smatterings

Walk with me Wednesday.. better late than never

At the beginning of the summer, we promised ourselves that we would take Wednesday afternoons off and go somewhere.  It didn't happen. Things got in the way.  We were always too busy.  But after last Sunday's jaunt to a nature preserve, which we thoroughly enjoyed, we decided to make sure to have this past Wednesday afternoon free.  I was going to tell you about the picnic, the pork and sweet potato pie, and the chocolate cake, but there isn't room in one post.  We ended up in a magic forest.  It had to have been .  Where else would you walk through a field of dragonflies..?  Thousands of them, flying as a cloud around you, hitting each other with a clear clacking sound.  I tried to hold the camera and get a short video.  It's not much, and terribly blurry.  Watch it, then close your eyes and imagine, dragonflies, or fairies. 

The trail lead across the field.  There we entered a forest of twisted trees, limbs reaching overhead and across the path to meet their neighbors on the other side.  We passed through the wood, walking in a shadowy, sun spattered tunnel. 

After nearly a mile, we came out of the wood.  In front of us was a huge salt pond.  Beyond it, the ocean. 

There was an observation deck. 

Across the pond, sat an osprey on it's nest.  Atop a nearby tree, sat the mate.  They were too far away to photograph with the camera I had.  

  Let me help you..   guess you had to be there.

 

       Trustom Pond Wildlife Refuge.  Amazing place.

Here's a link to some amazing info on dragonflies.  Everything that I've read about swarms indicates that although food, mating and migration may be the answer, no one is really sure.  There was a lot of food around, and the time of year is perfect for migration. 

Don't you love a little mystery?

walk with me wednesday

hours of blue
days of gray

That best describes the summer thus far.  Last weekend, finally, there were more hours of blue.  It was wonderful.  Sunday morning, the logger that I'd had cut a blow down area, came by to move his skidder up the road to a neighboring farm.  I walked the trimmed out woods road with him, checking to see if things had dried enough to get to some large downed maples I wanted to pull out for firewood.  Things are drying, but not dry enough to keep from rutting things up.  Maybe a few more weeks.  Maybe.  A bit later, another neighbor stopped by to check the list of the barn.  I like to double check it every year or so.  The sills are on the ground, not on footings or a foundation so it moves around with the moisture and temperature each season.  Sort of like a boat on the water.  Sort of.  While he was there, we started talking about the family of Canada geese that the town had been home to all summer.  We thought of them as "ours".  So did everyone else with a pond.  All seventeen of them made it through the spring and summer.  Now that the goslings have learned to fly, we no longer see them walking out of the woods, coming the last quarter mile up the hill from my closest neighbor.   They've expanded their home territory from what I think was about 1/2 mile square, to perhaps a mile or so, as the goose flies, of course.  I'd heard them fly in about dusk, announcing themselves and sending out an invitation to another group in the area.  Party night.  I hoped they'd stay away from the yard.  Thirty odd adult geese make an awful mess.  They did, and in the early morning, I heard them take off again. 

In the late afternoon, I left my shoes on the bank,

and paddled out to see where my summer neighbors were making their homes.  

 I found the entrance to the otters' den, several for the muskrat, 

and what I hope is the abandoned beginnings of the beaver's lodge.  I never successfully trapped him this summer.  I did get him in the trap once, but.... he, being the largest beaver I've seen in a while, ripped the door off of the trap and got away just as I got to him.  

 

This year's geese may be back next year.  The two sets of parents made their home here for the last two years.  The population has apparently been increasing.  An article in the local paper noted an increase in the bag limit for Canada Geese this year to five per day.  It said that the local population needed to decrease before the transients come through.  Seems like a lot to me.  Fly away quickly my friends.  I saw a red leaf.

walk with me wednesday

... out of winter and into spring.

I hear it everywhere.  The casual hello at the market, the how are you doing at the post office, my mom on the phone, everywhere it follows with,  it feels like spring.  Rubbing it in, she goes on to tell me the aconite in her yard are nearly over, the snowdrops already gone .  It's hard to imagine looking out my windows.  But, the sap is flowing and last Sunday saw the start of boiling.  I hear from neighbors that it will be a good year.  Perfect weather.  Sugaring and spring go together.

There is another harbinger of spring and I can see them by the change of color down by the pond.

The light these days is so bright on the snow that I've taken to wearing sun glasses.  It is impossible to get a picture that doesn't feel too purple, too blue, to bright, to contrasty.  With the snow crusting, I decide to walk to the dam without snowshoes.  It was almost hard enough, not quite. 

Breaking through a crust is hard work, especially when you find yourself up to your knees, even thigh deep in the snow.  Too late to turn back, I walk on, a few steps on top giving me confidence, the next few crashing through.   This kind of walk is exhausting but I'm on a mission.  In my pocket are pruners and over my shoulder a large bag.

The pussy willows are out.   

These are the males.  Until recently, I didn't now that the stems that I cut, the bushes bearing the furry little pussy willows, were the males. 

walk with me wednesday

There was a little discussion taking place inside my head all morning.   It was, more accurately, an argument, a rationalization.  I wanted a walk.  Outside, little clouds of blowing snow crystals swirled up the hill.  They distracted me from my work.  I really needed to get outside.  It had been since last Thursday that I'd been cooped up with a bug.  The first couple days hardly out of bed.  But, 20F was hardly balmy.  There wasn't enough snow for snow shoes and my boots weren't as high as the foot of snow that was on the ground.  Walking on the roads wasn't going to do it for me.  It wasn't just the exercise that I was after.   I'd have to go to a trail where the snow would be packed down, broken by others like minded.  It was.  As I approached the trail, I could see the only other person there was packing up his X-country skis to leave.  I'd have the woods to myself.  Perfect.

Someone once pointed out to me that New England is special when it comes to rocks.  We have ledge popping out everywhere.  Backbone, bedrock, spine.

Perfect backdrops for shadows and shelter from the wind.

We have transient rock.  Glaciers rolled them along, dropping them here and there, chips in a cookie.

Several times I passed puffs of fur.  Only fur, no signs of a hunt.   Dog, I think. 

Snow obscures the familiar and provides a canvas for the new.   I can see tracks going up, vertical climbers.  Squirrels.

The walk was only a mile and a half.  I got my exercise.

walk with me wednesday

Maybe it was the Blizzard of 1978.  That was the storm that closed Interstate 95 through Rhode Island for one week.  Maybe not.  Thing is, that in southern New England, the forecast of a winter storm sends the population into a frenzy and into the grocery stores to prepare, stripping the shelves of bread and milk.  It has become a local joke, much like Boston's French Toast alert.  I prepare in other ways.  Like getting a walk in and putting aside jugs of water.  My own necessities. 

The forecast for today was for ice, thick and slippery. 

Yesterday the snow was crunchy, the air snappy.  Perfect for a trek through the woods. 
 The stream had thawed with the warmer days. 

Do you know the sound that water makes when it flows around and under ice?  Beautiful music. 

walk with me wednesday.. with beaver

Everybody has "their thing" that they do.  You know what I mean, for example, baking chocolate chip cookies, or the best lasagna. For me, one of my "things" is that I seem to have the ability to trap beavers.  Don't laugh.  If you live on a pond, it is a great skill to have.  Years ago, we had to shoot them or worse yet, set the killer bear traps for the beavers that settled here.  It  was awful.  Beavers are smart, beautiful animals.  I can't bear to kill them, especially when so many people want ponds built on their properties.  Depending on where you live, it isn't always easy to get a permit to turn a wetland into a pond.  Beavers don't get permits.  That makes it pretty handy to have a beaver ready and more than willing to work.  My preferred method is to set a Hav-a-Hart trap.  Live trapping, uninjured.  I brag about the year that I trapped the offender in the first 15 minutes after setting the trap.  Usually, I get them within hours.  NOT this year.  It was a solid week.  Every morning with my first cup of coffee and every night before I went to bed, I'd walk down to the trap and make sure that no one was inside.  There isn't any point to stressing an animal any more than necessary.  I move them as soon as I find them.  This little beaver was so smart.  He had it down.  Day after day I found that he'd poked long sticks into the trap and released it.  One day I found that he'd somehow been able to block the entrance and partially fill the inside with mud and pond weed, his specialty.  On my evening checks, he'd be waiting a bit offshore and smack the water with his tail several times to scare me away.  I was beginning to think that this one would be the beaver that got away, or that we'd have to get rid of by other means.  My neighbor had complained that his field behind the pond was too wet to pasture.  There has been so much rain and the beaver had taken full advantage. The water level was really high.  My damn was soggy.  What the beaver built at night, I'd break down in the morning.  Lines had been drawn.  He had to go.

Location is everything.  Not here? maybe here??  Suble difference.  As the water level changes, so does the trap position.

Got 'em!

This little guy was so beautiful.  I wanted to dig my fingers into his fur coat.  It was long and shiny and so soft looking.  I didn't.   When it came to the release, he wasn't about to turn his back on me.  I had to dump him out of the trap.  Poor thing, he hissed and backed away. 

Did you know that beaver hiss? 

walk with me wednesday

It's a good thing that I think a rainy day is beautiful.  A very good thing.  It started to rain on the second day of our drive to the Outer Banks and didn't clear until the morning we left to drive north.  According to Weather Bug, the day time temperatures were the same in North Carolina as northern Vermont.  It was cold, foggy, windy, damp, rainy and beautiful!  The waves were enormous trashing monsters.  LOUD!  There is nothing like a storm at the beach.  Each day, I bundled up in fleece and rain gear and headed up the beach to the preserve.   A sweet neighbor loaned us his jeep one afternoon.  The rain had cleared and the fog settled heavily at the water's edge.  In the dunes, the was a bit of sun.  And, wild horses! 

Can you see him?   

No road trip is complete without some great bridges.  There is something about them... this one is in Delaware.  I go out of my way to cross a good bridge.

I wish I had a picture of the bald eagle... magnificent, and a rare sight for a New Englander.

walk with me wednesday.. small worlds

Even as a child, I was fascinated by what I saw as small worlds, miniature gardens.  Last month my niece came to visit.  As we walked down to the barn one morning during her stay, I noticed that the snow fleas * were out, in force.  It is a bit hard to pretend that they aren't there when the snow is literally peppered with them, jumping around.  If you aren't familiar with snow fleas, you might know them as "springtails".  As she reached down to grab a fistful of snow, probably to eat, I said, (not wanting to alarm her or gross her out too much) ooohhh... look, the springtails are here!  At this point I'm thinking that she'll never want to play in the snow after seeing all of those bugs.  But, a wonderful thing happened.  She said, 'It's like Horton Hears a Who.  There's a whole world in my hand.'  And that was the start of a wonderful conversation. 

On my last good snow shoe hike, I found these little gardens, worlds unto themselves.

When I see something like this, my imagination kicks in..

Someone should write a book.

* Achorutes nivicolus 

walk with me wednesday

It is still winter.  Here in the Kingdom we want to eek out every minute of winter we can before spring magically arrives tomorrow.  And so we shall....it should snow most of tonight, giving us an additional 5 inches before it calls it quits.  Lately there have been lots of days above freezing.  At night, the temps plummet.  The snow crusts on the top, a bit more falls and the result is fantastic snow shoe conditions!  Yesterday, I spent about four hours on top of the snow, not exactly relaxing but beautiful.  The boundaries had to be marked, clearly and with red tape.  Remember the logging issue?  The logger needs some reminders, a bit of gentle direction, a whack if he gets any closer.  There isn't a better time to do this kind of work.  No bugs, no tangled undergrowth (it is buried  under all the snow) and no leaves to hide previous markers.  As long as you don't have to dig for pins, it is easy going.  I wasn't the only one out.  Everybody in the woods is waking up.  They've got the calendar marked.  It is weird and it is wonderful, how everything knows.  Tracks are everywhere, beginning at my front door.

There were a lot of visitors checking to see if the otters were in town.  I think they ate themselves out of house and home last year. I've only seen one, and he was passing through.

The fisher was here, I saw his prints in a few locations, mostly near the hemlocks.

There are always coyotes.  They were after something I didn't find. 

The streams are barely visible. 

Spring is still... Undercover...

walk with me wednesday

March already and it feels like sugaring season. The days are longer, nights are cold, days are in the 20s, 30s and 40s. The back of winter has broken... yeah, right.  My family rolled in last Saturday to what they say is the most snow they have ever seen.  Probably is. 

That picture of the barn was taken two days ago, before the last weather trifecta (snow, sleet, and freezing rain) hit.   We've taken to plowing around the backside of the barn as there isn't anymore room for the roof to shed.  While those who ski, ski, those of use who remain behind go walking. 

Breaking through into the hip deep snow presents challenges.  It is hard to get back up onto your shoes, a helping hand makes a big difference.

I don't usually have company on my show shoe walks.  What a pleasure, extra feet pack  tomorrow's trails easily.  When we cross into the field, I spotted an existing trail, someone had come through here recently.  Great news for us, no break through.  We walked on top.  The fence lines have long disappeared.  We found this one  as we stepped onto a wire.

walking up the drive to the house.