holes are large and almost always rectangular. All of the holes in the previous photo would fit inside this one with plenty of room to spare.

The hole in this old red maple (Acer rubrum) was the biggest of all but I doubt very much that it was made by a bird or an animal. I think the river has washed the soil out from under it.

The hole was plenty big and roomy enough for me to comfortably sit in, almost like a hobbit.

I knew the old tree was a red maple by its buds. The bud scales in many of these examples had pulled back to reveal the many pinkish flowers inside. Those over on the left were even protruding a bit from the bud, but it was still too early to tell if they were male or female blossoms. It’s a good thing they hadn’t fully opened because the temperature fell to zero degrees on this night. The cold isn’t going to leave quickly this year but today is the first full day of spring, even if it doesn’t seem it.

I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever,
At the bottom of my dream.
~Henry David Thoreau

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Winter’s Beauty

Anyone who has read this blog for a time knows that I’m not a big fan of winter, but that’s because of all the extra work like shoveling the roof that comes along with it. Winter itself is a season filled with beauty, as this window frost shows so well. It looks like crystal ferns and when I was a boy most of the windows I saw in winter were decorated in this way. The newer double pane windows have pretty much put a stop to that, but car windows still become decorated on cold nights.

 

Once the ground freezes surface water has nowhere to go so if it rains or if the snow melts, small ponds form and freeze. This kind of ice makes it hard for animals like deer to get around because they slip on it.

I paid another visit to Mount Monadnock the other day and found Perkin’s Pond frozen over but little snow on the summit. That has changed since; we had about 6 inches of snow on Monday but I haven’t had a chance to get photos yet.

On this day there was very little snow up there. It was cold enough so the bright sunshine wasn’t melting what there was though.

I’ve wondered for a long time what caused these spidery holes in lake and pond ice. I recently read that when it’s warm enough drain holes can form in the ice. When snow falls on ice the added weight forces the ice sheet to sink somewhat and water can wick up through the drain holes and wet the snow, forming channels that look like rivers. These dark spidery creations are called “ice octopi,” “ice spiders,” or “ice stars” and can sometimes grow to many feet across. This example at Perkin’s Pond was no bigger than a softball, or around 4 inches, with arms that stretched for a foot or more.

The Ashuelot River hasn’t frozen and enough rain has fallen to create some waves again. I enjoy seeing if I can catch a wave at just the right curl. I don’t use burst mode on the camera so it isn’t easy, but I’ve found that if you are patient you can tune into the river’s rhythm and catch the waves in full curl. I love the colors of the river water in bright sunshine.

Ice baubles formed on the river’s shore and the stones were completely coated with ice, so I had to watch where I stepped. This ice had formed into a round disc shape around a blade of grass.

The sunlight on such clear ice is always enough to stop me in my tracks. The colors are so beautiful and the shapes in the formations always mind boggling. Like a thousand prisms bending light.

I went to the Ashuelot Falls in Keene to see if they had frozen up but other than some ice from the spray they were flowing normally. I’ve seen them turn into huge blocks of ice but I’m hoping I don’t see that again right away. When the sun is just right they look like golden tinsel.

The waterfall creates foam on the river and when it’s cold the foam can freeze. The current keeps the frozen foam from forming a flat sheet by spinning the irregular pieces into circles. When the circles of foam bump into each other they form rims and start to look like pancakes. These ranged in size from car tires to cantaloupes, and sometimes smaller.

In fact they are called pancake ice and from what I’ve read are rare outside of the Arctic, even though I see them at least once every winter. In the Arctic, the pancakes can stick together and form ridges that pile on top of each other and can reach up to 60 feet thick but here on the Ashuelot they just float downstream. Whether or not they make it to the Connecticut River and then to the Atlantic Ocean I don’t know.

This pancake formed around a reed and was stuck. It would probably never join the rest of the pack unless it thawed.

Wilson Pond in Swanzey has frozen over but not completely. If this ice was thicker it would have been perfect for skating on, but it won’t be thick enough for that for a while yet. The latest storm covered it with snow so unless someone plows or shovels it nobody will be skating here.

One of the things I saw when I explored the icy shore of Wilson Pond was rime ice. Rime ice forms when super cooled water droplets in ground fog make contact with something that is at a below freezing temperature. The thicker the fog, the larger the crystals. Rime ice can form on virtually anything, even snow. These examples grew on leaves and pine needles.

I tried to pick up a twig with ice crystals on it and they were so fragile they just fell apart. This leaf was resting on the pond ice and I left it where it was.

I didn’t touch these ice covered pine needles either. The crystals look sharp but just a touch of a finger or a whisper of breath is enough to destroy them.

This was what sunrise looked like reflected in Half Moon Pond before it froze over. We’re not likely to see this again until March or April. It is beauty that will be missed, but it’s by far not the only beauty to be found.

This is Half Moon Pond now, with the latest super moon setting behind it. Yes, it was as cold as it looks.

From a distance I thought these colorful bits were lichens on a piece of driftwood but it turned out to be rust on a piece of steel. But it’s still a beautiful color.

Nature is so very beautiful at any time of year and these simple pleasures are there for anyone to see, so I really do hope you’re able to get outside and enjoy them.

What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~Crowfoot

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Local Scenery

Sometimes I get tired of being sprawled out on the ground taking photos of small things and I feel like standing for a while, so that’s what this post is all about. White asters, yellow goldenrod and purple loosestrife made a pretty scene in this roadside meadow, so I had to stop to get a few photos of it.

I drove through a local cemetery one day and saw that the lawns were full of blossoming thyme. Bees love thyme so I’m sure they were just ecstatic.

Back before 1938 this path would have wandered through a white birch forest but the hurricane of 1938 blew them all down, so the city planted red pines in their place. The pines have grown very tall but don’t seem to have added much girth in three quarters of a century. This place is called the Dinsmoor woods, named after Mary Dinsmoor, who donated 13 acres of forest to the city in 1928.

I’ve driven by this scene nearly every day for over 20 years now and have always admired it in a quick, out of the corner of my eye way, so I finally stopped and took a photo of it. I can’t really say what it is about it that appeals to me, but something does. It’s the kind of place that I can just sit and stare at.

Rye pond in Hancock, New Hampshire is at the top of my list of places to kayak next summer because of the beautiful orchids that grow here. I went there recently to get a feel for the place and to find a good launching spot. While I walked the shoreline I saw two beaver lodges, but I think they were abandoned.

 

Beech leaves don’t usually fall until the following spring, so bare beech branches in the middle of summer are very noticeable. Many of our beech trees are dying of a bark blister disease but I don’t know if it caused the leaf drop seen in this young tree.

We’ve had enough rain this year to make me think that some of our waterfalls would be roaring, but as this photo of the lower falls at Bailey Brook in Nelson shows, they weren’t doing much more than trickling. There are upper falls here as well but since it’s berry season and this area is known bear country, I didn’t hike up to see them.

One day after a rain the clouds parted and sunbeams shot straight down to earth. I wish I could have seen what they were highlighting.

The colors of the sky and clouds were beautiful after thunderstorms rolled by one evening.

The late afternoon sun often turns the Ashuelot River falls in Keene into a golden ribbon. Silky dogwoods grow along the shoreline here and soon cedar waxwings will be eating the ripe berries.

The water in this pond was as smooth as water can be. It looks like it won’t be long before the cattails in the background fill this shallow pond completely.

This photo was taken just a few feet from where the previous photo was taken. It’s amazing how just a simple change in perspective can have such an impact on the mood of a photo.

I’ve walked by this little glade of ferns a hundred times but for some reason on this afternoon the light was like I had never seen it before, and had transformed the scene into something quite beautiful. I had to sit for a while admiring it, and I remember thinking what a wonderful painting it would make.

Landscapes have the power to teach, if you query them carefully.  And remote landscapes teach the rarest, quietest lessons. ~David Quammen

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