Porcupine Falls

I haven’t paid much attention to waterfalls this summer because of the drought and all of the dried up ponds and streams I’ve seen, but we’ve had some rain now and the weather people say the drought is easing, so I thought I’d go and see Porcupine Falls in Gilsum. It’s kind of an odd waterfall that I’ve often thought would actually look better with less water falling from it and I thought that the drought might have helped in that regard, so off I went up the old logging road that starts the trail.

Stone walls line parts of the road and speak of the history of the place. When you see stone walls it’s a fair bet that the forest was once cleared, because the stones that make up the walls were cleared from fields, not forests. This example is a tossed or thrown wall, where the stones were simply stacked loosely on top of each other without thought of form or function. Stones broke plow blades and other farm equipment and could harm horses that stumbled over them so the idea was to get rid of them as quickly and easily as possible, and piling them along your property lines made the most sense. Most of the stone walls in New Hampshire are this type.

And this view of what is left of white brook shows just how many stones there are in this part of the country. Though there was a trickle of water in the bed of the brook it didn’t give me great confidence in the possibility of seeing a waterfall.

The old logging road becomes what looks to be an even older farm road, covered with ankle deep leaves. I’ve seen a lot of deer prints here in the past but on this day the leaves made that impossible. You’d think by the way the light falls in this photo that it was late evening when I was there, but it was actually 11:00 in the morning.

There was enough water in this section of the brook to have it chuckling and giggling, as brooks do.

A teardrop of brook foam had what reminded me of a yin yang symbol in it. According to Wikipedia the yin yang symbol in Chinese culture describes “how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.” In other words, a balance between two opposites.

Split pore polypore (Schizopora paradoxa) is a common white rot crust fungus that grows on dead hardwood limbs, especially oak. They start life small and more or less round and then grow into a mass like that seen in the photo. It is said to be very drought tolerant.

The underside of the split pore crust fungus can show a wide variation in its spore bearing surfaces according to my mushroom books, and they can be circular, oblong, angular, or maze like. This example was very maze like. The variations don’t make this fungus any easier to identify.

A bridge over the brook at a point where it widens into a pool gets you to the view of the falls. Though it looks arched in this photo for some reason, it’s really as flat as a paved road.

Someone found some flat stones and made benches out of them. I sat on one for a while listening to the brook and the birds and thought about what a rare opportunity it was to sit in the middle of a brook and stay dry. When the water level returns to normal nobody will be sitting here without waders on.

Here is the view of the pool from the bridge. You can just see the stone benches at the far end. It’s a beautiful place to just sit and soak in the forest.

These well-built stone steps were built by the Jolly Rovers trail crew, which is a nonprofit organization from New York that travels throughout the country creating or improving trails. I’ve seen a few of their projects and they were high quality work so if you’re reading this and need trail work done I’d contact them. Many thanks to them for the great work they’ve done in this area.

Mica glittered on the stones throughout the area. The stones are mostly made up of feldspar, and feldspar, mica, garnet, beryllium and other minerals were once mined in Gilsum. Gilsum has a long history of mining and a geologically famous rock swap is held here each summer and attracts people from all over the world. If you want a good photographic challenge or if you just want to make yourself a little crazy, try getting a few photos of mica.

Finger size black tourmaline crystals were scattered here and there in the stones. I’ve spent many hours breaking stones open with a sledgehammer to find these crystals but there is a certain amount of luck involved, because black tourmaline is very fragile and just the vibration from the hammer hitting the stone can often shatter them into pieces. The examples shown here were all broken.

There is a well-placed bench for visitors to sit and watch the waterfall, but on this day I was the only one interested.

And that was probably because the waterfall was just a shadow of its former self. This photo makes it appear smaller than it actually was but it was still pretty anti-climactic. I think I’ve seen more water coming off my roof in a drizzle, but the pleasing sound of falling water was still there and I enjoyed hearing it.

I tried to make it look better by slowing down the shutter speed but it came out looking like a mass of broken fiber optic cables.

This photo from 2 years ago shows what Porcupine Falls normally looked like before the drought. It also shows how for a waterfall it isn’t very photogenic, and I think it’s because the water comes too fast and furious. This shot was taken in December. Maybe July would be a better time but it’s very dark here even with no leaves on the trees, and I’m not sure my camera could see the falls then. One thing that is very unusual about this waterfall is its tilt. It tilts because it follows the natural slant of the stone, which looks to be about 15-20 degrees off vertical. I don’t see many tilted waterfalls.

A nature hike wouldn’t be any fun without finding an unknown or two and this is today’s head scratcher. It’s a lichen that I’ve been trying to identify for about three years and every time I think I’ve done it I can’t ever be 100 percent sure. The closest I’ve come is the many forked Cladonia (Cladonia furcata,) but I can’t say for certain. It reminds me of a reindeer lichen because it has “that look,” and reindeer lichens are also Cladonia lichens, but the examples in the book Lichens of North America don’t look the same as this one.

The book does say that the many forked Cladonia is very changeable and can look like certain reindeer lichens, and that its appearance can even change from sun to shade. Though it isn’t rare I don’t see it very often. It grows on a thin layer of soil that has formed on stone, and though it was soft and pliable on this day in the past I’ve seen it become quite bristly and prickly when it dries out. This example grows in a spot that might get an hour of direct sunlight each day. If you know what it is I’d love to hear from you.

Young wrinkled crust fungi (Phlebia radiata) grew on a log. They have no stem, gills or pores at this stage but there were larger examples on the same log that had a very wrinkled and fleshy surface that radiated out from a central point. This fungus doesn’t seem to mind cool weather; the two or three I’ve seen have been growing at this time of year. As far as I’m concerned they took this day’s prize for the most beautiful thing I saw. They remind me of shells I might find on a tropical beach. Or maybe the snow flurries in the air today have set me to day dreaming.

If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song. ~Carl Perkins

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

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Vanishing Point

I decided to visit an old familiar place recently, just to see if it had changed any since my last visit. Now a rail trail, when I was a boy the big Boston and Maine diesels used to roll though here and I spent enough time walking the tracks to know the place as well as I knew my own yard. The view down the trail reminded me of learning how to draw perspective in art class and how easily the concept came to me. I walked here almost daily and the idea of a vanishing point was right there in front of me every time. Way down there where those two steel rails used to look like they came together; that was the vanishing point, and that was where I was going on this day.

 

The birches have had a tough time of it this year; that heavy foot of snow we had on Thanksgiving eve was more than some of them could bear. This one broke right in half about half way up its length, and some of the others still haven’t stood back up completely.

 

I saw a burl as big as a soccer ball on a black cherry branch (Prunus serotina.) Seeing something like this would have gotten me excited when I was younger and I would have been off to the library to read all I could about it. If a place can give a gift, then curiosity is the gift that this place gave to me. The things in nature that I saw in here made me curious enough to want to learn about them, and that’s something that’s still with me today.

Burl, for those who don’t know, is an abnormal growth that grows faster than the surrounding tissue. Scientists don’t fully understand why it happens but burls are thought to grow on trees that have been weakened by stress or damage.  Once the tree’s defenses have been weakened insects and /or fungi can attack and cause the abnormal growth. Woodworkers make some very beautiful things from burl and prize burls highly. I find them more on black cherry than any other tree, and I know what they are because of this place.

Before it died of Dutch elm disease this American elm grafted itself together in two places, both above and below where you can see daylight through the trunks. Natural grafts can’t really be called rare, but this is the first double one I’ve ever seen. The wind blows the trees and they rub together enough to rub off their bark down to the cambium layer, which can then grow together if the two trees are the same species.

 

Years ago the hawthorn trees (Crataegus) I saw here made me want to know why some trees had thorns and others didn’t, so I got ahold of a used 1858 copy of Asa Gray’s How Plants Grow to see if he knew. Gray was a hero of mine but he sure did write some awfully dry books, and if I hadn’t been so interested in plants I don’t think I could have made it through many of them. I learned a lot about the various ways plants defend themselves from his books though, including using thorns, spines and prickles.

Because snowmobiles pack it down so much it’s very hard to judge how deep the snow is along these trails, so I was surprised when I came to a slushy spot and saw that it wasn’t more than an inch deep. It’s still pretty tough getting into the woods but spring is coming.

What are woods here now used to be all cornfields when I was a boy and it seems strange knowing that I’m older than the trees. When I think about it though, I suppose even the youngsters among us are older than at least some of the trees. Maybe it’s getting to meet the trees that I know are younger than me that makes it feel so strange. I like the way these woods have grown up to have a light and airy, uncrowded feel. These trees are mostly red maple and they don’t mind the occasional spring floods that happen here.

I was dismayed but not really surprised to see some very invasive burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) growing here. These open woodlands are just the kind of place these shade tolerant shrubs love to grow in. Their shallow root systems and the shade they cast mean that native plants can’t get a start, so before long you have a monoculture made up of invasives. The plant is also called winged euonymus because, as the above photo shows, they have corky ridges or “wings” that grow along their stems.

There were only 3 or 4 burning bushes here but they were big and had grown thousands of berries. Unfortunately the birds had eaten every single one of them and all that was left were the once purple pods.

This old trestle marks the vanishing point that we saw in the first photo. Of course you can’t ever reach it because it moves with you (see-there is another one way down there) but it was a great thing for a young school boy to spend time thinking about. If you walk from vanishing point to vanishing point before you know it you’re in Swanzey with very tired feet, unless you cross country ski it like I used to. That’s another thing I learned how to do here.

Snowmobile clubs have put wooden safety railings all along these old trestles and there was a great example of a fishbone beard lichen (Usnea filipendula) growing on the weathered wood of this one. There are many lichens that prefer growing on wood, but it doesn’t always have to be in tree form.

I’ve always wondered how these old steel trestles were built but I never have been able to find out. I don’t know if they were built in factories and shipped to the site to be assembled or if they were built right in place. Either way I’m sure there was an awful lot of rivet hammering going on. I do know that the stones for the granite abutments that these trestles rest on were taken from boulders and outcroppings in the immediate area, but I think they must have had to ship them from somewhere else in this case because there is little granite of any size to be found here.

I’ve always been a lover of solitude and when I was young this is the place I came when I wanted to be alone, because back then you could sit on this old trestle all day without seeing another soul. It was a good place to just sit and think or watch the many birds and animals that came to drink from the river. I don’t come here very often these days because solitude is easier to come by now and the place seems to bring on an ache that’s hard to understand. Maybe it’s an ache for another shot at boyhood or maybe it’s just simple nostalgia, but it always seems to end with the feeling that there’s an empty place somewhere inside of me. Maybe that’s why I only visit about once each year.

 

Hurricane brook starts up in the northern part of Keene near a place called Stearns Hill. Then it becomes White Brook for a while before emptying into Black Brook. Black Brook in turn empties into Ash Swamp and the outflow from the swamp becomes Ash Swamp Brook. Finally it all meets the Ashuelot River right at this spot. Confused? Me too; it has taken me about 50 years to figure all of that out. Why so many name changes? I don’t know, but I’m guessing that the settlers in the northern part of Keene and the settlers here in the southern part didn’t realize that they were both looking at the same brook. I wonder if anyone has ever followed it from here to its source. It would be quite a hike.

This bluff where the brook meets the river is where bank swallows used to nest. They are social birds and nest together in large colonies that sometimes number in the thousands. What I find fascinating is how the male birds dig nest holes using their feet, wings, and tiny beaks, and these holes can be 2 feet deep. They nest near water and eat insects, and that explains why there were never any mosquitos here. The swallows are a good example of how this place has taught me so much over the years; I didn’t know exactly what kind of birds they were and I had to look them up. After all these years I still learn something when I come here, and it could be that the most important lesson I’ve learned is, as author Thomas Wolfe said, that you can’t go home again.

The past is for learning from and letting go. You can’t revisit it. It vanishes. ~Adele Parks

Thanks for coming by.

 

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Porcupine Falls

No, this post isn’t about a large caviomorpha rodent taking a spill. It’s about a new waterfall in Gilsum New Hampshire, which is north of Keene, called porcupine falls. By “new” I of course mean new to me. There is little about these woods that could be considered new. In fact very old is more like it. The route I took was an old dirt road that climbed gently through the surprisingly snowy woods. I say surprisingly because down in the low country our snow is gone.

Stone walls line the old road, showing that parts of these woods were once farmland.  Some of this land seems like it would be awfully hard to farm though, with large outcroppings of stone and boulders everywhere you look, but maybe a sheep farmer could have scraped by. Sheep farming was big business in this area at one time and many of these hills were cleared nearly to their summits.

There were more deer tracks on this old road than I’ve ever seen anywhere. I don’t know what the attraction is for them but they obviously love it up here.

White brook is the name of the brook that porcupine falls is on and though the water giggles and chuckles over and around stones for much of its length it does have an occasional calm stretch like this one. Apparently this is a great spot for animals to come and drink because I saw many tracks leading here. I found it a good place to just sit and drink in nature’s serenity, so maybe the animals come here for a little of that too.

 

Blushing bracket (Daedaleopsis confragosa) fungi get their common name from the way their white, maze like pore surface turns reddish when it’s touched. This one can be difficult to identify because of the variability in the shape of its pores and by the zones of color on its cap. This example wasn’t very zonal and was quite old and well beyond the blushing stage. This is another fungus that shows medicinal promise and many countries are testing its antiviral compounds, especially in relation to influenza. It is also called the thin walled maze polypore.

Tinder polypores (Fomes fomentarius,) also quite old, grew on a birch stump. The iceman was found to be carrying dried pieces of this fungus when he was found in the Ötztal Alps 5,000 years after his death, so it has been used to start fires for a very long time.

After a short hike off the old road through the woods you get your first glimpse of porcupine falls. In this photo they’re shooting out of the large rock outcrop in the upper right corner with a roar. I tried to find out how they got their unusual name but haven’t had any luck.

Someone built a nice solid set of stone steps near the falls. There is a lot of work in these, and finding the right stones for the treads wasn’t the least of it.

Someone also built a viewing bench. I didn’t sit on it but it told me that this spot was probably best for viewing the falls, and that turned out to be true.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice it when I was actually there taking the photos, but what an odd angle for a waterfall to have.  It must be a good 20 degrees off vertical. There is nothing mysterious about it; it was simply following the gap in the stone outcrop, but I’ve never seen a tilted waterfall. It actually falls into another brook that enters the shot from the left. We’ve had a lot of rain and it was quite forceful but photographically speaking, I think this is one waterfall where less water would have made for a far better shot. I’m going to have to go back once it dries out a bit.

If you stand where I was when I was viewing the waterfall and turn around, you find a massive rock outcrop covered with lichens, mosses and evergreen ferns. It might as well have been a nature nut magnet and of course I had to look it over.

I found a large patch of what I think is coral lichen (Sphaerophorus tuckermanii) growing on a mossy boulder. It was very stiff and prickly, much like a porcupine, but I’m having a hard time finding any reliable information about it.  I have high hopes that the often frustrating lack of information on lichens will change in the near future because thanks to the generosity of Santa I was finally able to order the book Lichens of North America by Irwin M. Brodo, Sylvia Duran Sharnoff, and Stephen Sharnoff.  I’m hoping it will shed some light on these fascinating organisms.

Gilsum is well known for the abundance of beautiful mineral specimens that are found there and it draws rock hounds from all over the world each July when the town holds its annual rock swap. There are a lot of old mines in the area and minerals like beryl, tourmaline, garnet and quartz can be found in and around them. I saw a lot of examples of feldspar that had me wishing I’d brought my rock hammer. The piece of feldspar in the photo was full of mica and splitting it open might have revealed a beautiful crystal that had formed millions of years ago, but I think my days of breaking rocks open with a sledge hammer are probably over. Even when I was young I could only take about half a day of it.

There was an old bone near the trail, or part of one anyhow. It had teeth marks on it and I’m assuming it is from a deer leg. At least I hope so. I see deer skeletons and carcasses in the woods fairly regularly but I’ve never stopped to actually study one so I’m not up on my deer anatomy.

 

The last thing I expected to find here was a slime mold but there it was, growing all over a rotting log. Not only is it odd to see a slime mold in winter but this one was growing in full sun. That’s doubly strange since slime molds dry up quickly in sunlight. I think this one was scrambled egg slime (Fuligo septica.) Whatever it was it was breaking all the rules and had me shaking my head in surprise as I set off down the trail. It was a good reminder that in nature study the words “always” and “never” don’t apply.

If you live in the Keene / Gilsum area and enjoy the outdoors this is a nice easy hike through an area with lots to see. Unless you stop to look at everything along the trail like I do the trip to the falls and back probably wouldn’t take more than half an hour.  With me along it might take 3 or 4.

Go to the winter woods: listen there; look, watch, and ‘the dead months’ will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest. ~ Fiona Macleod

Thanks for stopping in. Happy New Year!

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