Late Fall on the Fen

 "Come on in!  The water's fine!"  And Sue was right, the water was fine for a paddle through the Glen Lake Fen today.  Too cold for a swim, of course, but with high water filling channels now clear of frost-killed lily pads, we could paddle way, way back into the fen to parts we could not slog through in high summer.

Who knows how far we could have paddled, if we hadn't run into this beaver dam?  Sure, we could have climbed out and hauled our boats over, but it was just too chilly this morning to risk a possible tumble into that cold, cold water.  So we turned around here, deep into the fen in an area marked by a number of beaver lodges and many beaver-felled trees.  Sue just couldn't stop remarking about what a great turtle habitat this will be, come summer.

I am more grateful than I can say to have a friend who knows how to amble slowly along a boggy shore, poking into the reeds, trying to identify the remnants of summer's flowers, stopping to photograph the odd anomalous aspect, and just generally reveling in the delights of a bright crisp day to glide along on a beautiful waterway before the ice closes in.

We explored the shore of a Tamarack-studded island, noting the presence of such bog-loving plants as this Bog Rosemary, distinctively purple against the brown-grass background.

We found just one Pitcher Plant,  ruby-red in that cold blue water, its single flower still erect and intact.

It was Sue who noticed a whole bank of Bunchberry plants, their leaves the most radiant shades of pinky-purple against a carpet of moss and lichens.

Judging from all the rose hips along the banks, the air must surely have been filled with fragrance in summer.

The remains of Canada Lilies stood out, with their stout pods split open to reveal neatly stacked layers of dark red seeds.  (On second thought, these could be the pods of Blue Flag instead.)

Smooth Sumac is now in its glory, its crimson berry clusters held high against the dun background.  What lovely Christmas decorations they would make, adorning sprays of evergreens!  I wonder how long they keep that gorgeous color.  Do they darken with winter's freeze? 

For part of our journey today, we were accompanied by a soaring Osprey, who wheeled overhead, then flapped away, only to return shortly to settle into a tree and observe our approach.   I sure wish I had a telephoto lens.  I can make out that Osprey at the very center of this photo, only because I know he is there.  Of course, he flew away again as we drew abreast.  A breathtaking sight!

A Brief Paddle, A New Mushroom

A gorgeous blue-sky day today, and Sue and I wanted to paddle.  Rivers and creeks are too turbulent still, so Sue suggested the fen at Glen Lake, a beautiful wetland with meandering channels, resident waterfowl, and dramatic views of the mountains that surround Lake George. It sure looked lovely this morning, with baby Red Maples already turning scarlet and a noble Great Blue Heron there in its midst, adding his handsome profile to the scene.

With all the recent rain, the water level in the fen should have been high enough to grant us access to its farthest reaches.  Well, we tried, as these upturned Water Lily pads attest, their red-backed leaves standing erect to mark where we paddled through them.  But we didn't get far.  The water was high enough, but the channels were clogged with so much Eurasion Milfoil we could only progress by poling and hitching.  It felt like trying to paddle through porridge.  No fun at all!  So we made our way back to shore and went for a walk instead.

The fen at Glen Lake is bordered by the Warren County Bike Path, which runs from Glens Falls to Lake George.  We set out to walk along the bike path but soon left the pavement to enter a dark cool woods, where we found huge numbers of many different kinds of mushrooms.  Among the most brightly colored mushrooms were these chrome-yellow ones with slimy caps and with brownish flakes around the edges that made them look like little lemon pies.  They were vey numerous under stands of White Pine.

Curious as to what this mushroom could be, I bent down and picked one to examine its structure.  The first thing I noticed was the absence of gills and the presence instead of the distinctive pores that mark this mushroom as one of the boletes.  In this case, the pores were as yellow as the caps, and so was the stem.

I next noticed that these yellow pores promptly stained brown where my fingers had crushed them.  My fingers also turned brown where they were slick from touching the slimy caps.  I noticed the mushrooms had a rather pleasant fragrance, so I wondered if they might be the kind of boletus that's good to eat.  Sue gave me a plastic bag from her pack, and I picked a nice mess to take home for positive identification.

After searching all my mushroom guides and looking at lots of images on the internet, I was convinced that this mushroom was Suillus americanus, with common names of White Pine Bolete or Chicken-fat Suillus.  All sources mentioned that this species was, indeed, a good edible,  so I washed the pine needles off, dried them carefully, then sliced a few and fried them up in butter.

So how did they taste?  Meh.  To me, not so good.  They stayed kind of slimy and gelatinous, although I tried to fry them crisp.  They smelled delicious, but they had a kind of lemony acidity that I didn't much care for.  My husband, though, thought they tasted great, and he ate them all up.  As for me, I'll stick to morels when I crave wild mushrooms.