Autumn at Archer Vly

As our temps approach 80 degrees this afternoon, it seems strange to recall I was scraping ice off my windshield last Friday morning, preparing to head north up to Archer Vly, a small pond at the mountainous edge of Saratoga County, within the Adirondack region.  Since our leaves had yet to achieve their autumnal glories where I live in Saratoga Springs, I was surprised to discover that many trees had already dropped their leaves as I climbed higher both in altitude and longitude.  I was grateful to see that some autumn brilliance still remained to adorn the pond's shores and be reflected in its mirror-still water.

My friend Ruth Brooks had joined me for a paddle today, eager to immerse herself in northern splendor before she shortly heads to Florida to spend the winter.  For her sake as well as my own, I was delighted to find lots of brilliant foliage edging the shore. The Red Maples were especially spectacular. 

And here and there, the needles of tall Tamaracks (our only deciduous conifer)  had turned a glorious gold before all would be shed for the winter.

Since the morning was frosty cold, we chose the sunny side of the pond to start our circuit of it.  The sun warmed us well, while also enhancing the shining loveliness of Red Maple boughs leaning over the water and golden masses of Slender Sedge lining the shore.

We found other beauties in deep-shaded coves, such as the sculptural shape of these bleached-white twisted roots of a long-ago-fallen tree, nearly luminous against the dark banks.

The large floating heart-shaped leaves of Yellow Pond Lily had turned from green to a gorgeous lemon-yellow.

I was surprised to find floating this deceased Swamp Spreadwings damselfly, still looking so lovely, its colors slightly faded but its wings still glittering.

This species of damselfly (Lestes vigilax) is abundant along these shores in summer, hundreds of them setting the very air to sparkling by their constant fluttering among the emergent shoreline plants. (See the photo below, taken last summer.) The distinctive white band at the end of the abdomen was still quite evident on the one I found floating today.

Well now, here was something I'd never before noticed in this particular body of water, having never seen it anywhere else but in Lens Lake, another Adirondack lake some distance from this one.  This mass of transparent greenish jelly was formed by the colonial microscopic single-celled protozoan called Ophrydium versatile.  The individual cells line up side-by-side in the "blob"and attach themselves to a jelly-like substance they secrete.  They are symbiotic with microscopic Chlorella algae that live inside the Ophrydium cells and give the blob its green color.  That greenish color and transparency were slightly obscured in this case by a coating of silt.

With most of the shoreline wildflowers now wilted and/or gone to seed, our attention today was mostly drawn to what we could find UNDER the water, like those greenish gelatinous blobs mentioned above, or long ropy lengths of Common Bladderwort bearing bulbous growths at their tips, as in the photo below. Those tips, called "turions," are clonal reproductive organs that will break off and be buried in the underwater mud, ready to produce new plants next spring.

I have often been puzzled this time of year by the presence of many uprooted Pipewort plants floating around underwater.  A friend has suggested that the big flocks of migratory geese or ducks might be the cause of this, as they dabble to feed in shallow water, uprooting the Pipeworts in the process.  That sounds about as likely as anything else I have learned or can imagine.

We continued our paddle on the shadier side of the pond, where the banks are steeper and rockier, with long expanses of exposed bedrock that is home to many different mosses.

Since my friend Ruth is a serious student of mosses and other bryophytes, I'm glad she had this chance to examine much of the green stuff that covered the rocks and roots along the still-shaded side of the pond as we made our way back toward our landing. Other pleasures still awaited us, as we enjoyed a great lunch at the nearby Tinney's Tavern in Lake Desolation. New owners have purchased this long-loved establishment, and both of us can assert that the food there is as good as ever, and maybe even better.  They are open for lunch through dinner on Friday and through the weekend, so if you're in the area, give them a try.