Mondays in the Nelson Wilds: 7 Hours Is a Good Long Hike!

So, here I am writing this account just 4 days after and we have snow on the ground again! We thought that we had found spring at last on our hike this past Monday, but New England weather is so fickle that one never can be sure. At any rate, it was a beautiful, warm day and we began our hike early. Well, semi-early, 8:30 am. I had thought that we would be doing a shorter hike since I thought that Al had to work, but it turned out that he had worked the night before, so we had all day! Russ Thomas joined us for our exploration and we tried to take it easy on him, but in the end, we were all worn out.

Our exploration took us to another "Land Between", i.e., bordered on all sides by roads. We chose a woodland which none of us had explored before. Actually, Al had explored in the area when he lived nearby in the 1980s, but it had been a very long time. The area was bounded on the west by Conrad Road, on the north and east by Route 9 and on the south by Granite Lake Road. It's a fairly small piece of land, yet we hardly touched the surface of this area. With three of us, we were able to cover more ground, but still.....

Part of the area had been logged this past winter, so it was pretty open. We found deer tracks, snowshoe hare scat in abundance, and coyote and fox tracks. We also found three vernal pools, still frozen, but no doubt waiting for the first warm night to welcome wood frogs, peepers and spotted salamanders. Maybe one of these pools will have the elusive Jefferson salamander that we have not yet found in Nelson.

I took the opportunity to work my way through the thicket of spruce and pines that border the state land and emerged at the top of the cliff overlooking Route 9. It was interesting to have this new perspective on the road that I travel almost every day of the week. I have often observed tracks coming down off the the cliff or heading up the cliff and it is clear that the wild inhabitants of this land use the corridor of the highway to make their way to other woodlands.

After exploring this woodlands and spending some time at the vernal pools, we headed down the hill to Granite Lake Road. We revived our practice of tree identification while we were in the woods and found many of the usual species. When we reached Granite Lake Road, we decided to take Russ to see the Granite Brook Falls, where we had explored the previous week. It was still running high, but so much of the snow had melted so the travel was much easier than last week. We paused at the stream for a while and just spent some time looking into the water (this was in an area of calm water). We could see caddis fly larvae in their interesting homes, a whirlygig beetle and a dragonfly nymph crawling through the sand, almost perfectly camouflaged that only its outline was visible as it moved along the stream bed. We also enjoyed the interesting patterns and shadows that the eddies and current created on the stream bed.

We also wanted to show Russ the areas of interest below the bridge near Priscilla Walter's house, but Russ was running out of steam (as was I, though I tried to solder on). Along the way, we flushed a pair of Canada Geese. Certainly no shortage of those birds in these parts!

Wasn't much to see at the sites of bones and hides that we had found before. No visible changes, but worth looking, I guess. We finished our hike at the end of Priscilla's driveway and strolled up her driveway for a "brief" visit which included fresh glasses of water and some custard for Russ and me, and ice cream for Al.

In the end, it had been a full and happy day, but we promised Russ we would go a little easier on him in the coming weeks.