A Bobcat state of mind

I met Al at his house at 8 am, and it seemed like we would be hiking in the fog under another overcast sky.  We have been enjoying the January thaw with warm temperatures, but fog and rain have been the typical weather during this thaw and we had no reason to expect more on this Monday morning.  Less than ideal weather has never kept us from hiking.  So, we considered our layers for the day, donned our gators to deal with wet snow and headed out the door.

We hiked into the woods across the street from Al's house, with the initial goal to find the trails which Terry Mednick maintains near his cabin.  It didn't take long to find the trail, but along the way, we found tracks of the animal that would dominate our hike for the day: deer, deer and more deer.   But where there are deer tracks, there are usually tracks of other less common animals as well.  As we followed Terry's trail, skirting around Hardy Hill, or Mount Monednick, as Terry has humbly dubbed the area around his cabin, we scanned the ground for other tracks and animal sign.  We were not disappointed to come on bobcat scat early in our day.  That was all we needed to leave the trail and take off into the woods to follow the bobcat tracks.  The wet snow made tracking fairly easy, except where the snow had melted away.  We can't complain, though.  Last year, we had so few good tracking days, with little or no snow on most of our hikes.

We followed the bobcat tracks until we couldn't follow them anymore, and found ourselves on a steep slope south of Hardy Hill.  At the base of the hill, we came upon a stream which undoubtedly flowed into Silver Lake.  Streams are good features to follow as all animals need water and some animals, such as mink, favor small streams and brooks where they feed on crayfish and other aquatic prey.  Al followed the stream on the left bank and I on the right, as we continued to scan the ground for interesting tracks.   I stopped occasionally to look up as well, since last week, we found so many bear nests and bear-clawed trees, which one does not notice unless one looks up.

Al came upon the bobcat tracks again, at least, we assumed that it was the same bobcat, and we followed the tracks as they wove through the woods, over deer tracks, intersecting with red squirrel, or gray squirrel.   We were blessed to have clear tracks to follow--definitely bobcat, with the characteristic "C" shaped pad.  Canine tracks have a raised area that looks like an "X", so it is easy, when the snow is the right consistency, to differentiate between the two.  It is helpful to have two sets of eyes when tracking, because when a track becomes faint or seems to disappear, one set of eyes can catch a clue that the other person misses.  At one point, the bobcat had walked along a stone wall which was snow free and we had to trust that we would find clues to know where the bobcat went next.  We were not disappointed; we found a foot print here, another further on and soon, the bobcat left the stone wall and we could follow the tracks through the snow again.

Somehow, we always come to a point where the tracks fade and we have to stop.  It's disappointing, but we  don't stay discouraged for long. The woods offer up more tracks to follow and we are off again.  This time, it's canine tracks following the deer run.  Small canine, probably red fox.  Actually, we were soon rewarded for following these new tracks.  We came upon a kill site, where the fox had fed on a gray squirrel.  We found the skull of the squirrel, with dark gray fur in a rough circle on the ground as well as leg bones.  The site was not old, as the skull and bones still had a lot of flesh on them.  We left the leg bones, but took the skull with us.  I have put it outside inside a have-a heart trap (to keep it from scavengers) to decay, with the hope that we will have a nice clean squirrel skull to add to our growing collections.

As macabre as it may sound, kill sites are always exciting finds,because we get a glimpse into the lives (and deaths) of these forest animals that we actually see so rarely.  We have often remarked that the animals probably see us more than we see them.  They are long gone, for the most part, when we come upon their tracks, having smelled us or spotted us through the trees.Once  in a great while, we will see a moose, or deer, a bobcat, fox, or coyote, or even bear.  The sight of a fisher, or another of the mustelid family, is so rare, that following tracks and finding kill sites bring a stronger sense of the reality of the creatures.

After finding the remains of the gray squirrel, we moseyed in the purest sense of the word back in the direction of Al's house.  Moseying really means moving slowly, observing the tracks we found, which included more bobcat, old fisher tracks, deer, deer and more deer tracks, snowshoe hare, and taking time to enjoy the beautiful sunshine that had broken through the clouds and made the day warm indeed.  We took a break to snack on some clementines, cheese, a baked potato, and some trail mix and stretch our tired muscles.  At least, my muscles were tired.  The amazing thing was that we were just a few feet from the "Old Road to Dublin" trail, but the slope hid the trail from us.

Soon enough we found ourselves across from Wendy Klemperer's house, looking down on one of the large vernal pools in town, a place I have studied for many years, observing fairy shrimp, wood frogs, and spotted salamanders.  Last year, this pool had dried up early and probably any amphibian eggs had not survived beyond the larval stage.  We hope for more snow this year, so that this vernal pool might prove to be a suitable habitat for the frogs and salamanders to mature.

Our last goal for the day's hike was to find a lead mine which Jonathan Smith had told Al about.  The mine was supposed to be located somewhere in the land between Hardy Hill Road and the Nelson Road.   Parts of this area were steeply sloped with large boulders and exposed ledge.  Based on our experience with the Lead Mine off of Old Stoddard Road, we thought that this would be the right place to look for the mine.  Along the way, we found more bobcat tracks, fairly fresh, so, of course, we followed them!  The tracks seemed to be following the deer tracks fairly closely.  In fact, at one point, I looked over at a spot in the woods and saw a large pile of fur.  Another kill site? Well, there was no blood or flesh, but a lot of hair, which we thought at first was squirrel again, but the individual hairs kinked which indicated deer.  Following the bobcat tracks further, we found another pile of fur, and another, the final pile clearly deer fur, red, white, brown, and black and long, with hair folicles still attached.  No blood or flesh though. We decided that the fur might in fact have been there for a while, but we still hoped to find  a carcass.

No carcass, and we lost the bobcat tracks, so after Al found the lead mine and we explored it a bit, we headed with less moseying back to Al's house for hot chocolate, more clementines and a review of a very successful day in the woods, exploring and appreciating more of the land right in Al's own neighborhood.

From Greengate to the Overlook: Bobcat, Bears, Porcupine and Clementines

It was a clear and cool day this past Monday.   Not too warm.  Not too cold: just right for hiking in a foot of snow.  Our goal for this beautiful day was to reach the "Overlook," a spot between Kulish Ledges and October Snow, on the southwest slope of Osgood Hill. Always in search of alternate routes to our favorite places, we parked at Gwenyth Tolman's house and skirted the slope below Kulish Ledges and above Spoonwood Pond, to approach the Overlook from below.

Early on in our trek, we came upon tracks of another human on snowshoes, with a dog apparently dragging a stick.  We also crossed numerous deer trails, but hoped, as always to find something a little more interesting than deer.   For a while, we followed a stream to see if we might come upon mink tracks, since these water-loving muskelids tend to stick close to brooks and small streams to find crayfish and other small water-dwelling prey.   No such luck today, however.   We steered east away from the stream toward our intended destination.

Following the contour of the slope, we crossed tracks of fox, snowshoe hare and grouse.  And deer, more deer.  Often, because the tracks were old, it was hard to tell what animal had passed this way, but we could be certain that it wasn't a deer if the tracks went under obstacles that a deer couldn't possibly fit.  It is never enough to look at just a small sample of tracks to identify the animal.  One needs to follow, to observe the patterns and where the animal went, before coming to conclusions about what it was.   Of course, sometimes the signs are unmistakable -scat, hair, or scent posts which indicate one species over another.
Usually, though, one has to follow the trail a bit before these unmistakable signs appear.

Finally, after a long slog up a very steep slope, where we pulled ourselves up by saplings and on hands and knees, we came to a point which we believed was just below the overlook.  But we had to be sure, so Al took a piece of a clementine peel and attached it to a small branch which he thought we would be able to see from the overlook, if our guess was right.

Scrambling up directly under the overlook was out of the question--just way too steep, at least for me, so I took a path to the left, following the track of a porcupine at times, then bobcat, then grouse, until I worked my way up and above the overlook.  Al took a slightly steeper track and checked out a spot where he believed that the bobcat had sat under an overhanging boulder.  Eventually, we both reached the overlook which affords a spectacular view of Spoonwood, White Swamp, Holt Hill, Nubanusit, and Crotched Mountain, and, if we looked really carefully, a little clementine peel on a small branch in the valley below.  I actually needed my binoculars to see it, but it was there!

So we had reached the overlook from below.  Now what?  Well, if you were at the top of a steep slope, and the snow was soft and giving, what would you do?  Well, okay, maybe you wouldn't do what we did, which was to find a route to slide down the hill on our rear-ends.  I will admit that it was a little tricky and I didn't always follow Al's route, because he had stripped off all the soft snow and left me with a pretty slick slide, but it was fun and exhilarating and no one broke anything and it was a lot easier than going up. We took the time on the way down to peer into caves in the boulder field and note the porcupine and bobcat tracks, and the amazing way these animals maneuver these slopes with apparent ease, and observe the stripped bark of saplings, work of the intrepid porcupines.

Following the contour of the slope, we found ourselves in an area above Spoonwood Pond, where we had been before--last summer when we were trying to follow the stream to White Swamp, the wrong stream, as it didn't lead to White Swamp.  At the stream, we found more grouse tracks, and moose tracks.  We moved through an area of the forest, where there were beech trees, and where there are beeches, we always look for bear sign.  We weren't disappointed: bear nests, bear claw marks, some older, some new.  Our route seemed to take us through an area full of bear nests. I felt afterwards that we were following the bear's trail, from one beech tree to another, until we actually lost count of the number of bear nests that we found. The bear nests are branches twisted over one another, brown beech leaves still hanging off the branches.  The bears grab the branches to get at the beech nuts.  I can imagine them sitting up at the top of the trees, gorging  themselves in preparation for the long winter months.

The long winter months: our favorite time of year for following the tracks of so many forest creatures.  We finished our hike where we had started, and noted fresh human and dog tracks.  Gwenyth and Bronwen were taking a walk, with faithful Bronte, their chocolate lab.   We stopped on the way out to thank them for letting us park in their driveway.   Our exploration had been challenging, exhilarating, and rewarding.  What more could we want?

Hot Cocoa, of course, and more clementines, please.    

Well clawed bear beech, with an old "bear nest"

The Overlook with White Swamp in foreground and parts of Nubanusit further out.  

Al ponders the route down.  Somewhere over his shoulder is that little piece of clementine peel.

We slid down the slope on the left side of this photo. 

Al thought this boulder looked like an owl, but I thought it looked like a  moose  head in profile.  Al added the  snowballs for eyes.

Bear Nests from this past fall.  

The roots of this yellow birch were totally bare from the top of the  boulder to the ground, a distance of about  6 feet, but the tree looked pretty healthy.  

New Year's Eve Hiking on Kendall Lane

After getting side-tracked by fisher tracks last week in our quest to explore the northwest corner of Nelson, we returned this last day of 2012 to try again.  We were joined by Wendy Byrn and a new hiking friend, Lucy Ryder, whom Al met at the pancake breakfast on Saturday.  Lucy and her husband just bought a house on Granite Lake and she was eager to get to know more of our little hill town.

We parked at the end of Kendall Lane in Sullivan again, but did not allow ourselves to be swayed by tracks before we even started down this class VI road.  Recent snowfall necessitated the use of snowshoes, at least for Wendy, Lucy and me.  Al has some big boots that work well if the snow isn't too deep. It's hard work getting used to moving in the snow after more than a year of no snow, so we were working up a sweat and using some muscles that haven't been used in a while.

At first the tracks we saw were old, probably from the day before, but filled in from the windy night we had on Sunday evening, but soon we saw fresher tracks--deer, lots of deer tracks.  Then the reward for our labors: we discovered bobcat tracks!  Backtracking the bobcat, we found where the bobcat had rolled and urinated in the snow.  We also found snowshoe hare tracks that had crossed the bobcat tracks.

Further down the hill, we repeatedly crossed fresh deer and bobcat tracks.  It would be nice to be able to observe all the movement that the tracks indicate.  If we could have a vantage point to sit quietly and watch, the winter landscape would come alive.

Our intended destination was Otter Brook and Ellis Reservoir, but we had reached a dead end--Kendall Lane seemed to peter out and end in a wet area, but no sign of either Otter Brook or Ellis Reservoir.  We began to think that a second week would go by without reaching our goal.  Lucy had to get back to her family and Wendy decided that she would go with her.  Al and I determined to go forward, in spite of Lucy's concerns that we would get lost or not get back before dark.  Wendy was confident that we would be fine, but Lucy had never hiked with us before.  She was not used to our comfort level in the woods, even when we don't know exactly where we are and where we're going.

But we showed her what we planned to do and how we would get back to my house and promised to let her know when we got back so she wouldn't worried.  Before we parted ways, however, we looked at a spot which Al had found, where we hypothesized an owl had touched down to catch an animal under the snow and taken flight again.  We could see the where the wings had brushed the snow.

The open area where we parted ways was like a bowl, with a ring of trees around it.  The conifers grew together in a thick grove and every bough was weighed down with snow, but there was nothing for it.  We had to go through them to get out of the bowl.  Checking our compass, we took a southerly track.  We crossed the bobcat tracks again and again.  That cat certainly roamed back and forth through this area.

When Al took one route and I another, we soon lost sight of each other.  We used our owl calls to keep track of each other and stay close enough together.   Finally, we made our way out of the thick spruce grove and into more mature mixed hardwood and conifers.  Al cleared a spot on a rock and took a seat to wait for me.  I thought it was about time for a break, but that isn't why Al had stopped.  Without a word, he facilitated the opportunity for me to discover another point of interest: a deer bed, with what looked like orange urine.  Orange!  Threw me off--certainly not the typical color of urine.  Al surmised that it could be musk and sure enough, one smell and his supposition was confirmed.   Another piece of knowledge that I didn't have before: deer musk is orange!

I still needed to take a break, but we could hear running water at last.  We had found Otter Brook.  In fact, we found ourselves at a spot on the brook where we had been two years before, near where we saw a moose on another snowy day.  We crossed the brook at an old mill site, scrambling over snowy, ice-covered boulders.    It was a little hairy at times, but we made it safely across.  Time at last for a break.  We made a little fire, and ate our snacks.  We warmed our hands and watched our damp clothing steam.   Amazing what a little fire can do--just enough to give us the warmth we needed to move forward.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we found coyote tracks on the boulders on the stream as well as more bobcat and deer tracks. Our final trudge was through an area east of Old Towne Road that had been logged two years before.  In fact, we met the skidder in this same area on the day that we saw the moose.  Now the area was beginning to fill in with the early succession shrubs and trees.  Al commented that this would be a good area for blackberry picking in the summer.

Finally, we reached Old Towne Road and met Al and Ellen Guida, the owners of the land over which we had just crossed.  We had a nice chat with them then walked back to my house for our usual after hike cup of mint hot cocoa.   Safely back, all in one piece after another satisfying lovely day.

  

Christmas week is a little out of the ordinary.

In deference to the special time with family during this holiday, we decided to forgo our usual Monday hike. Instead, I invited Kirstin, Jimmy, and my granddaughter, Lucy, to join us for a little walk.   Lucy took the lead, such as a 19th month toddler can do bundled into a snow suit.   When she bent over to pick up a stick, she practically did a somersault.   It was a short walk from Al's house up Lead Mine Road and back again.  Then, Lucy's favorite part of the day: Hot Chocolate.   She is quite able to say a number of words: Chocolate,  Peanut Butter- two essential food groups, and "more", "a bite", "please," and "eat," so food and drink figure prominently in Lucy's life at this time.  It was enough adventure for her: a little walk, and hot cocoa.  

Christmas day was full of family, from skyping with our two children serving missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Cape Verde and Riverside, California, to opening presents and enjoying Christmas dinner.  So, I only had a little time to get outside for a walk with Bailey.  We headed down on the Murdough Hill Meander trail to the mill site.  The water still flowed through the mill race way, but with the cold weather, ice was beginning to form interesting and beautiful patterns on the edges of the stream and from overhanging branches.  

Today, I was blessed with a day off from work, so Al, my friend, Wendy Byrn, a new friend, Michael, and I decided to explore some more along Ellis Reservoir and Otter Brook.  At least that was the plan.  We drove to Sullivan to access the northern shore of Otter Brook via a class 6 road called Kendall Lane.  We parked at the end of the road with every intention of walking down to Kendall Lane to see what we would find.  Well, so much for that....

We had hardly stepped out of the car before we found ourselves looking down at a clear set of fisher tracks.   Change of plans--off to backtrack the fisher.  What fun to charge off into the woods to follow the tracks, to imagine the moves of the fisher, over fallen trees, rolling in leaves, and scent-marking.  We tracked the fisher to the edge of a wetland, where we couldn't find any more tracks.  More than likely, the fisher had crossed the wetland, but in such a way that we couldn't see the tracks anymore.   We also crossed tracks of a snowshoe hare, deer tracks, moose scat and browse, squirrels, and small voles and mice.  I missed the mink tracks that Al, Wendy, and Michael saw, in my haste to follow the fisher tracks (not like the tracks were going anywhere.).

After we came to the end of the fisher tracks, we conferred briefly and decided to follow a steep slope, with the belief that Otter Brook and Ellis Reservoir couldn't be far away. We found ourselves on the edge of a small open wetland, but it wasn't connected to Ellis Reservoir, at least not closely.  But we did investigate the wetland and found cranberry plants, but few berries.   Along its edge, we found more deer tracks, which appeared to be fairly new.  We also found a convenient spot to stop for a snack after which we decided to follow the stream that flowed from the wetlands to the southeast, toward what was proving to be the elusive Otter Brook.  At every turn, over every ridge, I expected to find myself looking down on the brook or the reservoir.

Truth be told, it never happened--we never found the reservoir.  But along the way, we found some more interesting tracks of coyote, fisher and gray fox, a beautiful area of the stream with intriguing ice formations and basins of water flowing under boulders.   We found bear clawed beech trees, a moose bed and very new moose browse, and, just before we returned to Kendall Lane probably a mile from the place where we had started, we found a monument marking the Sullivan/Stoddard town line.   We may never have made it into Nelson at all on this adventure. And we were a long way from Ellis Reservoir, our desired destination. Oh, well...find joy in the journey, so the saying goes.   To cap the day, we came upon a bear nest in a beech tree, just off the side of Kendall Lane.  We had covered a lot of ground, seen many interesting features and discovered a beautiful place on which we had never before walked.   All in all, another great day in the woods, not of Nelson, but of Sullivan and Stoddard, which we were happy to find at least as interesting and enjoyable as our hometown.

A Departure for the Holidays

Sorry, folks, but I have chosen to depart from my usual hiking account to share a story from my brother, Michael.  

The fall of 2012 was a strange ride.  Once head-hunters tried recruiting me for a job at Simmons College in Boston, all normalcy went out the window like an escaped parakeet, and I think now it’s gone for good.  Christmas didn’t get its due, and here it is Christmas Eve with no gift of any sort for my mother or sister or brothers or sisters-in-law or brothers-in-law or nieces or nephews.  What to do? 

Well, I’m always good for a story.  Not that I’ve had a blockbuster life, but I’ve had a life, and there have been turns and twists.  So Merry Christmas, and I will tell you a story.  I think it’s apropos of the season, even if it’s not a Christmas story, even if it’s not even a winter story.  Thirty eight years and six or seven months back and I was a missionary in the city of Sendai, Japan.  You’ve heard of Sendai.  Recently it got chomped by a tsunami—that’s why the name is familiar to you.  But in 1978 it was just where the mission home was, the headquarters of the Japan Sendai Mission.  It was also where the Sendai Kokuritsu Byooin was—the hospital that my mission president, Richard Kwak, got to know and trust because it took good care of one particular missionary who got in a bike accident.  Oh yeah—that was me.  But that’s not what this story is about.  This is, I guess you could say, a spin-off.   There is the story of Elder Haehnel crashing his bike and breaking his jaw and spending eight weeks in a hospital, and that is a story in its own right.  But this is a different story, tied to the first by the thread of the Sendai Kokuritsu Byooin. 

So there were a couple dozen missionaries in Sendai, and I was one of four in East Sendai, near the hospital, because I was still getting outpatient care.  The other three weren’t getting care—Elder Knox and the other two, Williams and Olson, were just there because somebody had to be there and they were it for the time being.  Knox—he was my senior companion and also the district leader—was probably also there to make sure I convalesced okay.  He was kind of fatherly.  But other than that, there was no connection for the rest of them to the hospital. 

That changed though, and here’s the story I mean to tell you.  Transfers came along as transfers did, Olson left for somewhere, and Elder Larsen took his place. Larsen was a fairly new missionary who had been serving up north in a part of the mission that was out of easy reach, especially once winter set in.  As it turned out, he had had medical problems before his mission, and President Kwak got an uneasy feeling one day.  He called Larsen to see what was up.  “Nothing really,” Larsen said.  “A little pain.  That’s all.”

So the president pulled him in and sent him to the Sendai Kokuritsu Byooin.  The doctors ran a few tests and told Larsen to lie low until the results came back.

Larsen was annoyed: just those Japanese doctors being over-cautious.  Well, he had a point.  After my bike accident, the doctors held me in the hospital a lot longer than American doctors would have.  Nevertheless, orders were orders, and Larsen was confined to quarters.  “They won’t see anything,” he said.  “The tests won’t show anything, and then I can get back to work.” 

So Mormon missionaries are like oxygen atoms: they don’t occur alone in nature.  It’s O₂ or sometimes O₃ but never just plain O.  In other words, Larsen couldn’t stay alone; one of us had to be with him at all times.  Usually the duty fell to Williams because, after all, he was Larsen’s companion, but Knox and I also took our turns. 

One day, when Williams had a few appointments to tend to, I accompanied him while Knox stayed with Larsen.  We rode our bikes some distance to the west and followed up with a few investigators.  The bulk of the time we spent with a man who, in America, we’d call an antique dealer.  The Japanese word for his vocation was more like junk-seller.  In any case, we met him in a small shop with wares hanging from the ceiling and piled up like leaning towers on the floor and crammed into every corner.  The man was amiable enough, but it soon became apparent that his interest was more in the novelty of us Americans than in truth from God.  We kind of realized he wasn’t going to become an investigator, and he kind of realized we weren’t going to become his new best friends, so we all started leaning in the direction of sayonara.  But the man was gracious; he didn’t want to end on a sour note.  He took out a stack of prints and told us to each pick one as a souvenir. 

They were reproductions of wood-block prints depicting Japanese rural life in the previous century.  They were beautifully rendered with vivid colors.  I chose one that showed two men bent under loads of sticks, trudging up a snow-swept mountainside with a village by the seashore far below.  It was as fine a souvenir as any missionary could ever want.  Matted and framed, it would look splendid hanging over a mantle piece. 

We bowed and arigato-ed many times over, then took our leave.  It was time to get back to our house, and we had a half-hour bike ride ahead.  Woo-wee, I was pumped.  Beautiful, beautiful souvenir. 

Not more than five minutes into the ride—if that long—a voice inside my head said, “That’s not yours, you know.  You came on this trip in Larsen’s place.”

I didn’t like the sound of that voice. 

But it wasn’t strident or insistent.  I heard it once, then didn’t hear it again.  Whoever was speaking knew how to let things simmer…

“All right,” I said.  “All right.  I will offer the print to Larsen.”

Of course, there was the possibility that he might accept. 

There had to be a way to make the offer that would both satisfy that little voice and also allow me to keep the print.  I’ve always been handy with words.  The right words—the right tone, the right facial expression and meaningful pause—would do the trick.  I could offer the gift selflessly and yet ensure that Larsen would recognize what a sacrifice it was and insist that I keep it.  I knew I could do it.  I had time to figure it out: we were still twenty minutes from home.  It was just a matter of the right words.

Then the voice again: “If you are going to show love, show it all the way.”

Well. 

Well, the voice was God, and God was onto me…  Of course He was. 

What He said was true.  Of course it was. 

I sighed and let go.  This beautiful, beautiful thing was no longer mine.  It hadn’t been from the start.  I opened my hand and let it go. 

When we came to the house, I pulled past Williams, parked my bike and ran inside.  “Elder Larsen,” I said, “the junk-seller asked me to give this to you.”

Williams came in behind me and heard what I said.  He kept mum. 

Larsen looked at the print and let out a whoop.  He took it with both hands.  “My first souvenir!  Wow!  That’s really cool!  My first souvenir!” 

You know, here’s the thing with God.  He works and works and works on getting us to act halfway decent, and then when we finally…finally…catch on, He gives us a big fat A-Plus Gold-Star.  Williams took me aside and said, “That was really good what you did.”  Meanwhile God was filling me up with such a measure of joy that I could barely stand it.  It wasn’t me!  Left to myself, I wouldn’t have done it.  God had had to coax me every step of the way.  I didn’t deserve the credit. 

But a cushion of joy had me floating for the rest of the night.  Sweeter than any fruit, warmer than any blanket, more beautiful than any Japanese print, be it a reproduction or original.  In the end all I could say was, “Thank you, God, for saving me from selfishness.” 

In a few days, I had to thank God all over again.  Larsen’s test results came back, and he was sent home on the next flight.  God knew.  Way back when it was just a “nothing really” kind of pain, God knew.  And He wasn’t going to send Larsen home without a souvenir. 

Now you might be saying, “You lied to Larsen: the junk-seller didn’t ask you to give him the print.”

No, I think he did—he just didn’t realize it.  He was the giver; I was the courier.  We just didn’t know it at the time.  I don’t regret my choice of words: that was only part I got right without God having to steer me. 

They say God is love.  Yes, that is what He is.  Perfect, seamless, practical, merciful, double-edged, implacable love.  I don’t always get it, but that day, thank God, I did.  

Merry Christmas, everyone!  And a Great New Year!

First Decent Snow

Al and I are getting to know the area between Bailey Brook and Kulish Ledges pretty well, having hiked it many times as we plot out a route for a trail to connect the two places. This past Monday, we returned to follow a possible route.  We traveled over some terrain that was not familiar to me, but  Al had been there before.  He had even given a name to one part of the trail; he called it "stove ridge." That seemed like a pretty arbitrary name to me and I said so.  "Why did you call it 'stove ridge?'" "Oh, I don't know; it needed a name."   Well, I found out farther along--a rusting wood stove with a cast iron pot was sitting in the woods just off the trail.  I knew there had to be a reason for the name.   Here are a few pictures of the stove and the somewhat leaky pot.   

The view from the vantage point overlooking White Swamp, Nubanusit Lake and Spoonwood Pond was obscured by the fog on this misty morning so once we reached that point, we chose not to linger.  In the woods, I could see evidence of porcupines at work: trees stripped of bark.  We decided not to follow the marked trail to Kulish Ledges, but to venture into some unknown territory.  We looked for more evidence of the porcupines, but didn't find it.  But we did find our way to a favorite spot which I call "Jigsaw Ice Falls" for the way that the rocks have fallen off the ledge like pieces of a puzzle and the water that drips off the ledge to form interesting icicles.  

A few pictures don't do justice to the beauty of this place.

Along our way back, we moved through a very thick spruce woods, with young spruce, which I characterized as toddlers spruce, older trees--teenagers, and the mature spruce-middle-aged and elderly.  Of course, getting through the toddler and teenage spruce was difficult, not unlike those years of parenting, but where the mature spruces were predominant, the way was a lot easier.

We found an interesting oak tree, the main trunk of which has grown in a triangular shape closest to the ground.  We wondered what could have caused the tree to grow this way and then to correct its growth further up the trunk.  It would be interesting to get a cross section of the trunk someday.  

Sometimes, it is a good idea to pause in the woods to look around and listen.  So much is missed when one is intent on "getting somewhere."   At one point, Al and I stood still, looking and listening.  I looked at some oak leaves that I could hear rustling in the woods.  They hung down from the top of the tree: why hadn't they fallen off?  Well, I was looking at a "bear nest."   Bears climb oak trees and break off the branches while the leaves are still on the tree.  These branches hang down from the top of the tree and don't lose their leaves.  We found faint claw marks in the rough bark at the base of the tree.  It is so much harder to see marks in a rough barked tree like oak as opposed to beech, in which the claw marks remain clear and discernible years after the bear climbed the tree for the tasty beech nuts.  We found a few branches on the ground, with bear chew marks in them.  The bear had visited this tree and another within sight of the first tree this past fall.  It wasn't a particularly good "mast year" for the oaks and beeches, that is, the trees didn't seem to produce many nuts, but these two trees must have had enough acorns for one bear.  

No dead cows today, no thick sphagnum moss, nothing overly spectacular, but the "little things in nature bring me back" (Tara Greenblatt) just the same, even on a misty, wet day, with just a bit of snow to make it interesting.  

Nelson's Northwest corner on a misty day

Early on Monday morning, it was pouring and I was sure that we were in for a very wet hike this day.  But as is often the case, by the time Al and I were ready to head out, the rain had abated.  We would still get wet, but not soaked.  With the right clothes, we could manage just fine.

Al's inclination on this foggy, misty day was to explore along the town line between Nelson and Stoddard, beginning on West Shore Road near Granite Lake.  I was up for anything so off we went.  We started in an area that had been logged about three or four years ago.  What looks like a nice open space is usually very difficult to get through; the dead fern hide fallen and rotting logs and the early succession growth is thick and prickly.  One of the first plants to appear after a clear cut is blackberry and there is just no easy way to get through it.  Oh, well... we did our best and soon found ourselves at the top of a steep rise in a much more open understory in a coniferous woods.

Consulting map and compass, we headed off in a northerly direction following what we believed to be about where the town line should be.  We followed a stone wall to a spot where two trails intersected.   I looked off to the right and noticed a pile of something white.  What was it?  Prepare yourselves, dear readers: it was not a pretty sight.   The pile of white was the guts of three butchered cows, including the intact stomach of one cow.  We also found three severed heads, hoofs and hides of the cows.  The remains must have been dumped recently, because I couldn't smell anything and clearly, the scavengers hadn't discovered them yet.  But they will and when they do, the pile will quickly disappear.   Nature has a way of taking care of its mess pretty quickly.   Nothing is wasted.

We didn't linger at the cow remains for long. We were on a mission to find what other interesting things we might discover in the northwest corner of Nelson.  For a time, we followed a stone wall, consulting the map often to determine where we were and to anticipate when we might verify that we were on the right course.   The area had been logged and it was more rough going, though we could find patches of wood in which to walk more easily.

We came upon a tree marked with bright orange survey.  This could indicate the town line!  We decided to look for the next mark and soon were rewarded with a clear path to follow: red blazes cut into the trees which delineated the boundary.  A stone wall also served as a reliable landmark to follow.  A clear path, yes, but not easy.  We had entered an area of large boulders and steep slopes.  The area resembled a gorge and Al chose the simple, but appropriate name for this place: "Town Line Gorge."  It works.  We paused at one point, Al perched on one side of the gorge and I on the other.  Towering ledges and small crevasses, boulders piled on top of one another, uprooted trees: these were the characteristic features of the land.  In one crevass  I saw a little mole scurry up the face of a rock.  Nearby, we observed branches stripped of their bark by porcupines.

Up and down we went, keeping the blazes in sight, checking in with each other as we found interesting spots along the way.  As we often do, we chose parallel paths, about 50 to 100 feet apart from each other so we might be able to find more interesting things.  At one point, I looked down and saw what looked like a teapot.  It was the remains of a rotted tree branch, with the larger part looking like the pot and a smaller branch like a spout.  It was hollowed out and had it a bottom, I would probably taken it with me to see what I might fashion from it.  Just as I found the "teapot", Al called me over to see something that he had found. I looked carefully at the ground as I walked.  Often Al will find something and leave it in its place and I will have to observe carefully to find it.  This time, Al was holding a small round something.  It was covered with a brown coating and soft to the touch. I had no idea what it was, but Al thought that it might be a truffle or false truffle.  He determined to check with his ex-wife, Sue, who is an expert in the woods, to see if she could identify it.

We found the corner, where the town line turns to the west.  We were sure that we were following the line, because the spot was marked with "TLNS" and the year on a post.   We turned west.   The slope was still steep, but we were no longer following the line of the gorge.  Soon, we came to a large wetlands, with deep sphagnum moss.  Because of the unusually warm late fall weather, the ground and the water were not frozen so we tried to step carefully to avoid getting our feet wet.  No such luck!   My boots were good, water-proof boots, but when one steps in a spot where the water is over the top of the boot, one can't avoid getting wet.  Thank goodness for good wool socks.

Even with good boots and socks, slogging through a wetlands gets tiresome after a while.  I headed for higher, dryer ground.  Al was not far behind.   Slogging also works up an appetite.  Time for a snack: cookies, a baked potato and clementines--our usual hiking fare.  Nothing better.   After a little break, we were back on track to follow the town line.  It was a short hike to Otter Brook and the end of our attempt to follow the boundary for today.  While the water didn't appear deep, it was much too cold for wading on this day.  We chose instead to follow a deer trail along the brook.

The trail took us through woods and across a partially frozen wetlands to what is best described as a moss garden:  boulders upon boulders covered with thick green mosses.   It was a feast for the eyes and felt luxurious on the feet.   On one boulder, we found a spruce and a yellow birch growing together, their roots entwined as if they were dancing.

We found our way back to the town  boundary markers and the gorge and discovered that the boulders we had seen coming up looked entirely different from the other direction.   We also found many boulders which seem to be delicately balanced, poised to tumble at any moment.  But our efforts to move them were in vain. What looks like a balancing boulder turned out to be pretty stable.

While we tried to avoid the logged areas, we still had to push through them near the end of our hike.  Along the way, we found four different types of club moss, a hollowed out ash tree that must have been massive in its hay day (I squeezed myself into the hollow and found rich, red soil--the happy result of decomposition), a maple tree that had fallen over a stone wall at an odd angle, and merged with the stone wall as it rotted away, and moose and deer scat and browse.   One of these days, we will see the actual animal again, or find that elusive shed antler.

We finished our hike near another deer stand, where we found a curious cylindrical container hanging about 12 feet off the ground.  We thought it looked like a cache up off the ground to prevent bears from getting into it, but not exactly.  We could use some help identifying this object.

Uggh--one of the cow heads, the least gory of the three.  

In the town line gorge.  

Al on the other side of the gorge.

At Otter Brook above Ellis Reservoir

Moss garden

Four kinds of club moss.

Here is how one gets inside a hollow tree.  Not always easy.  

Nice soil in the base at the tree.

Under the wildlife feeder.  

Across the power line tract, through a huge space which will  become a field, across McIntyre Road, and through the woods, and we were back on West Shore Road, with wonderful memories of a new place and pleasantly tired bodies.