Appalachian Trail Hike

Beth and I spent the holiday weekend on a backpacking trip along a small portion of the Appalachian Trail in Maine. The original plan was for us to leave the house Friday morning and start the hike. Then turn around early Saturday afternoon and head back, arriving back where we started on Sunday. Unfortunately, Hurricane Arthur had some input on that plan (it poured all day Friday), so we shortened the hike and left on Saturday morning instead.

This was a trail Beth chose, as she hiked it last fall during Outdoor School. Only then, it poured the whole time. Her teacher said it was the worst he had ever seen it during a backpacking trip, and he has many, many of those under his belt. She was miserable during that entire trip, and wanted to give it another shot during better weather.

Well, the weather was better, and according to Beth, the trail was in much better condition. But it was, I think, the muddiest trail I have ever hiked on.

The trail was a tad damp.

When Beth did this last fall, very little of the trail was above water, which was mostly “six inches deep” (according to her). Maybe it was!

Parts of the trail were pretty steep:

And steep in places

This was about the only place there was a “view” (though all of the trail was beautiful). It never came above the treeline.

It never emerged from the treeline

There was a huge colony of some kind of liverwort growing on this pine tree.

Liverwort!

Nice!

At one point, she thought she recognized the Little Swift River Pond campground, and we diverged from the trail. Only it was not the Little Swift. It was South Pond. Beth remembered these boats:

At South Pond

Only it wasn’t “these” boats, it was some other boats. Then, since we had unknowingly taken a side trail, we had difficulty finding the trail again. Beth consulted the map (as did I), until we concluded that we were at South Pond, not at Little Swift. We backtracked until we found blaze markings again, and continued on. This shows the importance of not pressing on when you’ve lost the trail. It’s better to go back until you find the markings!

I just have to show more photos of muddy trail. An awful lot of the trail looked like this.

The mud was deep

And a lot of the parts that didn’t, looked more like this:

And so was the water

In spite of the slogging, there were rewards. I saw some “Common” wood sorrel (Oxalis montana), which is not nearly as common as “regular” wood sorrel (O. stricta).

Common Wood Sorrel (Oxalis montana)

I think the only time I ever see this purple-veined sorrel is on backpacking trips! I suppose the “montana” part of its binomial name suggests a reason.

It was pretty common to see moose scat on the trail in the places that were not too muddy (or under water), so we were hoping to see a moose or two. This bog was an excellent place to find one, but we didn’t.

A nice bog

They probably saw us though.

Here’s one that grows on my property, but which rarely blooms there:

Sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia)

You can Kalmia angustifolia, just don’t call me late for dinner!

This one was perhaps the highlight of the trip for me:

A white “pink” lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule var. alba)

This is a pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule var. alba), even though it’s white. I had never seen one. There are white lady’s slippers that are pretty rare, and belonging to a different species, and I have never seen any of those either. But this one can be identified as a member of the “pink” species, because it has a slit running down the front of the flower. The other species in the genus have little round openings at the top of the flower – more like a slipper vs a shoe without its laces.

Here’s a shot of the pair where I tried to get the entire plant(s) in the shot:

The whole plant

Nice!

We stopped for “lunch” around 3:00pm, or maybe later. It was chilly outside, and once we quit moving, Beth was getting chilly. I had my sleeping bag stuffed (very snugly) into my backpack, making it nearly impossible to get anything else out of it without removing the bag. So I tossed it to her while I prepared some pasta.

It was chilly!

Neither one of us remembered to bring a spoon or a fork, which made eating the pasta something of a challenge. Not as hard as eating the soup would be later that evening! So as the sun was setting, I started carving a make-shift spoon out of a small sapling someone had cut (and conveniently for me, left 12″ or so sticking up out of the ground). It soon grew too dark for knife work though, so I laid it aside until morning. But once the sun came up, I made quick work of it, and we were able to eat our oatmeal with relative ease.

Beth models my hand-carved spoon

I think the most abundant plant along the trail was bunchberry (Cornus canadensis). When we started the hike I noticed that most of them had already dropped their sepals (which most people understandably mistake for petals). I suggested to Beth that if we had been there two weeks earlier, we would have been treated to a carpet of bunchberry blooms. But later in the hike, we transitioned into an area where they still held onto their sepals:

Lots of bunchberry (Cornus canadensis)

We stopped at “the view” again on the way back and rested up a bit. There was only a little more than a mile to go by then. I was admiring the mud stains on my pant legs:

Mud-stained pant legs & boots!

Luckily, those pant legs zip off, so I was sure to do that before going into the tent.

One plant I was looking for was the Creeping Snowberry (Gaultheria hispudula), which belongs to the often-featured-on-this-blog, Wintergreen (G. procumbens).

Creeping Snowberry (Gaultheria hispidula)

I first saw this on a backpacking trip a couple of years ago, but didn’t know what it was then (I identified it from the photos I took when I got back). So this was the first time I was able to look at it and know what I was seeing.

As we descended the trail towards the car for that last mile, I decided to try my hand at dead reckoning. I would look ahead for a land mark, estimate the distance to it, and add that to the distance covered already as we approached it. Then find the next landmark and do the same. Eventually, I switched to estimating where the next 100-feet would be, because I was pretty tired, and that made the arithmetic easier. I was pleased that by the time I figured we had another 500 feet, we could hear the stream near the parking lot, and we could also hear the occasional car. I stopped dead reckoning at T-minus 200 feet, and we were pretty close to 200 feet from the parking lot then. This was my first attempt at that, and I rather liked the results!

We got to the car around 1:00pm and drove south to Dixfield. We stopped at a diner and had lunch, and then drove home (about three more hours).

I have to say I’m pretty sore now, but I think I’ll know a lot more about that tomorrow!

 

Uncaptured Photos

This morning after I dropped Beth off at school I went home by a circuitous route through the back roads of Canterbury. I had solved a geocache puzzle some time ago (maybe a year ago) and decided it was high time I picked it up.

Before I got there, a white tailed deer sprung out from the woods and crossed the road in front of me. Since this was a country road with no traffic whatsoever, I stopped and looked at the deer for a minute. She had another deer with her, and I expect it was last year’s fawn. They were too far off in the woods to even think about photography, so I left my camera in the bag.

Then I went off to collect the geocache. It was in a guardrail next to this pretty little stream.

A stream in Canterbury, NH

Having found the cache, I got back in the car and looked for a place to turn around. Not finding one, the road took me to a farm (Hackleboro Apple Orchard), so I turned around there. I don’t like turning around where a road ends basically in someone’s driveway, but sometimes, that’s what happens.

As I made my way back through Canterbury, I saw a very large cat bound across the road in front of me. It was a bobcat! I had never seen one in the wild before, so this was a first for me. It stopped about 100 yards into the forest, turned around and looked back at me. I didn’t have a clear view, so I back up ten or twelve feet, thinking I might be able to go for a photo. But the bobcat thought otherwise. As soon as I began backing up, it took off running again and was gone in less than two seconds. Sigh.

I drove slowly trying to remember exactly where it crossed the road so I could look at its tracks, but I didn’t find them. Instead, I saw a pair of farm dogs galloping down the fence row on the side of the road from whence the bobcat had come. Maybe that’s what it was running from.

I am almost ready for warmer weather now, not because I don’t like winter (I do very much), but because I need some temperatures more conducive to canoe repair. I can’t use epoxy until the temp is at least 60, and 70 would be much, much better. I thought I might be able to heat the garage up some with a space heater if it was 40 outside, so I brought one home from church and plugged it in. It only raised the temperature to about 50 in the garage – not nearly warm enough. So I returned the space heater on Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, while I was at church, one of the kids in my Sabbath School class noticed a bird outside our classroom window and wanted to know what it was. I took a quick glance and erroneously pronounced it a mourning dove. Upon further inspection, I knew that it was most certainly not a mourning dove. I had no idea what it was. We observed the bird through the window for about five minutes from less than 10 feet away. It had a very long bill and would use it to probe holes in the ground, presumably for snacks of the invertebrate variety. It would bob up and down rather comically. What a day for me to have decided to leave the camera at home! I always take my camera to church with me, but when I saw it that morning, I inexplicably decided… nah.

When I left the room it was still out there. I sought out one of our church members who is a wildlife biologist. He has done some birding, but even though that was not his expertise, he came down straight away. He thought it might be an American Woodcock, but wasn’t sure. When I got home I looked that up, and I have to say, he nailed it.

So three rare (for me) wildlife sightings in as many days, and exactly zero photos of them. Still, just seeing them was a treat for me, and perhaps not being able to take pictures made me observe them more carefully in person.

 

First Day of Spring?

Today is the first day of spring, but it doesn’t look anything like that here. We had a snow storm yesterday, and it dumped nine and a half inches of snow on my house. I am nearly alone in being happy about this, but I do love snow.

This morning I took Penny down to Sandogardy Pond. I wore snowshoes, and she weasel-jumped most of the way. She’s sleeping on the floor near me right now, one tired doggie.

Anyhow, here are the shots I made while I was out.

 

Oak Hill

Friday I had planned to go on a hike in the White Mountains, but I’d have had to have gone alone if I had gone at all. Jonathan was home for the holiday but woke up feeling unwell. David had never committed (too early for him), and I made the mistake of never telling Beth until the evening before. Oops. So instead I puttered around the house.

Jonathan suggested that we hike somewhere on Saturday after church instead. Since I was itching for a nice walk, I immediately suggested Oak Hill, which is part of Concord’s trail system. He began inviting others from church, and pretty soon we had half a dozen people lined up.

This was the goal:

Oak Hill Fire Tower

It was only a little more than a mile from the trailhead, but we had a couple of people along who were not much used to hiking, so that was plenty. Also, it gets dark a little past 4:00pm now, so we only had three hours of daylight for this one.

It was brisk, but quite lovely. When we reached the fire tower we stopped to catch our breath for a few minutes. Then we climbed the tower. I could see Mount Kearsarge to the west.

Mount Kearsarge

Kearsarge is what they call a “prominence” because it stands alone – no other mountains around it. As a result, it’s not nearly as tall as it looks. I’ve been to its peak on several occasions and intend to go back there again one of these days.

Although this trail system is maintained by the City of Concord, the fire tower is just over the town line in Loudon. There’s a stone wall that divides the two towns in the vicinity of the trail, and they have a marker there to designate its significance.

Boundary Marker

Here’s a closer shot of the engraving.

C.L. 1898

I assume “C.L. 1898” Means Concord/Loudon, and that the marker was erected in 1898. It was probably set up shortly after a survey.

We headed back down the trail again shortly after that.

The Descent

I particularly like the look of the trail as it entered this section of hemlock:

Into the Hemlocks

We got back to the trailhead and then took our companions home -in their mother’s van – my car didn’t have enough room for 6 people, so she suggested that we trade vehicles for the afternoon. I thought that was a brilliant plan. 🙂 Too bad I didn’t think to grab my GPS from the car though – there were several geocaches we could have collected along the trail. Maybe next time.

When we got to their house, we ad some hot chocolate and a short visit. Then we went home.

 

East Pond Backpacking Trip

I spent yesterday and a good portion of today backpacking with some of the Pathfinders in my club. Last month I taught a class on backpacking during Honors Week, but no one can get the patch until they have actually gone backpacking. We checked that box today.

When we got to the trailhead, we noticed that Google was there.

One of Google’s Street View vehicles

I had never seen one of these before, and frankly, I was never expecting to. While we were still getting our backpacks out of the cars and paying the use fees to the US Park Service, the Google guys popped out of the forest. They gave some of the kids a partial can of Pringles. I think they were just as excited about having gotten something from the Google guys as they were about getting Pringles.

We set out a little after that, and not far up the trail, I found a neat little spot where the trail comes close to the river. We cooked our lunch there, and the kids all seemed to enjoy the stream. David found a perch in the middle of it, and none of the kids could figure out how he got there. Hint – he can jump farther than they can.

David relaxing in the middle of the stream.

Perhaps two hundred yards upstream from there, the trail crossed the river. We forded it with no issues. David crossed it expertly, but some of the kids were a tad nervous.

Fording the stream

We hiked up, and up, and up. I guess we went in about 2.5 miles which doesn’t seem like much, but with seven kids in tow (plus four adults), and all of them carrying more gear than they should have, it took a while. My plan was to hike all the way to East Pond. I have been there before, but by approaching it from the south. We were coming in from the north. All the while, I was looking for a suitable place to pitch our tents and spend the night, and that was a tough job.

The forest there is loaded with deadfall, and we were hard-pressed to find a place big enough to pitch a tent without it landing on a log. I looked at several places, and then pressed through some really thick hemlock and found a flat, mossy place. It was nice – but I suppose we would have to classify it as a bog. But bog is better than log, so we found the driest places available, pitched our tents, and stowed our sleeping bags in them.

I found some winter berry (Gaultheria hispadula), which I had never seen before. I knew it was in one of my books, but couldn’t recall the name until I looked it up at home.

Winter berry (Gaultheria hispadula)

This is in the same genus as wintergreen, and like wintergreen, it is edible. Most white berries are not, and since I didn’t know this plant, I did not sample it. I will next time though. The books say it tastes just like its close cousin.

I also found this bright red mushroom.

Mario’s mushroom

I have no idea what kind of mushroom it is, and I haven’t looked it up yet. I think it looks like one from any Mario Brother’s video games, so I’m just going to go with that for now.

While pitching the tents we met one minor disaster. One of our tent poles broke. I effected a repair with some duct tape from my pack, and some “available material.”

Tent Splint

This repair was incredibly effective, and I was rather pleased with myself for having made it. I will have to address it on a more permanent basis soon though.

With our tents pitched and bags stowed, we continued up the trail unladen (for the most part).

We didn’t make it all the way to East Pond as I had hoped. Before we got there, turn-around time arrived, so I turned us around and we went back to camp to begin cooking supper while we still had light.

We beat the sun back to our tents and began supper prep. I boiled up a bit of penne pasta with some broccoli, mushrooms, and garlic that I had dehydrated late last week (just in time). Then I tossed in some olive oil. It was very good if I do say so myself.

Mmmm… this was good.

The penny stoves performed pretty well. I did learn of one drawback to using isopropyl alcohol vs denatured alcohol – isopropyl leaves a lot more soot. Everyone (me included) had black all over themselves by the time they were finished handling their pots. It scrubs off the pots easily enough, but I’ve still got it around my fingernails and in my fingerprints. But I think the visible flame (denatured burns with an invisible flame) was well worth the sooty downside.

We didn’t build a campfire. That was partly because there was no good place to sit in the bog without getting wet bottoms, and partly because we were trying to engage in “leave no trace” camping. I don’t think we left a trace either, and I’m pretty pleased about that.

We turned in around 9:00pm, and I got up around 6:30. I ran into some regular wintergreen in bloom – it quit more than a month ago at my house, but I guess the higher altitude made it bloom later here.

Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)

Sorry for the darkness of that shot. It was handheld, and I was in a hurry (nature was calling). I would have gotten a better shot if I had taken the time to set up the tripod and lengthen the exposure time, but… I had to go!

When all the kids were up, I had them strike the tents and load up again. The plan was to hike back down to where he had eaten lunch the previous day. The bog was nice (really! no bugs, and not nearly as wet as one might imagine) but I wanted to eat in a slightly drier spot. That exercise took about two hours. The tent that I repaired has a somewhat porous floor, so Beth’s “pillow” got wet. She stuffed all her clothing in a pillow case, and that meant that all the clothes she had other than her PJ’s were very damp. So she hiked out in her jams.

The stream was just as nice for breakfast as it had been for dinner. I had pancakes (as did several of the kids). Others had oatmeal, and some had dry cereal. We loaded up again at 11:30 (it was a late breakfast) and in thirty more minutes found ourselves at the cars.

Now I have the tents pitched in the back yard to dry the bog off of them. With any luck, I’ll be able to take them down tomorrow, and consider repair strategies for the broken one.

 

Moths

Most of these were around the front door of my house this evening. The one on the screen was on the back door though.

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It was a pretty muggy day here today. I took a walk around my woods with the pruners and a bow saw and widened up my path a bit. Beth has been riding her bike on the path, which is something I would like to see continue. One of these days I’ll get out there with the mattock too and move some of the high spots into the low spots. But for now, riding without getting slapped in the face by a branch will have to do.

 

Buncha Blossoms

Close to the end of the workday today, Va dropped Beth off at my office. She wanted to load some songs on her iPod, and I have been storing those on my desk computer there. We took care of that, and then set out for the Haggett Farm where we camped last week. You might recall that I decided to leave the tents pitched so they’d have a chance to dry. Well, it was time to check them. I figured if any were dry, I could put them away, and if any were not, I could move them into our kitchen shelter where they would stand a fighting chance (the forecast is for showers every day for the next umpteen days).

Wet tents and a dry one

The results were mixed. The tent in the foreground was dry, but the ones behind it were wet. As it turns out, they were the only wet ones of the lot, and their wetness was confined to the inside. You might be saying, “But I only see one tent in the background!” and I could not blame you for that. It was a big part of the problem (if not the sole cause). The girls who used these tents decided to join them together, which is something they were not designed to do. That prevented the flies from being pulled tight, which is a requirement for keeping the rain out. And since they were improperly pitched, they let the rain in, and that’s where it still was when I got there today.

I unstaked them and poured about a cup of water out of each one. Then I moved them into the kitchen. I’ll try again perhaps on Friday.

When we got home, I took Penny out for a lap around our wood lot. Our neighbor has been doing some work.

Change, it is a comin'

He is getting ready to build a house back here. The one on his lot is sort of a shack, and he is anxious to get into some better digs. His parents will be building a second house back there too. Unfortunately for me, this is going to let a lot of light into my woods and completely change its character. The flora I have along this edge of the property is completely different from the flora along the northern border. Down here, I have dewdrops (Dalibarda pratense), dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius), goldthread (Coptis trifolia), and a couple of others that I can’t think of right now. This is the only place I know where these plants grow, and I believe them to be shade lovers. With the neighbor’s woods opening up, I will no longer have the shade they need, so I expect I won’t be enjoying them much longer.

The dwarf ginseng was blooming today though.

Dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius)

I will enjoy it while I can.

Farther up the trail (where the woods are more open), I found a pink lady slipper (Cypripedium acuale) shoot. This should bloom in another two or three weeks.

Pink lady slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

Then I made my way around to the front of the house. Va’s phlox has bloomed.

Phlox

It has not yet reached its full glory, but I expect it will by this weekend.

I also found some white violets.

Violets are white

I do not pretend to know which species this is, but the genus is almost certainly Viola. And the leaves are quite tasty.

At the edge of the yard I have several chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) bushes. This is one that I had misidentified initially, but had enough doubt that I sent a photo of it off to Mr Smarty Plants. They came back with A. melanocarpa.

Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa)

Samuel Thayer has lots of good things to say about this plant, and he stresses over and over again that it is chokeberry, not chokecherry. My bushes don’t produce enough for me to really get more than a taste of their berries.

As I continued my walk, I noticed a gaywing in bloom.

Gaywings (Polygala paucifolia)

I had seen several unopened blooms in the west woods, and took several shots of them. But hey! this one is open. So I chose to post a photo of it, rather than the others. By this time the light was failing. I put the camera on my little tripod (even though the mount is still stripped – guess I need to get a helicoil), backed the F-stop down to the minimum, and took this shot. It’s a little dark, and I don’t like the depth of field too much, but it’s still not too shabby.

Wild strawberry (Fragaria spp)

As I emerged from my little forest and came out onto the driveway, I saw the strawberries in bloom. I have no idea which species of strawberry this is – probably F. virginiana. It is nearly indistinguishable from dewberries, which are in the same genus as blackberries and raspberries. For a long time I thought the dewberries were strawberries, until I found that they produced blackberry drupes instead of strwaberries. They both grow along the edge of the driveway. Dad taught me to tell them apart – dewberries have thorns (little tiny ones) and strawberries do not.

I headed back to the house and checked out the “turn-around” spot in the driveway. There at the edge of that was another violet.

Violets are also blue

Nice.

 

Devil’s Den

A little while ago I found out about a hiking trail in Northfield. It looked interesting, except that it borders I-93, and I don’t generally like spending time within earshot of an Interstate highway. However, the other side of the trail was bounded by the Winnipesaukee River, so I thought it might be worth checking out. Beth and I took Penny there yesterday.

The trail winds through a lush hemlock forest that very much made me think of a rain forest in the Pacific Northwest (though I have never been there).

Dick Smart Conservation Area

Parts of the trail cross a wetland. I think this trail is best used when the ground is frozen, because there are no walkways or bridges. If the mud had not been frozen, I don’t think it would have been a very pleasant walk at all.

Beth hops a stream

I lost count of the number of streams we crossed, but there were at least a half dozen. None were very wide, and I easily hopped over them. Beth had to find a narrower place to cross one of them though.

Stump Seat

Beth really liked the way this stump had been fashioned into a chair. I don’t think it was part of the original trail plan, since the log that came from this stump had a trail blaze painted on it.

Speaking of trail blazes, the trail was not obvious in many places, and the blazes were critical in staying on the track. There were several times when I couldn’t see a blaze at all, so we would go back 10 yards to the last one we saw and scan for another. Sometimes it took a bit of effort to find the next blaze. Usually at those places, the more obvious path was not the trail at all.

Ferns

Between the hemlocks and ferns, the trail was very green, even for December 31. There was also a lot of moss everywhere. Some tree trunks were green with moss for 20 feet or more. I’m not sure, but these might be Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides). I learned about those from a fellow blogger last month. I am slowly learning to recognize various ferns, and it’s nice to add this one to my repertoire.

Beech Nuts!

I was delighted to find beechnuts on the ground. Actually, there were very few nuts, but lots and lots of hulls. There must have been tons of nuts here in October though. I came to love these when we camped in a prolific beech grove in October. I still need to develop a way to conveniently shell these nuts in quantity.

Since camping under the beeches in October, I have found two beeches nearby that make a lot of nuts. One is in downtown Concord, but it’s in someone’s yard. I don’t think I should gather their beechnuts. The other is right here. It’s not as convenient as Sandogardy Pond would be, but it’s way more convenient than Russell Pond. I have walked through the woods around Sandogardy in search of beechnuts, but haven’t found a good source there yet. There are lots of beech trees, but not much in the way of nuts.

But the highlight of the trip was when we found the place that the map calls “Devil’s Den.”

Devil's Den

There was a nice jumble of rocks here, and they made a lot of little dens here and there. I checked this one for bears, and finding none, went inside.

From the inside

Penny didn’t care anything at all about Devil’s Den – all she was concerned about was whether I would throw the stick she brought for me. I obliged.

Ice necklaces

Beth liked these ice necklaces that she spotted in the river. I liked them too, so I tried my hand at capturing them photographically. I did not do them justice though.

We hiked back up to the car again. The total round-trip hike was 1.5 miles. I’m pretty sure we will be coming back again.

 

Blueberries

This evening we Jonathan and I got home, we saw Beth and two of the neighbor kids (Haylee and her little brother) standing at the end of their driveway holding a sign. I couldn’t read it, so I figured I’d walk over there after we parked the car.

But there was no need. Beth came immediately to share her excitement. They had set up a lemonade stand, and had raked in nine dollars. From two customers. On our unpaved, low-traffic road. I don’t know if they sold any lemonade or not. They were also offering bottled water which they got from the Haylee’s mom, and I think some orange juice. They also had some ice cream, but the staff ended up eating that before it melted.

The first customer was our neighbor from across the street. He and his wife each bought something and paid two bucks each for whatever it was they got. (I’m counting them as one customer). The second customer was the UPS delivery guy who paid them five. Nice people! The kids were over the moon.

After dinner I invited Beth to come and look at my dewdrop patch. A new one had opened, and Beth took this photo of it, which is very decent!

Beth's dewdrop (Dalibarda repens)

So now she’s one flower closer to earning the honor we started on Saturday. I think Haylee must have come back out about then, and Beth lost all interest in flowers and in old Dad.

I went out again later, just before sunset. By then Beth was in the living room playing a video game, and Penny was so intent on herding Beth, that she did not hear me put on my shoes (she usually does, and comes running). I slipped out of the house unnoticed.

I checked on a patch of lowbush blueberries, and found a handful that were ripe already:

Lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium)

I picked pretty much all of these that were ripe and ate them on the spot. They were fantastic. Then I headed into the woods.

I didn’t stick to my trail this time. Every now and then I like to walk through the middle of the woods, because there’s a chance I’ll see something I don’t see every day. I was walking very quietly when the neighbor’s dog started barking. I wasn’t sure if it was barking at me or not, so I froze in place. Then I heard something crashing through the woods. It was a whitetail deer!

That would not have been exciting when I lived in Virginia. It was an unusual day back then when I did not see one. I see maybe three a year here in NH.

I remained frozen and slowly turned my head to follow her. She stopped. My camera was still in its bag slung over my shoulder. I slowly went for it. I managed to get it out and get it turned on, but by then she had moved into some thick brush, and I couldn’t get a decent shot. I don’t think she noticed me, but she well may have. Her life literally depends on her ability to do that.

Had Penny been out there with me, the doe would have continued her high-speed escape, and I’d have hardly gotten a glance.

I moved to the front woods after a bit and found an old piece of rope that the kids had abandoned out there. I decided to use it to mark a couple of maple trees I had found earlier this summer. I thought I had only one maple big enough to tap, but I’ve found three more now (quadrupling my potential syrup production).

I also found a couple of nut-bearing beaked hazels on my place. I’ll keep an eye on them too. I’d like to get a couple handfuls of nuts off them this summer. Actually, I’d be happy to get even two or three nuts, much less a whole handful. I am not that hard to please!

 

First Bloom

Two days ago we got about four inches of snow.

March 22

I thought it was beautiful, but a lot of people in these parts grumbled about it. We had more snow today, but no accumulation. It was coming down fluriously around lunchtime. I met Jonathan at the Tea Garden, which is our habit on Thursdays. Along the way I passed a silver maple (Acer saccharinum) and from a distance I could tell that it was in bloom. When I got close, I verified.

Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) blossoms

It is the first blossom I’ve seen this year. It beat the crocus and the hyacinths, and I was glad to see it, even if it does mean I won’t be getting much more in the way of snow this year.

I still have six inches of snowpack at my place. There are, however, a few bare spots in the woods here and there.

I'm melting!

It’s hard to tell if that’s enough to justify snowshoes, or if I’m just putting them on for fun. 🙂 But I did put them on today, and found two or three quarts of sap in my maple bucket. I emptied it into my six gallon jug, and noted that it’s pretty close to half full now. I might have to start boiling it down soon. I don’t have a “real” evaporator – that’s hardly justified for only three gallons of sap, especially since they ask four digits for those on Craigslist. I don’t know why! Instead, I will just use a big soup pot. It worked last time.