Leave it to Beavers

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

Thanks for stopping in.

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The Story of the Abandoned Road Part 2

This is the second part of a two part post about an old abandoned road here in Keene, New Hampshire. To read part one just scroll down or click here.

 

As I said in part one, there are many wildflowers that grow along this old road and this one, blue stemmed goldenrod (Solidago caesia), is rare in this area. This road is one of only two places that I know of to find this plant. With its little tufts of flowers spread out along its stem it is one of the easiest goldenrods to identify. The “blue stem” comes from the waxy coating on the stem that protects it from sunlight and helps hold in moisture. It is very similar to the whitish “bloom” seen on blueberries.

 

A closer look at the flowers of blue stemmed goldenrod.

 

Wildflowers aren’t the only plants found here. Poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) runs rampant on both sides of the road. This isn’t the place to be hiking with shorts on.

 

On the side of the road opposite Beaver Brook ledges soar quite high in places. These ledges were cut out of the bedrock by hand, long before there were power tools to do the job.They are great places to find mosses and lichens.

 

I found these common powderhorn lichens growing on one of the ledges. There are very similar to British soldier lichens, but without the red tips.

 

You can still see evidence of the star drills that were used to drill into the stone, which happens to be feldspar in this example. Star drills were long pieces of steel with a star shaped tip that were held by one man while two others hit the end with sledge hammers. After each hammer blow the drill would be rotated 1/8 turn and eventually a hole would be cut into the stone. A good team could do about 12 holes per day. Once enough holes were drilled small tools called feathers and wedges were tapped into each one to split the stone away from the ledge face. Then all of the fallen stone would have had to have been put into ox carts and hauled away. This was very labor intensive and it took a long time to cut a road through solid rock. This is why old roads were so full of curves-they followed the path of least resistance.

 

Beaver Brook cascades over ledges into a small, shaded pool that was once a popular swimming hole. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about how high the falls are. I’ve heard everything from 10 feet to 100 feet, but I’d guess that they are closer to 30 to 40 feet and maybe 50 if you include the part that isn’t visible in this photo. They are certainly high enough to allow me to say with certainty that you wouldn’t catch me jumping off those ledges.

If you’d like to see a very short video from above the falls taken by someone with absolutely no fear of heights, just click here. You’ll also be able to hear the great roar of the falls.

NOTE: What the person who shot this video did was extremely dangerous because of the crumbling cliff faces and I would strongly urge others to not try it. I hope he at least had a rope around his waist!

 

A lot of people come here to see the falls, but to get a clear view of them like that in the photo you have to climb/ slide / fall down a very steep embankment and then climb over large boulders. I did all of that 6 or 7 times trying to get photos for this post and I’m glad I don’t have to do it again right away. This photo shows a hint of the large stone in the center of the lower part of the falls that splits them in two in dry weather. Beaver Brook’s headwaters are in Gilsum, New Hampshire, north of Keene, and when the falls are split in half, you know that it has been very dry there.

 

This old hand colored postcard shows the falls split in two due to dry weather. This photo was taken sometime around 1910 and if you look very closely above and to the right of the falls you can see a woman sitting on a ledge with her feet hanging over. There is a bare tree branch hanging down just behind her on her right. (Our left) She is wearing a long, rose colored dress and a big, wide brimmed hat. Most of these old photos and postcards have people in them somewhere, but I’m not sure why. It’s possible that it was done to give an idea of scale, which this lady does very well. Maybe she had been diving into the pool from the ledges and was resting.

 

I know why the lady in the rose colored dress needed a rest! If you think getting down to the brook to get photos of the falls was difficult, just wait until you have to climb back up carrying cameras and a tripod! It’s close to vertical but with just enough slant to make it possible.

Here is a view of the falls circa 1900 that you can’t see today because trees and brush block the view. It seems amazing to me that this land was once so clear, with hardly a bush or tree on the hillsides. If it wasn’t for their roar you could walk right past the falls today while hardly getting a glimpse of them.

If you’re wondering if there is a person in this postcard the answer is yes. He or she is standing on the road beside the white fence just about even with the falls. It’s either a woman wearing a long black dress with a white collar or a man with a long white beard wearing a long black coat. This postcard was made from a hand colored black and white photograph.

If you were to follow the road in the postcard view today you would run smack into one of the biggest piles of dirt you had ever seen. All of the fill that the “new” Route 9 North sits on had to be trucked in from elsewhere when the highway was built in the late 70s. It’s amazing to think that what was once a footpath beside a brook, used by Native Americans to hunt and fish from, is now a multi-lane highway. This was and is an important route north out of Keene and now leads to Concord, the state capital.

If you stand on the highway and look down you can still see part of the original old road. This view is on the opposite side of the highway from the falls that we were just visiting and the old road isn’t as overgrown. The highway was built directly across the road, cutting it off from motorized travel forever.

The old road was originally built to access a sawmill which was built on Beaver Brook in 1736. In 1735 100 acres of “middling good land” and 25 pounds cash was offered to anyone who could build a sawmill capable of furnishing lumber to the settlement of Upper Ashuelot, which is now called Keene. Without a sawmill you lived in a log cabin, so they were often built before anything else in early New England settlements.

If you follow Beaver Brook upstream from the falls and across the new highway you will eventually come to this dam, built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1986. The dam has saved Keene from devastating floods several times, but it does not completely eliminate all flooding in the city. At capacity Beaver Brook Dam can hold back 106 acres of floodwaters.

Beavers are still here doing their part in finding flood control solutions too.

 

When flooding doesn’t occur the area behind the dam is essentially the same wetland, called “three mile swamp,” that it has always been. This is a great place to spot wildlife. As I was gathering photos for this post I saw ducks, geese, and a great blue heron who sat on a dead tree branch just out of camera range.

Well, now you folks know as much about this old rad and the surrounding area as I do. I hope it was an enjoyable excursion and I thank you for coming along.

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open. ~ Jawaharial Nehru

 

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The Story of the Abandoned Road

A while ago I did a post about how I had been chasing a particular angle of perspective (angle of view of the capture) and in it I showed a photo of yellow lines on an abandoned road. For me the shot was a total failure but I thought I’d show it as a good example of what I didn’t want to do. Of course, almost everyone who read the blog loved the photo, so I thought I’d do a post about the road itself and give you some background information. I’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks and ended up with so many photos that I’ve had to do the post in two installments. What follows is part one.

This is where we start-just inside the gate that keeps people from driving on the road. The trees are just starting to take on some color, so this is a great time to be hiking here. It’s hard to believe that such a secluded area could be less than a half hour’s walk from the city center. Deer, bobcats, mink, otters, black bear, and many other animals and birds roam this place.

 

This road was one of the first to be laid out in Keene, New Hampshire in the 1700s and was abandoned in the mid to late 60s when a new highway was built-literally right across the existing road. Nature has been taking back what is hers ever since and the road slowly gets narrower as the plants and trees grow in toward its middle where the sunlight is. It is kept open to the public as a nature trail and follows Beaver Brook, so named because of the beavers that once thrived here. The canopy closes in quickly as the road climbs and follows the brook and on cloudy days it gets so dark in places that it’s almost impossible to get a decent photo without using a tripod.

 

In places the brook is placid and free of most stones and other obstacles. A dam upstream, which we will visit later on, regulates the water flow but in times of heavy rain this brook can become a raging beast. There have been times when heavy flooding pushed it up and over the road and the parts of Keene that it runs through still often flood in spring.

 

In some places it is full of stones and gravel bars on which fallen trees and other debris gets hung up. An occasional flood will release the debris and wash it downstream, so flooding can serve a useful purpose.

 

The yellow no passing lines still show here and there where vegetation hasn’t covered them.

 

In other places the old guard posts and cables survive. These posts used to have to be hand painted black and white, one by one, all the way along this and every other road in the county. Of course, it was a lot more open then when the forest wasn’t allowed to grow so close to the rod.

 

 Many of these posts are the “newer” triangular concrete kind…

 

But there are still many of the even older wooden posts. There was no such thing as pressure treated wood when these posts were put here so most of them have rotted completely through where they meet the soil.

 

There was a time that there were no guard posts at all along this road. Instead trees were laid alongside the road and smaller diameter trees were used for rails. This old postcard from the early 1900s shows the area with many fewer trees than are seen today. These postcards were printed from black and white photos that had been hand colored.

 

There are many guard posts that have washed into the brook over the years and some are dangling from their wires. These posts are about six feet long and half their length was buried in the stony ground. Slowly, Beaver Brook is eating away at the sides of the road and since there is no maintenance here it’s conceivable that one day there will no longer be a road.

 

This concrete storm drain has been undercut by the brook and is slowly sliding into it. This must have been put in at a later date than the guard posts and wires.

 

Many wildflowers grow along the roadside and many actually grow in the thin soil that has built up on the pavement over the years. New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) are the stars of the show right now.

 

White baneberry (Actaea pachypoda ) fruits, called “doll’s eyes” can be seen as well. This plant is very toxic, which is why the berries don’t get eaten.

 

History and wildflowers aren’t the only reason I and many others keep coming here-scenes like this can appear and disappear in a very short amount of time. When we get heavy rain water will gather and cascade down the steep 200 foot hillside on the far side of the brook, creating a temporary waterfall. Two days after this photo was taken there was no sign of this one.

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind. ~Charles Dickens

Thanks for coming by.

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