A Solitary Ramble at Lincoln Mountain

It's hard to find new stuff to blog about this time of year. I visited all my old haunts today: Mud Pond, Spier Falls, the Sherman Island boat launch, the Hudson near Rippled Rocks Point. Ho hum. All quiet. Nothing new. Maybe I'll try someplace different, I thought, and headed over to Greenfield to visit the Lincoln Mountain State Forest.

Lincoln Mountain is a very quiet, off-the-beaten-track kind of place, over 900 acres of mixed hardwoods and conifers, hilly, with three creeks that drain into a sizable marsh. There's a narrow snow-covered dirt road that takes you well into the heart of the forest, and I bumped along it as far as I dared in my Toyota Corolla, not having four-wheel drive. I stopped where the road dipped steeply down, figuring I might not make it back up if I ventured further. Time to get out and walk.

Well, it was very quiet back there. Not a soul around, nor any sign that a soul had been by in some time. I'd better not break a leg back here, I said to myself as I slipped on an icy spot, which reminded me to put on my Yaktrax. I patted my camera bag, feeling to make sure I had my Trak phone. Oops! I'd left it at home in my purse. I decided to be extra careful. I hadn't told anyone where I was walking today.

Maybe I should have stayed on the road, but the animal tracks in the forest drew me in. Especially one well-trodden deer trail.

I followed that trail for a few hundred yards, not seeing any deer (of course), but I did find a spot where they'd pawed up the snow and searched in the oak leaves for acorns.

Lots of other tracks crossed the deer trail, so I made a few detours, curious to see what these other critters were up to. I followed these tracks -- I believe they are fisher's -- for quite a while, until I decided I'd better get back on the road and not stray too far into the forest.

I walked the road until it came to an open swamp, where I saw this fox trail heading across the snow-covered ice. I started to walk out onto the ice, then remembered my plunge-through yesterday, and changed my mind.

Walking back to my car, I was charmed by the sparkling snow. For some reason today, it was sparkling in Technicolor, flashing red and blue and gold and green in addition to dazzling white. Here's a photo of what I was looking at. Pretty hard to capture that color on camera, I thought.

In this photo, I've enlarged the most colorful flashes, then boosted the saturation. Click on the photo to best see the colors. As pretty as Christmas lights!

And here's something lovely in pure black and white: a branch of a Tamarack tree, with its cute little peg-like buds.

Lincoln Mountain State Forest is home to some of the oldest trees in New York State. There are Black Tupelos growing back here in the swamp that are possibly 800 years old. I had thought I might search for them today, but I lost my nerve when I discovered I had no phone, and I didn't want to go wandering around all alone. But for sure I'll be back on February 28, when Vince Walsh will be leading a trek to visit these ancient trees. A highly skilled tracker steeped in the lore of the forest, Vince is a truly engaging teacher and guide. He brought me to see the tupelos here last winter, an experience that felt more like a pilgrimage than an ordinary hike. We even found Great Horned Owls nesting in an abandoned Great Blue Heron's nest. Anyone who'd like to join us this year should check the details at Vince's Kawing Crow website. Click on the "Courses and Workshops" to find the schedule.

Just a Little Excitement

I walk in the woods nearly every day. And it's always good. Even today, when I plunged through ice up to my hips and had to walk half a mile through snow with water sloshing inside my boots. (With wool and polar fleece socks, my feet stayed plenty warm.) Just a little excitement and a lesson about river ice. Between the Spier Falls and the Sherman Island dams, the Hudson ice rises and falls with the water levels, cracking open along the shore, creating open areas that then freeze over with very thin ice. Oops!

Not every walk is that exciting, especially this time of year when all seems very quiet in the woods. It's hard to find things to take pictures of. I can't photograph the whisper of wind in the pines. Or the warmth of sun on one side of my face while the other goes numb with cold. Or the fragrance of Sweet Fern catkins crushed between my fingers. Or the high peek! peek! of the chickadees as they call to each other up there in the hemlocks but hide themselves in the branches. Maybe I'll catch just the briefest glimpse of their acrobatic antics, but they sure won't hold still for a photo.

Just think of all those nature series we've watched on TV, from Wild Kingdom to Planet Earth: all those telephoto shots and hidden cameras that captured all that animal action. Then go for a walk in the woods. Especially now, in winter. It sure seems like nothing's happening. But then I see all the tracks in the snow. Man, it was Grand Central Station right here where I'm standing! Where'd everybody go?

With the crunching of crusty snow underfoot, I know I'm not likely to creep up on any critters unawares. That's why it's so much fun to see their tracks. And like this turkey tail pressed on the snow, some are kind of pretty.

A Magical Day in the Marsh

Mid-20s, no wind, just the soft, silent snow wafting straight down in big starry flakes. It felt like a blessing falling on me as I walked out onto the ice in the marsh behind Three Pine Island. I stood there, not moving, just breathing and being, watching my footprints fill in with snow until, after a while, it looked as if no one had passed this way today. Or ever. I could even imagine that I was the first to ever set foot in this marsh, with pines and tupelos towering above me, tree-covered hills rising across the river. That's the magic of clean fresh snow. Everything looks brand new.

But of course, I've been to this marsh many times before. An amazing variety of native plants grow here, and part of the pleasure of winter walks is trying to name the stalks and twigs and pods that remain, long after the flowers have withered. I don't always get them right. I made a mistake a few blog posts back when I found these spiky pods on a Sweet Gale shrub and assumed they were staminate catkins storing up pollen to release next spring.

In fact, they were Sweet Gale fruits, filled not with pollen but seeds. When I touched one today, the seeds spilled out all over the snow. (Oh look! Up close, each seed resembles a tiny crown.) After touching the pods, my fingers felt sticky and smelled just deliciously fragrant. This shrub is called "sweet" for good reason. Its leaves smell wonderful, too.

Here's a plant that looks prickly but isn't. It's False Nettle and yes, it's leaves and flowers resemble those of its cousins, but it doesn't have the stinging hairs of true nettles. It's not particularly pretty in summer, but it does have a kind of stately grace when silhouetted against the white snow.

These little brown pods kind of look like miniature tulips. I'm pretty sure they're St. Johnswort of some kind. Marsh St. Johnswort thrives back here. So that would be my best guess.

Here are some close-clustering chubby pods on arching stems, with little hair-like things sticking out. (Apologies to true botanists, who know the real names of all these plant parts!) If I'd found these last year, I would not have had a clue what they were. But just this past summer I found lots of Ditch Stonecrop growing back here in the marsh: chubby little close-clustered greenish flowers on arching stems, with hair-like things sticking out. I'll bet that's what these are.

Going home, I drove along Spier Falls Road, enjoying the view of the Hudson River now open for quite a ways below the dam. When the dam was built (it opened in 1903), rocks for its construction were blasted out of the mountains that line the road, creating cliffs that can still be seen from the road. Each winter, these cliffs become sheer cataracts of ice, tier upon tier of massive icicles colored the most amazing blue.

I used to think that ice acquired that color from minerals in the rocks. Copper sulfate, for example, might color water that shade of blue. But sometimes we see that same color in snowbanks, with no copper sulfate around. A quick Google search set me straight. Turns out, it's a light scattering effect, similar to what makes the sky blue. Thick ice can act like a filter that absorbs the red and yellow parts of white light, leaving only the blue to be reflected toward our eyes. Or something like that. Whatever the physics, it still seems like magic. And certainly beautiful.

All Kinds of Ice

Bright sun, blue sky, temp in the mid-20s -- it felt almost balmy today as I set off across the snow-covered frozen expanse of Lake Moreau. A string of well-below-zero nights has set up the ice real thick, so I had no fear of falling through as I walked straight across the middle, despite the terrifying howls and roars and moans and rifle-shot cracks that echoed from lake to mountain all around.

The ice was noisy today. Sometimes it rumbled like a bowling alley, sometimes it sounded as if Hump-backed Whales were singing beneath my feet. Growing up on a lake in Michigan, I was told that these eerie sounds were made by the ice expanding, either because of freezing cold or of warming sun. Since today we had both, the ice let loose with every sound in its repertoire.

I headed straight across the lake to climb a ridge on the other side, taking a trail that follows a stream to porcupine dens near the top. I could hear the stream rushing along as it tumbled down its rocky course, but on the surface, it was frozen solid. This little waterfall looked as if it were carved out of Waterford crystal.

At one point the surface ice gave way to reveal the rushing stream beneath a scallop-edged opening.

Once again, the porcupines eluded me, although their trails continue to be well used, with evidence of recent activity. And today, I did find one quill. A very thin one and not very sharp, but a quill, nevertheless.

My next stop was the Sherman Island Boat Launch to see what the Hudson ice was up to. Today it was frozen solid, all the way across and halfway from here to Spier Falls Dam. But don't count on that ice being here tomorrow. The river flow is very dynamic here, and ice doesn't usually last long.

The stream that empties into the Hudson here by the boat launch was also frozen today. I followed its course way back into the woods, marveling at all the beautiful forms that ice can take on a flowing stream. There were ferns of ice so fragile they broke at a touch.

There were sheets of solid crystalline ice with bubbles captured in it.

There were delicate swirls that reminded me of the contour lines in a topographical map.

Some ice looked like the stylized wings and feathers on Pre-Columbian pottery.

Some looked like the coils of a spring.

I guess it's obvious, I'm enchanted by ice, by its beauty as well as its ephemeral nature. Ice is one of those things that make our cold winters not just bearable, but eagerly awaited. Snow is another. When will we get some more?

A Winter's Day Reading

What a lazy day for me! My only outdoor experience today was the quarter-mile walk across Congress Park to St. Peter's Church and back. Since today is my husband's and my 47th wedding anniversary and we're going out to dinner tonight, I didn't feel like changing out of my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes to put on my snowpants and longjohns for just a couple of hours. Instead, I curled on the couch with my cats and caught up with my favorite magazine, Northern Woodlands. Intended to promote forest stewardship, this quarterly magazine published in Vermont is chock full of articles that would interest all kinds of nature lovers, not just those in the timber industry.

One of my favorite features is a three-month nature calendar, called "A Look at the Season's Main Events," detailing what might be happening each week in the natural world. For example, here's what to look for outdoors in the coming first week of February:

Hawthorn fruits are nobody's favorite, but they stay on the tree and are valuable emergency food/ With body temperatures now near 40 degrees, woodchucks awaken in their burrows every few days, raise their temperature to over 94 degrees and urinate/ Beginning of the nesting season for great horned owls, our earliest nesters/ The viburnums, such as nannyberry and hobblebush, have naked buds, with no bud scales. You can see their miniature leaves all winter

And that's just one of 12 entries included for the winter season. What an incredible amount of information, and a handy guide for those of us who build our days around what's happening out in the woods!

In another section called "Knots and Bolts," I learned some fascinating facts about the sex lives of springtails, those tiny bugs (also called snowfleas) we find crawling over the snow on sunny days in February. (My photo above was taken as they crawled on dry leaves in December.) Springtails have no external genitalia and employ "a fastidiously impersonal method" of reproduction, according to Alan Pistorius, author of the article. He describes how they go about it:

A male secretes a viscous material which, by raising his posterior, is drawn up into a stalk, on top of which he deposits a spherical packet of sperm . . . called a spermatophore. . . . If a receptive female happens by, she takes the sperm packet up through her genital slit. Liquids inside her body cause the packet tissue to swell and burst, releasing the sperm for egg-fertilization duty.

If this system for combining precious genetic material seems to us haphazard, it apparently strikes a few springtails that way as well. Males of certain species build a fence of spermatophores around a likely female, a strategy presumably designed to ensure reproductive success by prompting the "eenie-meenie-miney-moe" response.

And that's not all. Lots and lots of articles about birds and bugs, critters and plants, beautiful photos and thoughtful essays, with an emphasis on caring for the environment. If you'd like a subscription, click on their website to sign up for one. You can also sign up there for a free weekly newsletter, even if you don't subscribe to the magazine. Check it out.

Walking Fern in Winter

I took a quick walk around Skidmore Woods today, just to get out in the sun and fresh air for an hour. And I do mean fresh! Maybe 12 degrees by early afternoon, after a 12-below-zero night. Brrrr! In this bitter cold, I didn't expect to find much green out there (except for the conifers), so a swath of leafy green like this patch of Walking Fern really stood out. For all its toughness for enduring hard winters, this quite un-fernlike fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum) has become quite rare in most northeastern states and Canada and is now protected as "exploitably vulnerable" in New York State. So I feel pretty pleased that I know where two discrete patches grow, about ten miles apart. And I was happy to see it looking so well, peeking out of the snow, snug on its moss-covered boulder.

Wolf Moon Rising

All circumstances worked together tonight to create the biggest and most brilliant full moon I have ever seen.

First of all, the moon is in perigee right now -- that is, at the point in its elliptical orbit when it's the closest to earth. Some 31,000 miles closer, in fact, than at its furthest point. I read on Yahoo today that this makes the moon 14% wider and 30% brighter than other full moons of the year. Indeed, it really knocks your eyes out tonight.

Second, the moon is full. Only once or twice a year does perigee correspond with a full moon, and that's what's happening tonight. And this full moon, the first one of the year, has a wonderful name -- the Wolf Moon -- to match its brilliance.

Third, it's as clear as clear can be tonight. Not only is there not a cloud in the sky, there's not a jot of humidity in the air, with the temperature somewhere around zero degrees F., last time I looked. Such bitter cold has turned the air to crystal, sharpening the focus of all the lights in the sky, including the planet Mars, which was shining brightly right up there close to the moon. My camera couldn't capture it without a tripod and time exposure, but the naked eye can see it clearly, a bright reddish "star" just a little to the left of the moon.

This moon will still be big and brilliant tomorrow. Be sure to bundle up and get out to see it. In fact, there's a "full moon hike" at Moreau Lake State Park on Saturday night, if you want to join a party of moonwatchers. Sometimes I am just amazed by how dazzled I feel, each time I see a full moon. Unlike us aging human ladies, she never loses her charm. I am almost 68 years old, so I've seen lots of moons in my life, and still, each month (if I'm lucky enough to see her), I gaze, mesmerized, to watch her clear the horizon and sail across the sky.

My husband's mother, Dorothy Donnelly, wrote a poem about walking out to look at the moon. I thought of it tonight, so I'll share it with my readers.

To Three Old Ladies

Two old ladies, lured

by the velvet night, leave

the lee of their porch and go,

for a change of scene, abroad,

a block from home. They wade

through shadows past the black

catalpa's cataract

to the corner, their ultima Thule,

where clear of the cliffs of leaf

and the tall waterfall elm,

they sight the sky and, in it,

in perfect view a quarter

million miles from the eye,

a face more famous than Helen's --

worth a walk in the dark, to see

that lily-stately and ancient

queen, dazzling in astral

white, throned in the heavens,

reigning over the night.

The travelers stare, unaware

that the silver light which comes

so fast from so far has fallen

onto their hair and sprinkled

their hands with spangles. They linger,

like talkative tourists in front of

the Mona Lisa, to praise her.

Eloquently, with the ardor

of competing ciceroni

extolling a masterpiece,

they show each other the moon.

Snowy Woods, with Eagles

"Whose woods these are I think I know . . . ." With the deepest sense of gratitude, I sometimes can't believe my good fortune that these beautiful woods are mine. And yours. In fact, they belong to anyone who chooses to wander them, because they are part of Moreau Lake State Park and thus they are open to all.

These particular woods are near the Sherman Island boat launch, where I stopped today to see what was happening on the river. The Hudson here is still wide open, and a group of ducks was paddling around over by the far shore. They were way too far away for me to ID, except to make a guess that they might have been male Mergansers, because of the quantity of white on their sides. At first I thought they were chunks of floating ice, but then one of them took to the air!

What a day it was to be wandering the woods, with fresh soft snow falling gently and silently all around, the downy flakes resting on every needle and twig, tingling my cheeks when I raised my face to catch them on my tongue. Here they have caught on a web hanging over the water, creating what looks like a necklace strung with diamonds and stars.

The snow gods must have heard my prayers, for the snow kept falling thicker and faster, until the very air was white. I tried again and again to capture a photo of the air filled with flakes, but all I could get were some streaks. Then I hit the flash button quite by mistake and Lo! the photo was spangled with all these white dots. They don't look exactly like snowflakes, but I thought they looked kind of nice, especially with the beautiful forest behind.

I next drove over to park headquarters, passing Mud Pond on the way, and almost skidded on the snow-covered road when I noticed a dark shape perched on the deer carcass out on the pond. It was too far away (and obscured by falling snow) to clearly discern with my naked eyes, but I aimed my camera at the dark spot and zoomed the lens as far as it would go. Here's what the camera saw. Looks like a Bald Eagle to me. (This underlining appeared without my bidding, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.)

And here's a cropped shot of the carcass and bird. Pretty blurry, I know, but at least it leaves no doubt as to what we are looking at.

And hey, here comes another eagle!

The new arrival just stands there, and the first bird seems not to take notice.

Eh! Not worth the squabble. Maybe that's what the interloper thought as it flew off again without joining the feast.

As I said before, sometimes I just can't believe how blessed I am, that these beautiful woods and the marvelous creatures who live here are there for us all to enjoy. I didn't even have to get out of my car to witness this amazing scene.

North to Riparius

My friend Linda owns a small cottage on the Hudson River up in Warren County in the tiny hamlet of Riparius. Concerned that Monday's flooding might have caused some damage, she wanted to check on her place today, and would I like to come along? Well, sure I would! I'm always happy to spend a few hours wandering the Adirondacks with a good friend. Especially since she wanted to visit the Ice Meadows along the way. This is an area along the Hudson north of Warrensburg where the river ice piles up in particularly dramatic ways, and it was certainly doing that today.

When we got to Riparius, the river was flowing free and fast, with hardly any ice at all, except where it had built up a bit atop the boulders that fill the riverbed here.

Here's a photo of Linda's little cottage. Isn't it cute? And just big enough for her as a quiet place of retreat, with the river rushing over rocks just beyond her porch.

It belongs to a small community of cottages that were built as a Methodist summer camp many years ago. Many of the current residents are descendants of the original founders of the community, but today they do allow folks who aren't Methodist to purchase the cottages. The community, however, still holds the ownership of the land the cottages stand on.

After making sure no flooding or ice had damaged her place, we headed off to nearby Chestertown for lunch. Chestertown is a very, very small town, but it has a great place to eat lunch: the Main Street Ice Cream Parlor. Good food, indeed (I had a very tasty homemade cream of chicken soup), and housed in a handsome building.

We could have hopped on the interstate there at Chestertown and headed straight home, but what fun would that be? Linda knows all the backroads and scenic byways between her place and Saratoga, so we went home the long way 'round. We followed the Schroon River through gorgeous forest scenery until we found another road that followed the Hudson to where it met the Sacandaga River. Then along dirt roads that followed the rushing river, and over an ear-popping mountain road that brought us out on Route 9N not far from Saratoga. The many roads home reminded us how blessed we are to live amid such beauty.

Icy Hiking

After yesterday's pouring rain and a temperature in the mid-50s, most of our snow has disappeared for sure. But freezing temps returned last night and today, and I wondered what the ice was like on Moreau Lake. So I drove to the park, stopping off at the office to check with the staff, who assured me the ice, although mushy in spots, was safe to walk on. Safe in the sense of thickness, that is, but slippery as . . . well, as ice! Yesterday's rain and warmth had melted the snow cover, and last night's and today's freezing temps had created a new glaze of ice that was slick and glassy.

Time to put on the Yaktrax. But even though I could then safely walk on the ice without slipping, the experience was really unnerving. In spots the new ice was very thin over a layer of water or mush, and each step went through this thin layer with sharp cracking sounds.

I also came across these dark shapes in the ice where it looked like it had melted all the way through. I kept a careful distance. I thought they were kind of cool to look at, anyway.

I don't think I would have dared to go out on the lake at all, if I hadn't seen this fellow way out there ice-fishing. His name is Dave, a fellow friend of the park, and he knows these woods and waters well. He reassured me the ice was thick enough to hold us up.

I still felt mighty uneasy out there, and soon headed in to walk along close to the shore. That's where I saw this disheveled heap among the phragmites and cattails. If this was a muskrat lodge, some critter -- coyote or bobcat? -- has rudely interrupted the muskrat's nap.

What a surprise to find these little mushrooms growing out of a rotten log! Is it possible they sprouted just yesterday, when the weather turned so warm?

Their flesh was tender and delicate, not woody or leathery like that of shelf fungi or Wood Ears, which I often find in winter. If they had sprouted last fall, how could they have stayed so intact through sub-zero temperatures?