Fall Color

The trees have transformed themselves with blazing color almost overnight this year, and the leaf peepers are here to see them. “Leaf peeper” is what all the tourists who come to see the fall colors are called. For about a month millions of them come and swell the population of the state to twice its size, and they are loved by the people who live here. They stand in awe of the colors with looks of amazement and wonder on their faces and we locals stand right there beside them with the same look on our faces, because no matter how many times we’ve seen this it’s still amazingly beautiful. It’s like being inside a kaleidoscope.

This year I thought I’d take you on a popular leaf peeper mini tour, heading east out of Keene on Rte. 101. There are lots of maple trees along this stretch and maples usually turn earlier than most other trees. Red maples especially have a wide color range and can be yellow, orange, red and sometimes even pink. This shot shows the Branch River on the way to Marlboro on a recent cloudy day. It’s one of my favorite stops to see early color. By the time the oaks and beeches come ablaze most of the trees here in this view have dropped their leaves.

Another thing I sometimes do in these fall color posts is take two shots of the same scene; one under cloudy skies and one in full sunshine. I do this because I’ve always thought that the colors were richer and more vibrant on cloudy days but to be honest that could simply be my eye trouble, because there are lots of people who think brilliant sunshine best shows the colors. It doesn’t matter because it’s all beautiful, but I’ve put some of both sunny and cloudy skies in here and there and I’ll let you decide.

On Rte. 101 in Marlboro as you’re traveling towards Dublin there is a cow pasture on the right and you can often see a line of cars parked alongside the road. The hillside on the other side of the pasture is the reason why, as you can see. It’s one of the most colorful and beautiful places to see along this road in the fall.  

Leaving Marlboro and into Dublin is Howe Reservoir, where can be seen more beautiful color from maples. I went twice, once on a cloudy day which is seen above and once on a sunny day. Again, I think the colors “pop” more on cloudy days but one drawback at this particular spot is that clouds will often obscure the view of Mount Monadnock.

This is essentially a continuation of the previous shot, followed to the right. There are beautiful colors here this year.

Here is a view of Mount Monadnock from Howe Reservoir that I spoke of, taken in full sunshine. Once again, I’ll let you decide what you like best.

Here is a red maple that stands just at the edge of Howe Reservoir. In the fall red maples aren’t always red.

I took a left turn onto Rte. 137 in Dublin, heading for Hancock, and stopped at Half Moon Pond where I discovered that the view was very different from this spot than it used to be in the morning before work. At 6:30 am the sun is just coming up over the hills that were behind me, and it falls on the strip of colorful trees there at the edge of the water and lights them up as if they were on fire. I used to stop almost every morning at dawn just to see it happening. On this day the deep colors were bleached out by the bright sunshine. Two geese quickly swam away, apparently upset that I interrupted them. I’ve seen and heard geese flying overhead in formation as well.

There was color along the Nubanusit River in Hancock. This is another stop that I used to sometimes make in the morning.

I used to also drive by this tree every morning, so I could watch it go from hints of color to color on every leaf; another fine example of a red maple in the fall. Without red maples this would be a very different landscape, especially at this time of year. Old timers call these trees “swamp maples” but if you look for that name in a tree identification guide you won’t find it.

From here you can go through the small town of Hancock and return to Keene by way of Rte. 9 south, or you can go back the way we came. Either way it really doesn’t matter because there is glorious color everywhere, along all roads. The big difference between routes is how many places you can stop and get out of the car. I think the way we came on Rte. 101 has more opportunities for doing so.

I thought we could take a rest from the road for a bit and look at few other things that are part of fall in this part of the world, like this beautiful fragrant white waterlily leaf. I loved it for its beautiful color and its veining. It was one leaf on a plant with many leaves and all were green except this one, which dared to be different.

And this will most likely be the last fragrant white waterlily bloom we’ll see until next spring. I took the photo about three weeks ago, I think.

Poison ivy is beautifully red this year. You might want to touch it or pick a few leaves to dry or press, but you might want to think that over because unless you’re immune to its toxins you’ll itch like mad for a week or two. Once it’s on your hands it can spread to other parts of the body and before you know it you have it all over you. The old saying leaves of three, let them be, is true.

Growing up out of the large bed of poison ivy was a Solomon’s seal plant with fruit dangling under the leaves. I’ve tried and tried to get a shot of the berries for years without much satisfaction but this year I decided to use my cell phone and the shot I got with it is what you see here. Very carefully, without touching any leaves, I reached up and over the poison ivy, and I haven’t itched at all.

I stopped to see the asters that grow in a local park one day and I think I saw as many bees as I did flowers. We hear a lot of bad news about bees and I can’t say whether it is right or wrong, but I do know that I’ve seen more bees this summer than I can ever remember seeing. If you look closely you’ll see them in this photo. Honeybees, I believe.

Here is a close look at one of those bees. I wanted to show you the open (true) flowers of a daisy and along came this accommodating bee to show you how they worked. This is a Montauk daisy which also grows in the park, and which was originally developed in Japan. For that reason it is also called the Nippon daisy. It is like a Shasta daisy on steroids and is very hardy. I saw them blooming in a snowstorm one year in late fall.

I went to Robin Hood Park in Keene and just as I got to the trail entrance I saw this sign. Attack owl or not I would follow this trail. As I walked along I could hear the flapping of wings, as if a bird sat in a tree above and was flapping its wings, but I never saw the source of the sound and I never saw an owl.

I wanted to follow the trail because lots of maple leaved viburnums grow here, and they’re beautiful at this time of year. They come in a wide range of colors and these examples were a kind of orangey pink.

And these were a deep purple, which is my favorite. If you’re looking for a native shrub that will attract birds and other wildlife and put on a good show in the fall, you might want to consider maple leaved viburnums. They’re a “plant it and forget it” shrub that ask for nothing except an hour or two of sunlight. Here at the park they grow in the shade of old white pines, maples, and oaks.

The next day was cloudy, so I visited the Army Corps of Engineer’s Dam in Surry for this view of one of the hillsides that was blasted during the dam’s construction. It was too dim on this overcast evening for the Canon camera that I often use for landscapes so I used one of the cell phone cameras, which do better in low light. It was the evening light that was important because in this light the color of the stone changes from ash gray to the beautiful blue gray color seen here. The contrast between the blue of the stone and the many colored shrubs / trees is beautiful and I could have stood here enjoying the scene for much longer if the sun hadn’t been going down. It’s one of my favorite places to come in the fall because it speaks of the beauty that can be found in wilderness. Or what was once wilderness; if you somehow tumbled down this slope today you’d end up in the dam’s spillway, so let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. If memory serves me correctly some teenagers climbed the safety fences one day and had to be rescued from this slope.

Surry dam dams up the Ashuelot river enough to create Ashuelot Lake behind it, but what trickles through is once again called the Ashuelot River, seen here just after it leaves the dam and begins its run through Bretwood golf course.

I headed south from Surry and once again ended up back in Keene, where I stopped at the Ashuelot River again. Following the trail through Ashuelot Park that winds alongside the river, I came upon this scene. As you could see there was a cloudless sky and it was too bad I thought, that the sun shined so brightly.

I was surprised to see an arrowwood viburnum still full of berries. The birds usually strip them of the pretty berries as soon as they ripen.

I went to a spot where many cinnamon ferns grow to see if they had turned pumpkin orange yet. They had, and they were beautiful.

I remembered that I hadn’t gone up to Beaver Brook natural area in Keene to see the only examples of blue stemmed goldenrod, so I went there to see it. The only trouble was, its stems weren’t blue. The blue color comes from the same naturally occurring wax crystals that cause the “bloom” on plums, blueberries and many other things found in nature. A lot of heat can melt them and a lot of rain can wash them away, and we’ve had both. If you look closely though you can see a hint of a blue stem running just over the leaf litter under this flowering stem.

Beaver brook was as beautiful as ever, and I knew I’d have to come back when I had time to walk the full length of the road. There are lots of oaks and beeches here and as I’ve said elsewhere in this post, they’re beautiful trees in the fall.

So you’ve seen the slice of fall color in the south western corner of New Hampshire for this week but we’re just getting started, so there will be plenty more to see.

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. ~Oscar Wilde

Thanks for stopping in.

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More Fall Color

Since the last fall foliage post I did I’ve been chasing color, and that isn’t always easy for a colorblind person. I’ve also been chasing light. The past three weekends I think, have been cloudy, and since the only real large blocks of time I have fall on weekends you’ll see what our fall colors look like when it’s sunny and cloudy. But sunshine or clouds these colors are always beautiful, as one of my favorite scenes shows in this photo of birches and maples growing on ledges up in Surry. I built an extensive model H.O. train layout when I was a boy with tunneled mountains I crafted out of plaster. They had small lichen “trees” growing on them and that’s what this scene always reminds me of. Though these are full size trees they look like toys.

And the big difference is, these views are much more beautiful than any you’ll ever find in a model train layout.

Also in Surry is this scene, which always makes me wish I could somehow transport all of you here so you could smell as well as see autumn in New England. The fragrance of all those leaves drying in the sun is sugary sweet and earthy at the same time. Kind of like apple pie, molasses, compost and woodsmoke all rolled into one scent. That scent immediately takes me back to boyhood, when I scuffed my way through the fallen leaves on my way to school each day. Going off to second grade is the strongest memory that comes to mind for some reason, and it is all held there in that wonderful smell.

Staghorn Sumac leaves give us bright reds, purples and oranges and they will often hang onto their color even into death. These leaves were totally limp and the way they hung on the branch made me think of laundry drying on the line.

But you’ll find that most of the color in this post comes from maples. Red maples mostly, because they have the greatest color range. As this shot shows, they are glorious when at their peak of color.

All of the tree color seen in this view of Halfmoon Pond in Hancock is on maples, and by the time you read this all of those leaves will have fallen. My blogging friend Susan likes reflections and this photo is probably the best one for those. October is a windy month but if you get up early enough you can often find water just as smooth as glass.

This was also taken at Halfmoon Pond, with reflections that are a little fuzzier. The wind starts to kick up at about mid-morning.

I stopped at a local post office one morning just after dawn and saw this scene, which I took with my phone. It was still cool enough for mist to be in the field behind the garden shed.

Along the Branch River is always a good place to find fall colors and, since I drive by it twice each day, I can usually get a photo of it in full sunshine.

But it was hard to get good sunshine shots this year and most of them looked more like this one. I’m putting this in to see what you like best. I’ve always thought that fall colors had more “pop” on overcast days but I know a lot of people who would rather go leaf looking on a sunny day.

The Ashuelot River North of Keene is another favorite spot of mine to see fall color. The soft, pale yellows of the silver maples give the eyes and mind a bit of a rest after the loud reds and oranges of their cousins the red maples. The silver maples don’t shout, they whisper in hushed tones.

Red maples certainly do shout, and here are a few more now. This has to be one of the most photographed spots in the entire county. I often see a line of cars here on my way home from work, and sometimes I join them.

I took this shot of what is essentially the same scene with my phone, which has HDR and RAW and all of that if you turn it on. I turned it on and found that it was too “something” that I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe harsh is the word. The color reproduction is good I think, but everything seems to have an edge to it. I’d be interested in hearing what you think. Should I turn it off again? I’m not sure there is a way to tone it down. It seems on or off is the only option.

Here is a closer look at the hillside with my regular camera. Notice all the bare trees. Already.

Here is another look, just for colors. It’s no wonder this is such a popular spot. Millions of people come here from all over the world each year to see scenes like this. Many just can’t believe such colors can be true until they see it for themselves. They stand and they gawk, lost in the beauty, and we stand and gawk right alongside them because no matter how many times you’ve seen it, it always seems like this is the most beautiful fall color ever.

Here is a beautiful example of a red maple that grows near my house.

Here’s a close look at a small red maple, the star of this post.

But red maples aren’t always colored red in the fall. They can be orange and yellow as well. I think this is actually a sugar maple, which are also yellow.

This is a cluster of colorful trees where I work. I’m going to spend a while cleaning up fallen leaves, I think.

Howe Reservoir in Marlborogh is usually a great place to get reflection shots but every single time I stopped there the wind was blowing, so I had no luck with that. I even went there before sunup one day and sat there waiting but the wind blew then too. Oh well, the trees were certainly beautiful.

That’s Mount Monadnock in the background. Or its flank anyway.

That is the mountain’s summit, taken on a very cloudy and dismal day. But it is this spot in clouds that makes me say that the colors often pop more on cloudy days.

These are all maples and they’re all bare now, so I’m glad I got there when I did. Sometimes an incredible amount of leaf drop can happen overnight so if you wait until “just the right time” you might find that you’ve waited too long. I’ve made that mistake more than once.

The blueberries, both high and low bush, are beautiful this year as they almost always are. They can vary from purple to orange but I usually see mostly red. For a plant that produces blue fruit blueberry shrubs have a lot of red in them.

An ash tree where I work was just beautiful in the early morning sunshine. Ash trees also have quite a color range, from lemon yellow to plum purple.

I’ve been either too early or too late to catch Virginia creeper in all its scarlet glory this year but this one had some color.

On the left is an oak and on the right a beech, and seeing these trees changing together reminds me that it’s time to get to Willard Pond in Hancock to see one of the most beautiful displays of an atumnal hardwood forest that I know of. It’s all oaks and beeches so I hope it will be this scene multiplied and amplified.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself. ~Annie Leibovitz

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Looking Back

The hardest part of these looking back posts is choosing which photos to use when I have hundreds to choose from. I try to choose a photo that speaks to the month it was taken, so I chose this photo for January because it says it all about what the weather was that month; cold enough for ice but very little snow.

In February we had both ice and snow, as this photo from the deep cut rail trail shows, but it’s a bit deceiving because it stays cold in the man made canyon. In the surrounding countryside we had a mild enough winter so, for the first time in almost 30 years, I didn’t have to shovel my roof. It would snow and then warm up and melt it and then do the same, and it did that all winter long. So far it appears that this winter is following suit.

March is when nature begins to stir, and one of the first signs is sap buckets hanging on maple trees. It really is a relief to see them because I know that even though we might still see a lot of snow the ground has thawed enough to let tree sap flow and buds to swell. Seeing breaking buds in spring is something I look forward to all winter.

But before the tree leaves appear many beautiful things will happen for just a short time, and they are the spring ephemeral flowers. In April I found these beautiful spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) blossoming in an old patch of woodland and I knew that spring was really, finally here. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to see the first wildflower in spring, but I’ve been known to kneel beside them for quite a long time taking photo after photo, making sure I don’t miss any of their fleeting beauty.

It was late April when I thought I’d walk along the rail trail to where wild columbines blossom but then I met up with a huge black bear, the first of two I’d see last year. This animal was closer than I ever want to be to another one; this photo was taken with a 50mm lens, not a zoom. It could have easily been on me in seconds but thankfully it just stared at me and let me walk away. The bear I ran into on Pitcher Mountain just a month later in May did the same thing, so I’m thinking 2019 was a lucky year. I was totally unprepared for each encounter and didn’t even have bear spray.

This is what the state of New Hampshire recommends we do when it comes to bears. I’m all for it but I just hope the bears have seen the posters.

In May I finally did get out to the ledges where the beautiful wild columbines (Aquilegia canadensis) bloom and though I didn’t see another bear I found that a lot of the shine had gone from this particular hike. This is the only place I know of to find these beautiful plants so I’ll be back out there this coming May, but this time I’ll be better prepared to meet up with old Mr. Bear, just in case.  

Every bit as beautiful but not quite as colorful as a flower is a spring beech bud (Fagus grandifolia) opening. A tree full of these looks like it has been festooned with tiny angel wings and they are one of my favorite things to see in spring. But you have to watch closely because they don’t stay like this for more than a day. A good sign that beech bud break is about to happen is when the normally small, straight buds grow longer and curl like a rainbow. Once that happens they are ready to break and let the leaves unfurl. I start watching for them in early May.

Some of the most beautiful things in the forest go completely unnoticed, like breaking tree buds. As this just opened bud of shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) also shows, bud break is an event worth watching for. Many other buds like oak, maple, and elm also open in May and are just as beautiful. I hope you’ll look for them this spring.

Though we see flowers in March and April it doesn’t truly warm up until May, and that’s usually when some of the more fragile flowers like these beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) appear, but last year I didn’t find any of these until early June. This is a flower that is so complex it really is a wonder that it is pollinated at all. Fringed polygalas are in the milkwort family and are also sometimes called flowering wintergreen and / or gaywings. The slightly hairy leaves were once used medicinally by some Native American tribes to heal sores. Some mistake the flowers for orchids and it’s easy to see why. They’re a beautiful and unusual little flower. 

One of the flowers I most look forward to seeing in June is our native pink lady’s slipper orchid (Cypripedium acaule.) I’m so glad that this native orchid is making a comeback after being collected nearly into oblivion by people who didn’t know any better. The plant interacts with a Rhizoctonia fungus in the soil and this fungus must be present for it to reproduce, so if plants are dug up and placed in private gardens they will die if the fungus isn’t present. They should never be dug up or moved.

In July we had a hot, humid spell and I saw a beautiful blinded sphinx moth (Paonias excaecatus,) which is something I had never seen before. The minute I saw it I thought it looked like a blue eyed baboon face and I still think so. I’m guessing that it would scare a bird away.

One of the things I most look forward to in July is the blooming of the greater purple fringed bog orchids (Platanthera grandifolia) I found growing in a swamp a few years ago. It is easily one of the most beautiful flowering plants I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a few. At one time there were so many of these plants Native Americans made tea from their roots, but I’ve only seen two plants in my lifetime and those grew almost beside each other, so I’d say they are very rare in this area. Last July I found that the two plants had become one, and I had to wade through a swamp to get to it. I’m hoping I get to see at least that one again this July. Orchids are notorious for simply disappearing with no warning.

August is when some our most beautiful aquatic wildflowers bloom, and one of the most rare and beautiful is the marsh St. John’s wort (Hypericum virginicum.) I find them growing in the wet soil at the edges of ponds. It can be tricky getting their photo though, because this plant closes its flowers at night and won’t open them again until they’re in full sunshine the following afternoon, so you’ll never find them blooming on a cloudy day or in the morning. Once they show buds I check on them every day until I find them blooming and it’s always worth the effort. This is the only St. John’s wort I know of with pink flowers; all of our other St John’s worts are yellow.

It was hot last August like you would expect it to be so I went back down into the deep cut rail trail in Westmoreland. It’s always a good 10 degrees cooler there with a nice breeze blowing, so it’s a good place to cool off on a hot day. But that isn’t the only reason I go there; it’s the only place I know of to find the beautiful and very reptilian liverwort called great scented liverwort (Conocephalum conicum), also called snakeskin liverwort, for obvious reasons. If you crush this liverwort it has a very unique, spicy clean scent. The reason it looks so snake like is because of the way its pores and air chambers are outlined on its surfaces. It is the only liverwort with this feature, so it is very easy to identify. In my opinion it is one of the most interesting and beautiful things found in nature, and it is always well worth searching for.

September is when our fall flowers start to bloom, like the asters seen here. The monarch was a bonus but I saw lots of them last year; many more than in previous years. There is a large field full of common milkweed very near where I took this photo but I always see far more butterflies, including monarchs, on other flowers. I’m not sure why that would be.

2019 was a poor year for fungi and I was never able to even find enough to put together a fungi post but I saw a few in September, including these orange mycena mushrooms (Mycena leaiana.) These little (less than an inch across) mushrooms fruit from June through September and are fairly common. If you touch them the orange color will stain your fingers. Mycena mushrooms also come in bright red, pink and purple. Some also bleed a blood colored latex when cut.

October is when the fall foliage that started turning in September really kicks in, and colorful leaves are seen everywhere you go. It’s a beautiful time of year and the foliage colors last year were exceptional, as this view from along the highway in Dublin shows.

In October I finally climbed Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard at just the right time and the foliage colors were at their peak. It was so beautiful I had a hard time leaving. I was up there for a good while, taking far too many photos. This was one of my favorites.

I had looked for red or orange cup fungi for years so I was surprised when friends said they had some growing in their gravel driveway. Fungi aren’t what I expect to see much of in November but there they were. It turned out that, not only was I looking in the wrong places for them but I was also looking at the wrong time of year. Now that I know when and where to look for the orange peel fungi seen here I hope I’ll find them regularly. They’re an unusual and uncommon fungus.

November is when those colorful leaves fall from the trees in earnest, but this view at Halfmoon Pond in Hancock lasted well into the month. What a beautiful season it was.

Life is a circle so of course we’ve ended up right back where we started, in winter. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at 2019 in photos. If I see only half as much beauty in 2020 I’ll be very happy.

Wise is the one who flavors the future with some salt from the past. Becoming dust is no threat to the phoenix born from the ash. ~Curtis Tyrone Jones

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone will have a happy and blessed new year.

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More Fall Color

Fall foliage is peaking here and our world is very colorful at the moment; it’s almost like living inside a kaleidoscope. This view is found at Howe Reservoir in Dublin, New Hampshire and though it was a cloudy and rather dark morning the camera did a fair job, I thought.

Here is another view of the trees at the reservoir. Mostly red maples, I think. Red maples can have red fall foliage, or yellow or orange.

Mount Monadnock, the second most climbed mountain in the world, was covered by clouds in this shot of the reservoir. The trees are beautiful here this year as they are most years.

This is a colorful part of my journey to work.

I raced to catch the sun lighting up the entire hill on the far side of Half Moon Pond in Hancock one morning, but I just missed it. Too bad; in six years I’ve only seen it happen twice.

The shoreline of Half Moon Pond is natural for the most part, with no buildings.

If I don’t take the dirt road I showed a few photos back I can choose a route that takes me past an excellent view of Mount Monadnock, but on this morning the mountain was hiding behind clouds. 

But even the clouds were worthy of a few photos, I thought. It’s hard to believe such a huge mountain is behind them.

On my way home after work the sun lights up this roadside pasture and hillside in Marlborough. Every year I struggle with whether sunny or cloudy days are best for foliage photos. By the end of the season I’ve usually tied myself in knots and still have no good answer, but it seems to me that these colors might have popped more on a cloudy day. 

Here’s the same hillside but this shot was taken on a cloudy day. To me it seems much more colorful than the previous shot but I’ll let you decide.

Those cows have one of the best views in the region.

A closer look at one of those maples you’ve been seeing in all of these photos. Sometimes red, yellow and orange can all be found on one tree.

Oaks are coming along and they and the beeches will take over when the maples are done. At least I hope so. This tells me that it’s time to get over to Willard Pond in Hancock; one of the most beautiful places I know of in the fall when the oaks and beeches blaze with color.

The Branch River in Marlborough is always a good place to see some color. The bright yellow on the left is Oriental Bittersweet, which is invasive.

Here is more bright yellow Oriental bittersweet in the trees along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey. Invasive oriental bittersweet vines (Celastrus orbiculatus) are as strong as wire and they strangle many native trees by wrapping themselves around the tree’s trunk like a boa constrictor. I’ve seen vines as big as my arm wrapped tightly around trees so as the trees grew they had no room to expand and slowly died. At this time of year you can see how they’ve made it into the tops of many trees.

Another of my favorite places to see fall colors is along the Ashuelot River in Keene. You can probably see why.

Another view from the riverside.

There is a spot along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey where thousands of invasive burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) grow, and in the fall they all turn red and pink. You can see some of them around the base of the trees in the distance.

Here’s a close look at the leaves. Though beautiful these understory shrubs take a lot of shade and can form monocultures in the forest. They in turn cast enough shade so natives can’t get a start.  Burning bushes often turn unbelievable shades of pink and a forest full of them is truly an amazing sight. Their sale and cultivation is banned in New Hampshire but there are so many of them in the wild they’ll always be with us now.

Just before burning bush leaves fall they’ll turn a soft, very pale pastel pink. The leaves on the trees above them seem to help regulate how quickly burning bush leaves change color by keeping frost from touching them. In years when the overhanging branches lose their leaves early there is a good chance that the burning bushes will also lose theirs quickly. There have been years when I’ve seen hundreds of bushes all lose their leaves overnight.

The New Hampshire Tourism Bureau estimates that more than three million out-of-state overnight visitors will come this fall, but unfortunately most won’t see scenes like this one because they will drive through our forests in a car or on a bus. They really should spend more time hiking, because this is the time of year when nature pulls out all the stops and reminds us what the word beauty really means.

Over everything connected with autumn there lingers some golden spell–some unseen influence that penetrates the soul with its mysterious power. ~Northern Advocate

Thanks for stopping in.

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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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Aimless Wandering

Last Sunday morning I woke from a dream of Mount Monadnock and drove to Perkins Pond in Troy to visit it. It might not be the tallest mountain but it is one of the prettiest, especially in winter when wearing a snowy cap. We had just gotten about 5 inches of snow 2 days before so it was a good time for photos.

It’s always hard to know how deep the snow is up there. I climbed to the summit in mid-April once and found snow well over waist deep in places. It was very rough going without snowshoes and I shouldn’t have done something so foolish. When I finally got back down I was dripping wet and looked like I had fallen into the pond.

There were ripples in the ice showing what you couldn’t see when it was in its liquid state. From here I decided to make the short drive to Dublin to see something I’d wanted to see since last summer.

It would have been a short drive if I had stayed on the highway but I decided to take the back way. I was able to go much more slowly than I could have on the highway and so was able to see more.

When I pulled over to take the previous photo of the road I heard chuckling and giggling and found that I’d parked near a stream that I didn’t know was there.

Ice baubles hung from the stones along its banks.

Once I’d reached Dublin Lake I saw what I had come to see. Each morning for the last 6 months I’ve seen this fallen tree on the shoreline out of the corner of my eye as I’ve driven past. Though I’ve only seen it for seconds at a time I’ve seen it burning orange from the light of the rising sun, deep indigo blue in the twilight before dawn, and as a black silhouette in fog so thick I could barely see the road. It has become something I look forward to seeing; a half way point on my journey and an oracle that hints at the weather for the coming day. I told myself that one day I’d see it in full daylight, and now I have.

I stopped at the branch river in Marlborough on my way back from Dublin to see if the melting snow had raised the water level. It didn’t seem any higher than normal and though there was a little snow on its banks there wasn’t a bit of ice on it that I could see.

I’d seen a lake and a pond covered with ice and a river with none, so I decided to visit a popular skating pond in a local Keene park. It told the story of our winter so far; yes, the ice grew but never thickened and it isn’t safe to be on anywhere in the state this. There has been no skating, hockey, ice fishing or much else that needs ice or snow this winter. Though I’m not a great lover of winter I am sorry that the people who enjoy it can’t have their fun. After all, I learned to skate on this very pond when I was a boy and spent many happy hours here.

These days I enjoy the pond more for the path around it rather than for the ice on it. Quite a few of the photos that have appeared on this blog over the years were taken here. It’s a great place to find fungi and slime molds and I saw my first maple dust lichen here. I’ve also seen otters playing, cormorants diving, turtles sunning, great blue heron fishing, and frogs hoping I didn’t see them.

The ice was thin enough to be nonexistent in many places around the shoreline. It was warm; about 48 degrees F, and it felt like a spring day. This weekend is supposed to be considerably different, with a high of 14 degrees F (-10 C) expected today. If the sun is shining it might be bearable for a short time, but there won’t be any hikes going on. Tonight they say we’ll see a -20 F (-29 C) wind chill and I hope I don’t have to be out in that.

Alders line the shore but they don’t seem to be in any hurry to produce pollen; there was no green dust to be seen on the catkins. They’re wise to wait, I think.

Apple moss (Bartramia pomiformis) in the upper left gets its common name from its tiny green, spherical spore capsules which someone thought looked like apples. Broom moss (Dicranum scoparium) in the lower right gets its common name from the way the leaves all point in the same general direction, making it look as if it had been swept by a broom. This photo shows that it would be very difficult to confuse them. Both seemed happy there by the pond.

The trees told the story of how the wind blew during the last storm.

There is more color to be seen in winter than most of us realize, but sometimes you have to look closely to see it.

Swamp dewberry (Rubus hispidus) looks like a vine but is actually considered a shrub. It likes wet places and is a good indicator of wetlands. It’s also called bristly blackberry because its stem is very prickly and its fruits look like small blackberries. I’ve never tried them but they are said to be bitter or tasteless. What I love most about it is its purple-bronze leaves in winter. They were so beautiful there against the green of the moss.

This drooping snowman didn’t seem to be enjoying the spring like temperatures, but he might yet have the last laugh.

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing – just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park? ~Ralph Marston

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Monadnock: A Mountain With Many Faces

I just finished reading Monadnock, More than a Mountain by Craig Brandon. In it he tells of how, throughout history different artists have painted the mountain from different sides, and how a few had traveled around the mountain painting it from all sides. That sounded like a fine idea to me and, since I have never seen it done before, over the last few weeks I’ve traveled to several towns that surround the mountain to take photos from each one.

The unusual thing about 3,165 ft high Mount Monadnock is that it can be seen from each town in the area, which collectively make up what is known as the Monadnock Region. The purpose of this post is to show how much the mountain changes from town to town-sometimes after driving just a few miles down the road. I’ve lived here nearly my entire life and even I was surprised by how much it changed.

Much of Mount Monadnock lies in Jaffrey, New Hampshire so I thought I’d start off this post with a view from there. This is the south eastern face of Monadnock.

 

At this spot in Jaffrey you are just about as close to the mountain’s south eastern flank as you can get without actually being on it. This is where you get a real sense of how massive Monadnock really is.

 

This view of Monadnock’s eastern face from Jaffrey can make you wonder if you’re looking at the same mountain that you saw from other directions, so different is its outline.

 

Perkin’s pond in Troy, on Monadnock’s western side, is the place someone with a new camera goes to try landscape photography. I can’t imagine how many photos have been taken of Monadnock from this spot, but the number must easily be in the millions. On a weekend at this time of year you almost have to wait in line for your turn. On this day there was an artist here painting the mountain and she had the best viewing spot. There are other fine views to be had in Troy. I was surprised by the even separation of foliage colors here, as if someone planted a row of maples, then a row of oaks, then a row of pines, etc. all the way up the mountain. I’m not sure what would have caused this.

 

Just down the road from Troy is Fitzwilliam, with a few good views of its own. This was taken at Rockwood Pond. Mount Monadnock is so loved by the public that, each time over the years that it has been threatened by loggers, developers, radio stations and others, money has poured in from all over the world to buy the threatened acreage and protect it. Though never 100% safe, the mountain will be well protected in the future. Most of it is now owned by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

 

The view from Rindge is a very pretty one of Monadnock’s southern flank. I just discovered this view while taking photos for this post.

 

Sometimes you have to climb a mountain to see a mountain as I did one morning just as the sun broke through the dense fog on top of Mount Caesar in Swanzey. Swanzey lies to the northwest of Monadnock.

 

Harrisville has some beautiful views of Monadnock from the north. This one is from a place called Child’s Bog, known for its great fishing.

 

I had heard stories of a great view of Monadnock to be had at a place called Sucker Brook Cove Sanctuary in Nelson, New Hampshire so I went there and found that it was indeed an excellent view, with Silver Lake in the foreground. The light would have been much better if I had gone there in the morning though, rather than in the afternoon. This view is from the north.

 

This view of Monadnock is from the top of Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard, which is the northernmost point in my travels around the mountain. The weatherman said we would have wall to wall sunshine on the day this was taken, and I believed him. When I started this trip I saw sunshine but once I had climbed to the top of Pitcher Mountain there wasn’t a sunbeam to be seen.

 

One of my favorite views of Monadnock is from this spot in Marlborough, New Hampshire. The sun breaking through the clouds made a patchwork of colors on the western face of the mountain on the afternoon that this was taken.

 

This is a view from Dublin. This is another good place to see the mountain’s great mass. This is the first photo taken with my new cell phone to appear on this blog. The phone camera has a much wider angle than either of my other cameras and it does a pretty good job. Speaking of cell phone photos, if you’d like to see some amazing ones you should pop over to Marie’s blog. You can get there by clicking here. You won’t believe her photos were taken with a cell phone camera, but they were.

 

This view of Monadnock from Dublin is a favorite of photographers. I took this photo with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ7, which is the camera that I usually use for macros.

 

Some days you just have to wait for Monadnock to peek out from its blanket of clouds, as this view from Dublin shows.

 

When he climbed it in 1860 Henry David Thoreau complained about the number of people on the summit of Monadnock. Nothing has changed since. On a typical Columbus Day weekend in October it is not unusual to find that it is standing room only on the summit. It is estimated that 100,000 people per year climb the mountain, making it the most climbed mountain in the United States and the second most climbed in the world after Mount Fiji in Japan. On the afternoon that this photo was taken you could see climbers on the summit, just as you can on most days.

 

My favorite view of the mountain is of course the one I grew up with and have seen each day for the better part of a lifetime. I’ve lived in other places but you don’t miss the mountain until you can no longer see it, and I’ve always come back. To me this view from Keene is the best one, but anyone in any town in the region would probably say the same about their view.

 

This map of the Monadnock Region might help you see how the towns that the above photos were taken in are related to each other, and to Monadnock itself. The town names are underlined and Mount Monadnock has a black triangle beside it. It is about 19 miles (30.6 Km) from Keene to the mountain.

If you’d like to learn more about the towns mentioned in this post you should take a look at Laura Mahoney’s blog Touring New Hampshire. I think you’ll find excellent photos and descriptions of every town here. You can get there by clicking here.

Those who climb to the peak of Monadnock have seen but little of the mountain. I came not to look off from it, but to look at it. The view of the pinnacle itself from the plateau below surpasses any view which you get from the summit. ~Henry David Thoreau.

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Canoeing the Afternoon Away

Last Wednesday I was floating in a canoe on this beaver pond with friends from north of here. It was a lot of fun but we got rained on and the canoe took on enough water to soak anyone sitting in the bottom of it, meaning me. Still, even though I got wet I’d happily do it all over again.

 

This beautiful cedar strip canoe was able to glide over most of the pond with ease and though we ran into an occasional log or stone, our trip was uneventful. Meaning we didn’t end up in the drink! Jim, who writes the jomegat blog, built this canoe and is in the process of re-building another one.  He drove for a couple of hours with them on top of his car so we could use one and so I could see the other one. It was interesting to see it in person after seeing it on his blog. If you’d like to see it for yourself, just click here.

Everything was so wet that afternoon because of the rain and all that I took very few pictures for fear of destroying my camera. I went back to the pond on a dryer day and took some of the shots that appear here so I’d be able to illustrate the adventure for you. We took a spin around this beaver lodge but nobody seemed to be home.

 

We saw hundreds of yellow pond lilies, also called bullhead lilies (Nuphar lutea.) Jim brought along his young daughter Beth, whose natural exuberance and happiness was contagious. I think we were all surprised by how shallow the water was. I’ve read that beavers like shallow ponds, but this pond was barley 6 inches deep in places. I don’t think we saw anything deeper than 18 inches.

This caught my eye as we floated past. Because it was raining at the time I couldn’t see well, and couldn’t really even tell if these were flowers or seed pods. They turned out to be dry seed pods, and I think they might be last year’s turtlehead (Chelone glabra) seed pods.

 

Jim and Beth spotted pinkish / purplish flowers off in the distance, but we couldn’t get near them because of all the obstacles in the shallow water. Though I hoped they were orchids I guessed that they were most likely Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) which is a small, native rhododendron that loves swampy places. Unfortunately, even with binoculars we couldn’t make a solid identification. These plants I’ve used for illustration grow at a cranberry bog that I know of. They are in full bloom right now.

 

Rhodora blossoms appear delicate-as if they would blow away in a strong wind- and are very beautiful. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote poems about this flower.

 

Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata)i s another shrub that likes swampy places and we saw what I thought were several examples of it. The plant’s stems and leaves have an odd, leathery feel to them because of their pebbly texture. From a distance both the flowers and leaves look like smaller versions of the blueberry.

We saw a great blue heron fly over us towards this nest, but it didn’t stop. It just flew around the nest and left as silently as it had come. When I suggested this pond as a good place to find wildflowers I didn’t know that herons, ducks and other birds were nesting here. I realized later on that this nest could have had heron hatchlings in it. Mid May would be about right, so I hope we didn’t scare the parents away permanently.

 

Last weekend I saw what I thought would be a perfect spot for canoeing in Dublin, New Hampshire, which is east of here. When I stopped I saw that someone had put up signs saying boating here was very dangerous and shouldn’t be attempted. All I can do is wonder why.

Shortly after passing the marshy area in the previous photo Dublin Lake appears on the right if one is traveling east. There is a good view of Mount Monadnock from the lakeshore. Dublin has a reputation for having wealthy summer residents and many famous people have been here. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson came and climbed the mountain. Mark Twain spent two summers here, and well-known American master painters Abbott Thayer and George DeForest Brush owned homes here. They and several other well-known artists painted views of the mountain. At 2,834 feet (864 m) above sea level Dublin is also the highest village in all of New England.

I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years old when my father started taking me along when he went fishing for brook trout. He did this 3 or 4 times before finally realizing that it was hopeless, because all I was interested in was exploring the forest. I didn’t care a whit about catching fish and his relaxing fishing trips turned into a living hell of chasing a whirlwind-pretending-to-be-a-boy through the woods and over slippery boulders. I stopped at this roadside stream last weekend to explore its banks and had to smile when those memories came floating back through time.

I don’t run much anymore and I make a point of staying away from slippery boulders, but I still enjoy the forest.  Hearing the sound of falling water and following that sound through the trees  until you come to a deep, still pool that is fed by a waterfall is what makes it all worthwhile. Sitting quietly on the bank of a stream enjoying the power and beauty of nature is one path to true joy, and my father knew it. I don’t think that he really cared  about catching a fish any more than I did.

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey. ~ John Hope Franklin

I hope everyone is safe and was able to stay out of harm’s way during the recent tornado outbreak. Thank’s for coming by.

 

 

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