Mystery Solved

Phomopsis gall on bitternut hickory limb

Here's an update about those warty looking tree "tumors" I wrote about in my February 24 post.  According to Moreau Park staffer Dave Alfred, the trees were all bitternut hickory.  There were about 20 hickories showing these growths in that particular low-lying area, and no other tree species nearby appeared to be affected.  Dave shared this information with Casey Holzworth,  regional biologist with the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.  This is what Casey  reported:

[These growths] appear to be phomopsis galls on hickory. It's a relatively common gall in hickory and some other species caused by some species of phomopsis fungus.  It will harm the vigor of the tree, but that's more of a concern for cultivators of some of the other species that this fungus can impact.  [Moreau Lake] Park staff will keep an eye on it.

 So now we know that it's just a fungus among us.  Not some alien invasion.  Phew!

Up North to Newcomb

Black spruce line the Boreas River near Newcomb

My husband's gone to Florida, so I'm freed from KP duty for the rest of the week.  Since I don't have to hurry home to start supper, I can stay outside as long as I like.  So what did I do today?  I took a drive.  And then I took a walk.  I headed north, planning to visit Pyramid Lake, but decided instead to go further north and surprise my blog friend Nature Girl where she works at Visitors' Interpretive Center in Newcomb.  Her blog Adirondack Naturalist is on hold for who knows how long (her internet service has been disconnected), and I really miss her.

I love sailing up the Northway (I-87) to the Adirondacks.  Sweeping vistas open on every side, starting around Lake George. By Chestertown you can spy high peaks peeking over the tops of lower mountains. Then Schroon Lake spreads out beneath Pharaoh Mountain, like a carpet before a throne.  I left the Northway to take the Blue Ridge highway west to Newcomb.  Not a good choice in winter.  Snowbanks crowded the shoulders and wet the pavement of this steep, winding road, with fully-loaded lumber trucks barreling around blind curves, and a frost-heaved roadway created tentative traction for my tires.  But wow! what a pretty drive!  I could tell right away that I'd gained both latitude and altitude by the soaring spires of black spruce, their church-steeple tops towering over the lower-growing conifers.  And in Newcomb, which lies to the south of the high peaks region,  the view of these peaks was spectacular today: chalk-white mountaintops against a blue, blue sky.

Nature Girl was indeed surprised by my visit.  We've e-mailed and posted comments to each others' blogs but had never met in person.  She's every bit as fun as she sounds from her blog.  She left her desk, strapped on snowshoes, and off we went on a tour of VIC's trails. 

The fat furry footprint of a snowshoe hare

The habitat at VIC includes woods and streams and a beautiful lake, where groups of school kids come to have their eyes and ears (and noses!) opened to the natural wonders around them.  Myself, I always feel like a kid when I'm out in the woods, especially when I'm with someone like Nature Girl -- who knows everything!  What I thought at first was a snowball's track rolling down a hill turned out to be ruffed grouse.  (Later, we thought we heard the deep whirrrrr of its wings.) Then we followed the tracks of a snowshoe hare as it meandered around the woods: a first for me (if hares exist in Saratoga County, I've never seen one).  We found tracks of fox, coyote, raccoon, otter, weasel, mink, and (possibly) marten; stopped to sniff some yellow snow (not skunky, it wasn't fox); marveled at the intricate beauty of a velvety hobblebush bud; traded tales about childhood adventures outdoors and harumphed about kids not playing outdoors anymore . . . in short, we had a blast!  I know I did.  Thanks, Nature Girl. I hope I can show you around my woods someday.  And I hope your blog gets back on the web real soon. I miss it.

A hobblebush bud gets ready to bloom

Funny Stuff in the Woods Today

Here's a funny-face boulder I found in the woods today. Looks like his eyes are closed and he's sleeping until spring.  He'll have to wait a bit longer: forecast is for below zero again tonight.  But up into the 50s by the weekend!  Promises, promises.

At any rate, this cold-again weather after rain has firmed up the snow pack beautifully.  I can move through the woods without snowshoes, and much more quietly, too.  No carrion eaters at the deer carcass today (does a chickadee count?).  There's nothing left but bones and hide.  There were lots of coyote, fisher, fox, and mink trails in the marsh, but none of them approached what was left of the deer.  Actually, it looked like the coyotes had other things on their minds beside eating: multiple tracks leading to a spot with a lot of commotion.  Several times.  Could they be mating?  Were they fighting?  It's also possible they were somebody's dogs, dancing and prancing around the way dogs do. I'll never know, but it's fun to puzzle over it.

I also saw many mouse tracks today, stitching over the inch of new snow.  I was just commenting to a friend that I hadn't seen their tracks for a month or so, figured they'd constructed their tunnels down under the snow and they'd stay there until snowmelt.  Maybe that day-long rain we had last week flooded their basements.

Don't Despair. Spring Will Come

By the look of the weather today -- lots of snow, forecasts of below-zero temps tonight -- it almost seems as if I jinxed Spring's advent by celebrating it.  I know I mustn't despair.  But as the image up there says, the waiting is very hard.  The picture is an ad for Hornbeck Boats that appeared in a recent Adirondack Explorer, and it captures a paddler's longings exactly. (And that's my own darling boat in the photo.)

 Sure, I love Winter.  I guess that's pretty obvious from this blog.  But oh! there's nothing like slipping along in the cool blue water, swift and silent as a water snake, surprising a mink at its morning meal, flushing a flurry of baby mergansers (they actually run on the surface of the water!), following a belted kingfisher in its looping, swooping overhead flight from tree to tree.  Or paddling out on a starlit night in the crystalline mountain air, the Milky Way shining above as bright as a silver river.  Or moving across a glassy lake on a cool autumn dawn, the rising mist as warm and soft as a baby's blanket (it's like being kissed all over).  Oh, Jackie, stop! Don't torture yourself! Okay.

My little Hornbeck canoe truly changed my life.  For years I used to have bouts of depression, often in spring, of all things.  I knew from my youth growing up in a boatyard that it lifted my spirits to go for a paddle, but the aluminum canoe I owned weighed around 80 pounds, and no way could I get that thing on the car by myself.  Then, about 15 years ago, all my family members pitched in and bought me a Hornbeck Kevlar canoe for my birthday. It weighed 17 pounds.  I could lift it myself.  I could carry it through the woods or even up mountains. I promptly abandoned all but required work at home:  time spent vacuuming the rugs or mowing the lawn was time I couldn't be on the river.

My boat became my portable zendo, my meditation chamber, my way to find silence and solitude; it carried me, at last, to genuine solace.  Depressions left, and haven't been back again.  When I'm in my canoe, drifting along, my attention drawn by the myriad wonders around me,  I don't need to do anything, or go anywhere:  I'm already there.  I don't need to earn my right to a place on this planet: like all the creatures I find in the woods and the water,  my being is simply sheer gift.  Suffering and death assume their place in the total scheme of things, subsumed, it seems, by a great, great goodness that lies at the core of creation. 

Many authors have written about the healing power of nature.  To that I say Amen!  I know, because I've lived it.  Thanks be to God for this beautiful world.  And thanks to my family, who gave me my beautiful boat.  And finally, thanks to Peter Hornbeck, who designed the canoe that changed my life (and who gave me a really good deal when I purchased an even lighter model: the 12-pound Black Jack, made of carbon fiber).

Oh yes. And thanks be for showshoes.  Even if winter does run too long, the shoes make the season a reason for celebration.

The Spring Thaw Begins

My son Philip edges close to the cliff

Today, my husband Denis, son Philip, and I hiked up the Spring Trail in Moreau Lake State Park to a rocky outcropping overlooking the Hudson valley, the Adirondacks to the north standing out in clear profile against a radiant blue sky.  It was 15 degrees this morning, and tonight we're supposed to get more snow.  But the signs are everywhere that this snow and cold are just winter's last gasps.  The south-facing slopes are bare now, basking in the each-day-higher sun.  Patches of green appear, and even though they're the always-green mosses and leaves -- wintergreen, partridge berry, trailing arbutus -- they lend the look of new growth to the forest floor.  But the surest signs of spring are the sounds:  the birds are singing their love calls in earnest, and all around are the drips and plinks and trickles and splashes and babbles of melting ice.

I know, I know.  We could get socked again, as we often do in March, with a two- or three-foot snowfall.  But so what?  That sun up there is like a growing boy with a huge appetite for snow.  It won't last long.

I think the sky is never so blue as in winter

Spring Signals

Wow! Is that sun getting hot!  I sat out on a high rocky bank of the Hudson today, and after about 15 minutes I sought the shade.  On south-facing banks, the ground is beginning to show.  Today was still below freezing, but it reached 50 yesterday, with a steady rain all day.  March starts tomorrow.  It won't be long until the woods and the waterways become nearly unreachable: the water not open for paddling but the ice unsafe to walk on, the ground not bare but the snow too porous to support snowshoes.  Even today, I was punching through if I left the trodden packed trail. And then comes the dreaded MUD season.  But hey!  That's the price we have to pay to get from here to there: SPRING! 

The signs are definitely there:  this beautiful red maple bud is so rosy and plump it seems about to burst into bloom.

Here's the first sapling of spring to be felled by a beaver.  I haven't seen any sign of new beaver activity all winter until today.  Their winter cache of underwater treetops must be running low.

(I just hope they stick to birch and poplar and leave the few remaining tupelos alone.)

And here -- not a sign of spring, exactly, but a sign that my hope of spotting otter may yet spring eternal -- are definite, couldn't-possibly-be-anything-else-but OTTER tracks.  I've found the five-toed, bunched-up paw-prints before, but this time they came with a tail attached, plus now and then a lovely, and positively diagnostic,  slide.

Birds and More Birds

Three Pine Island: the dead deer lies on the other side

Roark! Roark!  Caw, Caw! Caw, Caw!  Skreeeee!  Raven, crow, eagle: I heard them but didn't see them at the dead deer site today.  Wait, I did see one -- a juvenile bald eagle, all brown with pale streaks on his head, like he'd been to the beauty parlor for blond highlights.  He briefly circled the site, then must have spied me and split.  I thought I was pretty well hidden among hemlocks, but they don't call them eagle-eyed for nothing.

Anyhow, there's always something to see in the woods, even if you don't find what you set out to see.  Today, it was a pileated woodpecker -- no, make that two pileated woodpeckers, and both in the same tree.  And hitching along around the trunk up there as if they were pals, no riotous cackles or flapping of wings in challenge.  Must have been mates.  (Sorry I don't have a photo; distance, branches, and constant motion impeded my getting a clear shot.)

These woodpeckers sure have been busy.  I keep coming across piles of woodchips at the bases of trees,  look up, and sure enough, there's the tell-tale oblong cavity.   And some of these cavities are really huge!  I've seen them three or four feet long by one foot wide by six or eight inches deep.  Are they excavating holes for nesting?  Are they just finding lots of bugs all in the same spot?  Or are they just like guys of all species:  "Hey, look at me!  I'm bigger and better than all the rest."  (Do female woodpeckers dig big cavities, too?) 

Avian Evidence

We went back to the Hudson today to spy on the carcass, and once again, we scared off the carrion eaters before we could see them,  although we certainly heard them!  And we found their prints all over the snow around what was left of the deer: ravens, crows, eagles, coyotes, and (possibly) fisher.  A friend had been watching the scene before we arrived and told us an eagle had been fighting with several ravens.  We just missed them!  At midday, the feasters are mostly birds; the four-legged critters won't come out until night.  Most of the bird prints were too trampled or windblown to come out well in photos, but I did find this one that shows a bird landing and hopping (I'm guessing a crow by the size).

My best bird sighting today came at home, outside my kitchen window.  This sharp-shinned hawk stopped by for lunch, and apparently went away hungry.  I watched him (her?) sneak into the balsam propped up by the birdfeeders, rustle around in there a bit, and hop out empty handed (empty taloned?). Too bad.  I wouldn't mind thinning out our resident flock of English sparrows.  It's not that rare for sharpies to visit us, although we live on one of the busiest streets in Saratoga.  I guess it's because our feeders are probably the busiest for blocks around.

Tree Tumors

Winter days don't come much better: dazzling blue sky, glittering fresh snow, air as clear and sweet and sparkly as ice-cold gingerale.  My friend Laurie Williams invited me for a walk and I didn't need much convincing.  Laurie lives near Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park, so I asked her to take me to some of her favorite spots.  She showed me where springs keep the pond's edge unfrozen, where birds and bobcats lurk to snatch bullheads and tadpoles out of the water.  She showed me where a stream tumbles into the pond, its flow interrupted by terraces built by beavers. And lots of spots where she and her kids like to slide on sleds and skis.

Gall-laden crown

Then she showed me these trees, a whole bunch of them, all infected with something that causes all these tumors.  What a sight!  I wonder how these growths (are they galls?) will affect the trees' health come summer.  I wish I knew trees by their bark better than I do.  What are they?  What's causing this blight?  Will it spread through the rest of the forest?  If any of this blog's readers  know, I  hope you will leave a comment.  Both Laurie and I would really like to know.

Looking up the trunk

A growth close up

UPDATE: Here's an update about those warty looking tree "tumors" I wrote about in my February 24 post.  According to Moreau Park staffer Dave Alfred, the trees were all bitternut hickory.  There were about 20 hickories showing these growths in that particular low-lying area, and no other tree species nearby appeared to be affected.  Dave shared this information with Casey Holzworth,  regional biologist with the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.  This is what Casey  reported:

[These growths] appear to be phomopsis galls on hickory. It's a relatively common gall in hickory and some other species caused by some species of phomopsis fungus.  It will harm the vigor of the tree, but that's more of a concern for cultivators of some of the other species that this fungus can impact.  [Moreau Lake] Park staff will keep an eye on it.

 So now we know that it's just a fungus among us.  Not some alien invasion.  Phew!

My Dad at Pyramid Lake

I tried to creep up on whatever might be feeding on the dead deer I found two days ago, but ravens blew my cover before I was halfway through the woods: Roark! Roark! Roark!  No birds were there by the time I arrived at the scene, but it was obvious from their tracks that many had been.  And only birds, dropping down from the air and hopping on both feet to reach the carcass.  No canine or feline or mustelid tracks led out onto the ice from the woods.  I'm not going to post a photo of what the deer looked like.  It's pretty scary to see what beaks can do.

I wish I had a photo of the little kid I saw walking out on the ice with a grown-up (probably his dad) on Saturday.  The two were several  hundred yards downstream from me, and the kid was a picture of absolute delight: running circles around his dad, skipping and dancing, his arms windmilling, literally jumping for joy.  I felt a surge of happiness, then regret.  I wish I'd had a dad I could have been that happy with.

When I was a kid, my dad was the kind of guy you'd run to hide from:  a driven perfectionist with a violent temper and ready swats.  All my life I kept as careful a distance from him as I could.  Until just a few years ago, when he was in his late 80s, I in my late 50s.  My mom had died and I felt kind of sorry for my dad, so I asked his much younger brother (my favorite uncle) to drive him out from Michigan.  

Dawn at Pyramid Lake

It was late September and we went to Pyramid Lake in the Adirondacks,  staying in a rustic lodge at a retreat center where I volunteer.  The lake is surrounded by the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Area, the shoreline completely wild, with forested islands and sheer rocky cliffs rising up from the water's edge.  We had the place to ourselves. We hiked, we paddled, we found wild mushrooms we cooked in the center's kitchen. We marveled at the silence at night, woke to loons' calls in the morning.  My dad recounted adventures from his youth: building a log cabin in the woods all by himself at 16, visiting his trap line on the long walk to school each morning.  He grew absolutely relaxed and happy.  And for the very first time in all my life, I had a good time with my dad.

Here's an image from that occasion:  My dad and I were paddling across the lake.  A hummingbird came and landed on my hand.  He sat right there for several paddle strokes, I could see his ruby-red little bib, look into his bright black eye.  Now, when hummingbirds migrate, they fly thousands of miles without resting.  Why did this one come and rest on my hand?  That tiny bird seemed a symbol of great blessing.

My dad never stopped talking about that trip.  A year ago last September I went out to Michigan to care for him as he was dying.  I was privileged to care for him in the ways I had cared for my Hospice patients, to bathe him and shave him, to ease his pain, to hold his hand as he drew his last breath, and to close his eyes when he died.  Resentment and fear were replaced with overwhelming love.  I wonder if that could have happened if we hadn't had our retreat at Pyramid Lake.

Fungus Redux

Here's a close-up of the green-stained fungus I posted a photo of on February 20.  See all those little trumpet-shaped things growing on the fungus?  I wonder if they're some kind of  lichen.  So the food chain continues:  fungus feeding on tree, algae feeding on fungus, lichen fed by both of them.  I wonder what eats the lichen?  Probably something too small for me to see.

Matters of Life and Death

There's a new dead deer on the ice.  Moreau Park naturalists must have dragged it there, to serve as a feeding station for area carnivores, especially bald eagles.  (The park keeps a count of these wintering raptors.)  I'll be trying to creep up on this scene in the days to come, hoping to actually lay eyes on some of the animals whose tracks and/or wingprints I've been finding in the snow all winter.  But it's not easy to creep up on anything in snowshoes: CRUNCH!!! CRUNCH!!! CRUNCH!!!  It's snowing like crazy today, so maybe the new soft stuff will muffle my footsteps a little.

I'm sure there will be some people who won't like to look at this photo.  And I agree, it's kind of sad.  I see those little teats on her belly and wonder if she was pregnant (this is a doe, isn't it?).  By the injuries I can see, I'd guess she was hit by a car.  At least that seems a quicker way to go than being run down by coyotes or slowly starving to death this long snowy winter.  And now she'll be food for other creatures skirting the edge of starvation.   As so we all are (or will be): food for somebody else.  When I start to feel bad about Nature's bloodier side, I stop and think about all the lives -- animal, vegetable, microbiotic -- that have died to sustain my life all these many decades.  The count must be in the billions.  Trillions.  Gazillions!

When I ponder what will be done with my corpse, I think it's a shame how state laws make it difficult to return our bodies to Nature, requiring chemicals, caskets, vaults, and other cemetery regulations.  Even cremation requires a rigid container and causes pollution with smoke and burning fuel.  There are some green cemeteries I've heard of, where you can be laid directly in the earth, wrapped in a simple shroud of cotton or linen.  Then, as the soil is filled in around you, a tree is planted over you, and that tree will be your grave marker.  Native grasses and wildflowers fill the spaces between the graves and only the paths are mowed.  Now that's the way I'd like to be laid to rest.  Unfortunately, the closest green cemetery is several hundred miles away from my home.  So barring that, I'd almost rather be laid out on the river ice for all the coyotes and eagles to feast on.  Although my surviving family members probably wouldn't approve.   (UPDATE: my church, St. Peter's in Saratoga Springs, now has a "natural" section of its parish cemetery that allows the simple kind of burial I described above: no casket, no chemicals, biodegradable container or shrouds only.)

No, I'm not depressed, really I'm not.  During all my years with Hospice, death was my daily companion, and I early learned to come to terms with it.  Sooner or later, we all gotta go.  Others' lives depend on it.  And it is Ash Wednesday this week : "Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return."  For the moment, though, I'm really glad to be alive, in this beautiful world so full of life that even death will be subsumed by it.