A Short Walk Along the River

Well, darn it all! I wasted most of yesterday's mild and pleasant day doing housekeeping stuff that could have waited, and all of a sudden it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon.  That gave me only an hour or two before I had to start dinner.  Lucky for me, I'm surrounded by gorgeous areas that can feed my nature-needy soul in brief visits.  And many are also easy to access.  The Hudson River along Spier Falls Road at Moreau is a case in point. I made a quick trip over Mt. McGregor, zipped down the road to the Sherman Island Boat Launch Site, stepped from my car, walked to the riverside, and stood in awe at the beauty before me, the momentarily sunlit shore bathed in the golden light of a wintertime late-afternoon.

Even the seedpods of last summer's flowers appeared lovely in this light.  The spent Meadowsweet's stems were gilded, and the split-open pods of Great St. John's Wort seemed to glow as if lit from within.

The stillness was unbroken by sounds of birds or beasts, but this felled birch testified to the presence of beavers nearby.

While walking in the nearby woods, I came upon another downed birch, this one's decomposition helped along by a mass of the black-colored, pebbly-textured fungus called Birch Woodwart (Hypoxylon multiforme).

As I walked along Spier Falls Road toward the dam, I paused to observe this waterfall plunging down the mountainside, its waters noisily splashing and dancing, fed by snowmelt and recent rains to an unexpected fullness for this time of year.

Directly across the road from the Spier Falls Dam lies one of the quarries where rock was carved out of the mountainside to provide material to build this hydroelectric dam, the largest privately-owned dam in the country at the time of its completion in 1903.  During the winter, cascades of ice form on the face of these quarry walls, fed by springs that constantly water the rock.  Recent rains and above-freezing weather have diminished the ordinarily thick ice sheets that normally cover these cliffs.

But enough of the ice remains to remind us of how beautiful frozen water can be.

The spring-dampened rocks here are home to a marvelous variety of mosses, all plumped by the wetness and gorgeously green all year long.

This Dog Lichen, too, looked especially glossy and plump where it clung to the rock, its wrinkled dark-green leaves interspersed with upright flaps of tan fruiting bodies.  I suspect this might be the species called Peltigera membranacea, due to its glossiness and the upright nature of its fruiting bodies.  (Opinions from folks more knowledgable than I are very welcome.)

UPDATE:  I have heard from bryologist Tom Phillips that this Dog Lichen is much more likely the species Peltigera praetextata, a much more common species than the similar-looking P. membranacea, which Tom told me is quite rare in New York.

Chunks of quarried rock lie scattered across the forest floor, and a hibernal pool, fed by melting ice and snow,  has formed in a deep depression

Bright-yellow Lemon Drop Fungus (Bisporella citrina) has decorated a fallen limb that lies near the edge of the pool.

If our winter would only grant us some cold and snow, it's likely this quarry site will be visited by folks who practice their ice-climbing skills on the ice-covered quarry walls.  For the present, the steep walls and jutting rocks offer some challenges to those who like to climb rocks.

My own challenge at this point was to make my way back to the road and arrive home by dinnertime. To do this, I pushed through Asian Bittersweet tangles and climbed over some largish boulders.  This particular boulder caught my eye because of the big pink crustose lichen that decorated its face.

Unfortunately, my only lichen guidebook contains no photos of pink crustose lichens, and a Google search turned up only those pink crustose lichens that thrive in the tropics.  Global warming may be robbing us of our normal snow and ice, but we're definitely not the tropics! So this pretty thing will remain a mystery to me for the present.  Its name will, that is.  Its beauty and interest won't.