The old lumber lands are open to us at last! It was almost exactly 7 years ago that I first learned that vast tracts of land bordered by the Hudson River and formerly lumbered by the Finch Pruyn lumber company were to become part of Moreau Lake State Park. The transformation required lots of actions and transactions by a number of different parties, but all that effort has now paid off, and the Big Bend Preserve is now ready for the rest of us to begin exploring its many features. The entrance to this 880-acre preserve is located along Butler Road in Moreau, with a parking area and signs explaining the significance of this site, not just for those of us desiring to explore these lands, but also for the plants and wildlife that naturally reside here.
My friend Sue Pierce and I had a beautiful day last Friday to meet at the Big Bend Preserve and set off along broad level trails. No motor vehicles are allowed on the trails, but bicycles and horses are, as well as hikers. Open meadows stretched along both sides of the trail, and we could see mountains rising beyond the Hudson River in the distance.
We passed by two separate ponds along the way, where the quiet waters reflected both the cloud-wafting blue sky and the changing colors of the trees that lined the banks of the ponds.
Sue and I did not plan today to walk the entire three-mile loop trail that would take us all the way to the Hudson shore, but we walked as far as where the trail took a sharp turn to enter a more deeply forested area. I believe Sue had heard a bird she was trying to espy among the high branches. I could certainly imagine that the broad meadows and open forest that line these trails would be exactly the right habitat for many kinds of birds and other animals to reside in.
We could glimpse an open area beyond this wooded stretch, and we understand that this area is in the process of being cultivated as a pine barrens. Once the ground is prepared, the land will be seeded with native Wild Lupine, Horse Mint, and other sand-plain plants that support the life cycle of the federally-endangered Karner Blue Butterfly and other denizens of this kind of specialized habitat.
Many of the kind of plants that would thrive in pine barrens were already present now in the trail-bordering meadows. Tufts of our native Little Bluestem Grass bore fluffy seedheads that glittered in the sunlight.
Stands of Round-headed Bushclover lifted cinnamon-colored round seedheads atop stiffly erect stems.
A few of the trailside goldenrods still bore clusters of bright-yellow blooms, and nearly all of these flowers were swaying from the weight of visiting bumblebees stoking up on the last sources of pollen before the first frost arrived to end the blooming season.
This Northern Willowherb plant had already gone to seed, displaying a mass of curling pink pods.
Virginia Creeper vines snaked across the sandy soil, bearing leaves of startlingly vivid scarlet.
The most abundant flowers now were the masses of white asters crowding the side of the sunlit trail.
I find the small white asters quite difficult to distinguish as to species. But the relatively large size of these flowers, their open habit of growth and slender, dark-tipped pointed bracts suggested Frostweed Aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum) to me. The visible hairs on the stems was another clue to that species.
This was another white aster with relatively large flowers, but with narrower petals. Its long, tapered, sharp-pointed leaves virtually announced to me that this was a Lance-leaved Aster (Symphyotricum lanceolatum).
Amid so many white asters, this one with pale lavender flowers was quite the anomaly. The flowers could have belonged to several different species of aster, but the way its larger leaves enlarged at their base and clasped the stem suggested that this was the Wavy-leaved Aster (Symphyotrichum undulatum).
Sue told me that there were had been many more species of flowers blooming when she visited this site a couple of weeks before we explored it together. She even found the remnants of an orchid she had found then, one called Appalachian Ladies' Tresses (Spiranthes arcisepala), hiding among the trailside grasses. What a great indication that we will have lots of botanical treasures to discover as we continue to explore these wonderful new trails at Big Bend Preserve!
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