Bald Mountain Preserve

Bald Mountain Preserve in Marlow, New Hampshire is a great place to see many wildflowers, including purple trillium (Trillium erectum), painted trillium (Trillium undulatum), blue bead lily (Clintonia borealis), foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia), goldthread (Coptis trifolia), violets, and others. It is north of Keene and is called “the icebox of Cheshire County” because it often boasts the lowest temperature in winter.

Can you see the trail? There it is just to the left of the fallen birch. You have to climb over the stones to follow it.

You also have to use stones to cross a stream that winds its way through the preserve.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen so many hobble bushes (Viburnum lantanoides) in one place, and they were almost ready to bloom. I’ve got to remember to get back here soon because all of these bushes in bloom must be quite a sight. They are one of most showy and beautiful native shrubs.

 

False hellebore (Veratrum viride) plants grow all along the stream banks here and I’ve seen many bear flowers in the past. This tells me that they have been here for a while because this plant doesn’t begin to bloom until it is at least 10 years old.

People often mistake false hellebore for skunk cabbage, but the leaves of skunk cabbage aren’t pleated like these are. Confusing the two isn’t an issue because people don’t eat skunk cabbage, but unfortunately people do confuse false hellebore with edible ramps, also known as wild leeks (Allium tricoccum) and have been poisoned by doing so.

False hellebore is one of the most toxic plants in the forest and if you forage for edible plants, you should know it well. In 2010 five campers in Alaska nearly died from eating its roots. Thanks to being airlifted by helicopter to a hospital they survived. There is another account of an entire family being poisoned by cooking and eating the leaves. It is said that the plant was used by some Native American tribes to select a new leader. All the candidates would eat the root, and the last to start vomiting would become the new leader. I think I would have been comfortable with just being a follower.

Though I didn’t find them at the Bald Mountain preserve I’m including a photo of ramps here so people can compare them to the previous photo of false hellebore. Personally, since even the color is different, I don’t see how anyone could confuse the two plants, but it has happened.

Some kindhearted soul built a bench to sit on. There isn’t much of a view from it but you can sit and catch your breath.

The most impressive sight here is this monolithic granite outcrop that has to be at least 60 feet tall. It would soar above a two story house and it is a large part of the reason that this place is so popular with rock climbers.

By pacing off this broken slab I got rough measurements of 30 feet long by 15 feet wide by about 4 feet thick. At 168 pounds per cubic foot that equals over 150 tons, which is more than a diesel locomotive. What a sound it must have made when it fell from the cliff face! Even more remarkable than its weight is how one face is almost perfectly flat.

It’s clear that these boulders have been here for a very long time. This one was all decked out in mosses and polypody ferns (Polypodium virginanum.) They are also called rock cap ferns, for good reason. Grouse, deer and wild turkeys feed on their evergreen fronds in winter.

Other ferns like cinnamon fern were just out of the soil. It is interesting how plants that have just come up out of often wet soil can look so clean. The muddy soil doesn’t seem to stick to them at all. If I could discover their secret it sure would save me a lot of laundry and vacuuming time.

In the end I didn’t find any wildflowers but that doesn’t bother me because I know that when they’re finished blooming in Keene they will still be blooming here, so I’m glad that I made the journey.

I was surprised to see the waterfall in the above photo on my way home-surprised because it is in a spot that I’ve driven by hundreds of times without ever seeing a waterfall. It’s amazing what we miss.

On the path that leads to nowhere
I have sometimes found my soul.
~Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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Local Scenery

Quite often when I go here and there searching for plants that are new to me I see interesting and beautiful landscape scenes. I always take pictures but they don’t always make it onto the blog for whatever reason, so I decided to show some of them in this post.

 

I’ve shown shots of a meadow that I visit a couple of times recently on this blog, but this is a different one that I found just the other day. Even though it’s a different meadow, it is still dominated by several species of goldenrod and purple loosestrife.  I can’t help taking a photo every time I see something like this because the color combination is very appealing.

People who have been reading this blog for a while know that one of my favorite places to hunt for plants is along river banks.  The river that is easiest for me to get to is the Ashuelot, which runs north to south from Pittsburg to Hinsdale New Hampshire for 64 miles. This photo shows boulders out of the water in this section, which means that the water level is about as low as it’s been all year.

 

I also follow streams and this one seemed especially photogenic. Sitting beside a stream out in the middle of nowhere is just about the most serene and enjoyable way to pass the time that I can think of.

 

Recently an old friend came to visit from California where he now lives and we decided to hike a trail called High Blue in Walpole, New Hampshire. At 1,588 feet it isn’t very high but it is always very blue. When I sent my friend a copy of this photo he thought it looked a lot bluer than it did in person. I’ve noticed this too and, even though I’ve taken this photo of Stratton Mountain in Vermont with 3 different cameras, the view is always as blue as you see here.  I’ve even looked at photos online that are also just as blue and I can’t figure out what causes it, other than the atmosphere itself.

This is another view looking across the Connecticut River valley to the surrounding Vermont hills from High Blue trail in Walpole. I like the various shades of blue and how they fade into one to another. I think I’ve seen this same thing in photos from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’m anxious to see what it looks like when the trees change color, and wonder if it will still be as blue.

 Last spring before it had leaves I visited this lone tree and thought it looked a bit like an elm. Now that I see it fully clothed it looks more like an oak or a maple.  When you live in what is essentially a 4.8 million acre forest any tree that stands alone is a real eye catcher.

I’ve been watching a construction company gnawing away at this hill for over a year now. I’m sure they know more about what they’re doing than I do, but I think I’d be careful about getting under the large over hanging area on the right. It’s hard to imagine what the view will be when the hill is gone.

I was disappointed about not seeing the meteor showers and grabbed a few shots of the half-moon instead. I think the craters show better on a photo of a half-moon than they do on one of the full moon.

A few posts ago I showed a photo of the church in Marlow, New Hampshire, a small town north of here. This view is of the nearby odd fellows hall in the same town. It’s a shame that the power company put their poles and wires in front of all of these buildings. You can see similar photos online where the photographer has taken great pains to “paint out” the wires and poles. I thought about doing the same but then if a tourist saw this post and came here to see the real thing, they might be disappointed to find the wires in the way.

 

This view of Mount Monadnock from Perkin’s Pond in Troy, New Hampshire is well known and so cherished by local artists, photographers and residents that the power company didn’t dare block it with poles and wires. Last fall they, at what must have been considerable expense, brought in machinery that pulled the wires under the pond somehow. I saw the machinery but never saw it in action, so I’m not sure how it worked. I imagine it was similar to the process used for installing in-ground irrigation systems, but on a much larger scale.

Another well-known view of the mountain is found on a private road that follows the shoreline of Stone pond in Marlborough, New Hampshire. The road used to be part of a large private estate and the building in the photo was once a private chapel. The Saint Francis Episcopal chapel, built in 1926, is open to the public for weddings and other events. There have been many weddings here, and many photos taken of this view.

 

 This is the kind of place I hope to visit today. Happy trails!

Boy, Gramp! Nature’s so much bigger in person than it is on TV! ~ Dennis the Menace

Thanks for stopping in.

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