Climbing the Waterfall's Course

It was actually quite a pleasant day today, with a bright blue sunlit sky in the morning, and the temperature still above freezing.  Clouds had moved in by the time I got outdoors in the afternoon, but the woods was still lovely and welcoming as I climbed the course of a waterfall in the mountains that rise above the banks of the Hudson across from the Spier Falls Dam.

I kept on climbing, up and up,  following the streambed beyond the powerline road that traverses the mountainside here, up to where many tiny rills spill over boulders, creating fantastic ice palaces in the winter.
 

With all the above-freezing days we've been having, much of the ice had melted, but enough remained to transform the barren boulders into structures of cascading beauty.

Beauty lay all around, although sometimes I had to peer closely to appreciate it.   This patch of Haircap Moss with its colorful spore stalks certainly deserved a closer look.

As did the undersides of this fungus.  From the top, it was just a boring plain white, but a flip of the stick it was growing on revealed this beautiful honeycombed surface.

I was also enchanted by constellations of little asters, their petals long spent but their clusters of starry bracts revealing the very rightness of their genus's name, derived from the Latin word for star.  (Yes, I know their genus is Symphyotrichum, not Aster, now.  But I still call them asters.)

Winter Along the Kayaderosseras Creek

Nope.  Not a good day outdoors.  Fortyish, raining . . . .  Why would I leave the comforts of a cat-cushioned couch to go slipping and slogging along the banks of an ice-choked Kayaderosseras Creek today?  Well, it was just because that creek was ice choked that I saw the photos in the paper this morning and just had to head over to Ballston Spa to take a look for myself.

Yes indeed, that creek was surely choked with ice.  Jammed with ice, so the water was rising and shoving huge chunks into people's backyards, crushing the shrubs and scraping the paint off sheds, while the creek kept coursing along, right over the banks and down into creekside cellars. As I stood on a bridge that was groaning a bit underfoot, it was quite an impressive, kind of scary, sight.

But just a mile or less downstream, all was serene along the Burl Trail at Gray's Crossing.   It was here, last year, that the steep banks were beveled to allow high water to spread out over a floodplain, but today the water was well below flood stage, despite days of rain and snowmelting temperatures.  I guess that ice jam upstream was holding the water back.

There was still lots of water falling from the sky, creating pretty crystalline drops on every twig and bud and catkin and cone and fluffy tuft of grass.  

 

After this bank was cleared and reshaped, the state Department of Transportation planted the area with dozens of native trees.  Some of them thrived, but others did not.  The presence of all these ruffly fungi on the trunk of one young tree would indicate that the wood was dead and rotting.

 I didn't recognize this fungus at first, since I've only ever seen Split-gill Fungus (Schizophyllum commune) when it's all dry and shriveled.   A remarkable thing about this fungus is that it can dry up and shrivel again and again, but all it needs to come back to life is a little rainfall.  No shortage of that, of late.

Here's a close-up view of the split gills that give this fungus its name.   This is a particularly fascinating fungus with a very interesting sex life you can learn all about, if you like, by clicking here.

Along the water's edge was a tall weedy plant I do not recognize.  I wouldn't have paid it any mind, such a scraggly thing it is, but its transparent seed pods were catching the light and thus catching my eye, so I had to stop and give it a closer look.

I have never seen seed pods like this, transparent as cellophane.   Most likely, this plant is some kind of noxious weed brought in with all the new plantings, but who knows?  It was certainly thriving along these banks, so I should be able to find it and identify it next summer when it comes into bloom.  In the meantime, would any of my botanist friends like to hazard a guess what it is?

Update:  I heard from Steve Young, chief botanist with the New York Natural Heritage Program, that this is  a Mustard Family plant.  As he explained it, the sides of the seed pods have fallen off, leaving only the translucent partition that divided the fruit, called a silique.  Without leaves, though, we can't identify the plant as to species.

Soggy Winter

Several days (and even nights) of above-freezing weather have made a soggy mess of the woods, and hard-packed ice on the trails makes the walking quite treacherous.  But Nature still calls me out of doors, so I pulled on my Yaktraks and headed out for a hike around Mud Pond today.  I had heard that Moreau Lake State Park  staffers had placed a road-killed deer on the ice, so I hoped I might catch some ravens or eagles enjoying a carrion feast.

But not a creature was stirring around the poor sodden carcase lying lonely out there on the watery ice, nor could I find any trace of the wildlife that lives in these woods, except for numerous litter-strewn holes that squirrels had dug to retrieve their hidden food caches.   Oh wait, there were numerous deer tracks, too, the deer being the only woodland residents heavy enough to break through the crusted snow and leave any sign of their passing.

The birds were quite silent, too, with not a caw nor a twitter nor a peep to be heard above the sound of the rushing brook.  With all the rainwater and snowmelt filling its course, the creek made it all the way to the pond today.  Much of the year, this little creek disappears underground long before it enters the pond, but today it kept dancing happily all the way to the shore..

Despite the drear weather, I did find a few spots of color  in a stand of Bitternut Hickory, a tree that's known for the bright chrome-yellow of its buds.

I was truly surprised to find a couple of Witch Hazel flowers still bravely in bloom.

I took the river road home from Mud Pond, stopping to admire this view of my favorite little island in the middle of the Hudson.  Two days ago, the river was still iced over from shore to shore, but today the water ran open and dark, reflecting the beauty of the forested mountains that line the banks.

January Rain

No fair!  The better I feel, the nastier grows the weather.  Here I am, all over my cold and eager to get outdoors, and it's pouring rain.  Two days ago it was zero, today it's pushing 50.  Very strange!

Well, I did get out today, if just for a few minutes here and there, trying not to get my camera soaked.  I thought the fog rising over the snow might make for some interesting atmospherics, and I was right.

Here are horse pastures along Fitch Road above Saratoga Lake.

This is the Hudson River, still frozen over, from the boat launch site below Spier Falls Dam.

With the sodden snow, drifting fog, and pouring rain,  the landscape lacked much color.  These dripping Red Osier Dogwood twigs certainly stood out against the unrelenting gray.

Watching the Frazil Form

Well, if I had to get sick, this was a good week to do so, with weather so awful I wouldn't have gone outdoors anyway.  First, we had rain to turn all our lovely snow to slush.  Then arctic cold slammed down to way below zero, turning that slush into slippery slashing blades underfoot.  Then the wind came howling to drive that cold down deep in your bones, no matter how you bundled against it.  Yes, a good week to curl on the couch with a Kleenex box, mugs of hot tea at hand, and laps full of furry cats.

Today, both the cold in my head and the cold outdoors eased up enough to tempt me out under a clear blue sky.  But just for a drive.  The frigid air still caused me to cough with every breath.  It was only in the single digits above zero when I headed up north, curious to see if the frazil ice was forming on the Hudson River north of Warrensburg.  It was certainly cold enough to do so.

Before I reached the bridge that carries Rte. 28 across the Hudson at The Glen, I could see that the river was well jammed  up with this particular kind of chunky white ice that forms in areas of turbulent water.  As we head up north toward the Adirondack Mountains, the Hudson falls ever more steeply, with consequent turbulence.

Although it may look very much like snow, frazil ice doesn't fall from the sky, but forms when splashing water throws droplets up into the sub-freezing air, the droplets immediately turning to ice before falling back into the water.  These frozen droplets cling together, building up into slushy mats that eventually clog the river from shore to shore, as they are doing in this photo.  Eventually, the frazil clogs the river all the way down to the bottom, damming the flow and causing the frazil to rise up high on the banks, sometimes to heights as tall as 15 feet or more.

When I reached the bridge at The Glen, I could see that the river was still flowing freely here, with slushy mats of frazil rushing rapidly downstream.

I followed the river road downstream in my car, and had gone hardly more than half a mile before I could see that the frazil had stalled and was mounting up, pushing into the woods along the shore.

More than five miles further downstream, at the Thurman bridge, the river was still covered with frazil from shore to shore, although I could see where wide channels of open water had formed as the current pushed through.   But even these channels were covered with still ice today, after more than two days of temperatures well below zero.  This is the view looking upstream, and the view downstream looked much the same.

It's always an adventure to see what the ice on the Hudson will do.  Last year the frazil piled up to unprecedented  heights, engulfing the riverside road and shoving trees over in the forest.  It took several weeks for roadcrews to cut a lane through the heaps that covered the road.  Here's a photo I took last winter, on a patch of newly cleared road.

Let's hope the frazil is not quite so adventuresome this winter!

Say It Isn't So!

What's this I hear on the weather report?  RAIN?!  40 DEGREES?!  Just when we got the most beautiful snow, along with frigid air to keep it soft and fluffy.  And now it will all be sodden.  I was going to stay home today and start reading some of the wonderful books I got for Christmas, but when I heard that bad news, I hurried up to Moreau Lake to enjoy this splendid winter landscape before it gets ruined.  And I sure wasn't the only one walking out on the frozen lake.  The park was truly mobbed today, with skiers, snowshoers, dogwalkers, and ice fishers celebrating this beautiful day in this spectacular setting.

After strapping on my snowshoes, I headed around and across the lake, rejoicing in how the frozen surface gave me such ready shortcuts to my favorite sites.  Of course, I had to stop at the shoreline site where I found that rare Whorled Mountain Mint this fall, and I was delighted to see its withered seedheads standing tall above the snow.

I also stopped to chat with several fishermen, admiring their catches or commiserating with their lack of luck.  Ice fishers tend to be a really friendly sort of folk, usually glad to break their solitary vigil with some genial chatter.  I was having  a really jolly time chatting with these fellows (Jeff, Craig, and Rob), when Craig asked me if I lived in Saratoga and was I the mom of two of my boys.  Well, small world!  These guys know my guys and all about their music and other stuff.  In fact, Craig lives right around the corner from me and had seen me coming and going all summer with my Hornbeck strapped to me car. Even further, his girlfriend Kirsten is a publicist for my son Peter's band, The Figgs.  Amazing!

Speaking of my kids, why not put their photos here on my blog?  I sure am proud of this sweet bunch of boys, shown here at their sister Jane's house this Christmas.  Philip is on the left, then Stephen in the middle, and Peter on the right.
 

And here's their sweet sister, my darling daughter Jane, who hosted our entire family, along with all of her own and her husband's family, for a fabulous Christmas feast.

I am one lucky mom!

Revisiting the Winter River

On Friday, I waited and waited until the weak winter sun could coax the temperature to 4 above zero before suiting up to return to the snowy riverbank I first photographed for this blog five years ago.  And  look!  Except for maybe the trees being a little taller, nothing at all has changed!  How lucky I am to live in a region where landscapes as lovely as this are protected forever.  Or at least, for as long as I'm likely to live.  And how lucky I am, too, that I still have the health and strength and forbearance for cold that allow me to tromp about in the winter woods and enjoy its beauties.

The animals who live in this forest were still huddled snug in their dens, so I did not see a single track in the snow to indicate they'd been out and about.  The river,  though, had left plenty of evidence of its rising and falling, freezing and thawing,  by the sinuous lines that were etched on the ice near the shore.

Always, always, there's always something of beauty just waiting to be discovered along these shores.  The Highbush Blueberry buds were glowing a Christmassy red beneath a mantle of snow.
 

But the Winterberries sure took the prize for the richest red.

Five Years of Woods and Waterways

As I sat to compose an entry to start this new year, 2014, I realized I've been keeping this blog for five years now, having posted well over a thousand entries.  I went back to see how I started out on January 1, 2009, and what I wrote then rings as true to me now as the day I first posted it.  Let me share it again.

A Snowy Day on the River

New Year's Day 2009, new snow, blue sky, and cold, cold, cold -- cold enough to keep that new snow fluffy and dry, perfect for a walk in the woods at my favorite place on earth:  the forested banks of the Hudson River at Moreau Lake State Park in Saratoga County, New York.

I've been exploring this stretch of the river for over ten years, by canoe and on foot, in all seasons and weathers, keeping a journal of all the plants I could name and animals I have seen (or found signs of by their tracks and scats and calls), and I've learned that there's always the chance I will find something new each time I visit. 

For one thing, the terrain is always changing.  This section of river lies between two dams,  Spier Falls upstream and Sherman Island downstream ( a stretch of about three miles), and the water level changes several times a day, creating a shoreline that is sometimes a mud flat, sometimes completely immersed up to steep rocky banks or flooded back into the woods.  Both banks of the river are forested mountains that come straight down to the shore, the trees overhanging the water. 

Approaching the Sherman Island dam, the shoreline grows ever more interesting, as the river runs around islands and past rocky promontories and into quiet coves and occasional marshes watered by tiny rills that trickle down from surrounding hills.  

It's that stretch of the river I'm visiting today on snowshoes, to start this record of a year in the woods and on the water.

We enter the woods at the  end of Potter Road in Moreau,  taking a path down to the river and a rocky point I have named Bear's Bathtub for its large depression about ten feet across and more than six feet deep that fills up with water from time to time.  No water today with the temperature around 15 degrees (F) and the river here completely frozen over.  But it's not safe to walk on today.  With the rising and falling of the water levels, the ice breaks at the edge and water comes over the top.  Also, ice is formed at varying water levels so the shoreline is a jumble of broken shards and  plates -- not a pleasant place for a walk on the ice.

But many creatures have walked on the ice today or last night when the snow was new-laid -- mostly coyotes I'm guessing, leaving prints like those of large dogs.  There are places in the woods where many prints all lead in the same direction,  and we follow those to a large hole in a pile of rocks that appears to be a den.  [I later learned that this was an otter den.] More prints lead through the woods to a promontory I call Rippled Rocks Point that juts out into the river, a sun-washed spot where Lowbush Blueberry and Black Chokeberry thrive in the summer.  Today the rocks are covered with snow, revealing the path of the creatures who apparently congregated here today or last night, on this high open platform of ice and stone, exposed to the sky and the profile of mountains rising above the far shore.  Do coyotes howl at the moon?  There was a beautiful crescent moon last night, sharing the early evening sky with a brilliant Venus.

Other prints we found were those of a mouse, like trapunto stitching across the snow as it wandered about a bit before scurrying to safety beneath a fallen log.  Also, Red Squirrel prints.   I had hoped to find signs of otter here, near open areas of water near the shore.  I had seen their scat on rocks out in the water last summer and their tobogganing trails through the snow in winters past,  but today I didn't.  We did see a hunter, though, hoping to bag a coyote.  Why? He said he wanted to make himself a coyote suit to wear while hunting.  I didn't tell  him where we had found the den.

[A few days later I added another post about this same section of the river: ]

Across a bay from Rippled Rocks Point on the Hudson River at Moreau stands this lovely little rocky mound of an island, crowned by three tall white pines.  I call it Three Pine Island although it is also forested with smaller pines, hemlocks, Chestnut Oaks, Black Tupelo, Paper Birch, and one small, very crooked White Ash growing out of a crack in a boulder.  It is surrounded by a marshy area that runs a hundred yards or so back into the woods.  Both the bay and the marsh are frozen solid today, allowing me to explore on snowshoes an area I can barely creep into by canoe in the summer.

Prominent across the snowy ice are these tracks (see photo above),  which at first, all excited, I thought must be otter, this bound-and-slide so typical of that animal's track.  But no, the slides are too narrow, barely three inches across, and the pawprints as small as those of a cat.   Must be mink.  A couple of them, it seems, making a beeline across the bay, into the marsh all the way to an open stream that forms this marsh's boundary, where they disappear into the water.

On days like this and in places like this, I feel like a 12-year-old kid, like a kid in a candy store with a hundred bucks in my pocket.  Most people I know love to travel to foreign places and visit exotic sights.  I've done some of that.  But all  the time I was passing through it felt like I was only looking at places through glass.  I didn't know how to truly inhabit them.  But here . . .  here on this river . . .   I've  been here at least fifty, sixty, maybe more than a hundred times, in all seasons, weathers, times of day;  I know the names of just about everything that grows and lives here, flora and fauna;  I know what plants are good to eat and where the orchids grow; and yet,  every time I visit, it all seems terra incognita. 

I never know what I  might find.  One spring morning I nearly stepped on a tiny brand-new fawn curled in the grass at my feet, so close I could sense its breath pass in and out of its nostrils.  One autumn evening I watched a young beaver drag a twig to the water's edge and heard him gnaw on it. One cold but brilliant January afternoon I saw a pair of bluebirds high in a tree,  their rosy breasts the only color in the winter landscape.   And one day . . . .  Some day . . . .   Just one of these days I know I will see an otter.  

* * * 

January 1, 2014: Indeed, I HAVE seen an otter, or at least a few glimpses of one, and so many, many other amazements, too, in the five years since I started this blog.  Also, as a direct result of keeping this blog, I have made the most wonderful friends, folks who share my love for the woods and waterways and who happily share their knowledge of plants and animals and introduce me to the marvelous places where they may be found.

First mention has to go to my friend Ellen Rathbone, once the nature educator at the Adirondack Visitors' Interpretive Center in Newcomb whose own blog, Adirondack Naturalist, inspired me to consider starting my own. After some months communicating through each other's blogs, we finally got together in the woods and on the waters for many fun adventures.

Sad to say, the VIC in Newcomb eventually closed, and Ellen had to leave her beloved Adirondacks to move to my own home state of Michigan, where she now serves to educate Michiganders about the wonders of their own woods and waterways.  I miss her companionship dearly, but I also enjoy following her adventures in Michigan, both through her continued personal blog (now called An Adirondack Naturalist in Michigan) and also through the informative blog she maintains for the Dahlem Nature Center where she now works.

I had never in all my life experienced a genuine sphagnum bog until I was taken to one -- and then to many more -- by Evelyn Greene, a fellow Hornbeck canoe enthusiast who knows all the lost ponds and secret bogs of the Adirondacks as if they were in her own backyard,  Which, in many ways, they are.  To get some sense of the many adventures this intrepid lady has led me on, just type her name into my blog's search bar, and prepare to be amazed.

Evelyn is also an expert in the formation of frazil ice, a particular kind of fluid, snow-like ice that forms in the turbulent river and is deposited in huge heaps along the shore, creating a distinctive habitat that supports the growth of many rare species of plants.  Before I met Evelyn I had never experienced this remarkable phenomenon, nor visited such a rare-plant habitat as the stretch of Hudson River called the Ice Meadows, upstream from Warrensburg.

Evelyn also introduced me to her good friend Bob Duncan, another nature enthusiast and font of knowledge about all kinds of plants, including knowledge about where to find the rarest of the rare.  Bob's knowledge is matched by his genial willingness to escort me to lay my own eyes on these rare plants, including the almost extirpated Hooker's Orchid Bob is photographing here.

Another habitat I had never experienced before I started this blog was the alpine habitat above the treeline of the high peaks of the Adirondacks.  Because of my blog, I came to know Steve Young, chief botanist with the New York Natural Heritage Program, who led botanical excursions to the summit of Whiteface Mountain and invited me to join them.

Each time I went, I was able to add many species of rare plants to my life list.  These trips also helped to cement my friendship with Steve, who has granted me permission to collect specimens of plants that have not been recorded for Saratoga County, thus updating the botanical record.  Steve is also my go-to guy when I find a plant I can't identify.  Just this past year,  he confirmed that an unusual Mountain Mint I had found on the shore at Moreau Lake was indeed one of New York's most endangered plants, Pycnanthemum verticillatum var. verticillatum (Whorled Mountain Mint), with only four other populations currently known to exist in all of New York State.  Quite an exciting find for me, an amateur wildflower hobbyist!


I have gained quite a number of botanical go-to guys and gals during the course of my keeping this blog, and the ones topping that list would be my friends in the Thursday Naturalists, especially Ed Miller and Ruth Schottman, both of them walking encyclopedias of botanical information.  Not to mention, darn good company on a nature walk.

This photo shows Ruth and Ed on the Ice Meadows along the Hudson River during a field meeting of the American Botanical Society (Northeast Section) organized by Ed last summer.  I would have to write a book to explain the wealth of knowledge Ed and Ruth have shared with me on our many excursions together, all of that knowledge imparted with generosity and delight.  Any amateur wildflower lover would be blessed to have either of these two as a teacher, and I can't believe how lucky I am that they have invited me to join them on their weekly explorations of nature preserves throughout the region.


Also topping that list of gracious botanical experts I can always call on is Nancy Slack, ecologist, professor, and author of several books on plant-related subjects.  She is also a member of the Thursday Naturalists, and we can always count on her to answer any questions about mosses, lichens, and liverworts, an area of special interest to her.  But she knows a lot about a lot of things, including how to tell one aster from another, as she is demonstrating during a nature walk last fall.

When I started this blog, I thought I might gain a few readers among the nature lovers of Saratoga County, since this was the area I planned to focus on.  I was absolutely astounded then, when, a month or two later, I discovered my blog had attracted readers from all over the world.  I soon found myself connecting with other nature writers through their own blogs, and before long, we started communicating through comments and emails, and friendships began to grow.   One of the strongest of these friendships occurred with a young botanist from Ohio, Andrew Gibson, whose own blog, The Natural Treasures of Ohio, showcases his home state through splendid photography and enthusiastic, deeply informed writing.

I soon learned of Andrew's passion for orchids when I posted an entry about finding large numbers of White Fringed Orchids in a bog I had visited.  Andrew's excitement about that find was so intense (this orchid is very, very rare in Ohio), I just had to invite him to come out the following year to go orchid-hunting with me in person.  Well, we had such a wonderful time, finding every single orchid on his wanted list plus many other flowers, that we agreed he would have to come back the next spring, to look for some earlier blooming species.  What amazing, marathon sessions of botanizing we had both times!  I've recorded some of our adventures in blogs I wrote about Andrew's visits, one in 2012 and again in 2013.  I revisit these posts often, not only to recall the great time we had together, but also to remind myself once again of the amazing variety of botanical treasures that surround us here in northeastern New York.

Although most of my new friends have been wildflower enthusiasts like myself,  I also count myself truly blessed to have come to know Vince Walsh, wilderness guide, expert animal tracker, and all-round nature guru.  Proprietor of the nature education center Kawing Crow, Vince has enhanced the winter woods for me forever by teaching me how to identify the tracks of many of our forest inhabitants.  And not just to know their names, but also to read of their fascinating dramas in the snow.  (Vince also led me on a pilgrimage to Black Tupelo trees that have been dated to 800 years old!)

If I've saved this final tribute for last, it's because I'm afraid that once I start talking about my almost constant nature companion, Sue Pierce, I won't be able to stop.  Every nature lover should have such a friend to walk with, one who can really SEE all the wonders that surround us, who knows how to really look, and most importantly, how to linger and pay close attention.  I can't count all the treasures I would have missed if Sue had not pointed them out to me.  In this photo she is holding that rare Mountain Mint I mentioned above, a treasure I just had to share with her.  When I first found it, I counted about 15 plants, but with Sue and her gift for discovery along, we located more than 50!

Sue is a longtime and dedicated student of Henry David Thoreau, and she brings a Thoreauovian sensibility to all she observes in nature,  a sensibility she also brings to her own beautiful blog, Water-Lily.


Such wonderful friends, so many amazing adventures, a burgeoning store of nature knowledge,  connections to nature lovers and gifted bloggers all over the world:  all these I would never have acquired if I had not started my blog five years ago.  I think I'll continue to keep it for another year.

To all my friends and loyal readers and fellow bloggers, I wish you health and happiness as we start the new year, and for many years to come.  Be sure to let nature contribute to your sense of wonder in life.