Exploring Nature Blog

Right before going on vacation last week, I sprained my ankle, so instead of climbing peaks, we spent some time canoing around Lake Placid, Connery Pond and up the Ausable River. It was an interesting experience – an odd mix of secluded, back water wildlife and hair-raising dodging of motor boats making their way down the lake at high speeds.

On the Ausable River we paddled up stream from the dam in Wilmington and explored cattail choked sloughs and secluded bends over-hung with wildflowers and vines. The air was thick with the smell of flowers and balsam poplar. We saw all kinds of birds, including a great blue heron in the middle of swallowing a big fish. We saw some bubbles and went over to see a massive snapping turtle, about three feet long, resting on the bottom of the river. We didn’t pester him too much as he looked big enough to swamp the canoe. In a weed infested side area we spotted a mass of tiny, squiggling, baby bullheads all gathered together, teaming right out of the water.

On Lake Placid we paddled up a narrow inlet and found arrowheads and spatterdock and masses of pitcher plants with their purple, nodding flowers and all. It was even worth dodging boats to get across the lake and weathering the bone jarring waves left in the wakes.

On Connery we stalked two love sick ravens calling back and forth to each other across the lake and as it got dark startled a lone loon that jolted out of the water with a warble loud enough to almost swamp us.

I hope to be back on the trail soon, but time in the canoe was a great pleasure.

I have been climbing a lot of peaks lately. This is because my husband has decided to climb all of the 46 highest Adirondack peaks in one year. I am trying to keep up. It’s not easy. They are legendarily difficult peaks.

So when my husband hurt his knee last week (after two 15-mile hikes, a day of trail crew and a day of putting in a wood floor!) and had to rest for two weeks, I was not exactly crying in my orange juice. I went back to my relatively tame 4-miles a day with girlfriends. They only take an hour, I don’t get scratches, blisters or covered in mud. I can take time to look at wildflowers and catch up on what my friends are up to. It’s so much safer than those silly peaks. Usually…

Then last week, when we were about 2 miles from our cars, we got caught in a violent lightening storm. It just snuck up on us.

Most of the road was in the forest so we didn’t see it coming. After the first crack of thunder we started quickly back toward our cars. As we walked, the thunder booms got closer and closer to the lightening flashes. We debated whether aluminum umbrellas attracted electricity. I said no, though I still am not sure. I am a big believer in any comfort in moments of sheer terror, even if they are total lies. After one particularly violent crack we closed the umbrellas and let ourselves get drenched. No point in taking unnecessary chances! (It wasn’t until later that I realized my umbrella had a wooden handle anyway.)

Finally we got within a quarter mile of the cars, but we would have to leave the safety of the forest and cross an open expanse of field to get to them. The cracks of thunder were now simultaneous with the lightening. The storm was right on top of us. We didn’t dare go out in the open. We waded through poison ivy to get deeper into the forest and off the open road.

We stood there drenched and shivering while lightening pounded the hills around us. Finally I had had enough. After the next bolt lets run for the cars, I said. My girlfriend agreed. At least I think she did. It might have just been her teeth chattering. Anyway, the crack came and we ran. Never has a 1,000 feet seemed so far. We must have looked pretty funny, running full out, dripping wet, umbrellas flailing. God, I am glad no one got that on film.

Once in the car I took a moment to just breathe and feel relieved. Then it took a few minutes to clear up the steamed windows. I drove home slowly. Relishing the feeling of safety I felt in my little car in the face of one of the most powerful forces that nature can inflict in one pinpointed moment.

Gosh, I am looking forward to a nice, long, boring hike.

Yesterday started out as a beautiful, blue sky day. At 6am it was cool (33°), with the promise of climbing temperatures as the sun rose pink over the treetops. It was a perfect day for a hike, so we decided to climb Nippletop Peak, one of the 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks.
It is a long hike – about 14 miles round trip, 8 miles of which are on a dirt road winding through the Ausable Club property. This private club does not allow cars through their lands, so hikers are forced to hoof it the 4 miles in and out of the trailheads for several high peaks. We also added a mile onto the hike to traverse Indian Head, a rocky outcropping, overlooking one of the Ausable Lakes and looking striking like… well… an Indian’s head. It’s easy enough to throw on another mile when you are feeling energetic in the morning. Later, when trudging out at mile fourteen with blisters on all your toes from hiking in wet, muddy socks, you start to wonder whose bright idea that had been (my husband’s of course).

But I digress… The hike up to the cut off up to Nippletop was nothing short of wondrous. The sky was robin’s egg blue, all kinds of hidden warblers were thrilling away urgently, and as we rose higher, we started to get glimpses of the burgeoning green of spring spreading across the Great Range. Snow still topped Gothics and Marcy, but from there down, the green was stunning.

The trouble started about 2 miles from the summit. By then we had already hike 5 miles, so I was beginning to slow down a bit to pace myself. I still had 9 miles to go, after all. The trail had also become rather steep. Scrambling up steep, wet rocks while hanging onto jutting tree roots in between sloshing through black, peat mud can wear you down a bit. Then we hit the snow.

It was only on the trail, where snowshoers had packed it down all winter to a thick crust. The trouble was, the spring melt had run below it so every third or fourth step you would plunge through it up to the thigh, your foot landing in running water somewhere below you. Then you would have to stop and yank yourself out by any means available. Sometimes it involved using tree branches or roots as rescue lines or levering your open palms into the snow like snowshoes and pushing yourself out. Later, on the way down, I was so tired that I would just lay on my back and yank my legs out, heedless of the snow soaking through my pants. By then wet underwear was long past moot.

All this labor had slowed my progress considerable and all of a sudden I found myself alone on the trail. I thought about sitting on the first dry rock and waiting until my husband came down later. I had the car keys after all. But some inexorable voice kept me going up. I avoided the snow where I could, winding through scratchy trees and leaping from boulder to boulder. Finally, at noon, just when I thought I would have to look up the sign makers who promised I was .2 from the top and smack them, I came out on the summit.

It was breathtaking. From the top of Nippletop you stared out at the entire Great Range – from the Wolf Jaws through Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback, and Basin. Then beyond to Haystack and Marcy, with Algonquin peaking between two peaks. You could even see Whiteface off in the distance at least 20 miles away. And when I caught my breath and stopped feeling dizzy and nauseous from the hike up, I really loved it.

Before heading back down, I took a survey of my state. My socks and boots were wet and muddy, as was my… um… bottom. My arms were scratched and my braid had started to come undone, like an exploded milkweed pod. I was muddy all over and my legs were feeling a bit like a jello jiggler. Yup, I was in roughly the same shape as I was after climbing every high peak.

This time however, I had thought to bring some gloves for the way down. I felt so smug for thinking ahead after scratching my hands up on our last hike, an inevitable result of grabbing at scratchy trees to avoid plunging to my death on the way down. Too bad I hadn’t noticed that it was just one glove all balled up in my pack. I put it on my right hand, ignoring my husband’s obvious attempt not to laugh out loud. Okay, so I looked a bit like a mad housewife imitating Michael Jackson, but my right hand would at least not be scratched up at the end of the day, darn it.
It’s really not necessary to describe the skidding, sliding, snow plunging, tree grabbing, mud slogging and occasionally shrieking hike down Nippletop. It’s important to let people use their imaginations sometimes. (And no one needs to hear about how many blisters I had on my feet from hiking miles in wet wool socks.) I will say that we hiked down along Gill Brook which afforded some surprising peeks at waterfalls and deep, green pools that, had it been summer, might have been great for a bone-chilling dip.

All in all it was a fun day and after 800 ml. of ibuprofen and a long, hot soak in the tub later, I actually was really pleased to have done it.

Happy hiking!

Sometimes you see something in the woods that is hard to believe. This happened to me this week. I saw what looked like a giant bird perched in the very top of a huge cottonwood tree on the edge of the woods by my house. It’s early spring so the leaves are still sparse and that bright vibrant green, so the dark form stood out clearly. I was thinking, wow that must be a great horned owl – its huge!

I grabbed some binoculars and zeroed in on the sucker. I was stunned to discover that it was not a bird at all but a big, fat porcupine. It’s not that I didn’t know porcupines climbed trees. I know they do, but this porcupine was 50 feet off the ground, working his way out to the tippy tip of the smallest branch. It seemed a little risky to me.

Never being one to pass up the opportunity to harass wildlife, I ran out there with my video camera and tried to get a good shot of him. He was just too far up there. It was like trying to shoot a porcupine on the roof of a 3-story building.

This got me to worrying about him. What if he fell? Do porcupines fall? Are they afraid of falling? Do they bounce like cats? Do all those hollow quills make them weightless enough to float to the ground? I mean, they are fairly nocturnal, who knows what they do after dark? (Ok, ok I know that they are not floating around the forest at night… um… right?)

So anyway, that is my latest peculiar porcupine story. They never cease to amaze me. Those adaptable little suckers – the porcupine.

I know what you might expect from a title like that. All the wilderness is being paved over and chopped down and the poor wildlife are losing their habitat to us evil humans. Well, in fact, in my neighborhood, I have the distinct feeling that the wilds are winning.

If the myraid of wildlife that I see passing through my yard is any indication, we are not slowing them down a jot. Perched on a meadow between a mountain forest and an extensive wetland, our land is a wildlife super highway. Black bears, foxes, skunks, flocks of wild turkeys, raccoons and hundreds of white-tailed deer cross through our yard every season making their way from one habitat to the other.

Mostly they pass through at night, nibbling as they go on our baby trees, gardens, cat food, bird feeders, and even the wood siding. We often catch them in our headlights driving in after dark or see their tracks in the mud or snow in the morning. The deer chuff at us if we stumble on them at night, as if to say, “Hey, this yard is only yours in daylight, go inside or be trampled.”

Then every once in a while they meander through in broad daylight. This is just amazing to me. No matter how many times you see it in your life time, nothing makes you jump out of your chair faster than seeing a black bear lumber across your lawn. It is in those moments where I feel like we barely have a toehold in this wilderness. Any day now it is going to drive us out and grow over the house so that you’d never know people tried to carve out a place here.

You might laugh at that, but I came a cross a ‘57 Chevy half buried in the middle of the woods one day and I got to wondering if the guy was still inside and had just parked to take a nap when the woods took over.

I know its not like this everywhere and in most places development has fragmented wilderness and left wildlife perched on the edge of shopping malls. But up here in the Adirondacks, I have to say… we’re just barely keeping ahead of the wilds. I am pretty sure that given half a chance any sign of us would be reclaimed in a decade or two.