This past Monday, Al couldn't start our hike before 11 and I had to go to an appointment at 2 so we had just a small window of time for our usual hike. Well, we can make do with what we have.
We met in the Village and headed into the woods west of Mackenzie's house. I spied a tree right next to the Mackenzie's house loaded with small oyster mushrooms, but we passed them by to see what we could find further into the woods. The land west of the Village slopes sharply; we chose to take the "low road", the land at the bottom of the slope and we found two wetlands that we had previously not explored. Along the way, we found some possible bobcat scat and crossed a number of small streams.
 |
| A strange fungus on this beech tree. |
 |
| What weather event made this oak grow this way? |
 |
| View from the tree house |
 |
| Looking down on the first floor deck from the second story of the tree house. |
 |
| Rick's fabulous creation |
 |
| The view of French's farm from the end of Log Cabin Road. |
We followed the contort of the hill, weaving in and around streams and wetlands, parallel to Log Cabin Road. At one point, Al found a bird feeder in a patch of woods near Beth Williams and Mike French's house, obviously the work of a bear at some time in the past. We decided that we would stop by and return the missing bird feeder. Mike and Beth were home and welcomed us. Turned out that they hadn't seen the feeder for more than a year and were glad to have it back. We had a nice visit with them, with a little bit of politics and a lot of offers for coffee. We resisted their offers in favor of returning to the woods.
Heading up the hill, we came upon a network of trails, apparently for firewood collection. We found some possible vernal pools, which of course we would like to explore in the spring, if we remember where they are and if we don't have more interesting places to check out.
Al went one way and I went another and found ourselves coming toward each other from opposite directions. Quite a maze of trails...I was pretty sure that this was Rick Church's work and when we reached a large tree house, we could see Church's house nearby. Rick must have had a good time building the tree house, with cables, ladders and a pulley system to bring supplies up to the first and second floor. The trunk of the tree goes right up the middle of the tree house and the walls are supported and supplemented with the larger branches. It offered great views and I could imagine camping out on the second story and awaking to observe wildlife on the ground below.
Our time was almost up. We hurried back to the Village, after taking a few pictures and enjoying a little snack in the tree house. All in all, no earth shattering discoveries (though there was an earthquake the next evening, centered near Portland, Maine and felt throughout the Monadnock region), but a nice way to spend a couple of hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment