Walks
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Finding flora
Blue sky was unexpected, so we seized the day. Though my camera is still in the shop, the cell phone worked to capture some memories.
We were hoping to see some early ferns and wildflowers, and we weren’t disappointed.
Sensitive fern 
Pasture rose 
Trillium 
Wild cherry The May apples had formed buds since last week:
(May apple bud, photo-bombed by Lucy) The high point of the walk was the waterfall and old stone bridge.
That tree on the bank is always striking to me. It looks like it’s tip-toeing down to go wading.
The walk back yielded some artistic moss etchings on rocks…
As well as more ferns, more moss, and a tiny toad.
Christmas fern (?) 
On the whole it was a thoroughly enjoyable expedition with sights from small…
Bird’s eye speedwell …to tall.
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Summer Falls
Wild geranium at the entrance to the trail 
The first of many stairs 
One example of the harmony between human stairs and natural stairs 
There’s always a mixture of darkness and light 
Greenery is everywhere 
There were brook trout in most of the pools, waiting for the next rain to raise the water level and carry them further down the falls 
Sun peeks through 
Peace 
Forget-me-nots along the bank 
A female mallard that plopped in for a rest while we watched 
Turning to look back down the stream This is a 3/4 mile walk along a gorge, but that short span includes something like a 600 foot rise in elevation. We climbed a lot of stairs, then walked down the other side on a more gradual trail. It was an absolutely lovely day.
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Salamander Season
We discovered yesterday that we’d completely missed a chapter of spring. It seems early, but there were lots of signs of the season advancing, including salamanders cruising about among the dead leaves in one of our favorite pools.
Eggs had already hatched into plump tadpoles.
Some frogs were floating about. This one’s trying to remain incognito, and she almost succeeded in getting stepped on.
There were various signatures of creatures who were out and about and carving their names on trees.
The wind had left its mark too. This tree had been split in two and turned into a drinking trough.
And this was one of many that had been plucked up by the roots.
We saw some kinglets, and a few geese squabbling endlessly over their own patch of pond. We also saw a new beaver lodge, and lots of signs of the beaver’s activity on trees along the bank:
It was sunny and mild, and the green was just starting to show in the landscape.
On the whole it was a thoroughly enjoyable walk! Even though our winter has been unusually mild, the sight of new growth always marks a welcome change.
A friend tells me this flower is called coltsfoot. It’s one of the earliest spots of color to be seen in the mud along the roadsides. -
Chipmunks or deer?
New Monarch 
Resting deer 
Water droplets 
Bracket fungus (also a nice shelf for a nutshell) 
Squirrel Nutkin 
Lichen-covered stump 
Weird yellow fungus 
Bracket fungus 
Fall garter snake 
“Not in my back yard!” 
Sassafrass 
Tiny toad 
Dragonfly 
White-throated sparrow “What would you say?” I asked my daughter on our way out of the woods. “Was this walk mostly about chipmunks or deer?”
“Chipmunks, probably,” she answered.
But three deer, resting and grazing, were the first things we saw — after the monarch mudskipping in the parking lot. Later, we heard the snorty scream of a deer warning call, followed by some banging sounds, and then a young buck running through the woods across the creek from us. Could he have been clashing antlers with another deer? Or did he get stuck in a tight spot somewhere? Strange. We back tracked to see if we could get another look at him, and though we did see him we didn’t get any pics. Still another young deer bid us goodbye as we left the woods, too. They were surely out and about.
The chipmunks were definitely impossible to ignore, however! They scampered everywhere and chirped till the woods rang with it, warning everyone that we were intruding. The little guy pictured in the log was close enough to his safety zone to indulge his curiosity about us somewhat before disappearing inside.
The other story, for me, was the busyness and color of the woods. It shows up especially in the stream/bridge pictures. It’s difficult to find a single area of the scene that isn’t already brimfull of other outlines. It reminds me of those art class exercises where you are instructed to fill every space with a different pattern.
Not a ton of color this fall — mostly yellows and rust colors. It’s been dry. But it’s enough to tint the sunlight, giving it a beautiful burnished glow before it hits the ground.
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Pathway ponderings
Older Daughter and I took a walk down a familiar trail the other day. It was midafternoon and there wasn’t much wildlife to be seen. But this woodpecker tree was one of several reminders that the woodland inhabitants were alive and well.
The trail wound invitingly among ferns and trees. We’ll have a few months of color, then the winter monchromatic palette will be back in play.
“Green thoughts in a green shade” I thought this fuzzy fungus was a mouse at first.
We descended to a favorite spot along the creek, a small waterfall that always invites us for a picnic (though we never have one packed).
The picturesque scene hides a tragedy. The water was low enough that we walked up the creekbed instead of returning to the trail. At the base of the falls, hidden here by the pile of flood debris, was a dead rabbit, soaked with mud, eyes still open in panic. Somehow it had been washed down the creek and killed.
It was a disturbing sight. I’ve often noticed the waste of roadkill — animals hit by cars by accident. Nature is usually more purposeful, and a favorite mantra of nature writers is “the economy of nature.” But this was an example of pure accident. I couldn’t help brooding over it as we walked on.
Looking back downstream Raccoons had left their prints along the edge, attracted by the crayfish and frogs.
Did someone say “frogs”? It was a nice walk, though we were out at the wrong time of day to see any early warblers coming through on their way back south. The almanac predicts another harsh winter, and I saw some warblers on the move when we vacationed north of here a few weeks ago. Hopefully we’ll see a few in the days to come.
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Bald Mountain
Another place we visited on our Adirondack vacation was Bald Mountain. It was a popular place the day we were there! There is a fire tower on the granite crest of the hill that you can climb to look out over the Fulton Chain of lakes. I’ve climbed it in the past, but not this year — the nice solid ground provides a sufficient vantage point for me!
Bloom where you’re planted! 
Touches of fall 
Our most sure-footed hiker -
Revisiting Ferd’s Bog
Lucy, our trusty hiking companion, urges us on One of the places I love to visit in the Adirondacks is Ferd’s Bog, a 50-acre tract of boreal forest surrounding a black spruce bog. I first visited it in 2011, and the bog was filled with pitcher plants; I posted a picture of them here, at my other blog. I haven’t seen the pitcher plants for the last three years, though, and I suspect that people may be venturing off the boardwalk (judging from the many trampled trails I saw into the grasses) and taking them. It’s both foolish (since they won’t grow anywhere else — they grow in the bog because it’s acidic) and selfish (since it alters the ecosystem, prevents others from experiencing it, and even breaks the law by taking plants from a protected area). I hate to sound so negative, but it’s sad to see. I’m not sure whether the process can be reversed or not.
Nevertheless, the walk through the woods into the bog retains its primeval character. There are apparently many interesting birds that inhabit the area, but I haven’t seen any of them: gray jays, boreal chickadees, black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers, for example. But the many plants, trees and mosses always grab my attention and make the walk seem magical.
Here are a few pics from my most recent foray in.
Trail 
Lichen 
You descend into the bog — and climb back out 
A stump beautifully furred with mosses 
Wood between the worlds 
Boardwalk into the open bog 
Micro-world 
Creeping snowberry 
Stump host for all kinds of plants 
Open bog — the black flecks are dragonflies. The air was thick with them. 
Quietness — no sound but a single white-throated sparrow 
Big sky country 
Boardwalk leading back into the woods 
Follow the yellow — er, white — brick road 
The trail back out 
Red toadstool 
A tree bearded with mosses 
Red berries — not sure what kind 
Polished roots 
Evergreens 
Baby evergreens 
Log overtaken with other plants 
Decomposition 
Woodland benediction Some pics of Ferd’s Bog from last year are included here. Some from the year before are here.
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Brave blooms and a spring stream
They look like they’ve just arrived from someplace warmer, a small group of tourists looking hopefully around for accommodations.
Then there’s this one, growing in a tiny stream. Bloom where you’re planted.
We enjoyed the gorgeous glen on a sunny day. The joyous spring sound of rushing water was everywhere.
Wet-loving plants and mosses adorned the shale walls and dead trees.
I was taken with the sense of heights as we walked down the streambed. Everywhere, the steep banks invited us to look upward toward the sun.
The contrast between light and dimness caught my attention. So did the contrast between beauty and violence. You can’t get a stream picture that doesn’t include trees fallen down steep banks, broken and rotting — or great stones tumbled who knows how far by the water at its strongest.
Someone had created a space for humans along one part of the bank.
I, along with my daughters, joined in. We left our names there beside a growing number of others.
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Heroic ages
Thoreau wrote that morning brings back the heroic ages. I find that I’m much less eloquent about my morning walk the other day. I just enjoyed it. I liked the way the boardwalk zig-zagged mysteriously, and how it straightened out like a runway.
Then it was back into curving mystery.
The trees made another avenue along the meadow.
And bits of color from moss and bracket fungus showed a “land down under” that thrives even in a very chilly April when few leaves seem to want to open.
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Walking
The eastern towhee was back in the lower meadow, calling out at the start of my early morning walk yesterday: “Drink your tea!”
The robins were busy about their breakfast in the dewy grass.
As I walked, I felt a little dejected that neither of my daughters had taken the opportunity to come along. But it didn’t take long to recognize that in fact I was having a very good time being completely alone.
I thought about a meditation I’d heard recently on the idea that any human artistry has to begin with what’s already created — therefore it has to begin with gratitude. I thought about how I was walking through a work of art, and I did feel grateful.
I’ve said I was alone. Not entirely. I prayed, and so that level of conversation affirmed a companionship. There were plenty of sounds and critters to testify to the community of wild things around me, too: chickadees, kinglets, woodpeckers, chipmunks and squirrels, a ruffed grouse making its sound of a dribbling basketball off in the distance.
My favorite parts were the times I stood still and waited. In one of those listening times, a silent, shivering oven bird showed herself.
A little farther along and I reached a favorite spot. The green along this stream, and the glittering reflections, invited me to linger and think.
A short climb, and I reached the upper meadow.
More birds here, including flickers…
…and many a chattering goldfinch.
This demure song sparrow rustled quietly in a bush next to me.
And a rabbit briefly considered whether I was to be trusted before beating a hasty retreat.
I was thinking about developments in my life — decisions made, attitudes held — when I turned around to survey the view behind me and saw what seemed a perfect picture of Frost’s “Road Not Taken“:
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.The poem’s last two lines are the ones usually quoted, but they are really spoken tongue-in-cheek. The speaker has just told us that he had trouble deciding which path to take because both were worn “about the same.” The difference was slight. But he knew he’d look back and try to read more significance into the choice he’d made. In any case it seemed a fitting sight, and a fitting allusion, just at that moment. I’d already passed both “roads” and was looking back, as the poem does.
Thoreau says (in “Walking”) that a person has no business walking if they are preoccupied with their thoughts:
…it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is; I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
I was guilty of this. Yet there was much, still, that I noticed and enjoyed. There is something about knowing that life independent of me is busy all around that sets me free from trying to keep track of everything, and allows me to hear the inner voice. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I stayed out for several hours — almost long enough to grow moss and lichen, like some of the trees.
