Last Sunday afternoon, on the 12th, light snow started to fall in the afternoon. It snowed for most of the night but as these photos show, it didn’t amout to much. Depending on where you were an inch to three inches accumulated; what we call a nuisance snow. The above photo shows the Ashuelot River in Swanzey Monday morning. The water was higher than it has been all summer.
As usual the snow stayed on the evergreens. White pine trees have very flexible branches so they can hold a lot of snow but every now and then you’ll hear a loud cracking in the woods when older branches break off. It’s a good idea to not be under snow laden, older pine trees for long. Branches usually fall with their broken end down and I’ve seen them punch holes through roofs.
There’s a lot of splashing going on at the river and fingers of ice had formed on every twig on this shrub. If it was a shrub. There are many here, such as alder, buttonbush and dogwood so it probably was, but I was paying more attention to the ice than what it grew on.
Ice baubles form by water splashing over and over in the same spot. Eash splash of water adds thickness to the ice, just like a candle being dipped again and again in wax. Thanks to gravity they grow vertically, so seeing these at an angle told me that they grew too heavy and the twig they were on could no longer support them. It bent, and this threw the baubles off vertical. I’d like to see how they grow from this point on. They’ll look very different than a standard ice bauble, I would think.
I haven’t yet figured out what makes some flattened while others are more round but it really doesn’t matter. They’re all beautiful, especially when sunlight shines through them. It’s like seeing a thousand prisms all along the shoreline.
Sometimes the surroundings reflect in the ice baubles. I think the reflection of the river must have been what caused the blue in the one on the left.
The waves on the river weren’t huge on this day but they were curling nicely and they were beautiful, as always. If you come here at the right time of day, in the morning at around 11:00, the sun shines from the left of this spot and if it strikes a wave just right it can illuminate its interior, as can be seen here. There is a lot going on inside a wave, which is something I never thought much about until I came here and started trying to catch all their different poses.
They grow and fall and crash again and again and the resulting roar emphasizes the awesome power and beauty of the river. There are also deep rumbles and booms that you can feel more than hear, as if large boulders were rolling down the riverbed. This is not the place to try to hold a conversation. It is a place to just stand and be amazed by all that is happening.
I stumbled onto an interesting article recently that showed that chimpanzees can also be in awe of water. Primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall noticed how, when solitary chimps come to a waterfall, they will often walk into the water and sway back and forth rhythmically, from one foot to the other. There is even a photo of a chimp sitting on a stone in the river, staring up at a waterfall as if in a trance. This might not seem very remarkable until you realize that chimpanzees can’t swim and are naturally afraid of water. Something about the waterfall makes them forget themselves, and some believe it is the roar. I think there is more to it than just sound.
It’s much quieter here in the woods on the road to Swanzey Lake than at the river. This is a class 6 road, meaning it gets no maintenance during winter, so this might be the last time I can get out here until spring.
I thought if I came out here I would see the snow falling from the trees but it was dead still, without even a hint of a breeze, so most of the snow stayed on the trees. You can just see, at the end of the road in this shot, a bit of what I call snow smoke, which happens when the wind blows. Being in a place like this with the snow blowing from the trees can sometimes be like being in a blizzard.
Snow smoke was happening here but the sun was so bright the camera couldn’t really catch it well. It did catch the beauty of the beech leaves though.
I love to see dark water in winter. It looks like a polished black mirror against the white snow and it always makes me want to just sit and admire it.
In this view, just behind where the tree has fallen across the stream, you can see a beaver dam. Beyond it the beaver pond had frozen over. This was the first body of water I had seen with ice on it this season, but since it’s on or surrounded by private property I couldn’t get close to it. There will be plenty of other ice to see though, I’m sure. And more snow as well; it’s snowing lightly right now.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? ~ J. B. Priestley
I needed to be in the woods for a while so I chose Yale Forest in Swanzey. The forest is owned by Yale University and is where the students in the forestry program get some hands on experience.
The trail used to be one of the roads north into Keene and you can still see pavement here and there.
The beeches and oaks were still hanging on so there was some fall color to enjoy.
There was also still some snow left from the first snow storm that dropped about 4 inches. First snows almost always melt away because the ground hasn’t yet frozen.
Evergreen ferns don’t mind snow. In fact they’ll stay green even under feet of it. That’s an evergreen Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) on the right and a spinulose wood fern (Dryopteris carthusiana) on the left.
Unlike the spore producing sori on the marginal wood fern (Dryopteris marginalis) which appear on the leaf margins, the sori on spinulose wood ferns appear between the midrib and the margins. Spinulose wood fern cross breeds the with both the marginal wood fern and the Intermediate wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia) so it can get confusing. This one was producing spores and as usual it made me wonder why so many ferns, mosses, lichens and clubmosses produce spores in cold weather. There has to be some way it benefits the continuation of the species but so far I haven’t discovered what it is.
Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) is a common evergreen groundcover that grows along the trail. Small, heart shaped leaves on creeping stems grow at ground level. In spring it has white trumpet shaped flowers that grow in pairs and in the fall it has bright red berries which are edible but close to tasteless. I leave them for the turkeys, which seem to love them. My favorite parts of this plant are the greenish yellow leaf veins on leaves that look as if they were cut from hammered metal. I have several large patches of it growing in my yard.
Here was a downed tree; the first of many, I guessed. There have been lots of trees falling across the road this year and in some cases they are almost impossible to bypass.
I always stop to look at the branches of newly fallen trees to see what lichens lived on them. This one had a lichen garden in its crown. Mostly foliose (leafy) lichens, which were in fine form due to the recent wet weather. Lichens don’t like dry weather so I haven’t bothered them much this summer.
The big light colored lichen you saw in the previous shot was I believe a hammered shield lichen (Parmelia sulcata), so named because it looks like it was hammered out of a piece of metal. These lichens are on the rare side here but I see them occasionally, always on trees. Hammered shield lichen is said to have a large variety of named varieties and forms, so it can be tough to pin down. Fruiting bodies are said to be rare and I’ve never seen them. It is also said to have powdery, whitish soredia but I’ve never seen them either. Soredia are tiny packages of both fungus and alga that break off the lichen and they are simply another means of reproduction.
NOTE: A lichenologist helper has written in to tell me that this lichen is actually a crumpled rag lichen (Platismatia tuckermanii) which I’ve been searching for for years. I hope my misidentification hasn’t caused any confusion. I know there are lots of lichen lovers out there.
Though in photos the road looks very long in reality it’s probably only a couple of miles out and back. But it was a nice warm day and there is usually lots to see, so I wouldn’t mind if it was longer.
And here was a huge downed pine that had taken a few maples down with it when it fell. Its root ball was also huge.
Orange crust fungus (Stereum complicatum) is so bright it’s like a beacon in the woods and it can be seen from quite far away on fallen branches. The complicatum part of its scientific name means “folded back on itself” and as can be seen in this photo, that is often just what it does.
I saw some mushrooms squeezing out between the bark and wood of a stump.
I’m not sure what they were; possibly one of the wax cap Hygrocybe clan. In any event they were little and brownish and life is too short to try and identify little brown mushrooms. Even mycologists are too busy for them and toss them into a too hard basket labeled LBMs.
These larger examples on a different stump might have been late fall oyster mushrooms (Panellus serotinus) but I didn’t look at their undersides so I’m not sure. My color finding software sees salmon and coral pink, while I see orange. An orange mushroom in clusters on wood at this time of year often means the Jack O’ Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus illudens), which is toxic. That’s why you should always look at their undersides and other features if you want to eat them.
And the mosses were so beautifully green!
Finally you come to the small stream you have to cross if you are to go on. I made it without falling once again, but I always wonder if this will be the time. Some of those stones are tippy.
Once I crossed the stream I saw that a new beaver dam had appeared since the last time I was here.
Recently chewed alders told me the beavers were very active. On small trees like these they leave a sharp cut that looks like someone has cut the tree with loppers. Their teeth are very sharp.
The beaver pond had grown deeper and wider.
You can tell the beaver pond wasn’t here when this land was farmed, probably in the 1800s. You don’t build stone walls under water.
The pond banks had breached in several places and if left to their own devices the beavers will flood this entire area.
I don’t worry about what beavers are doing because they do a huge amount of good for the ecosystem, but since all of this is very near a highway the highway department will eventually destroy the beaver dam so the highway isn’t flooded. I didn’t worry about that either; it has become part of the cycle. Instead I admired the beautiful red of the winterberries (Ilex verticillata). They are a native holly that love wet feet and the beavers are making sure that they get what they love. By doing so you can see that the beavers, in a round about way, are providing food for the birds. They also create and provide habitat for a long list of animals, amphibians and birds. This area would be very different without them.
It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. ~Scott Westerfeld
I was driving along an old road looking for fall color when I saw a barred owl in a tree. I stopped the car and got out and much to my surprise the owl stayed put.
A few years ago I came upon a barred owl sitting right in the middle of a trail and like this one it let me take as many photos as I wanted. This one was much bigger than that one but like that owl, this one sat perfectly still and watched me almost the entire time. In this shot you can see that it did look away, and I’d like to think that was because it sensed that I meant it no harm. After taking A few shots I got back in the car and got ready to leave, watching as the owl flew deeper into the woods. Being able to look a wild creature directly in the eyes for a while is a rare thing, and something you never really forget. I’ve stared into the eyes of everything from black bears to porcupines to chipmunks and each time it feels as if they’re giving you something of themselves, willingly. And you want to do the same.
Wilde Brook in Chesterfield was a little wild on the day I was there and it was good to see.
Many streams like this one have dried up completely and though we’ve had some rain this part of the state is still in moderate drought. Other parts of the state are seeing extreme drought so we’re fortunate.
I find tree roots like this one on well-traveled trails. How beautiful it is; like a work of art worn smooth by who knows how many years of foot traffic? It looks as if it had been made; sanded, polished and crafted with love. But how easily missed it would be for someone who was more anxious to see the end of the trail than what could be seen along it. I’m guessing that many thousands of people have rushed by it without a glance, and this is why when you ask them what they saw they will often say “nothing much.”
A piece of driftwood on a pond shore reminded me of the bleached bones of an ancient creature. It is, or was a tree stump and I liked the flow of its roots and its weathered silvery finish. It grabbed me and held my attention for a while.
Witch hazels are having a glorious year. I’ve never seen them bloom as they are now. Apparently drought doesn’t really bother them.
New England asters didn’t have a very good time of it this year but what I did see were beautiful. This is probably the last one I’ll see until next year.
Golden pholiota mushrooms (Pholiota limonella) usually grow in large clusters on dead or dying logs and trees, but this tiny thing grew alone. It’s cap was no bigger in a diameter than a penny. These mushrooms are toxic and are said to smell like lemon, garlic, radish, onion or skunk. They are said to taste like radishes by those unfortunate few who have tasted them. Note how it seems to be growing out of a tiny hole in the log.
Though jelly fungi grow at all times of year I think of them as winter fungi because that’s usually when I find them. I often see them on fallen branches, often oak or alder, and I always wonder how they got way up in the tree tops. Yellow jellies (Tremella mesenterica) like this one are called witch’s butter and are fairly common. We also have black, white, red, orange and amber jelly fungi and I’d have to say that white and red are the rarest. I think I’ve seen each color only two or three times. Jelly fungi can be parasitic on other fungi.
Puffballs grew on a log. The biggest, about as big as a grape, had been partially eaten and I would guess that a chipmunk had been at it. I never knew chipmunks ate mushrooms until I saw one doing so this past summer. I often see gray squirrels eating them as well.
A tree “marriage” happens when two trees of the same species rub together in the wind. When the outer bark is rubbed off the inner cambium layer of the trees can become naturally grafted together and they will be married from then on. The process is called inosculation and isn’t as rare as we might think. This maple tree shows that even limbs on the same tree can do it, but this is the first time I’ve seen it happen this way.
Native little bluestem grass (Schizachyrium scoparium) catches the light and glows in luminous ribbons along the roadsides. This is a common grass that grows in every U.S. state except Nevada and Washington, but is so uncommonly beautiful that it is grown in gardens. After a frost it takes on a reddish purple hue, making it even more beautiful.
It is the way its silvery seed heads reflect the light that makes little bluestem grass glow like it does.
I had quite a time trying to find out what was wrong with this blueberry leaf with big black, tar like spots and I’m still not sure I have but it might be blueberry rust (Thekopsora minima,) which is a fungal disease which infects the leaves and fruit of blueberries and other plants in the Ericaceae plant family. The disease can eventually kill the plant if left alone so it’s important to treat it if you have a lot of bushes. I don’t see many problems on wild blueberry bushes so I was surprised to see this. I wish I had thought to look at the underside of the leaf. That’s where the spores are released and wind and rain can carry them quickly to other plants.
This mullein plant was as big as a car tire and will most likely have an impressive stalk of flowers next year. Mullein is a biennial that flowers and dies in its second year. Native Americans used tea made from its large, gray green furry leaves to treat asthma and other respiratory ailments. They also used the roots to treat coughs, and it is also said to be useful as a relaxant and sleep aid. The Cherokee tribe are said to have rubbed mullein leaves in their armpits to treat prickly rash and the Navaho tribe made an infusion of the leaves and rubbed it on the bodies of their hunters to give them strength. Clearly this plant has been used for many thousands of years. It is considered one of the “oldest herbs’ and recent research has shown that mullein does indeed have strong anti-inflammatory properties.
The spiny, 2 inch long fruits of the wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) have a watermelon shape and boys have been throwing them at each other for as long as I’ve been around. The fruit is not edible and the menacing looking spines are soft and pliable at this stage.
Inside a wild cucumber seed pod you find two chambers which hold a single seed each. These seeds look like giant cucumber seeds. A kind of netting is also found inside wild cucumber seed pods and once they dry the netting is even more interesting. A man wrote to me once and told me that he decorated pens that he makes with that same netting. For me these plants are like a time machine that always takes me back to my boyhood.
A friend’s tomatillos have ripened and are ready for salsa Verde. Tomatillo usage dates back to at least 800 B.C. when they were first cultivated by the Aztecs. Today they are also called husk tomatoes and they can be eaten raw or cooked. Scientists have found fossil tomatillos in Argentina dating back 52 million years, so they’ve been around a long time.
Here was another hemlock root, polished by thousands of feet. Do you see its beauty? Part of the beauty I see comes from knowing how much work would go into trying to create something like this in a wood shop, and part of it comes from the artistic bent I was born with. Much of what I choose to show you here I choose so you might see the beauty that shines out of those every day bits of life that we ignore so readily. Instead of stepping on a root without a thought maybe you could just stop and be still for a moment and really see what is there in front of you. It doesn’t have to be a root; it could be a blade of grass or a mountain or an insect. But just see the beauty in it. The more you let yourself see beauty, the more beauty you will see. Finally you will see beauty everywhere, in every thing, and you will become filled with a deep gratitude for being allowed to see the true wonder and beauty of this earth. This is not hard; all it takes is your attention, your contemplation, and a bit of time.
These are some of the things I have learned simply by spending time in nature. I make no secret of the fact that this blog’s sole purpose is to see you spending time in nature as well. It’s kind of like dangling a carrot before a horse, but why do I care what you do? Would you like an occasional glimpse of bliss? Would you like peace to wash over you like a gentle rain and comfort to cover you like a warm blanket? If you experienced these things would you want to harm this earth? Of course you wouldn’t, and that’s what this is all about.
Can we go from fall to winter just like that, with a snap of the fingers? Yes we can because this is New England and the weather can change that quickly here. Snow on Halloween is unusual but it isn’t unheard of; in 2011 we had a nor’easter come through that dropped close to two feet in my yard and cancelled trick or treating for that year. On the other side of the coin sometimes we don’t see any snow until well after Christmas. Nature seeks balance and we’ve had a several months long drought, so we might get a few surprises this winter.
This was a wet, heavy snow that stuck to everything and reminded me of the quote by William Sharp, who said: There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.
This blueberry bush with its red fall leaves did look radiant with its frosting of white snow.
The oaks were beautiful as well, but too much heavy snow when the leaves are still on the trees can cause major damage and power outages which can last for weeks. Luckily this storm was minor, with only 3-4 inches falling.
Still, leaves fell and autumn leaves in the snow are always beautiful. How beautiful this scene was with its simplicity and that amazing color. I couldn’t just walk away without a photo of it, and then I couldn’t stop taking them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~Albert Einstein
We’ve had our first snow and, from the time between when I took some of these photos and started putting together this post, we had our second and third snows. To have this much snow in November with leaves still on many of the trees and shrubs is rare, so I had to go out and see it.
But snow isn’t all we’ve seen. The frost on the windows speaks of full blown winter, even though winter is still weeks away.
These snows have been of the sticky kind and snow covered every branch and leaf.
Beech leaves will stay on the tree through winter and they do collect snow, but though the extra weight seems to bend their branches down I’ve seen very few very few actually fall off.
Oak leaves form the waxy, corky cells called the abscission layer at their base later than many other trees so seeing leaves on oak trees in the winter is no great surprise, but I know this tree well and it has usually shed all of its leaves before it snows. In fact most oak trees still have most of their leaves and this can be problematic, because the snow load on those leaves can lead to power outages from all the falling branches. Unlike beech trees oak trees lose branches regularly year round, and I’ve seen limbs as big as my leg fall on calm summer days, so it doesn’t take much snow to bring them down.
An odd thing that I noticed was how many oak leaves fell after the storm. Everywhere you looked the snow was covered with oak leaves.
The dark color of oak leaves means they absorb sunshine, which warms them and lets them melt their way through the snow. Oak leaves also repel water and you and see it in the many water droplets on the surface of this leaf.
There were many oak leaves that were still in the process of changing into their fall colors when the snow fell, like the beautiful leaves on this small red oak.
The hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) in my back yard were heavy with snow but like most evergreens they have a lot of flex in their branches so they can take quite a snow load. In fact they keep much of the snow from falling on the ground under them, so there is often several inches less snow on the ground in a hemlock grove. In a snowy winter deer will go there and so will I, because the walking is much easier.
When the sun fell through the forest in such a way that the still colorful shrubs were highlighted it was a very beautiful scene and I had to stop and just absorb it. It is things like this that truly are good for the soul I think. I’ve discovered that being able to find joy in the simplest things means that joy is never far away.
The small pond in my neighborhood has already frozen over but on this day it was really more slush than solid ice. After -2 degrees F on Thanksgiving night though, I’m sure it must be solid now.
There is a muskrat in this pond that eats an incredible amount of cattail roots (Typha latifolia,) and I know that from seeing not only the muskrat but all of the cutoff cattail stems floating on the surface of the pond. Native Americans used to roast these roots and make flour from them. They contain more starch than potatoes and more protein than rice. In fact Natives used all parts of the plant, eating the new shoots in spring, weaving mats and baskets from the leaves, and even using the pollen in bread.
I thought I’d get an old cliché shot of white snow on red winterberries but by the time I got there the wind had blown all the snow off them. They’re still pretty though, nevertheless. Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is a native holly that likes a lot of water. Birds love the bright red berries and it is an excellent choice for a landscape plant to attract them, especially if your yard has wet spots.
Here is another view of colorful understory shrubs in a snowy forest. It’s so very beautiful and it doesn’t happen often, so I was thankful that I could see such scenes on this day.
Mount Monadnock is always at its most beautiful when it is snow covered, in my opinion. Scenes like this remind me of the shoulder deep snow I found up there when I climbed it one April day; snow so deep I had to crawl over it to reach the summit. Henry David Thoreau wrote that felt the presence of “a vast, titanic power” when he saw Mount Monadnock. He climbed Monadnock many times but finally realized “Those who climb 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.” I agree, and that’s one reason I don’t climb it.
And then it snowed again, and again…
…until it seemed that every living thing must be coated with it, and it reminded me of one of my favorite winter quotes by William Sharp: There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.
This grove of witch hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) was certainly clad with radiance.
And they also had hundreds of flowers blossoming in the snow. I’ve known for a long time that these flowers were tough, but this is the first time I’ve seen this. I think they were taken by surprise because it had been in the low 40s F before it snowed, and that’s plenty warm enough for witch hazel blossoms.
It is in the deep quiet of a winter morning just before sunup when I really feel the beauty of this season. The birds are silent at that time of day and if I’m lucky so are my thoughts, and it is at those times when a great sense of peace can come over me. It’s the same peace that comes on the top of a mountain, or when I sit beside a river, or when I’m in a forest and sit with my back against a tree. It’s a peace that is always there but one that you can’t just order up like a meal at a diner. You can search for it as long as you like but it is only when you stop searching and are still that it will find you. It is restorative; healing even, and I do hope it will find all of you as well.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? ~ J. B. Priestley
Yes, I know I’ve shown photos of snow here already this season, but those were of conversational snow that didn’t really count. We often start the season with small snowfalls that cause a lot of talk but no action and the last one was one of those. This time though, the snow piled up to about 8-11 inches in two back to back storms and required considerable effort with plows and shovels to get it out of the way. This photo shows what I saw last Sunday morning in my own back yard.
A local trail that I follow sometimes was as snowy as it ever gets. It’s no secret to readers of this blog that I’m not a great lover of winter because of all the added work it heaps upon me, but I can’t deny its beauty, and when I’m not working because of it I love being out in it.
The breeze picked up and snow fell from the trees, creating what I call snow smoke. It’s like seeing through a veil of snowflakes and if you’re walking the trail when they fall it feels the same as being caught in a snowstorm. There was so much falling from the trees that day I had to put my camera in a plastic bag. I always carry one in winter and summer.
The skies were changeable; one minute sunny and the next cloudy. The bane of photography, because you have to keep changing your settings according to the amount of light coming through the lens, and if you don’t pay attention your photos will come out too dark like this one did.
The horses in the pasture in the previous photo pawed at the snow to get at any green shoots and ignored the skies above them.
I love how water looks so dark when surrounded by white but just when I didn’t want the sun to come out it did and kind of spoiled the blackness of the stream.
Photos of white snow on red fruit have become common enough to be a cliché, but I was there and the rose hips were there and I had a camera, so there you are. But my thoughts were not of red fruit in white snow. I wondered why the birds never seem to eat these native Alberta rose hips (Rosa acicularis) even though they’ve taken every hip off the invasive multi flora roses (Rosa multiflora.) It could come down to size, since these rose hips are much larger than those of the multiflora rose.
Snow covered every single thing, including these beech leaves.
A small pond was slushing over, and I saw more snow smoke coming from the trees over on the left.
The red wing blackbirds will have plenty of nesting material in the spring. These birds are very defensive of their nesting sites and have no problem letting you know when you’re too close. They’ll fly right in your face and hover there. They also chase hawks and eagles, so they have no fear.
The trees told me which way the wind had blown during the storm.
The trail around the pond was very snowy but it wasn’t too deep to manage. When it is deep I let snowshoers and cross country skiers break the trail and then I follow. If I’m lucky a snowmobile will have gone through first, but they aren’t allowed on this trail.
Sometimes without warning you can be sent off into a dream by nature and that’s what happened on this day when I saw this stone surrounded by the pristine white snow. I’ve walked this trail hundreds of times and I’d be willing to bet that I’ve tripped over this stone and have probably even cursed it, but on this day it sang to me and I loved it enough to take over 30 photos of it from different angles. It was so dark and perfect surrounded by such whiteness, and I’ve purposely over exposed this photo so you can see what I saw. It looked as ancient as the earth itself, and was beautiful.
There was fun to be had and people of all ages were having it. There was a lot of sledding going on, some on snow shovels.
I walk by this exposed bit of bedrock quite often but only in winter do I notice all its folds and wrinkles. For the geology nerds among you, the bedrock in this area consists of medium-grained light to dark-gray granodiorite and quartz diorite. (Basically granite) This is composed of oligoclase-andesine, quartz, biotite, muscovite and potash feldspar. The bedrock is fractured and has areas that have been split by the shearing motion of moving rock. This information comes from a natural resources inventory completed in 2009 by our local university.
A couple of our evergreen wood ferns grow out of cracks in the bedrock but they must be starved for nutrients because I’ve known them for years and they never get any bigger. But they are always green and any green thing is welcome in winter.
Icicles hanging from the stone outcrop told the story of the cold the evergreen ferns were experiencing.
Brooding. That’s what this scene says to me. A brooding landscape means that it’s “darkly somber,” and that’s how it looked to me when the clouds began to fill in. Winter it seems, might be here to stay.
Snow or not this is where I’ll be, every chance I have. I hope you have something every bit as wonderful in your life.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? ~ J. B. Priestley
Our first snow was just a dusting and didn’t amount to much, but it did grease up the roads and remind people that it was time for snow tires and windshield scrapers. There were a surprising number of car accidents for a seemingly small amount of snow, but the temperature dropped over night and it turned to ice on the roadways. There’s nothing worse to drive on than black ice.
Where the snow didn’t fall the frost did, and it coated this juniper haircap moss (Polytrichum juniperinum) one cold morning. The mosses and other plants looked like they had been dusted with powdered sugar.
Ice needles have started to form in places where there is plenty of groundwater. For them to form the air temperature has to fall below 32 degrees F right at the soil surface while the soil and groundwater remain thawed. Hydrostatic pressure forces the groundwater, sometimes super cooled, out of the soil where it freezes instantly into a “needle.” As more water is forced out of the soil the process is repeated over and over, and each needle grows in length because of more water freezing at its base. I’ve read that each thin needle is hexagonal in shape, and that needles have been found that were 16 inches long. The needles in these photos were 2-4 inches long I’d guess.
Ice needles start growing slightly below the soil surface and lift the soil as they lengthen. They also lift pebbles, as this photo shows. Though these examples are just pebbles, frost in the soil can heave quite large stones to the surface. When water in the soil freezes and expands, the ice grows into a kind of lens shape and pushes against everything above it. Large objects like rocks are pushed upward, sometimes as much as a foot. When the ice melts, the mud and sediment collapses in the space under the rock. This leaves the rock sitting at the height the frost has raised it to. Over time the rock eventually reaches the surface. This is also the way that frost breaks water pipes that aren’t buried deep enough, and heaves and breaks apart our roads each winter.
Frost can also break stone. This stone cracked somehow and water got into the crack and froze, breaking the top of it right off. This, along with wind and rain, is what turns mountains into sand.
The side of Mount Monadnock that I see on my drive to and from work has shown a snow capped peak, but this side at Perkin’s Pond in Troy gets more sun and most of the snow had melted by the time I got there. Monadnock is at its most beautiful with a dusting of snow, in my opinion.
There was snow on this side of Monadnock but you had to have a zoom lens to see it. I’ve been up there when the snow was so deep you almost had to swim through it. And that was in late April.
“Monadnock” in Native American Abenaki language means “mountain that stands alone,” and over the years the word has come to describe any isolated mountain. In 1987 Mount Monadnock was designated a national natural landmark. It is the second most climbed mountain in the world, after Mount Fuji in Japan.
The wind was blowing this lake sedge (Carex lacustris) around when I took this shot and that accounts for the blur, but I didn’t care about that because it was the color I was taken by. I thought it was very beautiful.
Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is a native holly that gets its name from the way that its bright red berries persist throughout most of the winter. They persist because birds don’t eat them right away and the reason they don’t is thought to be because of the levels of toxicity or unpalatable chemicals in the berries declines with time. Winterberry makes an excellent garden shrub, especially near ponds, streams and other wet places. Many birds will eat the berries eventually, including robins, catbirds, mockingbirds, Eastern bluebirds, and cedar waxwings. There are several cultivars available, including dwarf varieties. If you’d like to grow them make sure that you buy both male and female plants or you won’t see any berries.
I love seeing juniper berries at this time of year. A waxy coating called bloom reflects the light in a way that makes them a bright and beautiful blue. I always wonder how many gin drinkers know that the unique flavor in their drink comes from this plant’s fruits. Though they’re called berries, botanically speaking juniper fruits are actually fleshy seed cones. Unripe green berries are used to flavor gin and the ripe, deep purple-black berries are the only part of a conifer known to be used as a spice, often used on game like venison, moose and bear meat. Birds also love them.
The horizontal rows of holes made by the yellow bellied sapsucker cause “phloem” sap to dam up and accumulate in the plant tissue just above the wounds. The bird enlarges the holes over the course of several days and then adds another row above the first, eventually resulting in square or rectangular patterns of many holes. Sapsuckers have a kind of brushy tongue that they lick up the sap with. The kind of sap that we tap maple trees for is “xylem” sap, which is much thinner and less sweet than phloem sap. Because phloem sap is so much thicker and stickier than the watery xylem sap that we make maple syrup from, scientists can’t figure out how these birds get it to flow so freely. Insects, bats, other birds, and many animals also drink sap from these holes. I usually see sapsucker holes in trees with sweet sap like maples and birches, but these examples were in an eastern hemlock.
Anyone who spends time in the woods knows that the number of fallen trees is high right now. Trees that were already weakened by insects or fungi, sandy soils, road salt, or other stresses were hard hit by the ongoing drought and they continue to fall. The question is; for how long? For now, I stay out of the woods on very windy days.
I went out to get some shots of the super moon on the 13th, but it only looks super when there is something else in the photo like trees, mountains or buildings to relate a sense of scale. In this shot it just looks like any other full moon.
I didn’t know that maple dust lichens (Lecanora thysanophora) grew on stone until I saw this one doing just that. There were several of them on the stone and some were quite large. One of the easiest ways to identify this lichen is to look for the white fringe around its perimeter, but up until now I’ve looked for it on tree bark. They are usually the size of a penny but these examples were bigger than quarters, or about an inch in diameter.
I haven’t seen many turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) this year and the ones I have seen have been in shades of brown rather than the brilliant blues, purples, yellows and oranges that I know they can wear. Though I can’t see it my color finding software tells me that there is salmon pink in this example, which is a new color for turkey tails in my experience.
These mushrooms grew on an old stump and then froze. I don’t know their name but they sure were peachy.
Our native striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) has foliage which in winter turns deep purple where the darker areas are on the leaf and stays that way through the winter. It’s hard to tell from a photo and hard to explain why but these plants are so well camouflaged that I have looked right at them many times in the summer and not seen them. They are one of our rarer native wintergreens, and also one of our prettiest.
A friend sent me a photo of a bobcat that he took with his trail camera recently. I had a bobcat walk right in front of me, maybe 30 feet away last summer. They’re about 3 feet long and weigh about 19 pounds on average. They’re bigger than a housecat but smaller than a Labrador retriever. It’s said that bobcats are doing well because their prey; turkeys, squirrels, rabbits, birds, and rarely deer are also doing well. Rabbits, for instance, are doing very well. I saw a lot of them this summer. I was interested to see that this one had all 4 paws on that fallen branch. I wonder if it did that so it wouldn’t rustle the dry leaves and alert any prey to its presence. I also wonder if Native Americans learned how to walk through a forest so stealthily by watching animals like this one. It isn’t easy to walk silently through a forest, especially at this time of year.
Since I started this post with snow it seems odd to end it with a flower but though there haven’t been fields full of them I’ve seen a surprising number of flowers this month, including goldenrod, yarrow, meadowsweet, false dandelion, and this cheery little Johnny jump up I saw just last week. It’s almost enough to start me thinking we might have another mild winter, but I’ve seen flowers fooled by winter enough times to really believe it.
The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. ~Shannon Hale
Last Saturday, December 19th, we woke to snow covered ground. It was the first snow of the season but it didn’t come from a normal snowstorm. This was lake effect snow that came all the way from Buffalo, New York. Buffalo sits on the shores of Lake Erie and is famous for getting unbelievable amounts of lake effect snow. Luckily this storm gave them and parts of New Hampshire just a dusting this time.
Turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) are tough and don’t mind a little snow or cold. These examples were nice and colorful.
It would take a lot more snow than this to flatten an evergreen Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) but eventually they will flatten. This year’s fronds will turn brown and wither in the spring when the new ones begin growing.
From my favorite river watching perch on the old Thompson covered bridge, the Ashuelot River looked moody and had just a little snow on its right hand bank.
This view is of the sharp snow melt line between where the sunshine was and the bridge’s shadow. By the time I got there the sun was quickly disappearing.
From Perkin’s Pond in Troy Mount Monadnock had a dusting of snow that only showed when the sun was full on the summit, which wasn’t often on this day. The strong wind made the pond surface choppy.
Here you can see the snow on Mount Monadnock a little better. You can also see a solitary climber, standing in almost the same spot as the lone climber I saw the last time I was here. It must have been very, very cold up there.
Back in the forest the snow was staying put where the sun didn’t shine.
A large clump of Indian pipe seed pods (Monotropa uniflora) stood beside the trail. Each one looked as if it had been carved from a wooden block.
Some evergreen ferns still had a good coating of snow, but the sun was just reaching them.
Black jelly fungus (Exidia glandulosa) grew on an alder limb, but was frozen solid. I’ve never been able to find out how fruiting in winter benefits jelly fungi but it must, because that’s when most of them appear.
Ice had covered dead grass stems and made sharply pointed patterns.
A large puddle in the woods reflected the promise of better weather to come. Meteorologists say we’ll see sixty plus degrees again on Christmas Eve day, and I can’t think of a better gift after our last two extreme winters.
My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that? ~Bob Hope
Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone has a safe, joyous and blessed Christmas.
I’ve been working on a difficult post that needs a lot of research and I knew I wouldn’t have it done in time to post today, so I thought I’d do another to show you what winter is doing here in New Hampshire. So far we’ve had plenty of cold but only a dusting of snow, as the above photo shows.
This photo was taken on the same day that the first one was. That was how fast the snow melted.
But as I’ve said, we’ve had plenty of cold so winter is creeping rather than howling in this year. This photo is of the kind of puddle ice that is paper thin and full of oxygen and makes tinkling sounds when you break it. This example had the silhouette of a flying eagle in it, and I’ve circled it so you could see it. All I have to do is hear this kind of ice breaking and I’m immediately transported back to when I was 9 or 10 years old. I used to love riding my bike through puddles with this kind of ice on them in the spring. It was always a sign that, before too long, school would be letting out for the summer.
Streams freeze from the banks in toward the middle and this one has started doing just that.
Anywhere water splashes, ice will form.
Rising and falling water levels decorate the edges of stones with ice baubles. When you see this happening you know it won’t be long before the stream has frozen over. The stones have lost any heat they might have had stored from the sun.
It’s no different along the Ashuelot River; anything that water splashes on is coated in ice.
Ice needles are poking up out of the soil. A lot has to happen for ice needles to form. When the air temperature is below 32 degrees F right at the soil surface and the soil and groundwater remain thawed, hydrostatic pressure can force the groundwater, sometimes super cooled, out of the soil where it freezes instantly into a “needle.” As more water is forced out of the soil the process is repeated over and over, and each needle grows in length because of more water freezing at its base. Often these needles freeze together to form ribbons, and that is what this photo shows.
One of my favorite places to find winter is in this man made canyon, hacked out of the rock when the Cheshire railroad was built in the 1800s. It’s an endless source of fascination and wonder for me because of the unusual plants that grow there. Winter had already started before I got there.
The sun doesn’t reach down beyond the tops of these 40-50 foot high walls in very many places but even where it did it didn’t throw enough heat to melt the ice. The ice here can be very beautiful and is often colored in shades of blue, green and yellow, stained by minerals and vegetation.
When you walk through here in summer you hear the constant drip of groundwater, and in winter you see as well as hear it.
I’ve put a red circle around the spider who found his own Everest. He’s just to the lower right of center. As often happens I didn’t see him until I saw the photo.
There are thousands of liverworts living here and many are slowly being entombed in the ice. There’s a good chance that they won’t be seen again until spring.
Mosses too, are being encased in ice. Life on these walls is tough, but these plants can take it.
For those who might be thinking big deal-a few icicles, this photo from last year shows what those few icicles will have become by February. They grow as big as tree trunks, and people come here to learn how to climb them. For me it’s interesting to see how they start, and then how they grow.
What a severe yet master artist old Winter is…. No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. ~John Burroughs
Last Saturday morning this was the view from my back door, a measurable snowfall for the first time this season. Naturally I had to take a walk in it.
Old mister heron was in his favorite tree looking very cold, with one foot tucked up into his feathers. Of course I didn’t have my tripod, so this is the best I could do with photos of him. I was very surprised to see him in such cold weather.
This is one of the heron’s fishing holes. Not his favorite, but at least it wasn’t frozen over. I would think that frogs would be deep in the mud by now, so fish must be the only food that he gets from here.
This is the heron’s favorite place to fish but he probably won’t be fishing here again until March.
Native winterberry shrubs (Ilex verticillata) grow on the banks of the heron’s fishing pond. The berries seem even brighter against the gray ice and white snow.
We had a cormorant fishing from this dead tree one summer but I haven’t seen him at all this year. As long as he was out at the end of the tree he used to let me get as close to him as I was in this photo, but no closer. He was smart too-the sun was always behind him when I saw him, which meant that it was in my eyes, so taking photos was almost impossible.
As a side note, this is the first black and white photo that I’ve taken that has ever appeared on this blog. The only difference between this and the natural version is the ice had a tiny hint of blue in it; otherwise this was a black and white shot even though it was taken in color. I didn’t really have to do much of anything except let it lead me to where it wanted to be. Mr. Tootlepedal just won third place in a photo competition with a black and white photo and it was his example that inspired me to post this one. You can see his award winning photo by clicking here.
We didn’t get more than two inches of snow but it was heavy and wet and stuck to everything. I saw sunlight at the end of this trail so I followed it.
Snow really highlights features that you normally wouldn’t pay much attention to. I’ve walked by this huge clump of blown down trees countless times without giving them much thought, but the snow really highlighted their massive, now vertical, root system.
The sky was very changeable and the sun seemed to stay just out of reach no matter which way I went.
I think it was nature writer Hal Borland who noted how it is almost impossible to get lost in winter because all you have to do is follow your own footprints back the way you came. I agree with that unless it happens to be snowing when you’re trying to follow them.
The meadow seen through the trees up ahead looked like it might have some sun shining on it or at least, brighter light.
No sun here, but I like to watch the wind blow across the fields of dry grasses in waves, as in “amber waves of grain.” I was glad there were no waves this day though, because it was cold enough without the wind. Little bluestem grass (Schizachyrium scoparium) seems to be the most common grass seen in waste areas and vacant lots in this part of New Hampshire.
When I was in high school I had an excellent art teacher named Norma Safford who used to annoy me by insisting that the winter shadows I painted be in shades of blue. I didn’t think blue looked natural and thought instead that they should be in shades of gray, and I told her so. Imagine me, the color blind kid telling the great Norma Safford how to paint! This lady has roads named in her honor. Not surprisingly, the camera shows that she was right and I was wrong.
I finally caught up with the sunshine at this wetland and saw that it was melting the snow quickly. By the time I got back home it had almost all melted from my yard. The latest forecast says that we could get as much as another foot of snow tonight, so it sounds like it’s going to be a white Christmas.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? ~ J. B. Priestley
October and November were much drier than normal here but finally, on the day before Thanksgiving, it warmed up a bit and rained over 2 inches. I thought, with all that rain, that waterfalls might be worth looking at, so off I went.
Normally this depth marker in the Ashuelot River can’t be seen. When it is, you know it has been very dry. After the rain on November 27th, it is underwater once again.
I decided that my first waterfall would be Beaver Brook Falls, north of Keene. The only way to get to them is by walking, and when you do you have to pass the disappearing waterfall that flows down the hillside on the far side of the brook. This stream appears only when we’ve had a large amount of rain and if we don’t have more it will disappear in a day or two.
The falls were roaring as I expected. The mist was reaching me from across the pool but there was very little ice here. Montucky had a great shot of a frozen waterfall on his Montana Outdoors blog and I’m hoping that this waterfall will be as beautiful if it freezes. It’s hard to imagine such a large volume of water freezing, but it can.
Brickyard Brook, which is south of Keene, had more ice on it and some of the formations, like these long needles that had formed on the shore, were really interesting, Watching ice grow is more exciting than watching it melt, in my book.
The stones in the brook had cooled off enough so Ice crystals were forming around them as well. If the weather stays cold these ice skirts will grow larger and will finally join with those along the shoreline, and that’s all we’ll see of this creek bottom until March.
Brickyard brook was a good place to practice my water blurring skills. Blurring water shows the viewer that the water is moving instead of just sitting still. At least, that’s what I get from statements like “blurred water conveys the impression of motion in a still photograph.” I’m not sure why anyone would think the water in a stream was sitting still, but that is the argument usually made for blurring water.
There is quite a war of words going on between those who blur water and those who don’t, with those who don’t saying it doesn’t look natural and those who do saying that it is “dreamy” and gives a greater impression of motion. Personally, I think it’s over done, but I have seen some really beautiful blurred water photos.
I think blurred water is best used when the focus is on the water itself as it is in this photo. When water is just one part of a wider landscape photo made up of many different elements, blurred water seems distracting because it forces the viewer to focus on the water instead of the landscape as a whole.
After Brickyard brook I headed north to Nelson, New Hampshire to see what the cold had done to Bailey brook falls and yes, it was as cold as it looks-and slippery too. There are two waterfalls along this short stretch of brook and the lower falls shown in this photo were in deep shade. In this instance I had no choice but to blur the water, because no amount of upping the ISO or fiddling with f stops helped. I could only hope for sunshine at the upper falls.
The folks in Nelson saw dusting of snow the night before but before I left most of it had melted anywhere that the sun had touched it.
The sun wasn’t melting the ice though.
There was a little more sunlight at the upper falls, but I decided to blur them anyway because there wasn’t much of anything else of interest in this scene.
This would have been a great place to sit and have some lunch, but I don’t usually carry any. Maybe I should start, and spend a little more time sitting in the woods rather than just hiking through them. I’d see a lot more birds and animals that way.
All the added water made for some good waves in the Ashuelot River. I think this photo shows a good example of when not to blur water. Even though the water itself is the focal point in this instance I think it would have ruined the shot.
What do you think about blurred water in photos? Do my thoughts on the subject make sense, or am I all wet?
A cheery relaxation is man’s natural state, just as nature itself is relaxed. A waterfall is concerned only with being itself, not with doing something it considers waterfall-like. ~Vernon Howard
New Hampshire Garden Solutions 
