A Sparkling Day on the Mountain

Bright sun, blue sky, and just a dusting of new snow on the mountain trails at Moreau Lake State Park:  conditions were perfect Sunday for a hike to the Spring Overlook and beyond to the Tupelo Swamp.  My friend Sue met me at the trailhead on Spier Falls Road, and off we climbed, Yaktrax on our feet to keep us upright on the steep, icy, snow-covered trail. 

Although the day promised to warm to above-freezing temperatures, the newly fallen flakes were still cold enough when we started up the trail to dazzle us with their multicolored sparkles.  It's an interesting phenomenon, and one I can't explain, that sometimes the snowflakes behave like tiny prisms, flashing all the colors of the rainbow.  It's hard to capture this effect with a camera, but these two shots (the second with boosted saturation) show something of what we saw with our eyes.

I was eager to show Sue the big old Black Tupelos that my friend Laurie had taken me to last week, which are growing in a swamp way up in the Palmertown Mountains.  We would get there eventually, Sue and I, but first we had to stop to explore the gigantic rock formations that tower over the Spring Overlook.  These rocks are watered by little seeping springs that create lovely icicle spills in the winter and also create perfect habitat for a rich variety of colorful mosses, lichens, and liverworts.

We stopped for a snack while we took in the splendid view of the Hudson River from the overlook, and then proceeded to the swamp that lies in a central area of the Palmertown mountains.  Our trail took us through beech and hemlock stands, each forest type with its own quality of light and companion vegetation,  and we then left the trail to follow a rock ledge down into the swamp where the tupelos grow.  I was eager to show these trees to my friend, but I also wanted to make sure that I myself could find them again.  And I did.  But it took a little searching.  It's hard to believe that a tree that towered over all others in this swamp would be hard to find, but the surrounding hemlocks did their best to hide this tree's distinctive twiggy crown from view until we were right beneath it.

These tupelos are of such an unusual size (for tupelos) that I hope we can interest some dendrologist in doing core sampling to determine their age.  This part of the country was so extensively lumbered over the past centuries, hardly any trees of great age remain.  It would be quite exciting to know we had some ancients among us here in Moreau Lake State Park.  In a neighboring state forest a few miles away, Black Tupelos there have been dated at 600 to 800 years old.


I don't know what kind of ancient fallen tree has formed a nursery bed for these vividly colored Turkey Tails.   Whatever it is, it has produced a fungus of remarkable beauty.

On our descent from the mountain heights, we passed a row of craggy cliffs adorned with spectacular ice formations.

Below these cliffs lies a powerline access road, well traveled by both hikers' feet and power-company vehicles.  In the very middle of this hard-packed dirt road are several patches of Pink Earth Lichen, whose dainty appearance and diminutive size belie its extreme hardiness and tolerance for abuse.  I always go out of my way when I'm near this road to stop and admire these tiny pink lolllipops, so minute that most folks would walk right over them and never see them.  I don't know how I, with my very bad eyesight, ever came to see them in the first place, but I'm really glad I did.  And they're there, unchanged, in every season, seemingly as unaffected by the weather as they are to pounding traffic.

Beautiful Barks Along Bog Meadow

 Well, so much for our soft white snow.  Yesterday's all-day rain and today's high temperatures have destroyed all the snow and turned all the trails to wet mud by this afternoon.  Luckily, I did get out for a walk yesterday, despite a constant drizzle, choosing the Bog Meadow Nature Trail just outside Saratoga.  As this photo shows, Bog Meadow Trail is long and straight, and if one wants to walk quickly for exercise, this is a good place to do it -- especially when the trail's underlying railroad ties are thickly padded with a blanket of snow.  Even soggy wet snow.  I wore my waterproof boots.

I expected I would swing briskly along, work up a little healthy sweat, since there's not much to see in the woods this time of year, right?   Ah well, best laid plans and all that.  As it happened, the steady drizzle had dampened the tree trunks and darkened the bark, so that all the marvelous colors and patterns of lichenous growths on those trunks were more evident than usual.  Of course, I had to stop and admire the many variations. 


Some growths were a soft velvety green, with patches outlined in baby blue.

Others were speckled like the sides of a trout, with varying shades of pale green.

Or shades of blue.

Or bright emerald green traced with squiggles of rich brown.

This pale-blue patch was adorned with tiny black wormy shapes.

The base of one tree was speckled with large blue flakes.

This branch was covered with circles of both blue and green.

 During my walk, I focused my attention on only the flat crustose lichens, for the moment ignoring the frilly foliose lichens, as well as the many mosses that decorated the trees.  This abundant fluffy growth at the base of a tree did cause me to pause, however, and take a closer look.  Is this a moss, I wondered, or could it be a liverwort?

My eyesight is too compromised to distinguish moss from liverwort with my naked eyes, but a macro shot with my camera revealed the overlapping leaves of one of the liverworts in the genus Porella.

Stopping and starting along the trail as I did, I did not work up much of a sweat.  But I was out there long enough to get drenched by the constant drizzle that, after a while, set all the twigs to dripping.  Not wanting to risk wetting my camera, I packed it away and headed home, wondering how many exquisite variations on a theme of lichens I had missed.

Back Out to the Woods and Waters

A bright, cold, clear day, and oh, it was wonderful to get under that radiant sky and swing my legs along pine-needled paths and sandy shores at Moreau Lake State Park.  I do love the holidays, a month of feasting and family fun from Thanksgiving to Christmas, except that most of that month is spent indoors and eating far too much food that's not good for me.  So now I'm ready to get back to healthier eating and especially to just go out and play in the woods all day.  Yesterday,  a ferocious wind slapped me back into the house after just a few moments outdoors, but today a calmer air and a kindly sun called me out to wander for hours.

No snow as yet, as these photos show, but ice now covers the back bay of Moreau Lake from shore to shore.  I can hardly wait until the ice is thick enough to walk on, allowing me to reach my favorite haunts around the lake more quickly and directly.  We'll have freezing nights the rest of the week, I've heard, so I'm hoping it won't be long.  Today, the ice was whooping and moaning, a sign of further freezing.

Up close to shore, I could see all the wrinkles and crinkles that form as the water freezes.  It would be amazing to have a time-lapse movie of how these patterns progress.

Part of the fun of winter hiking is trying to recognize plants in their winter attire.  On my way home from Moreau I stopped off at Yaddo to visit some American Bladdernut shrubs that grow by a stream, and was glad to find a few bladders still dangling from the twigs.

A tree had fallen into the stream, and its bark was mottled with a very dark green lichen I don't recall seeing before.

I risked a slip into the stream to get a closer look at that lichen, much darker green than the very common Green Shield Lichen.  I though it was quite beautiful.

Small Treasures Along a Wintry Trail

Outdoors at last!  And what a pretty day for hiking!  Household duties and holiday preparations have kept me indoors all week, but today's bright blue sky and crisp cold air was too tempting to resist any longer.  Besides, I'd arranged to have my friend Sue meet me for a walk at Bog Meadow Nature Trail this morning, so that's where we went, longjohns underneath, boots on our feet, cameras and binoculars in our bags.

In flower season, I travel this wooded wetland trail quite often,  seeking the wide variety of native plants that grow here.  I've made a mental map of where some of the most interesting species grow, so I can look for them in every season and try to recognize them at every stage.  This abundant patch of Downy Rattlesnake Plantain is always easy to find, since it's marked off with wooden stakes to prevent the trail maintenance folks from mowing it down.  The beautiful evergreen leaves are now buried under the snow, but its spent flower stalks still hold their heads high.

Since most of the flowers and leaves are now withered and faded, any spots of pretty color stand out against the browns and grays of the landscape, such as this patch of rich green lichen adorned with a little cluster of coppery fungus.

The trunk of this tree was almost completely covered with a dusty pale-green lichenous growth, spotted with patches of rosy pink.  Its subtle colors reminded me of old-fashioned faded wallpaper.

 The rich-red pedicels of Panicled Dogwood certainly stood out from the rest of the underbrush.

But nothing is more vividly red than beautiful Winterberry, so striking against the blue sky and water.

Deep-blue ice has newly formed in the little trailside streams, creating patterns of needles and stars.

How reassuring to see these protruding shoots of Skunk Cabbage,  reminding us of the promise of spring, just as the new-formed ice announces the arrival of winter.

We hiked to this marsh with the hope of observing waterfowl, but found its surface completely covered with ice, no open water even around the edges.   So, no waterfowl.  We did see Goldfinches, Bluebirds, Cardinals, and Chickadees feeding among grapevine-festooned trees, one Red-tailed Hawk sailing in circles over the marsh, and Sue kept hearing what she thought was the cry of a Flicker, although she allowed as it could have been the Hairy Woodpecker she did manage to lay her eyes on.

Anyone know what kind of bird made this mud-daubed nest in the crotch of a Poison Sumac?   I suppose the young birds would long have fledged before the grapes ripened, but I imagine the large leaves of the grapevine twining among the sumac branches would have provided great cover.

We were able to recognize the shrub as a Poison Sumac because of the clusters of white berries that still dangled from some of the branches.  This variety of sumac, despised by humans but extremely valuable to wild birds,  is not that common this far north, but we do find it now and then in swampy areas such as this.

All along the trail we found the fluffy seed heads of Virgin's Bower, a native clematis that bears clusters of small white flowers in summer.  I love how the sunlight glinted on the silken filaments surrounding the curvaceous wiry structures that remain.

Walking the Wilton Preserve

 Oh, but it was grand to swing my legs under a wide open sky today, feel the sandy path under my feet, smell the scent of oaks and pines, and enjoy a nice long walk through the Wilton Wildlife Preserve with my good buddy Sue.  After a solid week of feasting and family togetherness -- all of it grand, but most of it indoors -- I was eager to get back to my nature haunts and the quiet companionship of a fellow nature nut enthusiast.

 I suggested we visit the Gick Farm parcel of the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, a sandy-soiled oak/pine savanna kept open by periodic burns and mowing, as a change of habitat from our usual forested mountain trails at Moreau.  Here, the walking was easy on soft sandy paths among tall native grasses moving in waves with the wind. 

White Pines and Pitch Pines share this habitat with oaks of several species, including the shrubby Bear Oak (Quercus ilicifolia), just about every one of which was laden with these knobby galls.

Mats of  Pussytoes carpeted the sand in places, colored a lovely pink and green.  A closer look at the leaves revealed their remarkable hairiness. Update:  A helpful reader has corrected me on this.  These leaves are more likely those of Mouse-ear Hawkweed than of Pussytoes.  Thanks, Ethan Dropkin!

In addition to fields of grasses and tracts of open woodlands, this section of the Wilton Preserve also contains several denser forests and a number of wetlands.  An abundance of emerald-green watercress marks the course of the little stream that winds through this wetland patch.
 

Almost every tree in the low-lying woodlands was a veritable garden of mosses and lichens, fungi and liverworts, all commingling in a complex community of many different shapes and sizes and colors.

This very dark, almost black lichen was splotched with a startling patch of bright red.  Could it be a natural aspect of this organism, or is this a paint splotch, marking the red-blazed trail we were following?

This little green clump of moss is one of the very few mosses I know the name of:  Ulota crispa, here centered on a lacy doily of Frullania liverwort, one of the very few liverworts whose names I know.

Now, what's this white disk?  Is this a lichen or some kind of mold?  What an amazing array!

I recognize the little Christmas trees as one of the Polytrichum (Haircap) mosses, but I can't remember the name of the dainty fern-like stuff clasping the base of this little tree.   I just thought the combination of colors and textures was delightful.

Here's another patch of a Polytrichum moss, containing slender immature spore stalks as well as the spent ones from last year.  The most arresting inhabitant of this patch, though, is that amazing fruticose lichen, one of the Cladonias that looks like stacks of trumpets or something drawn by Dr. Seuss.  I have heard it called Pagoda, but I do not know its scientific name.

With the light shining through the walls of this Tree Ear fungus, they look like little cups of Cranberry Glass.  How pretty they look, especially accompanied by those tiny yellow jelly fungi.

More little yellow jellies, maybe Dacryopinax spathularia, or Fan-shaped Jelly Fungus.  A mighty big name for such a minute organism.  Compare them to the pine needles next to them, to get an idea of how tiny they are.

Ooh, what a slimy thing this is!  I guess it must be a fungus, but I'm afraid it's too far gone to determine its identity.  Fascinating!  What an interesting color.

I admire my friend Sue for many reasons, and one of them is that she can SEE things that ordinary mortals cannot.  Even knowing exactly where this tiny Spring Peeper was sitting, it would disappear as I stared at it.  How on earth did she ever see it in the first place? 

And isn't it odd to find a Spring Peeper on the very last day of November?  Shouldn't they all be tucked away for the winter?  Another blog friend at "You Hike the Giant, too!" found a Spotted Salamander today.  I think this spell of balmy weather has the woodland critters thinking it must be spring.