Christmas in the Woods

Actually it was Christmas eve day when a trail I haven’t walked in a while called to me. It was a bright, sunny and warm day with temps nearing the mid-40s F. Days like this don’t come often in a New Hampshire December so I hated to waste it. I hadn’t been the only one to think so; the thin snow on the trail showed many footprints.

There were icy spots on the trail but I had my micro spikes on so I stayed upright. It’s a good idea to have them if you hike popular trails because the compacted snow quickly turns to ice.

There is pond here that’s a popular ice skating spot for local children. In fact I skated here as a boy. The town usually plows the snow off it but over the past few winters it has taken the ice longer to thicken up. I don’t think it was plowed at all last winter because it was too warm for good ice. Plow trucks have ended up at the bottom of the pond in the past so they make sure it’s good and firm before plowing it these days. But kids will be kids and you can see where they have shoveled to make a small skating area.

They pay no attention to the signs. Someday they might wish they had, but I hope not. This sign is on a dam and I’ve seen the pond when it had to be drained to work on the dam a few years ago, and I was shocked at how shallow it was. If a pickup truck went in at the deepest point the water would probably reach to the bottom of the windows.

Spidery cracks in the ice showed that it was still quite thin in places.

When a thin layer of ice on a pond gets snowed on quite often the snow is heavy enough to make the ice sink a bit, and this forces water up through holes in the ice. The water turns the snow to slush, which then freezes into the spidery patterns seen here. For years I wondered if someone had thrown a rock and broken a hole in the ice but this comes from below, not above.

Another thing I wondered about for years was what tree produced such zig zaggy twigs. When I finally realized it was witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) I felt pretty foolish, because all I would have had to do was look the plant over more carefully and I would have seen its seed pods and cup like bracts, which would have been an immediate give away. The seed pods especially are unmistakable in the winter. Inside each pod are two shiny black seeds that were much loved by certain Native American tribes. They are said to taste like pistachio nuts but I’ve never tried them. Natives also steamed witch hazel branches over hot stones in their sweat lodges to sooth aching muscles and used its Y shaped branches for dowsing. In fact the Mohegan tribe is said to have shown early settlers how to find water using witch hazel branches, and also how to use the plant medicinally. A tea made from witch hazel tightens muscles and stops bleeding and the plant is one of only a handful of medicinal plants still approved as an ingredient in non-prescription drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. It’s amazing that it is still being used medicinally after what is quite probably thousands of years. 

Two things we have lots of here in New Hampshire are trees and stones and you can find plenty of both along this trail. Some look like they were just left here by glaciers.

A vein of quartz in a stone points the way. Quartz can fill an already present crack in a cooling stone as a hot, liquid brine and some of the resulting veins can be very large. In Frankfurt, Germany there is a hydrothermal vein system that is nearly 4 miles long and almost over 200 feet wide. 

This little fern growing in a crack in a boulder never gets any bigger than what is seen here but it comes back every year to try again. It’s very persistent.

When water finds its way into a crack in a stone and freezes, the pressure from the ice can split the stone, and that’s what happened here. What is unusual about this scene is how a tree seed found its way onto the ground at the bottom of the crack and grew there. I’m guessing that the ever growing tree trunk is pushing the crack in the stone open even more each year. I’ve seen boulders as big as trucks split in the same way, cleaved perfectly by ice.

Stones aren’t the only things in the forest that crack; trees also crack. Straight, vertical cracks in tree bark like that shown above are called frost cracks because they happen in frigid weather when bark repeatedly freezes and thaws. Sunlight warms the bark during the day and then at night when the temperature drops quickly the bark cools and shrinks much quicker than the inner wood, and this causes stress and pressure build up. The unequal shrinkage and contraction between wood and bark can cause the bark to split, sometimes violently and as loudly as a rifle shot. It’s a relatively common sound in the woods at night, but it’s always startling. This frost crack is rare because it is in the bark of a white pine, which has thick bark.

Most frost cracks usually appear on thin barked trees and heal relatively quickly. This photo shows a healed frost crack in an oak.

Here is a scar in the bark of an eastern hemlock that I can’t explain. I’ve shown it off and on in blog posts over the years and many readers have had a shot at guessing the cause but none of us has truly been satisfied with their guess. By far the most popular guess is that lightning made the scar, but the lightning strikes that I’ve seen in tree bark have run as straight as a frost crack. They have also run the length of the tree, while this one comes up out of the ground and runs maybe 4 or 5 feet up the tree.

The zig zag crack is quite deep so I think it has been there for a few years. I’ve seen only one other photo of a similar scar and that also came with no explanation.

Sunlight on a hemlock branch warmed my spirits as much as it did the branch.

When a tree dies it often will shed its bark before it falls if it falls naturally, and the serpentine opening that shows in this tree’s bark is the beginning of the process. I see trees all the time that have all their bark lying in a heap at their base.

Sometimes I see trees that have broken off and fallen and their trunks are completely hollow. I often wonder how many of the trees that surround me in the woods are standing with hollow trunks. That isn’t a real comforting thought especially on a windy day, but I think the wound “window” in this tree shows how it happens. The weathered gray heart of the tree died first and the outer bark lived long enough to start healing the wound. If the tree had lived it would have most likely just been another standing hollow tree, but it finally died and I think the channels showing bark beetle damage all around the wound tell the story of how. Bark beetles don’t usually attack healthy trees but if the tree is alive when they move in it is doomed.

Here was a tree scar that wouldn’t ever heal; someone had cut down a hemlock that was about 5 inches through and I wondered who would do such a thing and why. And then I remembered doing the same thing when I was a boy, and I thought about how I didn’t know then and still don’t know why I did it. This seemed like a good time to ponder such things but I wasn’t able to fill in any blanks. It is healthy I think, to occasionally question our actions. I hope whoever did this will one day ask themselves why, just as I did on this day.

The bark had fallen off an old black birch (Betula lenta) and the inner bark was like confetti. Black birch bark looks a lot like cherry bark when young but once they reach about 50 years old the bark begins to split and form scaly plates. These irregular plates start to fall off when the tree is about 80 years old,  so I would say this tree must be at least that old. The beautiful inner bark shown here will eventually become the outer bark and it will begin to fall off when the tree is about 150 years old. Black birches were once heavily harvested for their natural oil of wintergreen so it’s unusual to find such an old example. I gave it a pat on the bark and wished it well.  

I know this very popular trail has been here since the late 1800s but this tree hasn’t been here that long. Still, it took a lot of foot traffic to wear the bark off its roots like this. I always stop to look at roots like this. Some are so smooth they look as if they had been sanded and polished by a cabinetmaker. Many show wood of different colors and are beautiful.

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. ~St. Bernard

Thanks for stopping in.

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Wilde Brook Through Chesterfield Gorge

Years ago I tried to do a post on Chesterfield Gorge, which lies over in Neighboring Chesterfield New Hampshire ,but it was really too dark there for the light gathering capabilities of my camera and I gave up on the place. Until recently that is; a helpful reader wrote and told me that our terrible storms this summer had toppled some trees and let in much more light, so last Saturday I went to see for myself. There was indeed more light available and I was finally able to get some passable shots of the gorge.

Chesterfield Gorge was created by Wilde Brook and it is said that it has taken it many thousands of years to cut through the bedrock to where it is today. The cool, shaded gorge has been enjoyed by locals for hundreds of years and in 1936 a local farmer named George White bought the land to be sure it would be forever preserved. It eventually became a state park and now anyone can enjoy it at no cost. There were many people here on this day including lots of children, which always gladdens my heart.

In places you’re high above the canyon that the brook has made and in the most dangerous areas the state has put up fencing to keep people back from the edge. But people will be people and some are foolhardy enough to climb the fences just so they can “get a little closer.” Not me; no photo is worth that fall.

The last time I came here there was only one bridge across the gorge because the raging waters of the brook had washed the upper bridge away. Happily I found a new one in its place this time. Though Wilde Brook seems placid enough it can quickly turn into a monster, so I’d never come here right after the kind of storms we’ve had recently. Over a foot of rain has now fallen in some places in just 4 weeks.  The brook starts at small ponds upstream and flows down into Partridge Brook in Westmoreland.  The last time I visited Partridge Brook I found that it also had raged and had scoured its bed right down to bedrock in places. It had also completely altered the landscape and had caused some serious flooding.

One of the trees that fell was a very big and old golden birch. There are many of them in this forest.

Sawdust on the inside of the fallen birch points to carpenter ants. I’m guessing that it probably had woodpecker holes as well because they love carpenter ants. Note the hollowed out space where the tree’s heart wood should have been.

Dry rot in the heart of the fallen birch pointed to fungi, and there were plenty of different mushrooms growing all over the fallen logs. The fungi rot the wood, ants move in, and before long a 100 foot tall tree is completely hollow inside. Add 60+ MPH winds and a lot of them come down; hopefully not on houses.

Some of the older birch logs displayed this wavy pattern. I think it was in the inner bark but I’m not positive, and I don’t know why it would be on only parts of certain logs. It was beautiful, like it had been sculpted.

I saw a lot of tiger’s eye fungi (Coltricia perennis,) also called fairy stools.  This one shows how the velvety cap reflects the sun and makes it look shiny. These are very pretty little mushrooms that vary in size and color. This one was probably an inch across and might have stood an inch tall.

I also saw lots of yellow spindle coral fungi (Clavulinopsis fusiformis) growing along the trail. These fungi almost always grow in tight cluster like these examples but I did see a single “finger” here and there.

Many trees had fallen into or across the gorge. It didn’t look like there was any way to get them out or to even cut them up. What will most likely happen is the next flood will wash them away.

The lower bridge is smaller than the upper one. It’s apparently also less likely to wash away, though I’m not sure why it would be.

I was surprised to see how low the water was by the lower bridge, but even so in places it still ran with enough force to knock a person down.

Here was a small, dammed up pool that looked perfect to cool off in. I often find these shallow pools that have been made by someone damming up a stream or brook with stones they’ve found just lying around. It’s hard to tell how long they’ve been there but I do know that people in the 1800s weren’t so very different than we are today when it came to recreation.

I’ve had some breathing issues lately so I’ve avoided hill climbing in the hot, humid weather we’ve had, but I had forgotten what a hike it was all the way down there and then back up again. I had to stop and pretend I had seen something interesting a couple of times while I caught my breath but I did surprisingly well. If this Louisiana weather ever leaves us I’ll have to start climbing again.

I kept taking photos of the gorge, trying to show how deep it really is. The safety fence at the top of the photo is about 4 feet high, so that should give you a sense of how far the drop to the water would be. I wish I could have gotten a closer look at all the plants on that cliff face, but it wasn’t possible.

Here’s one of those interesting things I saw while I stopped and caught my breath. At some point someone had bent a piece of iron into an S shape and hammered it into the end of this post. It looked quite old but I can’t guess what it meant.

Near the post was what looked like an old well cover. That’s something you have to be careful of in these woods because the wooden covers have often been there for a very long time and are rotted. And they’re often covered by leaves, so you have to pay attention, especially when near old cellar holes.

I saw lots of tree roots on the trail. I think the recent heavy rains have washed a lot of soil away from them, and that weakens their holding power so when a strong wind blows, down they go.

Some of the tree roots looked as if they had been carved and polished by an artist; so beautiful you wish you could take them home. I can’t guess how many years and how many feet it would take to do this.

I’ve chosen this little mushroom as the prettiest thing I saw on this day, but not just then; I’m seeing them everywhere I go this year and that seems a little odd since I can’t remember ever seeing them before. I love its colors and its waviness. I think it’s called the smooth chanterelle (Cantharellus lutescens) but I couldn’t guarantee that. There are a few chanterelle mushrooms that look a lot alike.

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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May Wandering

Special Note: In case you haven’t heard today (Saturday) and tomorrow nights are nights of the “super moon,” when the moon is expected to appear 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than at any other time this year. As if that weren’t enough, the Eta Aquarid meteor display also happens this weekend. Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

Every now and then I run across something that I think is really interesting so I take a picture of it. Then when I’m putting a blog post together quite often the interesting thing doesn’t really fit in, so it sits and waits for another post. This post contains all of those things that just wouldn’t fit in anywhere else. I hope you’ll think they are as interesting as I did. Opened cones of the Eastern white cedar or arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis.) I’ve seen many thousands of these but the color of these ones was simply amazing; a beautiful non-flower that looks like a flower. There was a big black slug beside these spring mushrooms, and I wondered if it had been eating them. From what I’ve read, this is most likely the slug called black arion (Arion ater,) also known as the European black slug, which is an invasive species. There is a catch all category of difficult to identify mushroom called LBMs, which stands for little brown mushrooms. Some are harmless and some, like those in the genus Galerina are deadly. They can grow in spring, summer or fall and are often found on logs. I wonder if they are toxic to slugs too. Oak marble gall. Galls can be caused by various insects laying their eggs on the twigs (usually a wasp.) The oak tries to protect itself by growing a gall around the insect eggs. Little does the oak know that this is exactly what the insect wants it to do; once the eggs hatch the larva eat their way out of the gall, leaving a tiny escape hole in the shell of an empty brown marble.  If you find one with no hole like those in the photo, an insect larva is still in residence. Iron sulfate mixed with tannic acid from oak galls made ink that was the standard writing and drawing ink from the 12th century until well into the 20th century. Some still use it today.

 This blue bottle fly was kind enough to hold still while I took its picture. I wish I could get a blue heron to do the same. Maybe I just have to start small and work my way up.

 This spent puffball caught my eye because it was bigger than a quarter. It wintered well. I don’t know what plant left these seed heads on all winter, but I like their furry, animal like appearance.

 I haven’t shown any lichens for a while, so here is a nice one. The rain we’ve had recently should plump most lichens up. Because this has a leafy look it is in the foliose lichen family. I haven’t shown any turkey tails (Trametes versicolor ) lately either. Here they are growing on a mossy tree trunk. I see them almost everywhere I go, but I’m still searching for a blue one. If I could find blue turkey tails and some blue lichens I’d be a mighty happy hiker.

These virgin’s bower (Clematis virginiana) seeds shining in the sun were an attention getter. Virgin’s bower is our native wild clematis vine that blooms anytime from July through September. It is usually found draped over shrubs or climbing up trees. Clusters of small white flowers cover the plant, and the hairy looking seeds that follow give it another common name: Old Man’s Beard. I have the cultivated variety that blooms in the fall growing on a trellis in my yard. The fragrance is unmatched. 

 The very top of a pine tree broke off and was lying on the ground in the middle of a trail. My grandmother had a cuckoo clock that used metal pine cones as weights to keep the clock running and those cones looked exactly like this one. I remember as a boy wanting those metal pine cones very badly, but I can’t remember why. Maybe it was because they tried to be as beautifully bronze-like as the real one shown here.

 This lone milkweed was the only one to escape the roadside mowing crew last year, and then it stood all through the winter. For perseverance alone, I thought it deserved having its picture taken. This is another tree root that I thought looked beautiful enough to have been carved by an artist. The smooth, sanded and polished look that comes to wood from weathering is amazing, and I always wonder how many years it took nature to create such a thing. I have a bookcase that holds several wooden art objects like this, and it’s very hard for me to leave these foundlings behind in the forest.  And that is precisely why I don’t carry a saw. 

This is the kind of weather we’ve seen here this week. I’m hoping for clearing so I can see the moon this weekend.

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.  ~Author Unknown

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these things that I occasionally stumble upon in the fields and forests. Thanks for visiting. Be safe in the woods.

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