Time for a Climb

Some coworkers of mine like to rock climb and they asked me if I knew any good places to do so, so I immediately thought of Hewe’s Hill in Swanzey. People have climbed there for many years I’ve heard, but until this day I had never seen anyone doing so. To get to the trailhead you have to cross this meadow. It was about 70 degrees F. with wall to wall sunshine; not great for photography but perfect for climbing, I was told.

Meadow anemone (Anemone canadensis) grew at the edge of the meadow. It’s an old fashioned garden favorite that has much larger flowers than our other native wood anemone. Though it seems to spread out in a garden it’s easy to control. It’s also called crowfoot because of the foliage and it is also known as Canada anemone. Native Americans used this plant medicinally and its root and leaves were one of the most highly regarded medicines of the Omaha and Ponca tribes. It was used as an eye wash, an antiseptic, and to treat headaches and dizziness. The root was chewed to clear the throat so a person could sing better.

Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) also grew in the meadow and some of them were very blue indeed. I always enjoy seeing these cheery little flowers.

At one point a tree had fallen across the trail. I was surprised because you don’t usually see this here. The hill is privately owned and well maintained. But it must be a lot of work; I saw two other fallen trees that had been cut out of the trail with an axe.

Delicate hay scented fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula) grew on the shaded sides of the trail. This fern gets its name from the way that it smells like fresh mown hay when you brush against it. The Native American Cherokee tribe used this fern medicinally to treat chills.

Raspberries (Rubus idaeus) bloomed along the sunnier sides of the trail. This plant has just started blooming but it looks like it will be a great year for them, and blueberries too.

Do you look at roots when you hike a trail? I do and I see many that so many feet have touched they look as if they’ve been sanded and polished. They can be very beautiful things, especially the roots of eastern hemlock like those seen here.

The bright harsh sunlight made photography a challenge, especially with a new camera that I don’t fully know (or like) yet, but this is a relatively accurate view of what the forest looked like from the inside.

Big, teardrop shaped leaves told me that Indian cucumber root (Medeola virginiana) grew here. In fact they grew in large numbers. Botanically speaking a whorl is an “arrangement of sepals, petals, leaves, stipules or branches that radiate from a single point and surround or wrap around the stem,” and nothing illustrates this better than Indian cucumber root. Its leaves wrap around the stem arranged in a single flat plane, so if you saw them from the side theoretically you would see an edge, much like looking at the edge of a dinner plate. If any leaf or leaves in the arrangement are above or below others it’s not a true whorl.

Native Americans used this plant as food because like its common name implies, its small root looks and tastes a lot like a mini cucumber. It’s easy to identify because of its tiers of whorled leaves and unusual flowers. It likes to grow under trees in dappled light, probably getting no more than an hour or two of direct sunlight each day. The flowers of Indian cucumber root have 6 yellowish green tepals, 6 reddish stamens topped by greenish anthers, and 3 reddish purple to brown styles. These large styles are sometimes bright red- brown but I think they darken as they age. These appeared to be kind of orangey. Each flower will become a shiny, inedible dark purplish black berry.

I had warned my co-climbers that it would be a slow climb, what with me having to take photos of every living thing and stopping to catch my breath frequently, but we made it to Tippin Rock in good time. I had a good chance to catch my breath while my friends tried to tip the glacial erratic. They each took a turn while I watched, and each of them had the big 40 ton behemoth rocking like a baby cradle. It’s a very subtle movement and you have to watch the edge of the boulder against the background to see it. So far everyone I know who has made something this big move so easily has been amazed. When you think about all that had to happen for a perfectly balanced boulder to be sitting on the bedrock of this summit it boggles the mind.

After the rock there are the views and they weren’t bad on this day. Some decorative puffy white clouds would have made the scene a little more photogenic but you can’t have everything.

For years I’ve heard that New Hampshire has 4.8 million acres of forested land but it’s hard to wrap your head around a number like that until you’ve see something like this. Seemingly unbroken forest stretches to infinity. Or at least to the horizon.

I often wonder, when I’m in places like this, what I would have done in the 1700s if I had looked out over something like this, carrying only a gun and an axe. Would I have had the strength and courage to go on into the unknown or would I have turned back to relative safety? Of course it’s an impossible question to answer, but that’s the way wilderness makes you think. Back then there were bears, wolves, and very unhappy natives down there.

The friends I was with were all about hanging off ropes after crawling over the cliff edge but I was not. I had the heebie jeebies just looking at the edge shown in this photo from 10 feet back, so since I don’t have the stomach for such things I left them to their fun (?) and headed back down the hill. Now that they know where the spot is they can come and climb anytime they like. I made sure that they knew, and I think others who might be reading this and thinking about coming here should know; this is private land and permission has graciously been granted by the owners to the public for recreational use. Nothing but your footprints should be left behind when you leave.

Of course I couldn’t leave without saying hello to my little friends the toadstool lichens (Lasallia papulosa.) They’re very rare down below in my experience but up here they’re plentiful and that’s good because it makes me climb up to see them. Since I’ve met climbers in their 80s on these hills and haven’t been able to keep up with them I’m assuming that climbing must be good for you. In any event some of the lichens were dry, as shown by their ashy gray state. They are also crisp like a potato chip at this stage.

Some lichens found a spot near seeping groundwater on the cliffs and wore their happy pea green color. In this state they’re soft and rubbery and feel like your earlobe. They aren’t big; this one was about an inch across.

Some lichens were on the fence, part green and part gray, but they dry out quickly. I’ve seen them ashy and crisp two days after a pouring rain. I like their warty look, which always reminds me of distant solar systems. They’re another one of those bits of nature that can take me out of myself for a while.

I saw a blister, which I took to be some type of gall, on a blueberry leaf. It caught my attention because blueberries don’t seem to be attacked by many pests or diseases other than witch’s broom.

A dead branch looked purple in the forest but my color finding software sees blue. Either way, you don’t expect to find blue or purple on fallen branches. I have no way of knowing what caused the strange color but I would guess spalting. Spalting is any discoloration of wood caused by fungal hyphae growing along the softer sapwood. Though spalting usually happens on dead wood it can sometimes be found on live trees, which isn’t good for the tree. It can be very beautiful and spalted wood is highly prized by woodworkers.

A man does not climb a mountain without bringing some of it away with him, and leaving something of himself upon it. ~Martin Conway

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To See What Others Cannot

I’ve been wanting to show you something so last Sunday I decided to climb Hewe’s Hill in Swanzey to see if I could see what I had in mind. Usually when I think of climbing a hill to show you something it doesn’t work, but I’ll keep trying. We start by crossing this hay field / meadow.

There were violets in the grass. There were also buttercups but my photos of them aren’t good enough to be shown here. I think this is a dog violet (Viola conspera) but I usually avoid trying to identify violets because there are so many and they all seem to look alike.

The grasses are starting to flower. Many grasses are beautiful and interesting when they flower, but it’s an event that I fear most of us miss.

Once we’re through the meadow and into the woods everything becomes very green, including the light through the new spring leaves.

There were thousands of starflowers (Trientalis borealis) along both sides of the trail. They are a woodland plant that doesn’t mind shade, so the leaves overhead don’t bother them.

I saw my first mushroom of the year but I don’t know its name. Someone wrote in once with a positive identification of this one but I can’t remember the name they told me or the date of the post it appeared in. There are an awful lot of mushrooms on this blog but finding a specific one can be tedious if you don’t have a name to search for.

Indian cucumber root plants (Medeola virginiana) were growing here and there. The plant gets its common name from its small white, carrot shaped edible root, which tastes like cucumber. Native Americans used it for food and also used it medicinally. The Medeola part of the plant’s scientific name is from Medea, a magical enchantress from Greek Mythology. It refers to the plant’s magical curative powers. These should be flowering in early July.

Botanically speaking a whorl is an “arrangement of sepals, petals, leaves, stipules or branches that radiate from a single point and surround or wrap around the stem,” and nothing illustrates this better than Indian cucumber root. Its leaves wrap around the stem arranged in a single flat plane, so if you saw them from the side theoretically you would see an edge, much like looking at the edge of a dinner plate. If any leaf or leaves in the arrangement are above or below others it’s not a true whorl.

I saw a few pink lady’s slippers budded but they usually won’t bloom until June. Some think they’ve found a pale yellow lady’s slipper when they see the buds are at this stage. This native orchid is our state wildflower.

As we get deeper into the forest it gets darker because of the canopy, and there is much less undergrowth.

There is a surprising openness in a dark forest overshadowed by evergreen hemlock and pine branches. I’ve heard that the same is true of jungles, because very little sunlight reaches the forest floor.

I saw a hemlock tree (Tsuga canadensis) with some young hemlock varnish shelf fungi (Ganoderma tsugae) growing on it. This mushroom’s common name comes from its shiny cap which will come later, and which looks like it has been varnished. You can tell that they’re young because of the white / tan color on their outer edges. As they age they will lose the whitish color and become deep, shiny red. This mushroom has been used medicinally in China for thousands of years. It is considered the most important of all the herbs and substances used in Chinese Herbal Medicine, including ginseng. In China it is called the Reishi mushroom and scientists around the world are researching its anti-cancer potential.

This hemlock didn’t have any fungi on it but it must have had insects inside it because the woodpeckers were having their way with it. A while ago I split a log that had thousands of big black carpenter ants in it and for a woodpecker they’re a delicacy.

The bedrock forms ledges here that appear to have risen from the surrounding terrain, creating caves under the overhangs. They aren’t big enough for bears but a porcupine, raccoon or even a bobcat might call them home.

When the trail reaches its steepest you know you’re very near the summit.

I gave a nod and a click of the shutter to Tippin Rock as I passed. The 40 ton erratic gets its name from the way it will “tip” if shoved in the right spot. It actually rocks back and forth very slowly, like a pendulum. I didn’t have time to wrestle it on this day but if you’re interested you can just type “Tippin Rock” in the search box over on the top right and you’ll be taken right to all the posts I’ve done about it.

This is what I wanted to show you; the forest canopy awash in spring greens. With the oaks and hickories finally chiming in all of the trees now have their new leaves. This is why the spring ephemeral wildflowers are done blooming in the forests. From now on it will be mostly meadow and roadside flowers.

We aren’t in the clouds up here but we are in the tree tops. How many shades of green can there be?

The forest seems to go on forever. Sitting alone up here with the breeze and birdsong I often find myself wondering what the early settlers might have thought when they looked out over something so vast and unbroken. I also wonder if I would have had the courage to face it. There were no houses out there, no stores, and no roads. Only what you carried; that and your own ability were all you could really rely on.

I sit with my back against the little toadskin lichen’s (Lasallia papulosa) boulder when I take photos of the views, so of course I have to spend some time with them. Most were surprisingly dry in spite of all the rain but still beautiful nonetheless.

Some plants seem to shine with the light of creation and some lichens are no different. Sometimes you can see entire solar systems on the face of a toadskin lichen.

It looks like Mister Smiley Face is growing a mossy beard. I hope it doesn’t get too out of control. We always smile at each other on my way down.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the spring forest from above.

To see what others cannot…
You must climb the mountain.
~Ron Akers

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Time for a Climb

July ended much as we’d expect it to; sunny and hot. But after a month or more of hot rainless days everyone, especially farmers, is hoping for rain. The weather people said that rain showers would pass through last Friday night and we did get a little, so on Saturday morning I decided to climb Mount Caesar in Swanzey. I was hoping that a few showers might help some mushrooms grow because it was about this time last year that I saw a beautiful violet coral fungus, easily one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in nature. The above photo shows the start of the trail between two dry stone walls. If I was a farmer in the 1700s and I wanted my cows to follow a certain path I would have built walls on either side of it too.

There was a hole dug recently under one of the walls. It looked plenty big enough for a family of bobcats but I didn’t see any signs of activity.

There is a meadow here, made when the town decided to clear cut a large swath of forest. I find many wildflowers here that I don’t see anywhere else, like slender gerardia (Agalinis tenuifolia) and Canada St. Johnswort (Hypericum canadense.) Two different native lobelias grow here as well, pale spike lobelia (Lobelia spicata) and Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata.) This spot has seen full sun and 90 degree F weather for quite a while now, and only the toughest can take it.

I keep trying to explain in words how small some of the flowers are that appear in these posts but a picture is worth a thousand words, so I took a photo of a lobelia flower sitting on a penny. It is from an Indian tobacco plant, which is one that appeared in my last post. A penny is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter.

As much as I’d like to I can’t stay in the meadow all day, so up we go.

There will be stops along the way so I can catch my breath and admire things like these fairy stool mushrooms (Coltricia cinnamomea.) They are very tough, leathery little things that seem to have shrugged off the lack of rain. I like their concentric rings. Their cap is usually very flat and with their central stems they remind me of tiny café tables.

Bark full of tell-tale holes from a yellow bellied sapsucker were about all that was left of a birch log. Many other birds, insects and animals sip the sap that runs from these holes and they are an important part of the workings of the forest.

A cluster of young fungi grew on the birch log. I’m not sure of their name but I was surprised to see them. It’s been dry enough to make mushrooms a rare thing this year.

The starflowers (Trientalis borealis) have gone to seed and this tiny seed pod was just opening, as you can see by the hole at the top. These chalky white seedpods are so small that this one would have fit inside the lobelia flower that we saw earlier with room to spare. I like how they look like miniature soccer balls.

Other small things along the way were these red British soldier lichens (Cladonia cristatella) growing with some trumpet like pixie cups (Cladonia pyxidata). Lichens like water so I was surprised to see that these examples looked so fresh.

The trail at the bottom of Mount Caesar starts out as bedrock and that’s also how it ends. This mountain is really just a huge mound of solid granite with a thin coating of soil covering it.

The views were what I expected them to be; hazy on such a hot, humid day.  I had hoped there would be a cooling breeze up here but hardly a leaf stirred. Not only that but the lack of shade made it feel even hotter than it did down below.

Off in the distance on another hill I saw a large sand pit that I’ve never noticed before. Swanzey is built on sand and gravel and digging it up to use elsewhere is thriving business. Surely an operation as big as this one has been there for a while, but I’ve never seen it.

Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey could be seen through the haze. At 3, 165 feet its summit rises another 2,203 feet higher than where I was standing. It was much too hot to even think about climbing that one but I’d bet that there was a cool breeze up there.

Everyone in this area has heard of Tippin rock, the forty ton glacial erratic that sits on the top of Hewe’s hill one mile to the south, but I doubt many have heard of the rocking stone that sits on the top of Mount Caesar. I’ve seen this big stone many times but hadn’t really paid much attention to it until a friend sent me a photo from 1895 with a caption calling it the rocking stone. It’s probably about a quarter the size of tippin rock but I didn’t try to rock it.

I was surprised to see a building along with the stone in the old photo with a caption calling it “the pavilion.” I wonder how many teams of horses or oxen were needed to get all that lumber to the summit, and I also wonder why a building was even needed up there. It looked old in 1895 so it must have been there a while. There was no air conditioning then so maybe people climbed to the summit hoping to find relief from the heat by sitting in the shade of the pavilion.  Maybe they had picnics up there; picnics were popular then. Or maybe they were tired of getting caught in thunderstorms and built a shelter, I don’t really know. I don’t even know who “they” would have been. I wandered all over the summit, using the shape of the stone as a guide, but I couldn’t find a trace of the building. Not a board, not a nail, nothing. Time has erased it completely.

I’m sure that people must have climbed these hills to pick the blueberries in 1895 as they still do, but I hope they had better luck than I did. It’s so dry up here this year they’re turning into hard, withered stones.

I couldn’t leave without a visit with my friends the toadskin lichens (Lasallia papulosa.) Their gray color told how dry and potato chip crisp they were but lichens are nothing if not patient, and they will sit here for eons if need be, waiting for rain. Some show an entire solar system on their faces and how fitting that is.; lichens have been flown into space and have survived more than two weeks in the void, leading many to believe that they are immortal.

Toadskin lichens have warts called pustules and on the back of the lichen there is a corresponding pit for every pustule. The black dots are its fruiting bodies (Apothecia) which are tiny black discs with a sunken center that makes them look like a bowl with a thick black rim. The way that they sit on the body (thallus) 0f the lichen makes them look like they’d blow away in a breeze, but they are attached. If I could magnify them enough we’d see clear to brown muriform spores in each apothecia. Muriform means they are “wall like” with internal cross walls that make them look as if they were made of brick and mortar. What strange and fascinating things nature will show us if we just take the time to look a little closer.

 I never did find the beautiful violet coral fungus that I hoped to see but I saw many other things that made this climb worthwhile, including this fan club moss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) that grew into double hearts.

May your dreams be larger than mountains, and may you have the courage to scale their summits. ~Harley King

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Time for a Climb

Last Sunday I decided to give climbing a try in spite of the icy trails. I chose Hewe’s hill in Swanzey because snowbanks usually cover the parking area and it’s rare to be able to climb it in winter. This year our lack of snow meant the parking area was clear, so off I went. I was a little disheartened when I saw all of this ice in the field I had to cross to get to the trail.

The ice has been very bad on many trails this year so I really didn’t know what to expect, but thankfully this trail was ice free.

It had been windy and I found many things that had fallen out of the trees, including this bristly beard lichen (Usnea hirta.) Lichens don’t look like they’d be very nutritious but many are high in protein and many animals eat them. Reindeer and caribou, snub-nosed monkeys, mountain goats, black tailed deer, musk oxen, lemmings, voles, marmots, squirrels, camels, llamas, and even red crabs will all eat lichens. Many birds and some squirrels also line their nests with lichens to camouflage them. Usually when I find these lichens they are still attached to the branch they grew on but this one was loose, just lying on the leaves. They always remind me of sun bleached dinosaur bones.

An orange jelly fungus (Dacrymyces palmatus) had also fallen from its branch. This brain like fungus grows mostly on conifers like white pine and eastern hemlock and there are a lot of both trees in this forest. Though it is said to be tasteless this jelly fungus is supposed to be edible. I’m not sure I would eat it but it is eaten in China, where it is believed that jelly fungi improve circulation and breathing. Certain species of jelly fungi are also thought to have a blood thinning effect.

Yellow jelly fungi (Tremella mesenterica) grow on hardwoods like oak, but almost always on dead branches. This example grew on a live tree, which probably doesn’t bode well for the tree. The jelly fungus doesn’t harm the tree because it is parasitic on crust fungi in the genus Peniophora, but the crust fungi do harm the tree. This example was very dry and had lost much of its volume. Jelly fungi swell up after a rain and can add 60 percent or more to their volume. I usually see most jelly fungi in winter, though I’m not sure why.

Each spring some of our rocks either sink into the ground or the frost heaves the soil up around them. My theory says that the sun heats the stone and the warm stone melts the frozen soil beneath it, sinking in as it does so, but I don’t know this for certain. The size or weight of the stone doesn’t seem to matter. This one was about the size of my foot.

It isn’t often that I run into a tree that’s all puckered up for a kiss, but that’s what this eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) seemed to be doing.  Actually it’s the tree’s wound cork that has grown over a scar. According to the book Bark, by Michael Wojtech, eastern hemlock is the only tree in the northeast that grows wound cork in annual increments, and because it does so it can be counted just like the tree’s growth rings. From what I’ve counted this scar took about 15 years to heal. It was about the same size as a large grapefruit.

This is another hemlock but instead of a scar it has what I believe might be the start of a burl, which is a rounded growth on a tree that contains clusters of knots made up of dormant buds. It is said that burls form on trees that have seen some type of stress, and though scientists aren’t 100 percent sure it is believed that they are caused by injury, a virus, or fungi. Once the tree grows and the burl grows along with it, it becomes more valuable. Larger burls can sell for many hundreds of dollars because its grain is beautiful and highly prized by cabinet makers and wood turners.  I’ve seen hundreds of burls but they are always quite large. I’ve always wanted to see what one looked like when young.

It seemed a little strange to be seeing ice flowing over the ledges with no snow on the ground. In summer I’ve walked by this spot many times and had no idea that so much groundwater seeped over the ledges. On this day it looked like a water pipe had burst.

Those who have read this blog for any length of time will recognize Tippin Rock. For those who don’t, the rock is a 9 foot high, 18 foot long, 9 foot wide, 40 ton erratic that a glacier parked near the top of Hewe’s hill untold eons ago. Its name comes from how it can be tipped when pushed in the right place. A friend who was at a dedication ceremony in this place tells me that a group of schoolchildren once climbed up on it and had it rocking like a cradle. I’ve never been able to move it a whisker, but I’ve only tried on one climb.

Low clouds had turned the sky to milk. A blue sky with white puffy clouds would have made for a better view but since I don’t climb for the views I didn’t mind. This is a timeless, peaceful place where I rarely see anyone else so I come to sit in the quiet for a while, listening to the breeze whisper through the trees. The unbroken forest seems as vast as the sky from up here.

On his blog Mike Powell recently told of the reverence, awe, and peace that came over him as he watched the rising sun wash the forest in golden light one morning. I thought he described perfectly what often happens in nature in a way that I haven’t been able to. To his description I would add gratitude because it often fills me up, especially as I leave the forest. I always feel very thankful for having been able to see the things I’ve seen; so many others aren’t able to.

Once you think that you’ve reached the top of Hewe’s hill because of the views if you keep walking in the right direction you find that there is still more to climb, if you wish. I thought these stone outcrops would be covered in ice but there was very little to be seen.

These ice falls were the most noticeable but at only about ten feet across they weren’t anywhere near the size of some that I’ve seen.

I couldn’t come up here without stopping to say hello to my friends the toadskin lichens, which are one of the most beautiful in my opinion. They are also one of the rarest, at least in this area. They grow on the faces of rocks and in dry spells will turn an ashy gray / dark green color like those pictured. I know of only 2 or 3 hilltops that they grow on and I’ve only found them on hilltops, so if you want to see them you have to climb.

But isn’t finding a solar system on the face of a lichen worth a climb?

When wet the greenish color of the algae that is present comes through on the surface of toadskin lichens. Each lichen is attached to the rock at a single point that looks much like a belly button, and that makes it an umbilicate lichen. The warts are called pustules and on the back of the lichen there is a corresponding pit for every pustule. The black dots are its fruiting bodies (Apothecia.) A very similar lichen called rock tripe (Umbilicaria mammulata) can be seen surrounding the toadskin lichen in this photo. Rock tripe is like a toadskin without warts. When wet both lichens are very rubbery and pliable and feel a lot like your earlobe, only thinner.

On the way back down some beautifully colored turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) decorated a log. I’ve seen quite a few blue, purple, and orange turkey tails this winter and they are always a welcome sight.  These examples felt like parchment.

The little smiley face that the trail blazer painted on this slab of wood says it all: Joy. That’s what you’ll find here, because that’s always what the reverence, peace, awe and gratitude found in nature add up to; a deep, abiding joy.

Touch the earth, love the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and the dawn seen over the ocean from the beach. ~Henry Beston

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Time For A Climb

I haven’t had time to do much climbing over the last few months so I thought I’d make up for the lapse by climbing Mount Caesar in Swanzey. It’s one of my favorite climbs because there is so much to see there, like this drift of reindeer lichen that looks like a snowy path through the woods even in August.

The uphill climb isn’t steep but it’s steady. Recent logging operations here haven’t helped the trail any, but at least it wasn’t muddy.

In some places the granite bedrock is exposed. I like the patterns of minerals in it.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) have gone to seed but the tiny white seed pods haven’t opened yet.

Starflower seed pods look like tiny soccer balls and can be tough to get a good photo of. Putting a penny on a stump to use as a background helped.

I found a dead cicada on the trail and put him on a stump for a better photo too. I never knew they were so blue.

As if to illustrate how you can hike the same trail a hundred times and still not see all there is to see, I found downy rattlesnake plantain orchids growing right beside the trail. I can’t believe that I’ve walked right by them all these years without seeing them.

This orchid’s flowers are very small and hard to photograph, so I went back with a piece of black artists foam core board and got this shot so you could see what they look like. They look a lot like the flowers of the checkered rattlesnake plantain that I showed in another recent post and indeed the two plants are thought to cross pollinate naturally. I don’t know what made them appear so sparkly in this photo.

Acorns were falling all around me but the real surprise was hearing a large tree fall off in the woods. I couldn’t see it and was glad I wasn’t anywhere near it because it made a tremendous crashing sound when it fell. That’s a rare experience for me.

Cinnamon fairy stools (Coltricia cinnamomea) grew here and there all along the trail. They get their common name from the concentric bands of cinnamon brown coloring on their inch diameter caps. They are a tough, leathery polypore which, if picked when fresh, will hold their color and shape for a long time.

My Mushroom books don’t say much about club shaped fungi but I think this might be Clavaria ornatipes. This fungus is described as spatula or club shaped and greyish to pinkish gray. It grew directly out of the ground.

The reason club and coral fungi grow the way they do is to get their spores, which grow on their tips, up above the soil surface so the wind can disperse them. This example is another of the Clavaria club fungi I think, but I haven’t been able to identify it.

There are good views to the south from the top of Mount Caesar though on this day it seemed just a bit hazy.

It was a very hot and humid day with temperatures approaching 90 degrees and I found myself wishing I was swimming at Swanzey Lake rather than sitting up here in full sun.

I couldn’t leave without looking across the hills to Mount Monadnock over in Jaffrey. It’s the highest mountain in these parts and is also the second most climbed mountain in the world, and on a day like this there were probably hundreds of people on it.

My friends the toad skin lichens (Lasallia papulosa) were very dry and ashy gray for the most part, but I did find a moist green one here and there. I’ve only seen these lichens growing on the very tops of hills so visiting them comes with a price. They’re beautiful and rarely seen though, so it’s a price I’m willing to pay.

I never would have seen this moth if it hadn’t flown in front of me to land on a tree trunk. Even though I knew where it had landed I had a hard time finding it, so perfect was its camouflage.  I think it might be a looper moth in the family Noctuidae. There are many, including some familiar ones like the cabbage looper and the golden looper. They all seem to be experts in camouflage, just as this one was.

Easily the most beautiful thing I saw on this day was this violet coral fungus (Clavaria zollingeri.) My daughter had climbed here the day before and told me that she had seen it but this is a big mountain and I had little hope of finding it. Her directions were perfect though and there it was; the most beautiful coral fungus that I’ve ever seen. I knelt before it to admire its beauty and forgot the heat, the mosquitoes, and even myself for a while.

The events of the past day have proven to me that I am wholly alive, and that no matter what transpires from here on in, I have truly lived. ~Anonymous mountain climber

Thanks for coming by.

 

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