Following the Town Line and working our way up and around Rollstone Mountain

An early start this morning, since Al had to work at 3.  Owen had maple sap simmering on the wood stove when I arrived at 7 to meet Al.  I love the smell of sap evaporating and often put my face over the pan to get a  "maple facial", as Owen calls it.  I don't know whether it does anything for my complexion, but I do love the smell of maple syrup.

The last couple of weeks we have been exploring in the northeast corner of Nelson.  New snow has provided many opportunities for tracking.  Last week it was primarily fisher and the week before, bobcat.  This week, it had been a few days since we had snow, but the snow was soft and we hoped to have another banner day of tracking.  What one hopes for doesn't always come to pass however.  We saw some faint tracks as we walked across Rye Pond to find the corner marker for the Nelson/Stoddard/Antrim town line, some newer tracks that were probably coyote, and turkey tracks on the edge of the pond, but after that, we found a few squirrel tracks, but no more, for a long time. But that freed us up to look for other things of interest, and to actually try to follow the town line this time.

As we made our way across Rye Pond, I could see a light colored post, or what looked like a post to me.  I decided to check it out.  From a distance, it looked like a porcupine stripped tree, but it was too short to be a tree.  Curious, I made my way up the slope to see for myself.  It looked like a dead tree, or a branch from a dead tree.  It was totally stripped of bark, but it was also pockmarked, as if a pileated woodpecker had taken every last bug from the branch.  I'm still not sure if that was what happened, but it sure was dramatic.

Soon after, we found the corner marker for the Nelson/Stoddard/Antrim town line and turned around to go back across the pond to find the marker on the other side.  Half way across the pond, I looked down to see a small spider crawling on the surface of the snow.  Not all the small creatures disappear for the winter. Some spiders do remain active, at least when the weather warms up.  I couldn't imagine the perspective of that spider crawling across the pond.  How vast the expanse must have seemed to her.

We crossed the pond and Route 123 and made our way up the slope.  The town line should have been to the southwest, but we found markers leading in another direction.  It didn't make sense, so we followed the direction we believed to be correct and found the stone wall that marked the line.  This stone wall led to the top of Rollstone Mountain.  But along the way, we found a couple of bear clawed beech trees and bear nests in the trees, as well as an amazing view of North and South Pack Monadnock to the south and Route 123 curving to the east.  We sat and had a few snacks and enjoyed the view for a while before heading up to  the top.   At the top of Rollstone Mountain, there is a large boulder with an arrangement of small rocks in the shape of a bridge.   We cleared the snow away, and Al added a snow bridge on top of the first. The snow is perfect for packing , so I tried to add a third, but it collapsed    So, I decided to add a stack of snowballs one at a time until they collapsed.  I was able to stack 8 snowballs before they tumbled and we moved on.

Okay, this post is not sequential because now I am going to talk about the cool spruce forest that we found on the way up Rollstone Mountain. The spruce grove was on the Nelson side of the wall.  "Dark" was the way that Al first described it, but I thought "mysterious" was much more inviting, and who knows but what we might find an owl in one of the trees, or some interesting tracks.  Well, tracks and owls were not in evidence, but it was an interesting place, with spruce trees of about the same age.  We imagined  that the area had been cleared about 60 years ago. The spruces had grown up together and crowded out almost all the trees.  We found a few hardwood trees, but other than that, just spruce.

We followed the stone wall with hopes to find the corner between Nelson, Hancock and Antrim, before making our way back to the car.   It was all downhill from there, so why not?   Along the way, Al found a couple bouncy fallen logs and we took another break to act like a couple of kids and bounce.  Between throwing snowballs, making a snowball tower, sliding down small boulders with our snowshoes, and bouncing on logs, we returned to our childlike ways for a little while.

We followed the stone wall for quite a ways, getting closer to Lake Nubanusit.  Just when we thought that we would never find the corner marker, Al decided to cross the stone wall.  I followed and looked to my right to see a tree marked with three blazes as well as a tree on the other side of the wall similarly marked.  We had found the corner where Antrim, Hancock and Nelson meet!   If Al hadn't chosen that spot to cross, we would have missed the marks, because they were on the downhill side.  

That goal accomplished we turned away from the wall to skirt around Rollstone Mountain's western slope.  Still no tracks to speak of, but we didn't give up.  We followed a steep draw which took us up to the saddle between Rollstone and Holt Hill, and finally, on our way down the other side, we found snowshoe hare tracks as well as a couple of piles of scat.  We wondered if we had scared the hares and they had taken flight on hearing us coming.  But we found no definitive answer to our musings.  We came to a spot which we would like to revisit in the spring--It looked like a good vernal pool possibility.

From there we followed a stream which, we could see from the map, would flow into Rye Pond.  We were hopefully to find mink tracks along the stream, but no such luck.  Just not a good tracking day.  We did find a lot of snow fleas or springtails and spent some up close and personal time with them (but we didn't eat them as we had last spring).

Well pecked tree limb or stump.

Winter cattails at Rye Pond

Boulder as big as a house.  

Boulder as big as a house--looked like a house from a distance.

Well pecked tree limb or snag.

North Pack Monadnock

Pack Monadnock

Snow arch over stone arch over Rollstone Mountain top boulder

Very interesting ripples in this broken trunk--I think that it is maple.  

I just thought the lichen and the fungus together was pretty.

Snowshoe Hare Scat--notice how round it is.

Spring tail close-up

Springtails or "Snow Fleas"

Yellow birch bud--note the ridges in the stem--very distinctive.

Even though we didn't find a lot of tracks this day, we will still count the walk as a success for all the interesting things we saw, the new territory we explored and the fun we had together.  There is absolutely never a bad day in the Nelson Wilds!