Forty Foot Falls

There is a power that comes when you’re in nature; sometimes it can come from gazing into the unrippled surface of a pond. Sometimes it comes when you sit with your back against an old tree. It is a kind of internal power that comes from the stillness, but sometimes I’d rather feel a different kind of power; an external power. Sometimes I want to just take life by the horns and hang on for what may be a wild ride, and I can find that here at forty foot falls.

Wet oak leaves and acorns can be almost as slippery as ice and I have fallen here a few times, but with your full attention and a bit of planning it can be done without mishap. I also go a bit slower these days. I always wear a bright orange hat and vest here because there are deer in these woods, and there are also deer hunters in these woods. The night after I came here I dreamed that I saw a beautiful white tail buck with a huge rack of antlers just standing at the edge of the woods. I also dreamed that I didn’t have a camera with me, which is usually the case when I see such things.

I saw what I think were more late fall oyster mushrooms (Panellus serotinus) on a log.

The gills looked right.

I made it up to what I call the middle falls easily enough. This is a good place to rest a bit, but don’t expect quiet. Though there wasn’t as much water as I’ve seen in the past the roar was the same.

I usually wait until this time of year after the leaves fall to visit here because this forest is very dark. I thought I’d have enough light for photos on this day but clouds rolled in and it was still quite dark. If the light appears different in one photo to the next that’s why.

I’ve known for a long time that what we call beech bark blister disease is caused by both an insect and a fungus but I had never seen it until now. The white cottony substance seen on this tree is the insect called beech scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga). According to Wikipedia science doesn’t fully understand how it works but it is known that excessive feeding by this insect causes two different fungi, Neonectria faginata and Neonectria ditissima, to produce annual cankers or blisters on the bark of the tree. The continuous formation of lesions around the tree eventually girdles it, resulting in canopy death. I would say in this instance we could call this excessive feeding by the scale. I’ve read in the past that each insect pierces the bark to feed, and that tiny hole is enough to let fungal spores in.

Here are the cankers or lesions, also called blisters. Some trees are covered with them as high up as you can see and I see dead beeches just about wherever I go. It’s really too bad because beech is one of our most beautiful trees.

A few years ago there was a terrible flood that came through here and washed away roads and structures, and one of the things it washed away was a bridge, and I believe this steel cable was part of that bridge.

In any event the cable is here and is easy to get tangled up in, so I always watch for it. On this day I used it to help pull myself up the hill.

Soon it will have become part of several trees. A woodcutter’s nightmare.

Once you’ve made it up the hill you get a first glimpse of what I call the canyon.

It’s a tumbled, jumbled place with huge boulders tossed here and there, and trees torn up by their roots. The power of water is incredible, and it shows here.

But it’s also a beautiful place; well worth the effort it takes to get here. I’ve used this view as the opening shot in posts I’ve done on mosses a couple of times.

It’s a beautiful, green place. You can see how vibrant and full of life the mosses are.

And you want to touch them; to pet them, almost. Broom moss (Dicranum scoparium) 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. It’s a fairly common moss that grows in large tufts or mats on logs and tree bases, soil or stone.

The water, or the objects in the water, have stripped the bark off several trees.

Whatever sat on that tree for years and bent it like that has been washed away. Only the memory of it remains.

I made it all the way to the upper falls without a problem this time. The upper falls are a bit anticlimactic; it’s hard to believe all the water and destruction we’ve seen comes from what appears to be a trickle, but I wouldn’t want to be standing here after two days of heavy rain. One odd thing I noticed that I never have before is how everything, the boulder faces and even the waterfall itself, is tilted at about 10 degrees off vertical.

Now we go back down, and going back down this hill is harder than most. Some of it is so steep I have to sit down and slide on the leaves. Not very dignified perhaps, but it beats breaking a leg.

As I was driving off I saw a bright spot in the woods. At first I thought these fungi must be chicken of the woods but they couldn’t be because they had gills and chicken of the woods is a polypore with pores, so it was off to the mushroom books. I’m fairly sure now that they were the mock oyster or orange oyster (Phyllotopsis nidulans) mushrooms. They can be very hairy or fuzzy at first but smoother later. These were more like velvet. They are supposed to be very stinky but I got quite close and smelled nothing unusual. They can be found clustered on both hardwood and conifer logs from fall to late winter. They are said to cause a white, stringy rot in the log. They’re quite pretty and this is the first time I’ve seen them.

Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall. ~Fulton J. Sheen

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Time for a Climb

We’ve had nights that have been more than cold enough to make snow and most of our ski slopes plan on being open by Thanksgiving day (Nov. 24), so last Sunday I was off to Walpole and the High Blue Trail to see if I could sneak a peek across the Connecticut River valley to see if the slopes were white on Stratton Mountain. Warm days after a freeze mean Indian summer, and it was a glorious Indian summer day for a walk; warm and sunny, but with a chance of showers.

I stopped to look at some black knot disease on a young black cherry. It is caused by the fungus Apiosporina morbosa which can also attack plums, peaches, and apricots. Spores from the fungus can be spread by rain or wind and typically infect trees from April through June on new growth. Infected stems swell up and produce hard black knots like those in the above photo. This disease can eventually kill the tree so infected limbs should be pruned off 2-4 inches below the knots and buried or burned before bud break the following spring.

This one is for Jerry over at the Quiet Solo Pursuits Blog. (If you’re a bird lover then you’ll love his blog.) Jerry says that they don’t have many boulders in Michigan so I show him some of ours occasionally. In my recent post on Willard Pond I showed a large boulder, but this example is only about half the size of that one. To give you an idea of scale I put my hunting season hat on my monopod and leaned it against the stone. What looks like green rags all over the boulder are actually rock tripe lichen (Umbilicaria mammulata.)

Some of the biggest rock tripe lichens I’ve ever seen grow here, and I looked for the absolute biggest among them to show you. The camera that I use for macro photos shows just how big they are. Rock tripe is very pliable and rubbery when it’s moist, but once it dries out it becomes crisp like a potato chip. It sticks itself to stone by way of a single, navel like attachment point. The rest of the lichen hangs from this central point, much like a rag hanging on a peg.

The magic corn had been harvested. I think of it as magic corn because I was here in mid-June and there was a meadow here, and then I returned in September and the meadow had become a corn field, complete with ripe, golden ears. And in the middle of a drought.

The critters got some of the corn but they didn’t get it all.

A bear must have eaten its fill because a large pile of its dung was full of corn. A mold that looked like 4 inch tall wiry horse hairs grew on it. Or more accurately, the mold grew on the sugars in the corn.

It’s hard to tell from these photos but tiny spheres full of spores top each hair like filament of this mold. Because of that the fungus is often called pin head mold and is in the Phycomyces family. It is related to bread mold and has been around for hundreds of millions of years, even though its life cycle spans just a few short hours. It’s best to stay away from molds that grow on animal droppings when they’re releasing spores because the spores have been known to make people very sick. I took a couple of quick shots and moved on.

I don’t know if it was because the corn towering over them protected them from frost or not, but there were many goldenrod plants blooming in the meadow / cornfield. It was nice to see them.

As I often do I thought of the early settlers who once lived up here as I passed what’s left of the old foundation. It’s hard to know why they left but many farms were abandoned when the woolen mills opened. They were paid next to nothing by the mill owners but it was an income that wasn’t weather dependent and one they could count on. I tried working in a woolen mill once and I knew right off that it wasn’t for me, but it isn’t too hard to imagine at least some of the homesteaders being happy they had a regular job. Farming is hard work in this stony ground.

The people who settled here were certainly hard working if not persevering, and the many hundreds of miles of stone walls snaking through these woods is a constant reminder of all of those who once tried to tame this land.

I was glad to see that the small pond had a little more water in it than it did two months ago. I’ve seen lots of tracks around it so I know that many animals come here to drink. Most of the duckweed had disappeared as well. Several readers have told me that it sinks to the bottom in the fall. It disappeared last fall, but was there again this past summer.

If the view from the overlook doesn’t tell you that you’ve arrived the sign will.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever shown a proper long shot from High Blue into Vermont, but that’s Stratton Mountain Resort in the center of the photo, way over across the Connecticut River Valley. It would be quite a hike.

Stratton Mountain had so many clouds around it I couldn’t tell if there was snow on the ski slopes or not. I decided to wait and see if they moved away and cleared the view. To give a sense of the distance and scale shown in this scene; the tiny white specks over in the lower left corner are houses.

To the left part of the Green Mountain range over in Vermont could be seen. The clouds were getting darker though.

To the right a neighborhood basked in bright Sunshine.

Straight ahead a darkness came over the land and the rain fell in torrents, obliterating the view of the mountain. That sounds a bit more biblical than I meant it to but it’s what came to mind as I watched the scene unfold. Since Vermont lies to the west of New Hampshire their weather almost always becomes our weather, so I thought it might be wise to head back down the hill. The clouds moved slightly to the left (south) but mostly floated slowly towards me, so it was hard to tell how long they would take to reach me and my unprotected camera.

The sun was still at my back and the day was still beautiful here away from the storm, so I took my time going down.

I spied something very out of the ordinary just as I reached the parking area. I used to collect rocks and minerals so I know enough about them to know that yellow is a rare color for a stone in this part of the world. Radioactive minerals like gummite and autunite are yellow and both are found in the northern part of New Hampshire, but the example above doesn’t look quite like either one and I’m not convinced that it’s a mineral at all. It looks as if the yellow material is on the surface of the stone rather than part of it.

The only thing I’ve seen in nature that was egg yolk yellow and could cover the surface of a stone is a slime mold, but slime molds almost always have some texture and this example looks more like it is simply coating and mimicking the texture of the stone, along with the bits of hemlock needles, acorns and other plant materials on it. I doubt that it’s a radioactive mineral and I don’t think it’s a slime mold. At least, not an active slime mold; it might be one that has dried out, but I can’t say for sure. In the end I have to say that it’s another of nature’s mysteries.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. ~Albert Einstein

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Time for a Climb

Sometimes when you live in a forest there is a feeling of closeness, so I like to occasionally visit more open areas to balance things out. Hill climbing usually widens the viewpoint so on Saturday I decided to climb the High Blue trail in Walpole. From up there, I knew there would be nothing blocking my view of the horizon.

There were plenty of flowers to be seen along the way, especially asters and goldenrods. They must have mesmerized me because I got home and discovered that I had no photos of the trail itself, so I have to ask you to imagine walking on your favorite forest trail as you scroll through this post.

Some aster blossoms were about an inch and a half across and that told me they were most likely New England asters. There is no other native aster as big that I know of that will grow in dry places. Some come close in size but they want wet feet and grow on stream banks.

They’re always beautiful no matter what their name or size.

Years ago there was a substantial colony of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) here that bloomed heavily each spring. They were the most coltsfoot plants I had ever seen in one place but a logging skidder plowed them up and I haven’t seen one bloom here since. I saw plenty of foliage on this day though, and that tells me that they’re making a comeback.

In all the time I’ve been coming here this large plot of land has been a hay meadow, but all of the sudden it’s now it’s a cornfield. I was here last June and the field hadn’t even been plowed, so I was surprised to see so much corn.

In spite of the drought the corn looked good, with large ears showing. Animals had found it though, and they were helping themselves. Possibly raccoons, or maybe turkeys or crows, or maybe all three.

When I was a boy walking along the railroad tracks I saw (and played in) many cornfields, so this field made me feel young again. The corn must have been 8 feet tall.

Fall had been sprinkled on the sarsaparilla plants (Aralia nudicaulis) along the trail.

A reflector button on a tree reminded me that archery season for white tail deer had started two days before. There are plenty of deer in this area and most likely plenty of hunters as well, but I didn’t see any. Bow hunters often sit up in the trees.

 The old foundation on the summit and the deer hunters made me wonder what the settlers who once lived here must have eaten;  probably plenty of venison, as well as moose, bear and other animals.

If you’re interested in history the following is from the book Walpole as it was and as it is. 1749 to 1879.

“The flesh of the deer and bear afforded the settlers many a delicious repast. Wild turkeys were trapped and shot, and quails and pigeons caught in nets, in great abundance. The brooks were filled with trout and dace, and the river abounded in salmon and shad.“

Clearing this place of all the stones in this wall as well as all of the trees that once grew here was hard work when all you had was an axe and a horse, or oxen if you were lucky, so I’m sure eating well would have been all important.

The small pond on the summit has shrunken to about half its size due to the drought but at least it still had some water in it. If the hoof and paw prints in the mud are any indication a lot of animals drink here. Though the pond’s surface was mostly covered by duckweed the dappled sunlight on it was beautiful. It was like  looking through a kaleidoscope.

This place is called High Blue because it’s higher than the surrounding terrain and the view to the west across the Connecticut River valley is always blue, without fail.

As expected the view was blue this day and there was little haze. I could see Stratton Mountain over in Vermont clearly, and that was a surprise. I’ve noticed that it can get very hazy here and sometimes you can barely make out the mountain.  I also noticed that some of the trees were getting taller, and I wondered who maintained this overlook. Whoever it is has some work ahead of them.

It was clear enough to just make out the ski trails on the right hand end of Stratton Mountain. I’m not anxious to see snow on them but I’m sure they’ll be covered by mid-November, either by man-made or natural snow. Thanksgiving always comes with a school vacation and that’s a busy time for the ski slopes.

I saw that there are now four piles of stones here, not only marring the landscape but also interfering with the space that people have to stand and look at the view. There isn’t much room to begin with and these piles take up half the available real estate, so I’ve decided that I will dismantle them. I could understand building them if they marked a trail or had some other significance, but up here they are just a nuisance. I almost tripped over one of them when I was trying to find the best spot for taking a photo.

The place I’ve come to call fern gully because of all the ferns there was both green with live ferns and brown with dead ones, with a little orange and yellow to mark the halfway point between them.

Some of the lady ferns (Athyrium filix-femina) were at the white stage; which is the last color they turn before becoming brown and dry. Lady ferns are also called ghost ferns because of this habit. Unfortunately they don’t all turn at the same time. If they did fern gully would be a wondrous sight at this time of year.

The hobblebushes (Viburnum lantanoides) warned that fall was right around the corner, and in fact tomorrow is already the first day of autumn.

Later that night I thought I’d take a photo of the harvest moon. I haven’t taken a photo of the moon in so long I can’t remember when the last time was, so I thought it was about time. But after a summer of cloudless skies one cloud floated in and parked itself right in front of the moon. It was the slowest moving cloud I’ve ever seen; I waited nearly two hours for it to float away so I could take this photo.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.” ~ John Muir

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Tippin’ Rock Tips

Last Saturday an old friend who moved to California years ago came east for a visit, so I thought I’d take him up Hewe’s hill to see Tippin’ Rock. He’s a regular reader of this blog and has seen the behemoth in photos, but never in person. Luckily he’s always up for an uphill climb.

Since we’re about the same age I don’t think he minded my stopping to take photos, like this one of a turkey feather. We don’t run up and down hills quite like we used to.

But we were able to huff and puff our way to the top where the 40 ton glacial erratic sat waiting. We marveled at the size of the thing and thought about all the things that had to have happened millions of years ago for it to have ended up here. It doesn’t just sit on dirt; it’s on the only perfectly flat section of the granite bedrock that the hill is made from. And it isn’t just any old rock; its underside is like the hull of a ship, with a keel-like shape to it. It also comes with a very old legend that says if you “get your shoulder under” the right part of the stone and heave, it will move. That’s where the name “Tippin” Rock” comes from.

Well, I’ve gotten my shoulder under every part of the thing and heaved until I was blue in the face, so I thought I’d let my friend Dave have a turn. Here he is going at it from the side, using his arms instead of his shoulder. The rock just sat there, so then he tried a different spot and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Wonder of wonders; 40 tons of granite rocked back and forth like a baby cradle.  “Well I’ll be,” I said and then I took a turn. Once again it moved back and forth like a pendulum. But it’s a slow, subtle movement and we discovered that if you’re looking directly at the stone you can’t really tell that it’s moving. You have to look at an edge to really see the slow rocking motion, and that’s what makes me think that every time I’ve heaved at the stone it was moving and I just couldn’t see it. We also noticed that we could hear it rocking by its crushing the dry forest debris that the wind has blown under it.

We tried several different spots and the big stone rocked slowly back and forth nearly every time, so the legend of Tippin Rock has proven true, and I’m glad to be able to check another of nature’s mysteries off my long list. I told Dave I’d make him world famous; known from here to Timbuktu as the man who can move 40 tons of solid granite with nothing but his bare hands.

We spent more than a few minutes marveling at our sudden onrush of super human strength but there were other things up here to see, so we headed off down the trail to where the views are found.

As I feared the sky was flat, dull, white, and uninteresting. It might seem ungrateful to complain about an entire summer of cloudless blue skies but I can say with surety that even the best things in life can become tiresome when you have too much of them. We did have a dark cloudy day with a little drizzle yesterday and it seemed like all of nature was rejoicing.

To the south there were miles of unbroken forest. I didn’t see much in the way of fall colors but some of the trees seem to be hinting at lighter shades.

To the west there was more unbroken forest and even a touch of blue in the sky. There is also a stronger hint of fall in this photo, I just noticed.

In places the bedrock forms ledges and in the ledges there are sometimes shallow caves, some big enough to sit in when it rains.  You have to choose your cave carefully though, because in many of them the stone on the ceiling is falling to the floor.

In places the bedrock forms sheer faces and rock climbers come here to hone their craft. Just to the left, out of sight in this photo, is a drop of (we guessed) about 60-80 feet. Vertigo comes easily here, at least for those who don’t do heights well, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to be wandering around at night.

I introduced Dave to my friends the toadskin lichens (Lasallia papulosa) and he was impressed by their tenacity. Even after a summer of little rain but here they sit, dry and brittle, patiently waiting for the fall rains that we are all hoping for. We just had a hurricane move up the coast that looked promising for a few tropical downpours but unfortunately it has missed us except for a tiny bit of drizzle.

Lady ferns (Athyrium filix-femina) reminded us that fall was right around the corner. According to the “Fern Bulletin,” which is a quarterly publication devoted to ferns, fern reproductive systems weren’t understood until the middle of the 16th century, when fern spores were finally studied. Before that time people thought that there were male and female ferns, and that’s how the lady fern came by her common name. There are other stories about the origin of the name but this one seems the most plausible. It is also called ghost fern for the way it turns white in the fall.

You have to cross a meadow filled with red clover to get back to your parking spot and on this day every clover blossom seemed to have a yellow butterfly on it. I think they were all common sulfurs.

It was nice of this one to fly into the frame as I snapped the shutter and show us the upper surface of its wings. The markings match the common Sulphur butterfly. There must have been a large hatching of them, or maybe they’re migrating through the area. Seeing so many at once was a beautiful sight.

Mister smiley face didn’t have to remind me that there was plenty to smile about, but it was good to see him just the same.

The best part of the journey is the surprise and wonder along the way. ~Ken Poirot

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Time for a Climb

Last Sunday the forecast was iffy, with possible showers and high wind gusts predicted, so I had to shake a leg and get moving earlier than I would have on a sun filled day. As the puddles in this photo of the old logging road that starts this climb show, it had rained the night before. It has been very dry here so the rain is welcome.

I chose High Blue trail in Walpole because of the forecast. It’s an easy and relatively quick climb and I know it well. I was hoping the showers would hold off, and they did.

Before you know it you’re in the meadow. I met a porcupine here last year but I didn’t see him this time.

I did see some orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca) though, and I was happy to find it because it’s something I don’t see much of. Yellow hawkweed is far more common here. Orange hawkweed is native to the alpine regions of Europe, so apparently it likes high places. If you look at the flower over on the left you’ll see a tiny crab spider pretending to be orange like the flower.

Crab spiders can change their color to match the background, but I think this one went a little heavy on the red. They change color by secreting pigments into the outer cell layer of their bodies and I wonder if they carry a whole case full of different colored pigments along with them. This one needs to mix in a little yellow to get the desired orange, I think. I’ve seen white, yellow and purple crab spiders but never red or orange.

I don’t know what kind of spider this one was, but it was living in a buttercup and it had a visitor. I don’t know the visitor’s name either, but it was able to balance on the edge of a petal.

Then all of the sudden the visitor was gone. I don’t know for sure where he went, but I can guess.

An eastern swallowtail butterfly appeared to be sunning itself on the edge of the meadow. It let me take 3 photos and then flew off.

There are places where the bedrock thrusts up into ledges and some of the biggest rock tripe lichens (Umbilicaria mammulata) that I’ve ever seen grow on them. They look like green rags hanging from the stone. These were very pliable because of the previous night’s rain. If you want to know what they felt like just feel your ear lobe, because they feel much like that, only thinner. Rock tripe is edible and eating it has saved the lives of people who were lost and starving in the past.

I put my new camera above one of the rock tripe lichens so you could get an idea of their size. The camera is about 2 X 3.5 inches and though it looks like it was on that’s just a reflection on the viewing screen.

This camera is hopefully going to replace the Panasonic Lumix that I’ve used for years. The Lumix was a great camera that took macro photos better than any camera I’ve owned, but it finally gave up the ghost after taking many thousands of them. Since you can’t get that version of the Lumix any longer its replacement is a Canon Power Shot ELPH 180. The jury is still out on its capabilities. I’ve noticed that it gets confused and can’t find the subject occasionally but it took all of the macros and close ups in this post, so I’ll let you judge for yourselves.  I need to put it through its paces a bit more, I think.

The eriophyid mite Acalitus fagerinea produces erineum patches on American beech that look and feel like felt. In fact the definition of erineum is “an abnormal felty growth of hairs from the leaf epidermis of plants caused by various mites.” The patches can turn from green to red, gold, or silver before finally turning brown. They don’t cause any real harm to the tree but if you had a copper beech as an ornamental they could be unsightly.

I finally stopped dawdling and reached the summit to find that the view was hazy as I expected. But at least the clouds were casting deep blue shadows on the hills, and that’s something that I had hoped to see on my last climb of Hewe’s Hill in Swanzey.  I could just make out the shape of Stratton Mountain, off across the Connecticut River valley in Vermont, on the left. It’s easier to see in winter when it has snow on it.

I sat and watched the cloud shadows race each other over the hills for a while like I remember doing as a boy. This view is to the west and the clouds coming toward me were beginning to darken and stack up, and the wind had started gusting enough to make the trees creak and moan. This spot is always windy even on a good day, so I decided it was time to be on my way.

But first I wanted to see the pond to see if it was covered with duckweed like it was last summer. It wasn’t covered yet but the tiny plants floated along the shoreline. It also had a lot of tree pollen floating on its surface. The tree and grass pollen has been bad this month because we haven’t had much rain to scrub it out of the air, and allergy sufferers are having a hard time of it.

Last year the duckweed all disappeared from this pond and readers told me that it sinks to the bottom in winter, and comes back in spring. So far it seems they were right.

I swished the end of my monopod through the duckweed and came up with these plants. Each plant has 1 to 3 leaves, or fronds, of 1/16 to 1/8 inch in length. A single root or root-hair grows from each frond. Many ducks eat duckweed and carry it from pond to pond on their bodies. I suppose if you had it in a home pond the only way to control it would be to scoop it out with some type of net. It does flower and makes seeds, so chances are good that you’d have to do it at least once a season for 2-3 years.

I saw several native pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) growing near the pond but all but one had lost its blossom, maybe to a hungry deer. This photo shows a view of the hole at the top of the blossom that insects need to crawl out of to escape the pouch after entering through the slit down its middle front. There is another hole just like it on the other side, so they have a choice. Downward pointing hairs inside the pouch prevent them from crawling back through the central slit, so forced to exit through a hole they get dusted with pollen.

I decided to take another side trail through what I’ve taken to calling fern gully; there was one more thing I wanted to see.

The fern fronds dancing back and forth in the wind were mesmerizing and I could have sat watching them for a while if the swaying, groaning trees hadn’t quickened my step.

I wondered if the dinosaur and coins would still be there on the quartz ledge and they were. I don’t really know anything about them but I like to think that a child was thankful for what nature had shown them and wanted to give something back out of gratitude, so they left their favorite toy and their allowance money. At least, that’s the story that has written itself in my mind.

Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind.
Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation.
Suddenly, you know you are alive.
~Vera Nazarian

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Time for a Climb

Last Saturday was the hottest day of the year so far, with plenty of tropical humidity as well. Puffy white clouds floated slowly through the sky and if you hadn’t known it was May you’d have sworn it was August. When I was a boy I used to love such days, when you could see the shadows of the clouds moving across the distant hills, so I decided to climb one of those hills to see those shadows again. Since it was so hot I decided on an easy climb and chose Hewe’s Hill in Swanzey. You start by crossing the meadow in the above photo. I saw that someone had been there before me; maybe another cloud lover.

Grasses were flowering. It’s too bad that so many miss them, because they can be very beautiful when they blossom.

Blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) wasn’t a surprise; meadows like this one is where it loves to grow. Despite its name this little beauty isn’t a grass at all; it’s in the iris family. Wild turkeys love its seeds.

I knew if I didn’t stop dawdling among the meadow flowers I’d never get to the top of the hill, so I set off up the trail.

But there were more flowers there to dawdle over. Pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule,) one of our most beautiful native orchids, bloomed alongside the trail. Native Americans called it moccasin flower, for obvious reasons. They used the plant medicinally as a nerve tonic and a pain reliever.

Further up the trail I found a woolly oak gall, created by the wool sower gall wasp (Callirhytis seminator.) It was a small example about the size of an acorn, but I’ve seen them as big as ping pong balls. The gall is caused by secretions from the grubs of the gall wasp, which will only build it on white oak and only in spring. There are small seed like structures inside the gall which contain the wasp larva, and that’s why these galls are also called oak seed galls.

Oak apple galls fall from the trees regularly at this time of year. Theses galls are caused by a gall wasp known as Biorhiza pallida laying an egg inside a leaf bud. Tissue swells around the egg and a gall is formed.

The gall wasp larva lives in the very center of the gall. Once they develop into an adult wasp they make a hole through the side of the gall and fly (or crawl) off to begin the cycle again. A web of spokes keeps the hollow sphere from deflating by connecting the inner hub to the outer shell.

When you see the 40 ton glacial erratic called Tippin rock you know the climb is just about done. This rock gets its name from the way it can be rocked or tipped when pushed in the right spot, but I’ve never found the spot. Anyhow, this wasn’t what I had come to see so I took a quick photo and moved on. The climbing might be over but the hiking to the scenic overlook isn’t.

I came hoping to see puffy white clouds casting shadows on the hills, and though I saw plenty of puffy white clouds I didn’t see any shadows. That’s because the clouds were off to the left and the sun was on the right. I find that usually when I go into the woods expecting to see a certain thing I don’t usually see it. Focusing on just one thing can make you miss a lot of what nature has to offer, so that’s why when I go into the woods I try to strip myself of all expectations and just enjoy whatever happens to be in my path. I saw many other interesting things so a lack of cloud shadows wasn’t disappointing. There will be other days with puffy white clouds.

Some of the puffy white clouds were becoming puffy dark gray clouds, and I wondered if we might see a thunderstorm. I hoped not since I was carrying three cameras (2 in pockets) with no way to protect them.

This view probably comes closest to what I was trying for, but it’s still not it.

This shot, taken earlier on the same day at a different location, is what started it all, and shows what I was hoping to see on the hilltop. I might have done better just staying in the low lands.

But if I hadn’t climbed I wouldn’t have gotten to see my old friends the toadskin lichens (Lasallia papulosa,) because they only grow on hilltops. Their warty projections are called pustules and if you look at the back of this lichen there will be a corresponding pit for every pustule. When wet the greenish color of the algae that is present comes through but when dry they can be very ashy gray. They are also very brittle when dry, like a potato chip.

Growing right alongside the toadskin lichens is rock tripe (Umbilicaria mammulata) which is kind of like a toadskin without the warts. It attaches to the rock in the same way and also gets brittle when dry. Though I imagine they must taste like old rubber, these lichens were a source of emergency food for Native Americans and saved the lives of many an early settler. Even George Washington’s troops are said to have eaten rock tripe to survive the brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777.

In this photo the green rock tripe lichens are smaller than the gray toadskin lichens and that’s unusual, but it’s because the rock tripe lichens in this photo are babies. I’ve seen rock tripe lichens as big as my hand but have only seen toad skins about 2 inches across, which is what I’d say the biggest examples in this photo were.

Each lichen, both rock tripe and toad skin, is attached to the rock at a single point that looks much like a belly button, and that makes them umbilicate lichens. I hope everyone reading this will make lichens one of the things they look for when outdoors. They’re fascinating, beautiful things that grow virtually everywhere; even in cities if the air is clean. Cemeteries are a good place to look for those that grow on stone.

Mr. Smiley face was happy as always because that’s what happens when you spend all of your free time outside. You become filled with more joy than you ever thought possible.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~John Lubbock

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Freezing Fog

Last Saturday was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the 50s F. Sunday, the weather people said, would be even better with wall to wall sunshine and temperatures in the 60s. In New Hampshire such predictions for a December day are enough to get people really excited, but unfortunately a fog rolled in overnight and at 10:30 am on Sunday our landscape still looked like the photo above.

Not only had fog rolled in but cold as well, so this wasn’t just ordinary fog. No, this was freezing fog.

Everything was coated in rime including the roads if you could believe the road watchers. I didn’t happen to see any icy roads but maybe I was just lucky.

I had planned the night before to show you a June day in December with sunshine, blue skies, and green grass, so I had to come up with a plan B. If there’s one thing you learn as a nature blogger it’s that you have to be flexible and take what nature gives. Make all the plans you want, but nature will do as nature pleases and you’ll either go along or be left out of the game. Anyhow, in a pinch I thought I’d climb one of our many hills to see if I could get above the fog. When I reached the bottom of Hewe’s Hill in Swanzey I was presented with the view in the photo above.

This white pine (Pinus strobus) at the trail head really was white, but with frost.

The trail was wet but easily climbed. This is a quick, easy climb and that’s why I chose it. I was afraid the sun would come out and burn off all the mist before I could get up above it, which is exactly what happened when I tried this last year on Mount Caesar in Swanzey. It’s a bit of a letdown to climb as fast as you can only to finally reach the summit and huff and puff as you watch the last wisps of mist disappear before you can even turn your camera on.

I didn’t expect to see any spider webs because I thought any sensible spider would be doing whatever spiders do in the winter like maybe sleeping, but there were spider webs to be seen. They looked more like someone’s kite string had tangled in the bushes than the beautiful crotchet like spider webs you’d see in the corners of the Addams Family mansion but there they were; strings of ice.

The trees wore long stockings made of tree skirt moss (Anomodon attenuates.)

Blue turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) decorated the logs and fallen branches.

A slice of bright sunlight made me think that I had spent too much time dilly dallying along the trail and had once again lost my chance to get above the fog.

In fact my chances weren’t looking at all promising. The mist I saw from the top of Mount Caesar last year burned off quicker than I ever would have believed it could.

But finally there it was, and this was the first glimpse. I had made it, but only just in time.

Is this what a forest fire looks like from above, I wondered?

The cloud was beautiful as it washed through the valley like a stream but silently, without even so much as a sigh.

Careful, we don’t want to take the fast way down. It would most certainly be our last step.

I visited with my friends the toad skin lichens (Lasallia papulosa) while watching the mist roll on. They’re very shy and only grow on hilltops, but since I always lean on their rock when I come here I’ve gotten to know them well. They were being woken by the first rays of the sun and that made me wonder how much light a lichen needs. I know that they produce their own food through photosynthesis but beyond that I know very little about their light requirements.  I think this one is one of the most unusual and beautiful of our lichens.

All too soon the mist started to yield to the power of the sun and evaporate.

And then it was gone, just like that, with nothing left but a soft haze, and I sat beside the toad skin lichens wondering about all of the people who had missed it. I wondered if they knew how peaceful it was up here, and I wondered how many knew that most of their troubles and fears would vanish like the mist had if they just spent more of their time in places like this one.

I knew how the person who blazed the trees must have felt when he or she painted this smiley face because I had smiled myself all the way down the trail. And who wouldn’t, after such an interesting and beautiful morning?

This is the same view that appears in the 4th photo in this post just two hours later, so I am able to show you a June day in December with sunshine, blue skies, and green grass after all.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

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Time for a Climb

Last Sunday morning there was ice on the puddles and I thought that it must have been cold enough over the last few nights to make snow at the ski areas so off I went to the High Blue trail in Walpole, which is north of Keene and higher in elevation. From there you can see the ski trails on Stratton Mountain in Vermont. The trek starts by following an old logging road to the trail head.

With a sign like this one to guide you, you can’t miss it.

Soon you come to the meadow, which is cut each summer for hay. As I was taking this photo I saw something small and dark moving out there, and it was heading straight for me. I’ve been here enough times to know that there shouldn’t be anything moving in this meadow, but if there was it would most likely be a deer.

It certainly wasn’t a deer; it was a porcupine and it seemed to be eating its way through the meadow. It would walk a few feet and then stop and munch some clover or whatever it was finding. What was odd about this encounter is that porcupines are supposedly mostly nocturnal creatures and spend much of their time in trees.

He came right over to me and sat up on his haunches for a better look. I asked him to please hold still for a photo or two and smile if he liked, and he was very obliging. He was also quite cute and looked like he had just had his hair done. If he was a pet I think I’d call him Yoda. Now I know why Leslie asked me if I ever posted porcupine photos a few posts ago. She said they were one of her favorites, so this one is for you Leslie. It’s easy to love such a gentle, friendly animal isn’t it? I’ve heard that they will play with toys like a ball of string for hours, just like a cat would.

For those who don’t know porcupines, they’re a rodent that can weigh up to 35 pounds, and large ones can be almost 4 feet long, including their tail. They are herbivores with large front teeth that they use to eat wood, bark and stems. They also eat fruit, clover, leaves, and fresh young springtime growth.

After giving me the once over he seemed to remember that he was on a mission and gazed out over the meadow with his beautiful, sparkling eyes. I realized that I was between him and an old apple tree and I wondered if that was where he was going. If so I didn’t want to stand in his way, even though he looked well fed.

As he slowly moved on I got a good look at the quills on and near his tail. Though their hair is soft porcupines carry sharp, barbed quills that can anchor themselves in flesh, so you don’t want to cuddle them. Many a dog has had to have quills removed from their noses in a painful procedure that often involves pliers. When attacked a porcupine curls into a bristly ball to protect its vulnerable stomach and then there is no way in except through the quills. The porcupine’s Latin name Erethizon dorsatum means “quill pig.”

Later when I was leaving I stopped at the old apple tree and saw a single, half eaten apple on it. These branches were too small to support the weight of a porcupine though, so I’m guessing that birds are eating it. Maybe the rest of the fruit had fallen and was easier for the porcupine to get to. Or maybe he wasn’t interested in apples at all; I didn’t see him on the way back.

I keep hoping to see a deer here but I never have. All I see are the game trails they follow and twigs they’ve browsed on.

Hunters know they’re here too, as this reflector tacked to a tree shows. I first saw these last year but didn’t know what they were until several helpful readers said they were used by hunters when it’s dark enough to have to use a flashlight to find their way. I was glad I was wearing a bright orange hat and hunting vest. This isn’t the time of year to be wearing my deer colored coat.

After the meadow there is more old road to walk for a shot while.

Then the road narrows to trail, which was covered with dry, crackly beech and oak leaves. The noisy leaves would make sneaking up on a deer just about impossible I would think. Better to sit and wait for them to happen by.

But it was a little cool to be sitting around waiting for deer, as the ice on the far side of the small hilltop pond shows. I was very surprised to see no duckweed on it; when I was here in September it was almost completely covered with it, so where could it all have gone so fast? It’s usually almost impossible to get rid of once it’s on a pond so its disappearance is a mystery to me. Maybe the wood ducks ate it all.

Being a once upon a time dry stone wall builder myself I always have to stop and admire the old walls that run through these woods. There are many miles of them, crisscrossing in a way that once made perfect sense when this land was pasture, but which now seems quite random.

Living up here might not have been easy but the outcrops break naturally into large flat slabs an inch or two thick, and that meant that wall building was probably easier than it would have been otherwise. The stones that come from ledge like this are every wall builders dream. I was able to build a wall with it once and it went up faster than any other wall I’ve ever built.

Yellow-fuzz cone slime mold (Hemitrichia clavata) grew on a fallen birch log. In this photo you can see the fruiting bodies that open into tiny cups filled with yellow fuzzy threads that make the mass look and feel a lot like felt. I first saw this slime mold at about this time last year at Porcupine Falls in Gilsum, so it has taken me just about a year to identify it. The cups are small enough to give me trouble seeing them without a lens, so I have to quite literally shoot blind and hope for the best.

The view from the top was hazy as it often is. Stratton Mountain, off across the Connecticut River valley in Vermont, looked like a blueish blur and its peak was cloud covered.

Zooming in didn’t help much but I can see a white line or two and that means snow on the ski trails. If they’re making snow up there in the mountains it won’t be long before it falls naturally down here. Maybe I came here subconsciously hoping that seeing snow would prepare me for winter and maybe it has, but nothing could prepare me for all of the other surprising things that I saw. That’s one of the things I love about being out in nature; there’s always a surprise waiting just around the next bend.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. ~ Emily Dickinson

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Time For A Climb

If you want to immerse yourself in nature the High Blue Trail in Walpole, New Hampshire is a good place to do it. Immersed in nature is my favorite condition, so I chose to climb here recently.

The trail from the start to the overlook is all uphill but it’s a gentle grade and a short climb.

Coltsfoot coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) leaves reminded me of spring, which seems like it happened just a couple of weeks ago.

Before you know it you’re out of the woods and in the meadow. You have to walk through here to get to the second half of the trail, so it’s kind of a midway point. I was glad that it had been mowed. I’ve been bitten by ticks 3 times this year.

I stopped to admire the marginal wood ferns (Dryopteris marginalis) that grow along the meadow’s edge. Many ferns are already starting to yellow but these are evergreen.

The round spore producing sori growing along the margins of the leaflets (pinnae) told me that this was marginal wood fern. Just before the spores are ready to be released the sori turn bluish purple, so I’m going to have to try to remember to watch closely.

Striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) showed how it came by its name. It is also called moosewood because moose will often eat its bark in the winter. It is said that Native Americans used this tree’s fine grained wood to make arrows.

Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) stops photosynthesizing early but its green berries will continue to ripen to red even after the leaves have withered. It could be that the plant sheds its leaves to put more energy into fruit production.

Every time I come up here I have to stop at what’s left of the old fieldstone foundation and wonder about the people who once called this place home. I know nothing about them except that they were hard workers.

And I know that by the stone walls that they built and the land that they cleared as they built them, probably by using a single axe. What is now forest was once open pasture and chopping that pasture out of old growth forest must have been near back breaking labor.

I’ve always wondered if the small pond near the foundation was their source of water. I’ve never seen duckweed on it before but it was almost covered with it on this day. I wonder how it got here. Ducks, maybe? I often hear them up here.

I realized that I’d gone through life up to this point completely ignoring duckweed, so I got down on all fours at the pond’s edge and reached out with the camera in one less than steady hand to get this close up of it. Since then I’ve learned that these are the smallest flowering plants known, with some flowers measuring only .012 inches (0.3 mm) long. I’ve also learned that if duckweed covers the entire surface of a pond for an extended period of time oxygen depletion happens, and without oxygen fish die. Duckweed can also kill submerged plants by blocking sunlight, so these tiny plants can have a big impact.

The paint seems to be weathering off the summit sign quickly now.  It can be very windy up here but the sign is protected by the tree it’s on, so I doubt that it’s the cause of it.

It’s a good thing I don’t climb solely for the view because I’d often be disappointed. This day was very hazy, hot and humid and the camera just didn’t seem to like landscape photography. Still, you could see Stratton Mountain across the Connecticut River Valley in Vermont. On a day so hot it seemed hard to believe that they would be making snow over there soon, but they’ll expect full lifts on Thanksgiving Day, which is November 26th.

Zooming in on the hills made things even worse but the view, though hazy, was very blue, as it always is. Since blue is my favorite color I was happy with it.

I’ve learned that when you pay attention to the little things in life like these beautiful clover leaves, the big things take care of themselves, and some even disappear altogether. I often end these walks feeling as if I don’t have a care in the world and, after walking regularly for a while, I now feel that way most every day. Living is easy once you’ve learned how.

I saw a large piece of tree bark beside the trail that seemed strangely colored but because I’m colorblind I couldn’t really tell what colors I was seeing. It was only when I used my color finding software that I found salmon pink, India red, sandy brown, sienna, rosy brown, gray, and even peach puff. I wish I had turned it over to try and figure out which kind of tree it came from because I’d really like to know what trees are hiding such beautiful colors on their inner bark.

I took a trail that I’ve never taken before on my way down. It looked like a game trail at first but it quickly became too wide for that. A stone wall crossed the trail near a glade full of ferns and when I stopped to look at a piece of milky quartz in the wall I spotted a dinosaur standing guard over 4 or 5 coins.  I can’t speak for the age of the dinosaur but the coins were old enough to have to decipher them by size rather than the markings. I made them out to be about 61 cents worth. As I walked on I had to smile to think of a little boy or girl loving this place enough to leave their favorite toy and the loose change in their pocket as a thank you gift to nature. I hope they’re still as thankful at 70.

It’s all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure–they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come. ~Edward Abbey

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Time for a Climb

As of last weekend we hadn’t seen any snow but it was cold enough to make it on the ski slopes. I was curious to see if they had been making any so I decided to hike up high blue trail in Walpole and take a peek over into Vermont.

It was a cool but beautiful sunny day.

Now that the leaves have fallen you can really see the hardscape that makes up the forest floor-what I call the bones of the forest. This is a great place to look at mosses and lichens.

The larger boulders in these woods are festooned with rock tripe lichen (Umbilicaria mammulata.) Some of the biggest examples I’ve seen-as big as a hand-grow here. Though I imagine they must taste like old rubber, these lichens were a source of emergency food for Native Americans and saved the lives of many an early settler. Even George Washington’s troops are said to have eaten rock tripe to survive the brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777.

 

Polypody fern, also known as rock cap fern, grows on the tops of many ledges and stones in these woods. This fern likes places with little wind and high humidity, so it will tell you something of your surroundings. The round sori where spores are produced can be found on the undersides of the leaves and are orange brown and look fuzzy when they are mature like those in the above photo. Many fern sori are covered by thin membranes called indusial, but those of the polypody fern are naked.

Something odd that I saw was two reflectors on a tree. They were about three quarters of an inch in diameter and looked to have been hammered into the tree much like a big thumbtack. I can’t even guess who would be coming up here at night, or why. My idea of a good time doesn’t include dancing around on cliff edges in the dark.

The beech trees along the trail still showed a little color.

When they are moist black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) puff up like little black pillows, but when they dry out they shrink down to little more than black specks. Since this example didn’t look like either I think it was frozen solid.

These orange jellies (Dacrymyces palmatus) looked frozen too. I see a lot of these at this time of year and almost all of them grow on eastern hemlock logs.

Seeing this old stonework always gets me thinking about the people who once lived on top of this hill.

What a job clearing this land must have been for a man with nothing but an axe. Just as daunting would have been having to get rid of all the stumps and stones before he could plow. It must have been near back breaking labor from sunup to sundown. I’ve cut trees with an axe and built stone walls, so it’s no wonder to me that they died so young. I think they must have simply worn their bodies out.

The pond had ice on it, so it had been quite cold up here the night before. I wonder if this small pond was originally a hand dug stock pond. It’s very close to the old foundation. Someday I’m going to have to research the history of this place.

The sign lets you know that you have arrived.

As always the view was very blue and as I suspected there was snow on Stratton Mountain over in Vermont. They like to be open on Thanksgiving Day, which is November 27th, so most of the snow is probably man made.

Man-made or not, if it’s cold enough on these mountain peaks to keep snow and ice from melting during the day then it won’t be too long before those of us down in the valleys get a taste of winter too. This view looks to the west so the wind is almost always blowing through here. I was dressed for fall but up here it was winter and the wind was biting, so I didn’t stay out in the open long.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. ~Washington Irving.

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