Time for a Climb

Last weekend was relatively dry, warm and sunny but there really was no humidity to speak of, so I decided to climb Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. It’s an easy climb and that’s what I needed because my legs were telling me that the 18 years of age I felt in my mind applied only to my mind, and not to my legs. “Think young and be young” I remembered from somewhere, so up I went.

I saw a single orange mushroom on a log and though it looked like an orange mycena (Mycena leaiana) I’m not so sure that it was. It looked too pale and orange mycenas usually grow in groups, but I have read that the orange can wash out of this mushroom in a heavy rain, and it won’t grow in groups if it’s too dry. Mushrooms are 90-95% water and if it’s too dry they simply won’t grow.

The gills certainly looked right for an orange mycena as far as shape but the color doesn’t wash out of them and I thought they looked a little pale.  I wonder if it wasn’t the fuzzy foot mushroom (Xeromphalina campanella,) which is similar.

In any event I couldn’t wonder about mushrooms all day so I continued up the trail to the meadow, which is a good spot to catch one’s breath. Since I live in a forest and work in a forest seeing a view like this is amazingly refreshing and expansive. I don’t see many like it.

From here on the trail gets very rocky so I always wear good hiking boots when I come here. It really seems to get worse each year but they have been working on parts of it.  

The highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) is a native plant that you can quite literally find just about anywhere in this part of the state but especially on Pitcher Mountain, and people come from all over to pick them. I saw a few but most had already been picked.

There are two varieties of blueberry here on the mountain and this one is the native black highbush blueberry (Vaccinium fuscatum.) It has smaller fruit than that of the Vaccinium corymbosum highbush blueberry in the previous photo and is darker in color. Some say they are sweeter while some say the other highbush blueberries are sweeter. Though they are both native berries many people don’t want these berries because they seem to think that they aren’t blueberries, so most of them go untouched by the pickers. When I come up here in January I find them mummified by the thousands, still on the bushes. I’ve eaten many of both kinds and in my experience one isn’t any better or worse than the other, in my opinion.

Before I knew it I was at the old ranger station, which is another place I stop to catch my breath. Quite a while ago someone or something (like a bear) broke the boards off one of the windows so I thought I’d see if it had been repaired.

Someone had screwed a piece of plywood over the open window, so that should keep out whatever or whoever wanted to get in.

I felt lucky to have seen the inside of the place so I’ll post this photo of it once again. Chances are it’ll be a long time before I see it again, if ever. It was 1940s all the way and as we can see someone or something checked all the cupboards. A lot of card or cribbage playing probably went on at that 2 legged table. I grew up with one much like it but ours had 4 legs.

There is an old mountain ash tree (Sorbus americana) near the ranger station and it was loaded with ripening berries. Mountain ash is used ornamentally because of its white flowers in late spring and bright orange berries in the fall, but it is a native tree. Native Americans made a tea from the bark and berries of this tree to treat coughs, and as a pain killer. They also ate the died and ground berries for food, adding them to soups and stews. The berries are said to be very tart and have an unpleasant taste when unripe.

I always think of the fire tower on Pitcher Mountain a monument to irony because the original wooden tower built in 1915 burned in April of 1940, in the most destructive forest fire to ever strike this part of the state. Twenty seven thousand acres burned, including the tower and all of the trees on the summit.

I took a look at what I call the near hill. It rises like a great burial mound out of the forest. It is completely covered with forest, much like I’ve heard Pitcher Mountain once was. My question has always been: if the fire burned Pitcher Mountain down to the bedrock and killed all the vegetation why didn’t that happen on this hill? It isn’t that far away from this summit.

I could see the new wind farm over in Antrim if I pushed my camera to the limit of its zoomability. There were many more windmills than these three but I couldn’t fit them all in one photo.

I love seeing the shading on the blue hills from up here. If I had to choose between color and detail I’d have to choose color as what I’d rather see. I can imagine the details but I think it would be difficult to imagine the colors. Although now that I think about it since I have a certain amount of color blindness there is always a bit of imagination involved.

I was able to sit for a while and watch the cloud shadows move over the hills below. This is something I always liked to do as a boy and I still do.

What I call the birdbath had plenty of water in it. I didn’t see any birds splashing in it on this day but I have in the past.

The old tower tie downs reminded me of the tornado warnings we’d had just a few days before. These towers can stand some pretty terrible winds, I’d guess.

Common goldspeck lichens (Candelariella vitellina) grow profusely all over the bedrock up here. This crustose lichen is very granular and was once used to dye wool in Sweden, but I can’t imagine how they ever got them off the rocks. Crustose lichens usually can’t be removed from the substrate they grow on without damaging it in some way.

This is another view of the hazy distant hills.

A flower I’ve only seen here grows in the cracks in the rocks at the summit. Mountain white cinquefoil (Potentilla tridentata) is also called three toothed cinquefoil because of the three large teeth at the end of each leaf. The white 5 petaled flowers are small; maybe a half inch across on a good day. At a glance they could be mistaken for wild strawberry flowers but wild strawberries have yellow centers. These plants are said to bloom for 2 or 3 months and make an excellent choice for a sunny rock garden that doesn’t get too hot, because they don’t like heat. They must be struggling this summer because it has been hot. We’ve had a long string of mid-80 to 90 degree days.

The climb didn’t help my creaky legs any but that didn’t bother me because being on a mountaintop is something I’ve missed, and climbing is something I’ve never regretted doing. They call to you and they don’t stop calling until you climb, and then they are still for a while. But just a while.

The events of the past day have proven to me that I am wholly alive, and that no matter what transpires from here on in, I have truly lived. ~Anonymous mountain climber.

Thanks for stopping in.

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Blueberrying on Pitcher Mountain

It’s blueberry picking time here in New Hampshire and one of the best local places I know of to do that is on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. Wild blueberry season in New Hampshire usually starts around the end of July and people come from all over to pick them. I like to come here at this time not to pick blueberries but to meet the people who do.

The trail, as mountains go, is relatively easy to climb even for me and I often meet elderly people climbing here.

Hay scented ferns (Dennstaedtia punctilobula) line the trail and they were starting to turn white, here and there. Another signal that fall is in the air. This fern likes shade and will tolerate extreme dryness as well. Its common name comes from the way it smells like hay when it is bruised. It does well in gardens but gardeners want to make absolutely sure they want it because once they have it they’ll most likely have it for a long time. It’s very difficult to eradicate.

A young mountain ash tree was covered with wooly aphids, almost from the soil to its tip. These sucking insects can be winged or unwinged. Eggs overwinter in crevices in the bark of trees and in spring nymphs hatch and begin feeding on the underside of new leaves. In late May through July, they develop wings and fly to trees where they feed on twigs and begin reproducing. Soon the colony is composed of aphids in all stages of development and becomes enveloped in white, fluffy wax as seen in the photo. Some aphids mature and mate. Each mated female lays only one egg, which once again starts the overwintering stage. I’m guessing that this young tree will be severely weakened by such large numbers of aphids. The drops of liquid are their waste, which is called “honeydew.” It’s very sticky and often leads to sooty black mold.

Someone left a small stone on top of a larger one. I used to collect rocks and minerals and I could see that it wasn’t anything special. I almost tossed it into the woods but then I thought that it might have been special to the person, possibly a child, who left it there, so I put it back. Speaking of children I saw a few here on this day, and that made my heart glad. There’s no such thing as too many kids in the woods, and one of the greatest gifts we can give them is introducing them to nature.

There were lots of white whorled wood asters (Oclemena acuminata) growing along the trail but many hadn’t bloomed yet. This plant can take quite a lot of shade.

The leaves were all mottled on this wood aster. I’ve never seen this before and I’m not sure what would have caused it. It didn’t look like leaf miners.

Before I knew it I was at the meadow. The white puffy clouds though unexpected, were fun to see.

The clouds were unexpected because the weatherman said wall to wall sunshine for the day. Instead it looked like the clouds might be on their way to becoming wall to wall and some were huge. That dark area out there is a cloud shadow.

Theses hay rolls (?) were placed near where I saw the big black bear in May on my last trip up the mountain. I’ve thrown hay bales up onto wagons before but I was very thankful that I never had to roll these big things around. They must be for the Scottish highland cattle that live up here.

Chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) dangled red and ripe from the trees. The Native American Ojibwe tribe called them Asasaweminagaawanzh. They crushed them with stones and then heated them in a pan with lard and sugar. The berries were used in pemmican, in cakes, or cooked in stews after they had been crushed and dried. Pemmican was a meat, lard and fruit mixture which was stored as a high energy emergency winter food that kept people from starving if food became scarce. It saved the life of many a European as well. The Ojibwe still make and sell chokecherry syrup and chokecherry jelly. They say that they are one of the “sweetest tastes of white earth.”

Unfortunately most of the cherries in this area have black knot disease. It is caused by the fungus Apiosporina morbosa which can also attack plums, peaches, and apricots. Spores from the fungus can be spread by rain or wind and typically infect trees from April through June on new growth. Infected stems swell up and produce hard black knots like those in the above photo. This disease can 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.

Flocks of these little gray and black birds flew along the trial beside me. I think they were dark eyed juncos. They were very quiet and didn’t seem frightened of me at all. In fact they were as inquisitive as chipmunks and watched me the whole way.

The old ranger cabin told me I was just a few yards from the summit.

The ranger cabin had me wondering just how often the people in charge come up here, because the boards someone ripped off one of the windows were still missing since at least May. There was also an alarm sounding on the generator that powers the fire tower, but nobody around to silence it.

I’m not sure what would happen if the power was cut to the fire tower. There sure are a lot of antennas on it. You find people on most mountaintops in this area and popular ones like Mount Monadnock can at times seem as busy as a Manhattan sidewalk. There were a few up here on this day and I even saw a woman wearing flipflops, which I wouldn’t recommend. I call the fire tower on Pitcher Mountain a monument to irony because the original wooden tower built in 1915 burned in April of 1940, in the most destructive forest fire to ever strike this part of the state. Twenty seven thousand acres burned, including the tower and all of the trees on the summit.

I met a man with a German (?) accent who was very interested in blueberries. I told him that there were plenty of bushes right here on the summit and he should just help himself. The highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) is a native plant that you can quite literally find just about anywhere in this part of the state. There are areas where they are more concentrated though, and Pitcher Mountain is one of those areas. This is what the man was after and though they grow in great numbers near the summit he wasn’t having much luck finding any berries. I saw people carrying containers around and I saw ripe berries, so I’m not sure why he wasn’t finding any.

Native black highbush blueberry (Vaccinium fuscatum) has smaller fruit than that of the Vaccinium corymbosum highbush blueberry in the previous photo and also grows on the summit. Some say they are sweeter while some say the other highbush blueberries are sweeter. Though I told him that they are both native berries the man with the German accent said he didn’t want these berries because they must be “some kind of strange hybrid.” He wanted native berries he said again, so I finally had to say good hunting and move on. Clearly someone has given him erroneous information about blueberries but it can’t be just him, because most of these berries go untouched by the pickers. When I come up here in January I find them mummified by the thousands, still on the bushes. I’ve eaten many of both kinds and in my experience one isn’t any better or worse than the other, in my opinion. I wish I could have convinced the visitor of that.

It’s been quite dry lately so I was surprised to see water in what I call “the birdbath.” I saw a dark eyed junco taking a bath in it once but they didn’t follow me all the way to the summit to bathe on this day. I did see a black Labrador retriever roll in it though.

There was a certain haziness to the atmosphere so I couldn’t see much detail on  Mount Monadnock over in Jaffrey.

Before long the clouds had almost fully come together and they seemed almost low enough to touch. I began to wonder if wall to wall sunshine was going to turn into wall to wall rain.

So off I went back down the trail, wondering about the woman climbing a mountain in flip flops and the poor man who couldn’t find a blueberry even though he was surrounded by thousands of them. I’ve always found it easier to understand plants than people, and sometimes human nature really does baffle me.

Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve; they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion. ~Anatoli Boukreev

Thanks for coming by.

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