The Spruce Budworm Returns a Primer on Plant Signatures Weaving History (And Ash) French Forestry, Salvaging Sunken Wood, Neat Things About Needles, and Much More

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WINTER ’14

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FOREST

The Spruce Budworm Returns A Primer on Plant Signatures Weaving History (and Ash) French Forestry, Salvaging Sunken Wood, Neat Things About Needles, and much more

$5.95 on the web WWW.NORTHERNWOODLANDS.ORG

Cover Photo by Mandy Applin Photographer Mandy Applin spent many hours last winter observing and photographing a parliament of short-eared owls in the Finger Lakes region of New York. “Just before sunset, the owls became active, hunting for prey over an open, grassy area. They were close enough to hear as they occasionally called to one another, but far enough away to be quite THE OUTSIDE STORY challenging to photograph,” said Applin. This Each week we publish a new photo was taken with a Nikon D7100 camera nature story on topics ranging and a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens attached to from otter spraint to late- a 1.7x teleconverter. blooming asters.

EDITOR’S BLOG “Depending on your spouse’s level of squeamishness, bringing flesh-eating beetles into your basement may also cost you your marriage.” From: Cleaning Skulls

WHAT IN THE WOODS IS THAT? We show you a photo; if you guess what it is, you’ll be eligible to win a prize. This recent photo showed a young buck’s velvet-covered antler.

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VOLUME 21 I NUMBER 4 REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS CENTER FOR NORTHERN WOODLANDS EDUCATION, INC. WINTER 2014 Virginia Barlow Copyright 2014 Jim Block Northern Woodlands Magazine (ISSN 1525-7932) is published Elise Tillinghast Madeline Bodin quarterly by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., magazine Executive Director/Publisher Marian Cawley Tovar Cerulli 1776 Center Road, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 Dave Mance III Andrew Crosier Tel (802) 439-6292 Editor Steve Faccio Fax (802) 368-1053 Patrick White Giom [email protected] Assistant Editor Bernd Heinrich www.northernwoodlands.org Robert Kimber Amy Peberdy Subscription rates are $23 for one year, $42 for two years, and $59 for three years. Stephen Long Operations Manager Canadian and foreign subscriptions by surface mail are $30.50 US for one year. Todd McLeish POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Northern Woodlands Magazine, P.O. Emily Rowe Brett McLeod Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 or to [email protected]. Periodical Operations Coordinator/ Susan C. Morse postage paid at Corinth, Vermont, and at additional mailing offices. Web Manager Bryan Pfeiffer Published on the first day of March, June, September, and December. Joe Rankin All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written Jim Schley consent of the publisher is prohibited. The editors assume no responsibility Poetry Editor Michael Snyder Adelaide Tyrol for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Return postage should accompany all submissions. Printed in USA. Chuck Wooster For subscription information call (800) 290-5232. DESIGN Northern Woodlands is printed on paper with 10 percent post-consumer Liquid Studio / Lisa Cadieux recycled content.

NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 1 Center for Northern from the enter Woodlands Education C BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Susan Morse has contributed to this magazine since its early years. One of her Richard G. Carbonetti LandVest, Inc. first articles appeared in our Winter 1997 issue. The topic was lynx. The opening Newport, VT paragraph mentioned her involvement in live-capturing a mountain lion. Vice President As far as I can determine, live-capturing a mountain lion is part of a typical Bob Saul day in the life of Sue. She disputes that characterization – claiming that she Wood Creek Capital Management spends a lot of time in reverie on her couch – but my recent experience trying Amherst, MA to set up a holiday event with her suggests otherwise. Treasurer/Secretary The event, which will serve as a 20th anniversary celebration for both Northern Woodlands Tom Ciardelli and Sue’s non-profit, Keeping Track®, should have been straightforward enough to organize; Biochemist, Outdoorsman the problem was that Sue kept disappearing. At different times when I tried to reach her she Hanover, NH was in Katmai National Park and Preserve studying brown bears, in northernmost Alaska Si Balch traipsing the shore of the Beaufort Sea where she photographed polar bears eating dead Consulting Forester whales, and tracking caribou in Quebec’s Ungava Peninsula where, alas, she pulled a tendon Brooklin, ME falling down a hole while carrying a 55-pound pack across the tundra in a blizzard. Sarah R. Bogdanovitch I finally tracked down our “Tracking Tips” columnist long enough to nail down plans. Then Paul Smith’s College she disappeared again, on a quest for badgers. Paul Smiths, NY So, please see page 56 for details about the event, which will occur on Friday, December Starling Childs MFS 12, at the Norwich Book Store in Vermont. And if you come, treat with extreme suspicion any Ecological and Environmental claims by Sue about quiet days on her couch. Consulting Services Norfolk, CT Speaking of the day-to-day: I’m pleased indeed to announce the publication of our “Season’s Main Events” perpetual calendar. Written by Virginia Barlow, this brand new calendar is an David J. Colligan Colligan Law, LLP appealing way to learn about what’s happening right now in local nature. I hope this will find Buffalo, NY its way into many classrooms and libraries, and it makes a great gift and stocking-stuffer, too. You can learn more by calling our office, or accessing our online store. Esther Cowles Fernwood Consulting, LLC Finally, I’d be remiss to let this column end without thanking everyone who has contrib- Hopkinton, NH uted to Northern Woodlands’ educational mission in 2014. Your contributions enabled us to Dicken Crane increase our print run this year, putting the magazine into the hands of many new readers. It Holiday Brook Farm helped us make critical upgrades to our website, share educational resources, and invest in Dalton, MA projects (the calendar’s an example) that will broaden our educational reach, while also con- Julia Emlen tributing to the long-term sustainability of our nonprofit. Thank you for the financial support, Julia S. Emlen Associates in-kind assistance, advice, and encouragement. Seekonk, MA Onward to 2015! Timothy Fritzinger Alta Advisors Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director, Publisher London, UK Sydney Lea Writer, Vermont Poet Laureate Newbury, VT Peter S. Paine, Jr. Champlain National Bank Willsboro, NY Kimberly Royar Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department Montpelier, VT Peter Silberfarb Dartmouth Medical School Lebanon, NH

The Center for Northern Woodlands The mission of the Center for Northern Education, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) public Woodlands Education is to advance benefit educational organization. a culture of forest stewardship in the Programs include Northern Woodlands Northeast and to increase understanding magazine, Northern Woodlands Goes to School, The Outside Story, The of and appreciation for the natural Place You Call Home series, and wonders, economic productivity, and www.northernwoodlands.org. ecological integrity of the region’s forests. in this ISSUE

features 28 Spruce Budworm 46 DAVE SHERWOOD 38 Doctrine of Signatures ALLAIRE DIAMOND 46 Maine Basketmakers JOE RANKIN

departments 2 From the Center

38 4 Editor’s Note 6 Letters to the Editors 8 Calendar 9 Birds in Focus: Fusion Foods BRYAN PFEIFFER 11 Woods Whys: Needles vs. Leaves MICHAEL SNYDER 13 Tracking Tips: Hoof Anatomy SUSAN C. MORSE 14 Knots and Bolts 27 1,000 Words 28 54 The Overstory: Eastern Hemlock VIRGINIA BARLOW 58 Field Work: Mining Timber JOE RANKIN 63 Upcountry ROBERT KIMBER 66 Discoveries TODD MCLEISH 73 Tricks of the Trade: Making Charcoal BRETT R. MCLEOD 74 WoodLit 76 Donor List 79 Outdoor Palette ADELAIDE TYROL 66 80 A Place in Mind ANDREA LANI

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 3 EDITOR’S note

By Dave Mance III

How to Bow Hunt in the Rain

Growing up, I never got along that well with school, but I always loved to read and especially loved to read hunting stories, which were their own genre back then. Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows – a fabulous book about a boy, his dogs, and their coon-hunting adventures in real-world nature – was required reading in my fourth-grade class, despite the fact that two major characters are disemboweled and one dies from starvation. My partner teaches fourth-grade in a semi-rural school and her kids are now reading Gregor the Overlander, a book about a city kid who falls through a grate in his apartment building into a fantasy world full of giant cockroaches and rats. Nothing and everything has changed in the last 30 years. Anyway, thanks in part to authors like Rawls, I grew up and became a writer. I got my start writing hunting stories for weekly newspapers. Many of my pieces had a how-to bent, complete with excitable punctuation (“How to Bag the Biggest Buck of your Life!”), an homage to the Field and Stream columnists I admired and a byproduct, I suppose, of growing up in a family of teachers. I’m tempted to make fun of my 20-year-old self for having the audacity to think I was qualified for the gig – it’s a little like the high-schooler who tells his mother he’s dropping out of school. (“And what do you think you’ll be qualified to do with a tenth-grade education?” “Teach ninth-grade.”) But I’m not sure that’s fair. In some ways, young me deserved the platform. I was a driven hunter with a handful of good bucks to my credit; more importantly, I had the certainty of youth on my side, which I’ve come to recognize as its own immeasurable asset. In the book Moneyball, Billy Beane, a highly touted baseball prospect who had all the natural ability in the world, recalls being benched in favor of teammate Lenny “Nails” Dykstra, who was half as skilled and twice as ignorant. Beane basically thought his way out of the league – he studied so hard he psyched himself out and couldn’t hit anymore. Dykstra didn’t think much at all and went on to have a storied career. In one memorable exchange, Dykstra – a rookie – is getting ready to go to bat with the game on the line and asks Beane who the pitcher is. Beane looks at him incredulously and says the guy’s only one of the best pitchers in the history of the game. None of it registered on Dykstra’s face, who shrugged his shoulders, sauntered up to the plate with a chip on his shoulder as big as Texas, and promptly delivered the game-winning hit. Deer hunting’s kind of like this in that the more you know, the harder things can be. As you age, you find that early successes are not easily replicated and that what you’d thought were sure-fire tricks were mere hints, at best. You develop an almost reverential respect for the deer, who over time prove themselves to be remarkably adept at staying alive. If you’re not careful, you can become Billy Beane; furrow your brow because the wind’s swirling or because it’s too hot or because the rut is in this phase or that, wondering if you should go north or south and whichever way you choose second-guessing yourself. Whereas when you’re young and Lenny Dykstra, you simply announce that you’re going to go shoot a deer and head straight out into whatever direction you’re facing. Bow season opened on a rainy Saturday this year. It was a miserable Nor’easter type rain – vertical at times, with a nasty, swirling wind. Had I taken advice from my younger self (During the pre-rut, hunt concentrated food sources!) I would have been in the lowlands where the oaks and hickories were masting at bumper rates. But the oak woods I hunt are full of chipmunks this year, whose scoldings pulse like asynchronous alarm clocks and wear on you after a while. They’re close to town, too. Close enough to hear vehicles on the highway, roosters kerr-ker-rueing on the old Rice farm, the teenagers down in the Hidden Valley gravel pit filling the sand full of shot. As I age, getting away from things has become more important than playing the hunting odds, something I suspect is somewhat universal. “I don’t care if I even see a deer this year,” said my brother recently. “I just don’t want to see people.” And so I found myself in bigger woods, high up in the Green Mountains. I spent Friday night at camp with my dear friends Jamie and Hiya, then headed out early Saturday morning to hunt in the driving rain. I walked for a mile or so into the wildest country I could find and took a stand in a copse of old-growth hemlocks, the land steep enough here to have kept the skidders at bay. The brown and deep-green color pallet seemed somber compared to the festive deciduous foliage. The only flashes of color were wine-red shelf fungi and glowing shards of milk quartz that rose from the earth; chalk white like old bones. I nestled into a crevice that afforded me a bit of protection from the wind, a 180-degree view, and a couple

4 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 choice screening trees that would allow me to bring my bow to full draw. And then I tried not to think of the rain, which was heavy enough to run through my pants and down my legs, or work, or any number of personal threads – good things and bad, important and otherwise. A friend was having marriage trouble and losing weight. The Patriots’ offense line had been a sieve since they traded Logan Mankins. My ex-wife wrote to say our cat had died. One of my old tips was to pick your hunting strategies based on conditions. (If the tracking conditions are ideal, track! If they’re not, sit!) But as you get older it gets harder to compartmentalize and leave your domestic life behind when you enter the woods. Sometimes you’ve got to keep moving to escape your own head. You can track deer in the rain on bare ground fairly effectively if you know the country you’re hunting. You have to be able to pick up on subtle clues to find the track – an upturned leaf, a dent in the dirt. Oftentimes you need to use your fingers to touch the finer details. You have to know enough about deer to ascertain the sex and scenario – a buck is going to act differently than a doe/fawn group. And you have to have a portfolio of past experiences that’s expansive enough to help you predict where they’re going. At this point your brain takes the available clues and creates a story; you then follow the storyline to the deer. If you’re not of this world this probably sounds like a load of mystic bull, but you’d be surprised at how often it works. If you’ve ever picked your way along a familiar forest path on a pitch-dark summer night, your feet and your ears and your nose taking over and somehow seeing you through to an open meadow and faint star light, it’s the same sort of instinctual, animal thing. I gave up my stand and soon found a pair of tracks scuffing through the hemlock duff, bounding at first then slowing to a purposeful trot. They looked like they were left early that morning, so I followed them down the mountain into a forest full of red maple and beech. My story was that they were a doe and a yearling and they were going to follow the curl of the hill and hold in a hardwood flat where I’d pushed doe/fawn groups many times before. As a younger man I didn’t shoot does; a relic of the don’t-shoot-the-mothers ethos prevalent among Vermont hunters in the 1980s and probably a macho streak that wanted to put big antlers on the wall. These days I still can’t shoot a doe who’s with young-of-the-year, but the yearlings and older ones are fair game. Hunting’s more like gardening, a bow more like a hoe. Twenty minutes later, I pushed the deer: a doe and a yearling. They ran downhill, tails down, into the wind. The deer aren’t spooky on the first day of archery season, and so I trotted parallel to where they’d gone, hoping they wouldn’t go far. About 100 yards on, I turned downhill and stopped at a vantage point overlooking an old patch cut that had come in to hay-scented fern. I took a knee and looked left to where I figured the deer might come sneaking to try to get my wind. A full minute later I noticed that both deer were already there – about 30 yards away at the far edge of the opening, standing motionless and watching me. I squared my torso and drew my bow. I blew the peephole clear of water – the rain was still just pounding down. I’d never be able to follow a blood trail if this deer wasn’t hit cleanly. My last thought was: don’t you dare shoot her in the belly. My brain heard loud and clear and the arrow went flying harmlessly over her back. The deer bolted; one headed north, the other south. I went to the point where they’d separated and found a good spot where I could see in all directions. I’d wait here to see if they’d returned to join back up – a decent play in these types of situations. This was a trick I didn’t know when I was 20, and so age and wisdom might have ruled the day after all. But as I sat there in the rain waiting for that doe to come back I felt myself beginning to lose. I was cold and hungry. Hiya would be back in camp, where there would be a fire in the woodstove and an afternoon playoff baseball game on the radio. “Don’t give up!” was one of my 20-year-old pearls of wisdom. When I was rereading those early columns, it was the tip that seemed most hackneyed. And yet at that moment this piece of wisdom shone in its intended glory, and I was able to remember myself more sympathetically. Basically an earnest kid who didn’t like to lose. Really the only trick I knew back then was to stay out chasing deer all day while the older guys sat in camp and played cards. But you know, that can be the best trick in the whole book. “Don’t give up,” I thought. Said out loud, maybe even in my 20-year-old voice. But I did. I shivered against the rain and unnotched my arrow and walked uphill toward camp. It was a good tip, kid. That was a nice piece.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 5 letters to the EDITORS

Mixed Nuts To label the creator of all that Champion Trees To the Editors: mystery God takes some of the To the Editors: As usual, the recent issue was good mystery out, attempts to give The formula for measuring champion trees is from cover to cover. I think I can add cause to mystery. The incred- shown in “Going Big” [Autumn 2014], although something to the story on harvesting ible assertion “I know there is a without describing the challenge faced in deter- sblack walnut meats [Foraging, god” flies against that wonderful mining one of the three required measurements. Autumn 2014]. First, after letting the piece of wisdom: we know that The first, circumference at breast height, should nut husks decay, I put the nuts in my we don’t know. be no problem for anyone with basic tree knowl- small cement mixer with water and several rocks David R. Southwick, Enosburg Falls, Vermont edge and a standard steel diameter tape. The and tumble the mix for 20 to 30 minutes. (If you second, tree height, is almost as easy (using a don’t own a mixer, maybe your neighbor has one.) long tape plus a vertical-angle instrument such as In the end, a rinse will give very clean nuts ready Timber Theft: Take an Active Role a clinometer, hypsometer, Haga altimeter, or Abney to be dried for several weeks. At that time, I do the To the Editors: level). However, the third measurement, average initial cracking with a bench vise where the nuts Your article on timber theft [Cutting Down on crown width, is not in a forester’s typical reper- can be rotated once or twice to get maximum Crime, Autumn 2014] contained a great discus- toire, and to be done accurately requires a special cracking without crushing. Thereafter, diagonal sion on the various forms of timber theft and instrument not readily available. I am aware of wire cutters are the best tool to finally obtain good deceptive practices, including the degrees of suc- two designs for constructing such a device: one nut meats. cess states are having on enforcement. Because published by Wayne D. Shepherd of the U.S. Forest Russ Seaman, Rougemont, North Carolina the article was enforcement-focused, I hope Service (Forest Service Research Note RM-229, landowners don’t come away with the impression 1973); the other by William H. Dunn of the U.S. that both enforcement and prevention are best Forest Service North Central Forest Experiment Bear of an Issue served by government. During my 36-year career Station (1977). If anyone has trouble obtaining To the Editors: in forestry, the best outcomes I have witnessed these documents, I would be pleased to send you I enjoyed the editorial on the battle to ban bear were those where landowners took time to take PDF copies of them [email [email protected]]. baiting in Maine [Autumn 2014], even though I an active role by educating themselves on the Arthur H. Westing, Putney, Vermont do not hunt and always thought of bear baiting as best options to manage their woodlands and sell unfair. I am glad there are reasonable, smart peo- their timber. It’s not hard to find information. (A An article in the Autumn issue [“Going Big,” page ple that can write well to encourage and educate quick Google search on “selling timber” revealed 36] asked for submissions of your favorite big others to be tolerant. After reading your thoughts, 23,000,000 hits.) Here in Connecticut, the Division trees. Here are a couple gigantic examples we I understand the hunt is not always the same for of Forestry has a guidance brochure entitled “Ever received on Facebook and via email. everyone and that is alright. As you say, most hunt- Thought of Selling Your Timber?,” and has service ers have their own personal ethics. My husband foresters who can provide landowners additional – who got his Maine guide license a few years ago advice and information. Other states offer similar – is a responsible and ethical hunter, even though I resources. Yes, that means putting the person would have a hard time pulling the trigger. who knocks on your door with a deal on hold until Jane Howe, Tunbridge, Vermont you are up to speed on the best options. It’s a rare day indeed that any delay while you educate yourself will result in anything but a better out- An Atheist’s Answer come for both your woodlot and your wallet. It’s To the Editors: true that effective enforcement can deter some Your piece “Theology of a Quaker Logger” [Autumn timber theft and deceptive practices. However, in 2014] compelled me to write. I am an atheist and my opinion, it’s the landowner’s diligence that is a logger. And a sawyer. And a creator of finished the first and most effective line of defense. Finally, pieces from those logs sawed into lumber. I’ve I agree with the comment contained in the article broken my back, my hip, been bruised, cut, and about most loggers being hardworking honest pummeled, been close to death a number of people. I hope this important discussion does times. None of that changed my atheism or what not discourage landowners from managing their is. For me, the deepest spiritual realization is that forests, including harvesting forest products. we don’t know. Mystery is all round; awe for what Doug Emmerthal, program specialist, is need not have anything to do with belief or faith. Connecticut Division of Forestry

We love to hear from our readers. Letters intended for publication in the Spring 2015 issue should be sent in by January 1. Please limit letters to 400 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

6 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Clockwise from top left: A striped maple crop tree with beer can for scale, submitted by Joseph Adams, Rupert, Vermont. A monster maple, sent in by Jeremy Turner and discovered by his wife, Laura French, during a timber cruise in New Hampshire. “How about this yellow birch! I am hanging onto an old barbed wire fence through the middle,” wrote Nan Williams; photo taken in Rowe, Massachusetts. The second largest bur oak in New York, sent in by Dave Swanson from the Finger Lakes region. Mike Larsson in a forest of big tulip trees in Welwyn Preserve, not far from the shore of Long Island Sound. Dan Heale and a huge ash tree in Zoar Valley, Gowanda, New York.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 7 CALENDAR

A Look at the Season’s Main Events

By Virginia Barlow December January February FIRST WEEK Wintergreen is a fragrant evergreen plant Jan. 5 – Full Moon. Native Americans called Sometime in February, NASA’s Dawn that creeps along the ground. By now, this moon “The Full Wolf Moon” / During spacecraft will encounter Ceres, a dwarf its single, white flowers have developed cold spells, loud booming can be heard planet in the asteroid belt. Photos taken into bright red berries that are eaten by when lake ice contracts and cracks / Little over several months will be sent back to deer and grouse / Spring peepers are piles of seeds in the woodpile or in the Earth / Feb. 6 – The giant planet Jupiter hibernating in the woods beneath several toes of shoes may be the work of white- will be at its closest to Earth and fully inches of soil / Tree sparrows have footed mice / Some mourning doves take lit by the Sun. If your binoculars are returned – from the north, where they a short trip south, but many stick it out / fairly good, you should be able to see have been nesting on the tundra. Here, As cold weather settles in, grouse may four of its moons / For overwintering they’re more likely to be on the ground form coveys and roost in the lower branch- birds, it’s probably as bad as it gets: below birdfeeders or looking for grass es of conifers, somewhat protected from temperatures are still low and food seeds than in trees the wind supplies are dwindling

SECOND WEEK Dec. 13-14 – The Geminid Meteor Shower “As the day lengthens, so the cold Woodchucks are curled up below the frost is biggest of them all; there may be strengthens” / Goshawks are northern line in their burrows, metabolizing the 120 meteors per hour at the peak / birds and Vermont is near the southern body fat amassed in the summer and fall, Red-spotted newts form groups and edge of their range / Beneath the ice, paying no attention to Ground Hog Day. remain somewhat active beneath the some aquatic plants are photosynthesizing, They’re not likely to be up and looking for ice in ponds and streams. Those in the even at low temperatures and light levels. mates for another month or so / Flying terrestrial red eft stage are hibernating This produces much-needed oxygen for squirrels are spending their days in nests under logs or forest debris / Sunflower fish and other organisms / Common lined with moss, lichens, grass, and/or seeds and peanut hearts are good sources plantain, with its thin, cylindrical seed birch or cedar bark / Foxes will cache of protein at birdfeeders / The red berries stalk, is also called rattail and that is what food caught during good hunting days of winterberry holly, held tight to the twigs, its seed stalks look like now. Mice and in pits they dig in the snow. Then it is are brightening wetlands birds like the seeds covered over

THIRD WEEK Wild cranberries are the same species Ivory-colored poison ivy seeds are still Maple sugarmakers are on high alert. Sap as the cultivated ones. The edible fruits on the vine, nutritious food for many will start flowing in earnest anytime now – are still on the plants, in bogs and fens / birds / Previously mated downy and hairy if it hasn’t done so already / Robins will Northern shrikes breed in the far north but woodpecker pairs are executing courtship winter as far north as they can. When sometimes appear at birdfeeders in our displays and reestablishing home ranges / there is no snow and plenty of fruits and area. It’s not sunflower seeds that they’re Chickadees in the cattails are likely to berries, there will be robins / Blue jays after; this little predator eats birds (also be feeding on cattail moth larvae, not may be cleaning out your feeder, but they small mammals) / Green frogs may leave the infinitesimally small cattail seeds / are sharp lookouts and will sound the ponds with low dissolved oxygen to over- An owl’s diet can be reconstructed by alarm if any danger is sighted / Coyote winter in streams and seepage areas. They taking apart the pellet of indigestible parts tracks may lead you to drops of blood from will survive as long as they don’t freeze that gets coughed up 6 to 16 hours after females in estrus or urine from males its meal

FOURTH WEEK Woodpeckers sometimes drill holes in cow Frost – on windows, trees, rocks, or any February 22 – Conjunction of Venus and parsnip stalks, searching for the insects that other surface – takes on an endless number Mars. During this rare event, these two shelter inside. Cow parsnips are huge, up of beautiful patterns / Big brown bats bright planets will be within half a degree of to 10 feet tall / When the ground is covered hibernate singly in the southern parts each other. Look for them in the west, just with hemlock branch tips, a porcupine has of their range but gather in clusters in after sunset / Male skunks have the urge to probably been at work. Deer often clean northern New England / Purple finches will mate; their tracks will lead to female dens / up this mess / Deep snow is especially visit feeders for sunflower seeds / Red Foxes will be born soon, often in former important for shrews, as they remain active squirrels often seem to think that the bird- woodchuck dens / Wild turkeys seem to get in subnivian tunnels throughout the winter / feeder is just for them. They have some braver as their food supplies dwindle. They A raccoon’s long, sensitive fingers would claim to ancestral rights: squirrels evolved may venture into yards and orchards for freeze if used in cold weather in North America some 30 million years ago spilled birdseed and fallen fruit

These listings are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on your latitude, elevation – and the weather.

8 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 BIRDS in focus

Story by Bryan Pfeiffer Fusion Foods

On a crisp, sunny day in September, at the end of what was probably a typical summer for a dragonfly (lots of flying around, killing things, and mating beside a pond), a common green darner took off and began to wander south. As it cruised past the summit of Vermont’s Mt. Philo, with Lake Champlain below and the Adirondacks off in the distance, the dragonfly crossed paths with a merlin. GLENN PERRIGO The merlin – a falcon that moves like a fighter jet – specializes in killing songbirds. But when it spotted the fat, juicy dragonfly, the merlin swerved, plucked the darner A merlin with a darner dinner. from the sky with its talons and began to eat on the wing. So it goes with birds. Many species go off their diets, breaking For many migrants on their way south, the eastern seaboard rules or notions we have about what they eat. Our perceptions offers a banquet of fruits such as rose hips, bittersweet, and give us comfort by imposing a sense of order on nature: poison ivy. Bayberry, a waxy source of fat for otherwise insec- Kingfishers eat fish. Hummingbirds drink nectar. Flycatchers tivorous yellow-rumped warblers and tree swallows, grows in catch flies. abundance along the east coast. But the coast is also where a Except when they don’t. good many people live. Ornithologists now recognize the value Migration is one reason. Besides requiring raw determination in keeping these shrubby swaths of habitat (even some invasives) and innate navigational skills, migration takes calories, lots of from being replaced by lawns or housing or shopping malls. For them, stored as fat and burned as fuel on long-distance flights. many songbirds, it’s not only about the breeding and wintering Insects are a fine source of protein and fat for the trip, a healthy grounds; it’s also about the fruity turf that lies between. snack for a southbound merlin. Whether in migration or not, birds do eat some crazy stuff. But insects become scarce during the fall migration, which I’ve seen a herring gull crush and swallow a large Arctic tern would seem to be a problem for classic insect eaters such as chick and a bald eagle nibble on the leg of a road-flattened flycatchers and warblers. So the insectivores go for the next best northern leopard frog. I’ve watched a snowy owl try to catch fish thing: fruit. In one study of 69 bird species stopping on Block at sea and a great blue heron unearth and swallow a gopher. Island, Rhode Island, all but one (winter wren) had fruit in their What may seem odd to us, of course, usually isn’t so odd droppings. Least flycatchers, blackpoll warblers, red-eyed vir- for birds. Nature has a way of toppling our assumptions. Those eos, and scores of other self-respecting insectivores find essen- of us in the Northeast, for example, who see warblers and fly- tial fuel in the fruits of viburnum, bayberry, pokeweed, Virginia catchers turning from insects to fruit in autumn, might have creeper, and other shrubby plants and vines. it backwards. After all, many of those birds came here to nest Gram for gram, fruit is lower in lipids and protein than insect and to feed their young from our spring flush of black flies, tissue. Even so, some birds fare well at the fruit bar, particularly mosquitoes, and inchworm caterpillars. They visit for three or avian omnivores such as tanagers and sparrows, which tend to eat four months of the year – and then they’re gone, back to the fruit year-round and can maintain body mass and conditioning tropics to eat fruit. on a fruit diet during migration. To my mind, a merlin, no matter how many dragonflies it The classic insectivores in the study, however, did not fare eats, will always be a songbird killer at heart. But a songbird that as well when fruit constituted a greater portion of their diet. we know as insectivorous may, in fact, be a fruitarian that for a Yet they often don’t have much choice. On the journey south, few months of the year prefers to eat bugs. songbirds might stop where fruit is the only option. If you were weak and hungry, with miles to go, you might settle for an apple Bryan Pfeiffer is an author, wildlife photographer, guide, and consulting naturalist who if your hamburger weren’t available. specializes in birds and insects. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

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10 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 woods WHYS

By Michael Snyder

Why Do Evergreen Needles Look So Different From Deciduous Leaves?

Ask anybody to draw a leaf and damn few would draw a pine, spruce, hemlock, or fir needle, and even fewer would draw the green scales of a northern white-cedar leaf. Most would choose maple or oak, right? But leaves they all are, despite so many differences in their size, shape, and approaches to the very important business of being a leaf. Let’s begin there. There are certain things that all leaves do, regardless of their shape or size or whether they are evergreen or deciduous. Notably, all living leaves absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mix them with the water and elements they wick from the soil in that marvelous free lunch called photosynthesis. They do this to make carbo- hydrates, which fuel their own existence and growth. It is an imperative shared by all leaves. Accordingly, both evergreen and deciduous leaves make and use the pigment chlorophyll, and so both appear green. Both release oxygen as a byproduct hard to come by and there is nearly continuous abrasion from of their self-feeding ways, and both leaf types provide food and wind, snow, and ice and relentless browsing by hungry animals. homes for all manner of animals, great and small. If a tree is to keep its leaves through winter, they had better be From there, though, it’s mostly differences. For starters, and very tough and good at minimizing water loss. The tree’s life is with rare exceptions like tamarack, evergreen leaves remain on at stake. the tree much longer than their deciduous counterparts. Despite Thus, our evergreen intrigue. The hardwoods go out in a the misleading name, evergreen leaves are not green forever. blaze of color at the first hint of cold, and nobody can blame Leaves remain on the tree continuously for several years – as them. (Imagine what would happen to those flimsy leaves in many as 10 for some spruces – but eventually whole cohorts winter.) Evergreens persist and we’ve got to ask: how? turn yellow, orange, and brown and are shed, replaced by new An evergreen’s tendency toward conical form and clustered leaves in spring. In this way, the tree remains “ever green,” but it leaf arrangement allows it to shed snow while still capturing does so with different age classes of leaves. light. Compact needle shape and waxy coverings minimize water We also know that evergreen leaves look, feel, and even smell loss. And not having to make new leaves in the spring seems very different than deciduous leaves. They tend to be linear and to be an effective cost-saving measure. The tree gets several smaller, more compact, and less flat. They appear, well, more years of production to pay off the costs of its leaf making. needle-like than leaf-like. They are sticky to the touch when Being able to photosynthesize during winter whenever broken, and typically have a pungent, “evergreen” smell. temperatures, sunlight, and moisture allow can be a real There are additional, if less visible, differences. Evergreen advantage. Many studies indicate that while northernmost leaves often have a blue-white, wax-like coating. And the pores evergreens develop such deep cold tolerance that they do not through which they exchange oxygen, water vapor, and carbon photosynthesize in winter, many of our temperate evergreens, dioxide with the atmosphere – their stomates – tend to be such as red spruce and balsam fir, do. This is only an advantage sunken below that surface. Unlike the obvious veins of broad if the trees can balance production with protection, but given leaves, evergreen leaves typically run their vascular systems climate change and a future where weather might become more buried deeper within and surrounded by the photosynthetic extreme, it’s an advantage that someday may really pay off. cells closer to the surface. Taken together, these traits suggest a tree built to make do Michael Snyder, a forester, is commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, in harsh environments. Think winter, when water can be very Parks, and Recreation.

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12 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 TRACKING tips

Story and photos by Susan C. Morse

Clods, Wedgies, and Imprints

Tracking appeals to us because we enjoy sorting out nature’s subtle clues – clues that lead us to visualize and appreciate the behavior of different wildlife species. Simple tracks of moose and deer are obvious discoveries for the most part. Other evidence, a bed site, a rub, or a hair snagged on a twig tip – these are signs that enable elusive species to come alive in our imaginations. What I have named “hoof clods,” “wedgies,” and “hoof imprints” are examples. Though related to tracks, they are more than that. They are delightful physical pieces of the puzzle. You can hold them in your hands and wonderfully feel the presence of the moose or deer that left them. First, let’s review some cervid foot nomenclature. What we call a hoof is actually an extension of the foot’s toes. The hardened clouts are the paired toe- nails of toes three and four. Smaller vestigial nails for digits two and five are called dewclaws, and over evolutionary time have become separated from the main toe clouts of the hoof. Toe number one (the equivalent of our thumb) is absent from cervid feet. The clout wall is analogous to our fingernails, and its hardness contributes to the hoof’s durabil- ity, traction, and sharpness for digging. Also called the unguinus, the wall is made up of compressed hairs that are glued together by body proteins. The subunguinus is a narrow area of soft tissue located between the wall and the inner callus pad. The callus pad is the relatively hard but supple base that forms most of a hoof clout’s bottom surface. Back to clods, wedgies, and imprints. You can find these signs in any season. All you need is packable mud or From top: Mud clod of cow moose, freezing temperatures and snow. A hoof clod is a lump of earth perfect cow moose wedgie, bull or snow that has been packed in between a deer or moose’s moose hoof imprint, alert doe in snow, hoof clouts and subsequently dropped as differences in terrain and whitetail hoof showing anatomy. hardness caused the clouts to flex and spread apart. Clods are wedge-shaped and one can readily feel the smooth sides shaped by the inner walls of the paired clouts. I call especially good ones wedgies. Of interest to transportation planners and wildlife biologists, one can determine exactly where moose cross a roadway by searching for clods and wedgies that have been expelled from hooves onto the hard pavement. Imprints are moldings of the bottom of hoof clouts. Snow and ice become packed within the wall edges and into the callus pad’s slightly concave surface. The packed snow builds up, much as we sometimes experience a similar accumulation of snow within the crampons of our snow- shoes. Look for a cast replica of a clout’s base with recognizable wall, subunguinus space, and callus pad impressions visible. I often find perfect hoof imprints within or near a recently vacated bed site. The warmth of the animal’s curled body covering its feet causes the frozen imprints to thaw slightly, then to be released when the deer or moose stands up and exits the bed.

Susan C. Morse is founder and program director of Keeping Track in Huntington, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 13 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ FORAGING ]

Wild Parsnips: A Lesson in Safe Harvesting Yes, foraging can be risky. But most people approach wild foods with unneces- sary caution. Foragers are often the subject of anxious looks even when nibbling wild plants that are no more dangerous or difficult to identify than a garden tomato. Just how cautious one should be when foraging is a question that each forager must answer for him or herself. But there are sensible guidelines for reducing the risk of your wild food adventures. There are few better cases to illustrate this than the wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa). Parsnips are members of the carrot family, Apiaceae, which contains some of the most toxic plants in the world. One member, water-hemlock (Cicuta maculata), is so poisonous that a single bite may be lethal. Before gathering wild parsnips, a forager should be able to identify water-hemlock and other similar-looking poisonous plants at a glance. This is not as daunting a task as it may sound. In our region, the list of dangerously toxic plants is a short one, but it is a list that all conscientious foragers must commit to memory. Knowing these plants also helps new foragers prioritize. Beginners can steer away from the carrot family toward species that are easily identified and where the stakes of faulty identification are much lower. The next step is to spend time with comprehensive field guides. There is no way around it: if you want to pursue an interest in wild foods, you must also cultivate a familiarity with wild plants in general. When I first encountered the parsnip, I cross-checked several guides until I was certain of my identification. The guide also reminded me to handle the plant carefully, as the sap from parsnip stems and leaves contain a toxin that can cause a nasty burn. Field guides assume that the plant you are identifying is in flower, as this is the stage of a plant’s life when it can be identified most reliably. But parsnips in flower are not good to eat, having long since drawn the sugars and nutrients from their roots. What’s a forager to do? Wait. Watch. Get to know the plant through its whole life cycle. Parsnips are biennials: they spend their first year storing energy in their big taproot and only flower in their second year, using the stored energy to outgrow com- Fried Parsnips peting annuals. So in the fall I note the location of first-year parsnips. Then I seek out their star-like, green rosettes in the spring. Peel parsnips Once harvested, prepare only a small amount of any new plant and cut into matchsticks. for your first taste. If it tastes unpleasant, do not eat it. Unpleasant flavors warn of toxins. Even if it tastes good, consume in moderation Boil for 30-45 minutes until at first. In the case of wild parsnips, I find this last bit of advice to a fork goes be the most difficult to follow – their sweet, spicy flavor makes through easily but they are them difficult to stop eating. still firm. Isn’t this a lot of work for a taste of wildness? At first, yes. fry Drain and But once wild parsnips become familiar, you will gather them in oil or butter with the same confidence you have when harvesting carrots until browned. from a garden. The only difference is that the wild ones are free Season with for the taking. And for those who are nervous about wild foods, salt. it is good to remember that all food carries risk. Even the most benign-looking garden strawberries will make you sick if eaten in sufficient quantity. For those willing to explore the wild for new flavors, foraging for plants like the wild parsnip can provide both an education and an adventure. Benjamin Lord

14 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 [ NATURALLY CURIOUS ]

Most songbirds use their nests only once. After their young have fledged, the nests are usually abandoned. But nothing is wasted in nature. White-footed mice and deer mice, both of which remain active year-round, often use old nests as larders where they store food for the winter. Occasionally they even renovate a nest in the fall in order to make a snug, elevated winter home. They do this by constructing a roof (of milkweed fluff in this photograph) over the nest, which serves to keep the snow out and provides a welcome layer of insulation. Mary Holland/www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.

NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 15 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ INVASIVE PESTS ]

The Cold Can Only Do So Much

According to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, last winter was among the top five coldest on record in Ithaca, New York, when you consider the number of days the temperature dipped below zero. The cold did a number on our wood piles, but did it affect exotic insects like the hemlock woolly adelgid and the emerald ash borer? Unfortunately, the answer is probably no. Insects prepare for winter by building up glycerol – basically an antifreeze – in their blood. The accumulation of glycerol is usually gradual in response to environmental triggers. Cold tolerance varies between insect species and BARBARA SCHULTZ according to the season. Typically, insects are the least cold tolerant in summer, gaining tolerance through fall and early winter to a high point in January and February, and then gradually decreasing again in spring. Many have hoped that the spread of exotic invasive insects would be limited by cold winters in northern New England and New York. Last winter’s Jim Edsen, a forester with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks & Recreation, very cold temperatures, in particular, fueled speculation that hemlock woolly conducts a woolly adelgid survey in southern Vermont. adelgid (HWA) might be set back. (The adelgid remains in place for life once it settles on a twig and begins feeding, and so it can’t avoid the cold.) A recent below zero, yet we found HWA mortality to be 92 percent. On the other laboratory study demonstrated that HWAs in the Berkshire Mountains in hand, at a site in the northern Catskills, temperatures got to 24 degrees Massachusetts suffered 97 percent mortality at 22 degrees below zero and below zero and we found only 82 percent mortality. It may be that HWA none survived 31 degrees below zero. populations in the northern Catskills have developed better cold tolerance The problem is that natural conditions rarely mimic lab conditions. As than the adelgids near Cayuga Lake. everyone knows, there are cold spots and warm spots on the landscape. The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) has an advantage over the HWA in that it And even when the temperatures do get cold enough to kill a large number spends the winter under an ash tree’s bark, which shelters it from winter of individuals, the remaining HWAs – which are all female and reproduce extremes. The tree’s mass collects solar energy during the day, which asexually – can ramp up reproduction and quickly rebound. Population moderates low temperatures at night. The few hours of extreme cold dynamics are a pretty nuanced thing, and while it might seem that 97 experienced in the early hours of a morning won’t be felt under the bark percent mortality would be hard to overcome, the reduced density means of a tree. So even though your thermometer might indicate an extreme tem- less competition. The food quality of the hemlock twigs will stay better for a perature, EABs are not nearly that cold. longer time, giving the surviving HWAs a fertile field in which to flourish. Research on the cold tolerance of the EAB has been conducted in Minnesota Research indicates that cold tolerance is a genetically linked trait, so and Ontario. Lab research in Ontario indicated that the lethal temperature for progeny of the survivors may also be cold tolerant. Last winter I worked the EAB was between 9.4 degrees below zero and 15.5 degrees below zero, with students in my lab at Cornell University to monitor whereas in Minnesota another lab study found 98 percent mortality at 30 two sites that have been harboring HWA for a few years: degrees below zero. While 20-degree below zero temperatures were fairly one in Cayuga Lake in central New York, the other in common in many locations last winter, there were also warmer periods the northern Catskills. At a site near Cayuga Lake, the between these cold snaps that limited the amount of time a tree trunk temperature never got below 8 degrees actually spent at that temperature. There’s currently no evidence that EAB populations are developing cold resistance, but researchers in Minnesota evaluated mortality in logs placed outside in 33-degree below temperatures, and found that there were still a few survivors. The take-home message is that cold temperatures are not a “silver bullet” for controlling our invasive forest pests. By enduring the bitter cold last winter we might have bought a year of relief with HWA, but due to their reproductive prowess, they will be back soon, perhaps even stronger than before. In New York, at least, EAB populations seem to hardly have been phased by last winter. We must prepare for the arrival of these insects in order to mitigate their impacts and make plans to preserve the genome of our threatened native ashes and hemlocks through seed collection and treat- Lowest Minimum Temperature (°F) Jan 2001–Feb 2014 ment of seed trees to keep them alive. We need to act quickly and wisely to conserve what we can of our native forests. -35 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 Mark Whitmore

16 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 [ THE OUTSIDE STORY ]

Spanning the Seasons

The sign in the window, which read “Clearance! Hats and Gloves 50% off,” puzzled me. Snowflakes swirled on gusty winds. The bitter cold stung my fingertips. Clearance? Temperatures hadn’t climbed above freezing for days; the warmth of spring was a distant dream. Lose your gloves or your wool hat in winter, and when you go looking for a replacement you’re likely to find sandals and sun hats on display. I used to rail against such a setup, assigning it to an insatiable human propensity for speed, afraid that at some point we might just lap ourselves. But when I began to study trees, and learned how their growth patterns transcend traditional seasonal boundaries, I softened my stance. It began one summer when I was studying leaves – long and pointed, with coarsely toothed edges, on American beech; seven or so leaflets supported by a central stalk on white ash; the finely toothed leaves of paper birch. When autumn arrived, the leaves flashed brilliantly and fell, but the show wasn’t over. The seemingly bare branches displayed buds for the next year’s leaves and flowers that were, as botanist and writer Rutherford Platt described, “varied as jewelry, in all sorts of exquisite shapes and bright colors.” On beeches, the lance-like buds were such a vibrant chestnut-brown that I wondered how I could have previously overlooked them. The brown, pointed buds of paper birches were less prominent, but no less beautiful. The rounded buds on the tips of white ash twigs reminded me of the dome on a telescope observatory. Through buds I continued studying leaves, without waiting for spring. I discovered that inside each bud, miniature leaves grow into intricate ptyxes, or folding patterns. Many leaves and stems are packed together to allow the greatest volume in the smallest space, a process referred to as vernation. The whole thing reminds me of a hiker trying to fit weeks’ worth of gear into a backpack. These folding patterns are so specific and varied that they warrant their own set of botanical terms. Beech leaves, for example, grow in a plicate pattern – pleated along the central rib. One theory holds that the unique leaf shape of each tree is derived, at least in part, from the need for efficient folding patterns within the bud. Throughout winter and early spring, I watched the buds swell and grow longer until they seemed ready to burst open, like racehorses at a starting gate. Buds, however, don’t just open in response to a vagrant, unseasonably warm day or early season rain. Specific criteria – exposure to cold temperatures for a cumulative, but not necessarily continuous, period of time, followed by adequate day length and an accumulation of warm weather – must be met before buds break dormancy. Species, location on the tree, genetic variation, and the weather of the previous season influence the requirements of each bud. The buds opened like slow-motion jack-in-the-boxes. Stems elongated. Miniature leaves unfolded and grew larger. The volume that grew from each tiny bud astounded me. For many species in our region, including American beech and white ash, an entire year’s new leaves and new stems often originate from this single flourish, a process called determinate growth. As soon as the flourish is over, these trees develop new buds – at first smaller than the head of a pin – that will open the following year. Other species, such as paper birch, have indeterminate growth – a series of buds form and open during the growing season before the following year’s buds are produced. With either growth form, the next year’s buds, which are completed before the leaves fall in autumn, carry the legacy of seasons past. In spring, for example, the number of leaves and the length of the shoots produced by each bud are greatly influenced by the previous summer’s environmental conditions, such as temperature and moisture levels. The growth process of buds and leaves is a continuous cycle that blurs traditional seasonal boundaries. Planning ahead, it seems, has its advantages. This winter there is still time to find jeweled harbingers of spring along the branches. And if you just can’t wait, cut some twigs at the end of February and place them in a vase in a sunny window. You’ll get an origami lesson and an early taste of spring. Michael Wojtech

The Outside Story is sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: [email protected].

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 17 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ STEWARDSHIP STORY ]

Forestry in the Age of Instant Gratification

Instant messaging. Instant coffee. We live in an age the boxes is in this stand of tulip trees. (You can find the of instant gratification. So practicing forestry, where clues at www.ct.gov/deep/letterboxing) rotations are measured in centuries, isn’t always I have learned to be proactive when it comes to easy. This was made apparent to me when I was educating the public about forestry. Shortly before a a young forester, just starting my career managing harvest begins, I notify neighbors, municipal officials, state forests in suburban Connecticut. One of my and sometimes the local newspaper if necessary. The first assignments was to plan and oversee a timber Connecticut Division of Forestry installs informational harvest on Paugussett State Forest in 1984. I inven- signs at all of its timber sales, explaining the reasons for toried the stand of mixed hardwoods and wrote a the harvest and a contact phone number of a forester plan for the sale. It called for removing poorer-quality for more information. trees on most of the 32-acre stand to improve the So, no, practicing forestry in an age of instant grati- overall quality and composition of the timber. There fication isn’t easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. was a 1.5-acre patch of tulip poplar sawtimber that Jerry Milne I thought would rapidly regenerate if it was clearcut. Knowing that tulip poplar seed is viable on the forest floor for up to seven years, and that the soils were fertile, I expected a lush growth of seedlings the year after the harvest. What I didn’t expect was to be called by a reporter from the local newspaper a few weeks after the cutting began. A local resident had complained that an area of the forest had been entirely denuded of trees. To quote: “It looks like you’re clearing for a house. It’s totally stripped. Everything has been knocked down, from tiny saplings to trees of tremendous girth. The debris has been left there. Is the state planning to clear it to allow new growth?” We invited the reporter out to the site. We showed her the forest floor, covered by tulip poplar seeds that would quickly take root the following spring. She took pictures and wrote a well-balanced article. But the headline still blared “Timber Harvest Looks Horrible.” Fast forward to 2009 (an instant in forestry). In conjunction with another timber sale on the same state forest, I called a reporter from the same newspaper and showed her the now 25-year-old stand of tulip poplars. This time the headline read “Tip- Toeing Through The Timber Harvest – Doing Nature’s Forestry With Chainsaws and Trucks.” The article was very positive. It’s been 30 years since the original cut. The regenerated tulip poplars are tall and straight, and the biggest ones are 14 inches in diameter. Most people would walk right past it, except for the letterboxes. A few years ago, the Connecticut Division of Forestry installed a letterbox in each state forest to educate the The author measures a 9-inch-diameter public in a fun way about forest management. One of black walnut tree growing at Paugussett State Forest.

This series is underwritten by the Plum Creek Foundation, in keeping with the foundation’s focus on promoting environmental stewardship and place-based education in the communities it serves.

18 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 [ ECOLOGICAL ETYMOLOGIST ]

Dear E.E.: My husband thinks that the “witch” in witch hazel refers to an actual mole-on-the-nose witch. But I think it’s witch like witch a well. Who’s right?

Neither of you, I’m afraid. People did dowse with it, but that’s not where it got its name. It also doesn’t have anything to do with the local witch – those glam rock flower petals are the give-away. The wizard of Oz’s Glinda aside, no self-respecting witch would be seen in sunburst yellow. Witches (the people) got their name around 900 a.d. from the Old English verb wiccian (Old German wikken), which meant to control or cast a spell on. Wych, on the other hand, is an adjective meaning pliant. It’s been around a little longer (since 700 a.d. or so) and has different roots, coming from the Old English wice, Old German wik. Now I’ll admit they look awfully similar (which is why even some dictionaries get it wrong) but they’re linguistically unrelated, and a speaker of Old English would have pronounced the two words differently. Hazel has also been in the English language since about 700 a.d., starting as haesel. It probably came to England with the Vikings. (Hollywood likes to portray the Vikings as brutal thieves, but there was a surprising amount of cultural exchange.) Of course, the English people must have already had a word for hazels, but it probably sounded more like the Irish word coll. Interestingly, both words came from a Proto-Indo-European word that was probably something like koselo. Think of them as distant cousins – we know they’re related, even though they look nothing alike. The first known use of wych hasill was in Henry VIII’s Unlawful Games Act of 1541, which outlawed all games of skill except archery and mandated bows of “Elme, wyche hasill, ashe, or other Wood.” Witch hazel as we know it doesn’t grow in England so the law must have been refer- ring to wych elm, which Gerard’s Herbal (dating from the same time) calls witch hasell. You can see from the spelling discrepancy that people were already confusing wych and witch because the two words had come to have the same pronunciation. It wasn’t until 1760 that a botanist called our American shrub witch hazel. Of course, hazels are the Betulaceae family, elms are Ulmaceae, and witch hazels are Hamamelidaceae, but that’s eighteenth-century botany for you.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 19 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ MANY MILES AWAY ]

French Private Land Forestry

In 2006, I took a trip to northern France to learn how private land forestry was practiced there. I returned for a more extensive visit in 2009 and was able to spend more time walking the woods with consulting foresters, asking innumerable questions. My guides were Roland Burrus, a large landowner, and Roland Susse, who is classified as an “expert forester.” Both belong to a Europe-wide forestry organization called Pro-Silva that has chapters in 26 countries, including one in the U.S. and sycamore maple. Conifers also are present, times in 10 years. These costs generally run about at the New England Forestry Foundation. including Norway spruce, Douglas-fir, and white fir. $1,200 per acre. Thus, uneven-aged systems From my hosts, I learned that the French Northern red oak is viewed with caution over con- using natural regeneration in small patches, with approach to forest management has both similar- cerns that it may become an invasive. Black cherry no planting, hand clipping, or deer defense, is ities to and differences from the practices used in is a very problematic species in parts of Europe, much more attractive from a financial standpoint. New England. In order to understand why certain acting like buckthorn here in the Northeast. This irregular, uneven-aged approach still has practices are followed, it is necessary to dig down The French have a very different relationship more tending costs than many American land- into society, history, economics, and biology. with nature than we do, in that they expect for- owners are used to, but it is much less expensive First, the place. France is about the size of the ests to be managed. There is a gardening attitude than the even-aged alternatives. six New England states combined. It is 25 percent toward the entire landscape. Unmanaged land In addition to lower costs, it is felt that the forested, versus 85 percent in New England. The makes Europeans somewhat uncomfortable. Wild irregular forest is less risky for landowners, land is pretty rich, with many sites having fairly nature is highly valued, but it is relegated to spe- because they do not have all their eggs in one deep soils and a pH of 6.0-7.0. The forest species cific places and reserves. basket. France has experienced major winter are fewer than in New England. The focus is largely Historically, much of the land in France was wind storms in the last 20 years that have flat- on oak, in particular sessile and pedunculate, both managed for firewood. Until the introduction of tened many mature stands. The irregular stands in the white oak family. After that come beech coal heat and power in the 1800s, Europe ran often suffer less economic loss and, having estab- on wood. Hundreds of thousands of acres were lished regeneration, often recover faster. devoted to firewood production; these areas were The forests in France are continually culled and clearcut every 40 years and regrown from cop- improved. Management of individual trees starts pice stump sprouts. I saw many acres of these when they reach three to four inches in diameter. former firewood plantations that were still in tran- Harvest cycles are normally between 5 and 12 sition. Today, most forest management focuses on years compared with the 15- to 20-year interval growing high-quality trees for logs. Traditionally, typical in New England. Perhaps not surpris- France’s officially endorsed forest management ingly, then, one of the key features of French for- policy has largely focused on even-aged manage- est management is excellent permanent access. ment (i.e., clearcutting and either using natural These forests have established trails every 60 to regeneration or replanting) in both hardwood and 100 feet; it’s a system known as “the rack.” softwood stands, but this is changing. Harvesting is typically done with a cable skid- Close-to-nature forestry, as practiced by der and chainsaw by small contract logging crews adherents to irregular, uneven-aged silvicultural working either for the landowner or for a sawmill. systems, is driven largely by economics. Irregular, Logging costs are low because access is easy. uneven-aged systems differ greatly from the They harvest often but lightly, typically cutting even-aged management approach that tradition- only a few large, high-quality trees per acre. ally was followed. In the latter method, if trees Much of the work is seasonal. Hardwood logs are planted they often have to be fenced for sev- are cut when sap is not flowing, normally from eral years to prevent browsing by deer. If natural September through March. Softwood logs are cut The author, left, and host Roland Burrus, a French forest regeneration is used, the competing plants are anytime except during the four- to six-week loose owner. often clipped out by hand, sometimes two or three bark growth season. Loggers cut firewood and

20 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 softwood pulp and do precommercial silvicultural have no certification. They do not feel it is worth times with a forestry education, who is employed work the rest of the year. the cost and bother. full-time by a large landowner. About 10 percent Hardwood sawlog-quality trees are felled and I asked Roland if certification made a difference of owners still use forest guards, although many then topped at the point where the log-grade in selling wood. He said only in beech logs, which more used to. The guard walks the land, trying to material stops. This stem-length wood is sold are in an oversupply situation, so buyers can be get to every acre every year. He tends the forest, and delivered to the mills, which do the buck- choosy. Oak logs are in high demand, so mills will thinning, enrichment planting, pruning, and keeping. One mill I visited was cutting oak into nine buy all they can with no regard for certification. ing guard. Many owners are moving to split the grades. Auctions are held at the log landings and Amazingly, supply and demand actually works. job, with volunteers doing the guarding and paid mills bid for logs by lot. Some wood is sold stand- One final fact I found interesting is the French silvicultural contractors providing the tending. ing by bid. The tops are left in the woods and sold profession of “forest guard,” a local person, some- Si Balch in place for firewood. Both forests and agricultural lands are recognized as nationally important assets in France, and protective measures have been in place for many decades that have resulted in an almost complete moratorium on land conversion. In France, as in many other European countries, this approach is accepted as normal. The trade-off in prohibiting the conversion of land to other uses are tax laws that encourage landowners to be able to manage their lands profitably. Owners with management plans that meet the approval of the public service forester qualify for an even lower tax rate. This system encourages long-term planning and silvi- culture, since there is no possibility of any other use of the land. In the U.S., conservation easements have a similar effect. (Though in the U.S., land that is subject to conservation easements does not see a reduction in taxes, even though the development potential is gone. The U.S. approach to the “problem” of taxing land for potential use,

and thus driving rural land toward development, PHOTOS BY SI BALCH has been the creation of current use programs.) Napoleon had a huge impact on forest hold- ings in France through changes he orchestrated in the inheritance laws. French law refutes the European custom of primogenitor and requires fairly equal distribution among all children. Thus, if your assets are forestland, it will be divided into smaller pieces. Some forest blocks can be held together if there are other assets to distribute. Also, the value of forestland in estates is appraised at 25 percent of its full value. This is because a full forest rotation is estimated as 100 years and a human generation is 25 years, so it is valued at one-quarter of full value. This valuation formula makes it more likely that forests can be passed on to heirs intact. Forest certification in France is not as prevalent as you might think. We have been led to believe that the Europeans have fully embraced it. However, Roland Susse told me that only one of his many clients is FSC-certified; about 20 percent are PEFC-certified (a program similar to Top: Auctions are conducted at landings and mills bid for logs by lot. Bottom: The tops of sawlogs are left behind, the American Tree Farm System); and the rest processed, and then sold in place as firewood.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 21 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ LOOK BEFORE YOU PUMP ]

Ethanol Exorcism

Dwight Broome looks a bit like an old-fashioned moonshiner as he pours water into a shop-built contraption that could easily be mistaken for a still. Broome is indeed after alcohol, but not the kind the feds frown upon. In fact, the federal government is responsible for the very alcohol he’s now trying to isolate. Broome’s goal is to remove the ethanol that’s been added to gasoline since 2005 as part of a federal mandate designed to reduce oil imports and support corn farmers. “You just dump five gallons of gas in there, and then pour in two quarts of water,” he said, the explanation taking about as long as the process. “When the water hits that gas, all the alcohol is absorbed right into the water.” Simplifying the chemistry, the ethanol that’s been mixed into the gasoline would rather join up with the water. The result of this new union is a milky solution that very quickly settles to the bottom of the tank, an old propane canister cut in half and turned upside down. Broome drains the ethanol/water mix out a threaded valve at the bottom, leaving behind only the gasoline, which can then be drained from the same opening right back into a five-gallon plastic tank. Voila. Purified gas almost instantly. And the by-product doesn’t go to waste – Broome uses the ethanol-water mix that’s siphoned off to fill tractor tires as part of a small-engine repair business, and as a “really, really nice” windshield washer fluid in his car: “I’ve used it down to 40 degrees below zero and it hasn’t frozen yet.” Broome’s been practicing this purification ritual at his shop in Concord, Vermont, for at least the last 10 years. That’s about the time he began to be overwhelmed by an “onslaught” of customers bringing in weed whackers, chainsaws, and other power equipment suffering the symptoms of ethanol poisoning. “I used to fix four-wheelers, marine outboards, snowmobiles – and I’ve had to give all that up because chainsaw and weed whacker and lawn mower fuel system problems keep me so busy,” Broome said. Seeing the devastating effect that ethanol can have on machinery, he began making ethanol-free gas to put in his own equipment. Those burning gas containing ethanol may not know exactly what it’s doing to their equipment. “It makes engines run hotter,” said Broome of problem number one. That’s because ethanol has a higher oxygen content than gasoline, which Dwight Broome drains the alcohol out the bottom of his separator tank. What’s left inside is ethanol-free gasoline. creates the effect of a carburetor adjustment

22 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 and makes the engine run leaner. Equipment manufacturers say that this additional heat can score pistons or expand rings to the point that they become affixed to the cylinder wall. The problem can be exacerbated with equipment like chainsaws, which are designed to run at very high RPMs and can also suffer other heat-building problems, like a dull chain or grime and sawdust that prevent the saw’s cooling mechanisms from functioning properly. Standard gasoline is currently mixed at a ratio of 10 percent ethanol (E10), though blends such as E15, E30, and even E85 are sold at some stations. Above: Select stations sell non-ethanol gas, and often are eager to promote that fact. Below: The Northern Woodlands’ This has created confusion and led the Outdoor research department conducted a test of the ethanol content of gas from six random stations in central Vermont. All Power Equipment Institute, a manufacturer’s trade pumps tested stated a 10 percent ethanol content; the results of our experiment showed four stations came in right at group, to create a “Look Before You Pump” cam- 10 percent, while two showed little to no ethanol. This project was highly unscientific, but interesting and fun. Get your paign, encouraging equipment users to be sure own ethanol content tester and try yourself: fill with water up to the first line, top off with gas, shake and let settle. the gas they’re buying is compatible with their PHOTOS BY PATRICK WHITE equipment. While most equipment made today can used to happen. “Your gas might have gotten old. safely use mixes up to E10, there can still be prob- You might have had to clean the carburetor out. lems with older equipment, when fuel isn’t used But everything still worked once you did that,” promptly, or when the gas that comes out of the said Broome. Ethanol also can swell up plastic, pump has a higher ethanol content than advertised in Broome’s experience. If you’ve ever had to on the label. struggle to get your chainsaw gas cap on or off, Broome says that some E10 mixes actually you now know why. have a higher ethanol content than advertised, Loggers, who use their saws almost constantly, perhaps because of separation that occurs in the tend to experience fewer problems, said Broome. underground storage tanks below gas stations, Trouble usually shows up when the fuel is allowed particularly those that don’t pump a lot of gas. to sit in the engine, like it does for the many peo- “If you happen to get a batch that’s 20 or 30 ple who fire up their saws mainly to cut firewood percent alcohol, the temperature can get so high a couple times a year or take down the occasional that it’ll actually cook the motor,” he said. Broome tree. To make matters worse, these homeowners uses a small plastic tester (they’ve been around are also more likely to run their chain a little duller for decades and can be purchased from many or have fuel filters that are plugged. outdoor power equipment retailers) to determine So what is the right way to put your saw up for the the percentage of ethanol in the gas he buys, and winter, or store it between extended periods of use? reports that he regularly sees ethanol in excess of “If you’re using alcohol fuel, you need to run it dry,” 20 percent at local stations. Broome advises. “The worst thing that’ll happen It’s not just heat that causes problems. “[Ethanol then is you might have to clean the carburetor blends] go bad quicker. And slime everything up. or put a new diaphragm in. If you leave gas with And rot the gas lines,” said Broome. This is a alcohol in the carburetor, most of them now have particular problem with older saws that weren’t deceleration valves [a feature designed to reduce own water separator, websites like pure-gas.org built to withstand today’s more corrosive fuels. He emissions by shutting off fuel delivery once the provide information on local gas stations offering regularly sees generators come in with the fuel throttle is released] and those will stick. And when ethanol-free gasoline. (There are loopholes that lines rotted off, and marvels at how much gas that happens, you can throw the carburetor away, allow independent gasoline distributors to avoid has likely made its way into the ground around because it’s not a replaceable part.” Conversely, having to add ethanol to their product.) And small the country – an example of the law of unintended when the carburetor sits empty, that plastic part canisters of ethanol-free gas (often pre-mixed consequences, since the ethanol blends were shrinks and won’t stick. The damage from ethanol with two-cycle oil) can be purchased at hardware designed to be green. Similar problems occur doesn’t happen instantly; as a general rule, chain- stores. Broome hopes that someday this problem when gas containing ethanol is allowed to sit in a saw manufacturers recommend storing gas for no will go away if policymakers are pressured by the chainsaw; it can literally melt the fuel filter to the more than two months and always shaking the public to reverse course on ethanol requirements. inside of the tank, he said. “In fact, I’ve seen saws gas can vigorously before filling equipment. “In the meantime,” he said, “I just want to get that have sat for six months, and the fuel filter has A safer bet, according to Broome, is to avoid information out there so people can learn to deal almost completely dissolved – it’s just a smudge using gas containing ethanol in the first place. with it.” on the side of the tank.” These problems never For those who don’t want to build or buy their Patrick White

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 23 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ OBJECTIFY ]

The Modern Woodstove

The use of fire as a cooking and warming tool predates our species – evidence suggests that Homo erectus, a now extinct relative, was creating controlled fires a million years ago in Africa. It was probably the Neanderthals – that next link in the human evolutionary chain – who 3 invented the fireplace; pic- ture a crude clay mound in a cave. And while fireplace design became more sophis- ticated as Homo neandertha- lensis gave way (or merged into) Homo sapiens, people heated their homes with open fires for the next was, by most accounts, a piece of crap. Inventor several hundred thousand years. David Rittenhouse soon improved the design, but The problem, of course, is that fireplaces are who knows who David Rittenhouse is? James stupidly inefficient. About 90 percent of the heat Wilson, a merchant from Poughkeepsie, New energy of the wood goes up the chimney, and the York, improved Rittenhouse’s design in the early draft pulls the warm air out of the cave (or house) 1800s (stove historians suspect he’s the one who as the smoke exits. added the doors that turned the open fireplace Enter good old Ben Franklin, a man who into a closed stove), but Wilson’s patent was, was so competent that he makes pretty much ironically, lost in a fire. Also, his invention was everyone in the history of the world look like called a “Franklin Stove,” so it further cemented a slug by comparison. His accomplishments Ben’s legend. include figuring out electricity, mapping the Gulf At this point, it’s fair to wonder if Franklin should Stream, establishing the most successful news- be credited with the invention at all. Archeologists paper in the colonies, facilitating the relationship have pulled modern-looking cast iron stoves out with France that helped decide the American of Han tombs in China that date back to 20-225 Revolution, courting an impossible number of AD. The earliest known record of a European cast mistresses on two continents, and in his spare iron stove is in 1475. The pilgrims bought Dutch time inventing bifocals, a carriage odometer, a jam stoves (a metal box you jammed into a fire- flexible catheter, a glass harmonica, swim fins, place) with them to America, and the first patent the lightning rod, and, as we’re discussing here, for a device for “saueing [sic] of firewood and the modern wood stove. warming of rooms with little costs and charges” Europeans had been improving chimney design was issued to John Clarke by the general court of since the 1600s. German Franz Kessler famously Massachusetts in 1652, more than half-a-century promoted a chimney with a complex baffle before Franklin was even born. system designed to lengthen the path of a fire’s But it’s good to have folk heroes who are larger fumes (and thus its heat). Frenchman Louis Savot than life. And since you’re sitting by a woodstove invented a draft mechanism that supplied the fire reading a printed product under an electric light with oxygen. Franklin’s twist was to add a metal through your bifocals in a free and independent firebox that incorporated both a rear baffle and a United States of America, the thought that you cold air supply. owe the entire moment to ol’ Ben makes for a Functionally speaking, the original Franklin stove much more entertaining story. 8

24 NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 2

[ SOIRÉE ]

Writer’s Conference a Success

On October 17-19, Northern Woodlands held our first-ever Writer’s Conference, hosted by the Hulbert Outdoor Center in Fairlee, Vermont. The weekend featured natural history presentations, woods walks, instructional workshops, a nature illustration class, and readings/presentations by notable authors from around the Northeast. Author John Elder offered the keynote address. Special thanks to The Trust for Public Land, who sponsored the weekend, and to all who participated in the event. We hope to see all of you 4 (and a whole host of new people) at next year’s conference.

1 Attendees 2 View over Lake Morey. 3 Castle Freeman and The Trust for Public Land’s Patricia Crawford. 4 Patti Smith and guests at S’mores social. 5 Howard Frank Mosher 6 Robert Kimber 7 Ted Levin addresses the group. 8 Woods Walk

NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 25 Learn from the Pros!

Professional & Homeowner Game of Logging classes held throughout New England Serving Timberland Investors Since 1968 Hands-on safety training for Full Service Forestry Consulting forestry-related equipment. across New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. •Chain saw •Skidder •Brush saw •Forwarder Timberland Marketing and Investment Analysis Services •Farm tractor •Harvester provided throughout the U.S. and Canada. www.woodlandtraining.com Foresters and Licensed Real Estate Professionals in 14 Regional Offices Bangor, ME (207) 947-2800 Portland, ME (207)774-8518 Concord, NH (603) 228-2020 Northeast Bethel, ME (207) 836-2076 St. Aurélie, ME (418) 593-3426 Kane, PA (814) 561-1018 Clayton Lake, ME (603) 466-7374 Lowville, NY (315) 376-2832 Newport, VT (802) 334-8402 Woodland Jackman, ME (207) 668-7777 Tupper Lake, NY (518) 359-2385 Americus, GA (229) 924-8400 Training , Inc. W. Stewartstown, NH (603) 246-8800 Eugene, OR (541) 790-2105 229 Christmas Tree Farm Road Chester, VT 05143 [email protected] Call (802) 681-8249

26 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 1,000 words

Photo by Frank Kaczmarek A maple leaf frozen in time (and ice) near the edge of a small pond in northern New Hampshire. “The blue seen in the shot is the reflection of a cloudless sky,” said Kaczmarek. “The leaf is still embedded in the ice. More than likely a thaw, followed by a refreezing, buried the leaf in a new layer of ice, leaving only its impression visible.”

NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 27 Caterpillar

28 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 The Budworm Returns

By Dave Sherwood

n the spring of 1976, Bangor, Maine, was preparing for war. Douglas C-54 Skymasters, the same four-engine behe- moths used during the Berlin Airlift, sat wing-tip to wing- tip on the tarmac of the small city’s International Airport. State and federal government agencies had mobilized millions of dollars in public funds for the battle. A cumulative 18 million acres – an area nearly the size of the Clash state of South Carolina – was to be carpet-sprayed with chemical and biological weapons over the coming decade, an overwhelming show of force unlike anything this quaint, quiet corner of New England had ever seen. Despite these efforts, the death toll would reach the tens of millions, with impacts felt as far away as New Hampshire and Vermont and Manitoba and Newfoundland. Because the victims were trees, not people, the war hardly generated national headlines. But the carnage, total and abso- lute, would forever change Maine’s society and economy. Thousands of miles of roads were cut to facilitate huge salvage harvests. Mills retooled to handle the enormous volumes of wood. Jobs were gained, then lost. Fierce public backlash in the wake of salvage harvesting and aerial spraying led to

PAUL WILLIAMS. INSET: JERALD E. DEWEY/USDA FOREST SERVICE/BUGWOOD.ORG new laws governing forest practices. A new forest emerged. All of this was, for the most part, the result of feeding by the larvae of a small, nondescript gray-brown moth called the spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana). “Those years were a blur,” recalls veteran forester Gordon Mott on a recent visit to Maine’s Baxter State Park, ground zero during the outbreak. By the end of the 1970s, said Mott, the broad, sweeping flanks of mile-high Mt. Katahdin, the park’s signature peak, were lifeless. From the summit, it looked as if the Maine Woods

Left: Budworm damage in Quebec. Above: Choristoneura fumiferana larva

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 29 were dying. “It was a sea of red and dying crowns, everywhere even the most wizened woodsman is unlikely to ever spot one. you looked,” he said. But every 40 years or so – for reasons still little understood by Mott, a Yale-educated research scientist who led the “cam- scientists – budworm populations explode. In just five years, paign” against the spruce budworm in neighboring New populations skyrocket to 20,000 per tree. Veterans describe the Brunswick during the 1950s, had been called upon by the U.S. forest as wet and dripping with caterpillar “snot.” Forest Service to monitor and research the 1970s outbreak in To make matters worse, the larvae pupate and emerge as Maine. The devastation, the politics, and the side effects of long- moths in July and take flight, sometimes sailing with the pre- since-banned chemical pesticides like DDT, used to combat the vailing winds in vast clouds, then landing like paratroopers budworm, had worn him ragged. “It wasn’t a good feeling to in far-off forests. If wind and weather combine for favorable have 6 million acres of DDT [spraying] on my hands,” he said, traveling conditions, these airborne invasions can be swift – and shaking his head. devastating. Wiry, sharp-witted, and white-bearded, Mott, now 82, is a vet- It is this possibility that alarms many in Maine, including eran of two outbreaks – and may soon bear witness to a third. Dave Struble, chief entomologist for the Maine Forest Service. The budworm is back. Since around 2006, more than 8 million acres have been infested

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A Hot-Burning Fire in Quebec – north and west of Maine and directly upwind. Trees The spruce budworm is a well studied – but surprisingly little are defoliated, gray, and dying. understood – native of the Acadian forests of the northeastern Though the species is native and has been documented as far United States and Canada. Confusion begins with its name. back as the sixteenth century, it’s viewed as an enemy combatant The “spruce” budworm actually prefers balsam fir. In the in Maine, explains Struble, because much of the northern third spring, it emerges from hibernation as a larva that feasts on of the state is dedicated to growing trees for paper and lumber spring shoots and buds, then grows to a fleshy brown, inch- production. During the most recent outbreak, Maine’s spruce long caterpillar. Depending on availability, timing, and weather, and fir stocks were so savagely struck that even The New York it will also prey on white, black, and red spruces. Regardless of Times took notice, predicting a severe timber shortage in Maine species, the budworm prefers the more luscious, foliage-rich and fingering the budworm as the culprit. An estimated 20 to crowns of older, mature trees, though it often attacks younger 25 million cords of spruce and fir were killed between 1975 trees, as well. and 1988, more than a decade’s average harvest in Maine. Ken The budworm is always present across northern New Stratton, a former state forester, told the Times: “This is a very England in small numbers, though between outbreaks its serious situation. Some people are going to be hurt.” density plateaus at just five caterpillars per tree – so low that The ferocity of the outbreak led to an equally ferocious

30 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 response. With millions of acres – and millions of dollars worth about 15,000 acres a year are clearcut. Industrial landowners of timber – at the front lines, industry aligned with state and opted instead for smaller, partial harvests, as dictated by new federal government to initiate the largest, most expensive spray laws. While more aesthetically pleasing, they spread the cutting, program in the United States. Synthetic chemical pesticides, and roads, across a much larger footprint, according to records including trichlorfon, carbaryl, and fenitrothion were broad- kept by the Maine Forest Service. Even paper-making changed cast-sprayed across Maine’s forests – notoriously wet forests that dramatically. Instead of making newsprint the traditional way, are crisscrossed by streams and rivers and dotted with pristine with spruce and fir pulp, mills retooled to use hardwood species lakes and ponds. Rising costs and public protest eventually led unaffected by budworm. to a sharp decline in public funding and a swap to Bt (Bacillus “The budworm changed everything,” says Struble. thuringiensis), a more targeted biological pesticide with lower The forest products industry has since downsized, though it toxicity to humans and wildlife. remains a larger part of Maine’s economy than that of any other “We were the bad guys back then,” acknowledges Pat Flood, a state. In 2013, forest products generated $8 billion in total value former operations manager and forester for International Paper. to the state’s economy, including 38,789 jobs – too many to “And we were making things worse.” Flood, now a Maine sena- ignore, says Maine State Forester Doug Denico. LEFT TO RIGHT: MAINE FOREST SERVICE. STEVE SCHLEY/SEVEN ISLANDS. DAVE SHERWOOD

tor, arrived in the state shortly after the outbreak subsided, but Left: Recent years have seen a surge in damage north of the border. Center: The oversaw much of the subsequent harvest – and was in the midst devastation left by the last budworm outbreak, when an estimated 20 to 25 million of the public relations skirmishes that followed. cords of spruce and fir were killed. Right: If spruce budworm arrives, there is unlikely “Initially, we built roads for salvage. But we needed to jus- to be another state-wide government response. This time around there are wood pellet tify the capital expense. So we cut more and more. Everything and biomass markets to supply if smaller trees need to be harvested. became bigger. Bigger harvests. Bigger sawmills. More demand. Once you learned how to move that much volume that quickly, Today, the industry is bracing for the worst. it began to feed on itself,” he said. “We have had no choice but to blow the whistle and get New mills, manpower, and money – the cogs of the war people alarmed,” said Denico. “If this outbreak isn’t as bad as machine – created a business boom and an environmental it could be, great; but if it is, then we’ll be ready.” A long-time backlash. More roads also meant more “eyes” in the woods forester for Plum Creek, one of the largest landowners in Maine, – and increasing public scrutiny. New, more restrictive laws, Denico recalls the previous outbreak all too well: “There wasn’t including Maine’s Forest Practices Act, which regulates clear- a green needle left. The forest was dying.” ” cutting, soon followed. (In the early 1980s, 80,000-100,000 Together with researchers at the University of Maine and land- acres of forest were being clearcut each year in Maine. Today, owners, the Maine Forest Service is putting together a blueprint

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 31 for a more thoughtful, measured response – ahead of the bud- his hard-earned wisdom. On a shady, north-facing slope, he worm’s arrival. But there are still more questions than answers. enters a pickety thicket of softwood – dense, dark, and seem- Is the forest of today more, or less, vulnerable to a budworm ingly impenetrable. He grabs a young fir tree and offers it as a outbreak? Is spraying the best approach? Can the markets hint of what is to come. handle the sudden influx of wood that might result from an Fir, explained Mott, was a minor component of the pre- increased harvest? In this day and age, is any level of spray- colonial northern forest, but decades of “cherry-picking” the ing economically, or politically, feasible? Who will fund the most economically viable species of each logging era – from response? What role should the state play? What lessons can be mast white pines of the mid-1800s to the old-growth red spruce gleaned from past outbreaks? the late-nineteenth century – has left plenty of growing space for the much more tenacious and competitive fir, long considered a “weed” but now more common in the remaining softwood Then And Now stands than spruce. Since the last outbreak, the fir, despite being To the untrained eye, the forest along Baxter State Park’s winding Perimeter Road seems peaceful and timeless. There is no hint of the war that took place here just four decades ago. But to the professorial Mott and his wife Ginny, who both spent years here researching the previous outbreak, these forests are a textbook in budworm biology. In 1970, this corner of Baxter, only recently protected, was much like the rest of the Maine Woods: a vast, largely uninter- rupted swath of mature spruce and fir dotted with bow-legged moose, pristine brook trout ponds, and surprisingly few roads despite its proximity to Boston and New York. Weak markets through the middle of the twentieth century, difficult access, and rudimentary logging equipment limited harvesting to only the biggest, most valuable trees. Maine Forest Service records showed nearly 130 million cords of standing spruce and fir across the landscape in the mid-1970s – much of it in big, mature trees that were more than 60 years old. It was, says Mott, an almost perfect feeding ground for the largest budworm outbreak on record. “Today, we’re dealing with a forest that is drastically different in age and composition from any previous outbreak,” explained Mott as he bumped his Subaru wagon along the gravel road. This is Mott’s first lesson of the day: Less mature softwood means less food for the budworm. “An outbreak will likely be much less severe this time than last,” he said. Maine Forest Service data confirm Mott’s observation: Spruce and fir volumes have dropped by nearly half statewide since the early 1970s, to around 70 million cords. And the trees are younger, often by 20 years or more. Farther down the road, along Nesowadnehunk Stream, once an important river-driving thoroughfare, Mott pulls off the road and he and Ginny admire healthy stands of mixed yellow birch, paper birch, northern white cedar, sugar maple, red maple, balsam fir, and red spruce. “There’s far less continuous conifer now JERALD E. DEWEY/USDA FOREST SERVICE/BUGWOOD.ORG than prior to the 1970s and 1980s outbreak, and much more mixed wood,” he observes. Lesson #2: Spruce and fir, when mixed amongst hardwoods, are more resistant to budworm, which tends to thrive only in areas where its favorite foods are most concentrated. Mott points out other subtleties along the way, easily overlooked by the layman. He is eager – even exuberant – to share

Some 18 million acres was treated for spruce budworm during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Maine.

32 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 more susceptible to the budworm, has outcompeted the spruces To Spray, Or Not To Spray and is now dominant in many of the remaining softwood stands With millions of dollars’ worth of timber on the stump in – for the first time ever. Maine – and many questions still unanswered, landowners, Lesson #3: More fir means the budworm isn’t going away. policy-makers, and environmentalists are already on edge. Fear This, says Mott, is likely as true inside Baxter State Park of the unknown, explains Lloyd Irland, a former Maine state – where spraying was less vigorous and no logging took place economist who helped direct the state’s massive spray program following the budworm – as it is outside, on private lands, where in the 1970s, contributed to the intensity of response last time. vast acreages were protected with chemical pesticides before “This time, there will be a much better-informed forest nearly a decade of intensive salvage harvests. community,” said Irland, who, in 1987, helped to draft a “time Which brings Mott to Lesson #4: There is no single cure-all, capsule” document to ensure that lessons from the past outbreak no one perfect solution or management approach. wouldn’t be lost. “We’ve already had three or four hundred peo- “I’ve been around long enough to know better,” he said. ple together in a room talking about budworm – before we even

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 33 have brown needles on trees in Maine. That’s an extraordinary Forester and research scientist Gordon Mott helped lead Maine’s war on spruce difference.” budworm during the 1970s. The experience has given Mott, now 82, a different Like military veterans for peace, Irland, Denico, Struble, and perspective on the forthcoming outbreak. Mott, and others who lived through the 1970s outbreak, take the threat seriously – but this time, their approach is tempered by wood pellets and biomass, both of which can take advantage of experience and wisdom. smaller trees, as two examples. No one envisions a broad-based, state- or federally-funded But Strauch acknowledges that politics could be as big a spray program like last time – and all agree there’s no money, or factor in decision-making as biology or economics. Many envi- political will, for it anyway. “We aren’t recommending the state ronmentalists are already watching. Jenn Burns Gray, of Maine get involved with a spray program, except to monitor what goes Audubon, and Cathy Johnson, of the Natural Resources Council on and work with the pesticide control board to ensure that of Maine, said their organizations – two of the most prominent landowners use appropriate pesticides” said Denico. in Maine – had yet to take a position but are learning. “We’re Even pesticides have changed dramatically in the past 50 years. waiting, and watching, like everyone else,” said Johnson. Mott recalls the anguish he felt when a Canadian fisheries biologist Jym St. Pierre, of Restore: The North Woods, an environmen- approached him with a handful of writhing salmon parr – victims tal advocacy group, said he and others will keep a much closer of a DDT spray program he’d helped lead in New Brunswick. This eye on any spraying or salvage proposed. “We literally waged a time, he advocates careful, small-scale spraying with Bt, the much military-like campaign on the budworm back then. In the midst more benign, narrow-spectrum organic pesticide. of that war, we swept aside a lot of important environmental The landscape has also changed. Today, a more diverse group issues, saying ‘Look, we don’t have time to think about these of landowners, including NGOs like The Nature Conservancy things right now,’” he said. “But this time will be different.” and the Appalachian Mountain Club, as well as private investors, logging contractors, and a few remaining industry landowners, have created a checkerboard of management practices Calm Before the Storm – one likely less uniformly susceptible to a budworm outbreak In Baxter State Park, the budworm has yet to arrive, quiet – and less likely to unite behind a single strategy. “Our recom- still pervades, and the din of politics is faint. Pheromone traps, mendation will be to let landowners individually, or collectively, which use sexual attractants to lure budworm moths, are do battle themselves,” said Denico. “Any spray program will be scattered across the landscape here and throughout northern much more targeted.” Maine. They have shown a sharp increase in budworm activity Costs may also prove prohibitive. In the 1970s, spraying cost in recent years – but still far short of an outbreak. $5 per acre or less. Today, that price could be as high as $40 to Mott makes one last stop at Nesowdnehunk Field, a vast $60, according to recent figures from similar spray programs spruce and fir “flat” near the cool, wet base of Mt. Katahdin. He in Pennsylvania and Quebec. “Landowners will have to look forces his way through a thicket of balsam fir spaced tightly as at their high-value stands and decide how much risk they’re jail bars. A faded strip of flagging flutters from a branch. “I think willing to accept,” explained Pat Strauch, director of the Maine this is it,” he declares. “Plot #1.” Forest Products Council. Strauch acknowledged that his mem- It’s an old research plot where he and Ginny had studied the bers are on high alert. “It doesn’t matter who the landowner is, budworm’s devastating impact on Baxter’s spruce forest – and this will be a big deal. But, as a whole, I think we’re in a better its subsequent conversion to fir. Today, it’s hard to tell one bend position this time than last.” in the road from another. It all looks the same – miles of fir For starters, he said, remaining pulp and paper mills now thickets with almost nothing growing in the understory but prefer hardwood to spruce and fir – making the industry less clubmosses, club-handled bolete mushrooms, the occasional fir vulnerable to an outbreak. The existing road network, built seedling, and a few bracken ferns and pin cherries. in the 1970s and 1980s – as river drives ended and budworm In many ways, acknowledges Mott, it resembles a graveyard. salvage ramped up – will keep costs down should landowners The fallen spruces – the last vestiges of the precolonial old- need to salvage dying timber. Targeted spraying with biological growth forest – remain only as soft, moss-covered humps on the pesticides like Bt can help buy time. Presalvage in areas where forest floor, like the headstones of another era. severe outbreak is imminent will ensure that valuable wood But Mott isn’t overly sentimental. As a forester, he views doesn’t die on the stump. And many landowners have been budworm as part of the natural cycle, a reality in the Acadian purging fir from their ownerships for decades, seeking to favor forest no different, really, than wet springs or cold winters. It’s a the less vulnerable spruce. perspective gained during previous outbreaks. Strauch has faith that industry can devise new ways to use Lesson #5: “Budworm happens,” he said. the abundant fir that could flood the market should trees begin dying en masse, as in the 1970s. “Historically, we’ve been very Dave Sherwood is a Maine-based environmental journalist. good at finding new opportunities,” said Strauch, who has been tasked with helping organize the industry response. “The This article was supported by Northern Woodlands magazine’s Research and Reporting beauty of Maine is that we have markets for everything.” He cites Fund, established by generous donors.

34 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 DAVE SHERWOOD

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36 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Thanks for supporting Northern Woodlands through:

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Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 37 CC WELLCOME LIBRARY CC WELLCOME

38 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 THAT SIGNATURE LOOK AN INTRODUCTION TO THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

By Allaire Diamond

LOOKING CLOSELY AT PLANTS, we can learn a lot – it treats, the similarity of plant color to the color of symptoms, about local habitat, climate, hydrology, wildlife, and soils. For and by equating plant action to medicinal action (see the expla- example, succulent leaves indicate that a plant may thrive in nation for saxifrage below.). The idea has strong foundations sandy soil or endure periods of drought; thorns hint that the in oral history and traditional healing, which can be intensely plant is selective about who gets access to its fruits; and dark localized or even individualized. red, bad-smelling flowers suggest that the plant relies on car- In every era, the doctrine has had its skeptics. While plants rion-feeding insects to distribute its seeds. have a cornucopia of medicinal properties, historically assigned For thousands of years, people have also used a plant’s signatures very rarely corresponded to them. Herbalists have appearance to divine its medicinal properties. A broad concept criticized the doctrine as being a poor stand-in for deeper knowl- called the “doctrine of signatures” holds that features of plants edge of plants and plant medicine. It is notable that, even as the resemble, in some way, the condition or body part that the plant doctrine of signatures gained popularity as a Christian concept in can treat. So, bloodroot’s scarlet roots could treat diseases of the medieval Europe, herbalists and traditional healers were among circulatory system, or mandrake’s resemblance to male genitalia those persecuted for witchcraft, and their evidence-based knowl- means it could be used to treat infertility. The plant’s common edge of plants was driven underground. Dutch physician Rembert name often speaks to this associative thinking. Dodoens wrote in 1583 that the doctrine “is so changeable and The doctrine of signatures has probably existed as long as uncertain that it seems absolutely unworthy of acceptance.” people have looked at plants. Dioscorides, who practiced and The doctrine of signatures may not hold any medical water, but wrote about medicine in ancient Rome, was one of the first to it generates a fascinating web of stories that point to a universal describe a signature in the year 65: “The Herb Scorpius resem- connection with the plant world. My research turned up citations bles the tail of the Scorpion, and is good against his biting.” ranging from oblique references in arcane English to complicated Prominent medieval European physicians named the doctrine phytochemical analyses. Instead of finding one coherent narrative, and developed it further, believing that God included signa- it felt like my search turned up echoes of herbal thinkers through tures in plants during creation to tell people how to use them. the ages, some with massive experience and others just starting The Italian doctor Guilielmus of Saliceto referred to signature out, respected doctors of the time and mothers telling their chil- qualities in a treatise on medicinal plants published in 1290, dren to avoid a plant’s bright red berries, whispers around a fire and British physician Thomas Browne wrote in the 1640s that and leaf fragments floating in oil, ready to be tinctured. “there are two books from whence I collect my divinity: besides Ethnobotanist Bradley Bennett writes that the doctrine of that written one of God, another of his servant Nature – that signatures seems to function more as a mnemonic for remem- universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes bering plants than as a technique for discovering effective plant of all.” The Swiss physician Paracelsus popularized the concept medicines. So when we see the plant whose roots have red sap, in Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century. we know it as bloodroot, the same way that we recognize the Plant signatures were being interpreted on other continents, creepy fruits of white baneberry, or doll’s eyes, and know we are as well. They are a cornerstone of traditional Chinese medicine, seeing Actaea pachypoda. dating back millennia, and ethnographers have documented the How do we incorporate the doctrine of signatures into our concept in a variety of Native American tribes, in traditional current relationship with plants? As I learn about historic signa- communities in Israel, and elsewhere. It is a complex and uni- tures, I become a more literate reader of the landscape. Though I versal impulse to apply signatures to plants, and this has taken won’t be snacking on saxifrage leaves to pass a kidney stone any- many forms across time and cultures. People have interpreted time soon, I value how these echoes of human lore and botanical signatures through the resemblance of a plant part to the organ understanding make my walk through the woods richer.

Allaire Diamond is a conservation ecologist with the Vermont Land Trust. She lives in Jericho, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 39 ISTOCK

AMERICAN GINSENG Panax quinquefolius Ginseng is an Anglicization of the Chinese word for “man-root” or “man-essence,” and its Latin genus name Panax means “cure-all” or “panacea.” The plant’s signature is easy to divine: its root looks like a man and is therefore thought to aid and strengthen all parts of the body. According to some sources, ginseng has been valued in China for over 5,000 years, and American ginseng has been exported to China since the early 1700s. Today, the price for wild ginseng is around $550 per pound, which helps explain the plant’s relative rarity in North America.

SPLEENWORTS Ferns of the genus Asplenium Ferns reproduce by spores, which are produced and held in organs called sori. In many species, sori resemble rows of quotation marks on the backs of fertile fern fronds. In ferns of the genus Asplenium, the sori look like spleens. Spleenworts are small, delicate ferns often found growing on cliffs, ledges, or outcrops; species in our region include wall-rue (Asplenium ruta-muraria) and

maidenhair spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes), FOREST AND KIM STARR pictured. The plant has long been used medicinally and was thought to treat spleen disorders by European espousers of the doctrine of signatures. References also exist for their traditional medicinal use in Hawaii, Malaysia, New Zealand, and India. Pharmacognostic studies confirm that at least some species have medicinal compounds.

40 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 TVNKTVC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS STEVEN KATOVICH

MAIDENHAIR FERN Adiantum sp. I have long associated this lovely plant with cool, breezy rich forest slopes, but I was intrigued when my research turned up a doctrine of signatures reference from traditional peoples of Galilee in Israel and the nearby Golan Heights. Apparently, this plant has been used for hair problems and to combat fear. Its fronds tremble – perhaps fearfully? – in the wind. The plant was decocted and either drunk or poured on the hair.

SAXIFRAGES Livelong saxifrage (Saxifraga paniculata) and early saxifrage (Micranthes virginiensis) Ecologists get excited when we come across cliffs or ledges, because we know that we’re likely to find a variety of small, specialized plants that are able to grow in very little soil, and that often thrive on minerals that precipitate directly out of the rock. Medieval doctors got excited by ledges, too, but for very different reasons: they were seeing a pharmacopeia of kidney medicines. It was thought that plants that could “break” rock in order to grow could also be useful in breaking apart kidney stones. Italian physician Guilielmus Saliceto wrote a treatise on kidney treatments in 1290, and he used the term saxifrage to refer to a variety of plants, including those in the modern genus Saxifraga, the alpine plant Dryas octopetala, and ferns in the genus Asplenium (more on those on opposing page). The word Saxifraga derives from the Latin saxum (rock) and frangere (to break). The purported kidney application may also have come from the European species Saxifraga granulata, whose small granular structures resembled kidney stones. The genus has some interesting North American species, including early saxifrage (Micranthes, formerly Saxifraga virginiensis) which grows commonly on ledges and exposed rock and may provide essential food to support blueberry-pollinating bees outside of blueberry-flowering season. Even more apropos to the genus name, livelong saxifrage (Saxifraga paniculata), pictured, grows on calcium-rich rock and secretes dissolved lime through pores ringing its leaves. If you’re hiking to see it in the boreal outcrops of our region, bring plenty of water to help head off any kidney troubles.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 41 WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

DANDELION Taraxacum officinale / other species worldwide Dandelions are eminently adaptable. Native to Europe and Asia, they’ve dispersed and settled easily across the world’s varied landscapes, and have been incorporated into most medicinal cultures, from the deserts of India, to Mexico and the Peruvian Andes, the mountains of Turkey, and the forests and clearings of native North America. Tenth-century doctors in the Middle East mentioned dandelion as a liver and spleen treatment, and the genus name combines the Greek taraxis, “inflammation,” with akeomai, “curative.” Another French moniker is pissenlit, “bedwetter,” referencing the plant’s traditional use as a diuretic and also one of its signature properties: the stem yields a liquid when broken. Dandelion’s yellow color was also thought to signal its efficacy for jaundice and other liver disorders. Traditional Chinese medicine applies the doctrine of signatures slightly differently: it asserts that plant roots can be used to treat internal ailments while the above-ground flowers, leaves, and seeds can better treat external conditions, such as upper-respiratory problems. The scientific literature supports these and many other powers of

dandelion: some sufferers of inflammation, cancer, NORTH CAROLINA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY / PHOTOGRAPHER TOM HARVILLE diabetes, allergies, liver disorders, blood clots, and, yes, urinary troubles have found relief in this ubiquitous plant. Yet despite an English common name that derives from the French dent-de-lion, “lion’s tooth” (referencing its serrated leaves), I could find no mention of its use in feline dentistry.

HEPATICA Hepatica acutiloba, Hepatica americana For centuries, people have turned to this small rich-woods perennial with hopes of healing hepatic (liver-related) ailments. Its lobed leaves turn purplish as the season progresses, and so in color as well as shape resemble the lobes of the liver. In the late 1800s, gatherers combed the mountains of the southern United States searching for hepatica leaves to sell to purveyors of patent medicines such as Dr. Roder’s Liverwort and Tar Sirup, and Beache’s Vegetable Syrup. Medicine-makers bought around 450,000 pounds of hepatica leaves in 1883 alone. As consumers failed to see results, these medicines gradually ceased production and hepatica populations rebounded. It remains a fairly common early spring wildflower in rich or limey woods.

42 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 IVO SHANDOR / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT Arisaema triphyllum Few plants are as odd and recognizable as Jack-in-the- Pulpit. Its flower-bearing spadix (Jack) sits enclosed in a sinuous, petal-like spathe (the pulpit). It seems to have inspired a variety of religious imagery in early European settlers, who couldn’t decide if it signified good, evil, or just the ridiculousness of the church as an institution: in addition to naming pious Jack, the plant has been called devil’s ear and priest’s pintel, or penis. At least one source from 1778, possibly referencing that last name, records its use for urinary tract or bowel problems. Other names for this common plant include brown dragon and dragon-root. Irritating calcium oxalate crystals in its root, or corm, caused painful stinging when handled raw. Following a different interpretation of the signature concept, this stinging was thought to be effective in treating painful boils and bites, including snake bites. Rafinesque (1828) reported that this plant was said to kill snakes, and that Native Americans were said to be able to handle rattlesnakes after “wetting their hands with the milky juice of this plant.” A 1928 ethnography of the Meskwaki tribe describes it being applied to snake bites. It’s not clear whether the dragon names reference this particular use, or are describing the serpentine appearance of the “pulpit,” or both.

UPLAND BONESET Eupatorium perfoliatum There is still no cure for the common cold, but an effective herbal remedy may be growing in a wet meadow near you. Boneset’s signature is instantly recognizable: its 7SONG opposite leaves fuse around the stem, like broken bones knit back together with a scar. Only vague accounts hint at the plant’s being used to heal fractures, though; more references cite its use in treating fever, flu, and cold. The nineteenth century botanist and scholar Constantine Rafinesque wrote in 1828 that the common name derives from boneset’s use in treating “breakbone fever,” or dengue fever, a mosquito-borne illness whose symptoms include intense bone pain. A bitter tea made from the leaves apparently had curative effects. Millspaugh wrote in 1892 that “there is probably no plant in American domestic practice that has more extensive or frequent use than this. The attic, or woodshed, of almost every country farm house, has its bunch of dried herb hanging …ready for immediate use should some member of the family … be taken with a cold.” More contemporary scholars and studies have, in fact, found that boneset has some effectiveness in treating fevers. Another common use of boneset, also called thoroughwort, was to promote bowel movements, and the stem growing “through” its fused leaves can also represent this action.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 43 CHRIS EVANS / BUGWOOD.ORG

COMMON AND GLOSSY BUCKTHORN Rhamnus cathartica (pictured) and Frangula alnus As we wring our hands over the invasive growth of these small trees, it may be helpful to consider the value of buckthorn in other cultures. Buckthorn’s inner bark/sapwood sports an intense yellow hue and it, along with the plant’s unripe berries, yields a yellow dye. Accounts exist of people boiling the bark in ale to treat jaundice (a liver disorder that makes skin turn yellow), and people in the Israeli regions of Samaria and Galilee have reported that drinking a decoction of the bark has been used to treat hepatitis.

COMMON MILKWEED Asclepias syriaca Break a stalk or leaf of milkweed and sticky white sap oozes out. This plant and others in its genus have been used by people on both sides of the Atlantic for millennia. Milkweed’s sap and soft, flossy seeds have long been used to dress wounds; many parts of the plant are edible with some preparation; stem fibers have been used for cordage; and the silky seed floss has traditionally been used as a mattress and pillow stuffing and even, in World War II, in life preservers. In some places, milkweed pods are still worth about 55 cents a pound. The plant also has been used to stimulate milk production in new mothers. Ethnographer Frances Densmore spent time with the Chippewa tribe and reported in 1928: “During confinement [after childbirth] take half a root, break it up, and put it in a pint of boiling water, let it stand and get cold. Whenever a woman takes any liquid food, put a tablespoon of this medicine in the food. This remedy was used to produce a flow of milk.” Its leaves have been used as a female contraceptive by Native Americans (sometimes decocted and taken internally, sometimes applied externally). Conversely, monarch butterflies use the plant to improve reproductive success. Monarchs become toxic to predators by feeding on the poisonous white milkweed sap. DAVE MANCE III

44 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 A Consulting Forester can help you

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Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 45 Rising From the Ashes

46 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Maine’s Native American basketmakers have brought a tradition back to life. By Joe Rankin

or Jeremy Frey, of Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indian tribe, weaving ash baskets is a family tradition. He learned to create baskets from his mother when he was 22. His grandmother also wove baskets. Other family members did, as well. Frey tells people this when they stop at his booth at Native American arts fairs. He loves to share the details of how he collects ash logs, pounds them to separate the fibers, splits the ash splints. How he turns wooden molds for his baskets. How he comes up with designs, spends hours upon hours hand-weaving to get a particular look, incorpo- rating porcupine quills, perhaps, or sweetgrass. “When you teach people, they’re more likely to appreciate it,” said Frey. You’re not just selling a work of art then, you’re selling a tradition, a story. “You’re selling the purity of it. It gives more credence to what you’re doing.” HTSCUTS OF THERESA SECORD PHOTOS COURTESY

Philomene Saulis Nelson sells her baskets on Indian Island, Maine, circa 1940. Inset: Great-granddaughter Theresa Secord continues the family tradition.

NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 47 Today, Frey’s baskets are avidly sought by collectors. Ash baskets don’t fare as well in terms of archaeological preserva- They’re displayed in museums, including the Smithsonian, tion as, say, pottery. But there’s no doubt that the eastern woodland and in galleries and collections around the country. In 2011, Indians took advantage of natural materials found in the woods he won best-of-show at both the Santa Fe Indian Market, – ash splints, sweetgrass, birch bark, spruce roots, or cedar bark the largest Native American arts festival in the world, and – to make strong and beautiful baskets. And it’s been done for a the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market in long time, said Julia Clark, the curator of collections at the Abbe Phoenix. This past August, he won best-of-show in the basket- Museum in Bar Harbor, which is devoted to the Wabanaki. ry division at Santa Fe. His creations routinely fetch thousands At first, utilitarian baskets likely held sway, but as Maine’s of dollars. cachet as a tourist destination began developing in the mid- 1800s, fancy baskets – purely ornamental works – became important, said Clark. “Fancy baskets fed into a Victorian-era A Heritage Restored fascination with ‘exotic’ peoples, and the basketmakers were pretty savvy. They saw what wealthy collectors wanted and tried The black ash tree occupies a unique spot in the culture of to incorporate those style elements into their work. A lot of Maine’s Indian tribes. Tradition holds that the Wabanaki – the baskets would have matched the stuff in a Victorian home.” People of the Dawn – are the progeny of the tree. It is said that Basketmaking became an essential part of the economy in Glooscap, hero of the tribes’ creation stories, shot an arrow at a some native communities. “They weren’t making a killing by black ash and from the wound in the tree’s bark people flowed any means,” said Clark, “because they weren’t selling them for out like a river to populate the world. very much. But for some families it was a critical source of Stories aside, there’s no doubt that the black ash (or brown income. They would work all winter to harvest and process the ash, as it’s commonly known in Maine) has helped sustain the ash and sweetgrass and make baskets.” Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac tribes for gen- Jennifer Neptune, a Penobscot basketmaker and the execu- erations. The tree has a unique property: once its bark is removed, tive director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, said the tree can be pounded along its length until the growth rings the tribes have a “special relationship” to the black ash. “It has separate, producing perfect ash splints that can then be planed sustained our communities. Ash baskets paid for people to go and split and resplit, producing pliable yet durable weaving to school, paid for clothes, paid for food. Some people went to material as wide as a man’s belt or as fine as dental floss. college with basket money,” Neptune said. “It fed us when there Exactly how far back ash basketry goes is hard to determine. weren’t animals to hunt and the rivers were dammed up and we MARY RANKIN

48 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 couldn’t fish for salmon anymore. It Traditions and Innovations was basketry that fed our people.” But in the late twentieth century, the The revitalized basketry tradition has popularity of Wabanaki ash basketry spawned a burst of creativity. Today, waned. By the early 1990s, there were basketmakers are experimenting only about 30 active Indian basketmakers with new forms, finishes, and materi- in Maine, and their average age was 63. als; they’re looking to other arts for Elders weren’t passing on their skills. The inspiration, as well as back into the craft was in danger of being lost. tribes’ basketry tradition to incorporate Concerned about that trend, basketmakers older techniques. from the four Maine tribes formed the Maine Indian “I’ve always tried to develop my own style Basketmakers Alliance in 1993. The group began putting on based on innovation,” said Frey. As part of that, “I’ve kind of workshops for kids and created an apprenticeship program that made everything smaller. I tighten everything up, bringing the paid master basketmakers to mentor younger generations. The standards closer together and making the weaving tight. I often Alliance began arranging shows and exhibits and helping basket- use silhouettes as my inspiration. Not flat areas, but curves. makers with marketing. They harken back to the feminine form, with a graceful sway Now there are some 150 active basketmakers from the four and angles.” tribes, and the average age has dropped to 40. Meanwhile, prices Frey said he works with different embellishments, including have gone up, with basketmakers getting hundreds and some- porcupine quills, a traditional material. This year he turned a times thousands of dollars for their works. wooden handle out of a burl and incorporated it into the top for This year, five tribal basketmakers from Maine competed in a tall basket to take to the Native American Fair in Bar Harbor. the juried show at Santa Fe. In addition to Frey’s best-of-show That is not traditional. But the basket sold for $20,000 – before in basketry, former MIBA Executive Director Theresa Secord, a the sale even officially opened. Penobscot, won first place and Sarah Sockbeson, also Penobscot, At her booth at July’s Bar Harbor show, Sarah Sockbeson an honorable mention. snapped photos of her works with her camera phone before

Above: This miniature (3-inch diameter) green curly basket by Sarah Sockbeson incorporates brown ash, sweetgrass, and antler. Below, from left, Gabriel Frey, a Passamaquoddy, weaves a basket handle. The braided ash detail of a Jeremy Frey creation. Sockbeson shares the Native American tradition of basketmaking with a new generation. HTSCUTS BEMSU,BRHRO,MIEECP SNOTED AS EXCEPT COURTESY ABBE MUSEUM, BAR HARBOR, MAINE PHOTOS

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 49 MARY RANKIN

50 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 gently wrapping the sold items to send off with customers. Many basketmakers,” she said. “But this is my first Jeremy Frey.” of her baskets feature deer antler handles. She slices the antlers The small vase is tightly woven in black and white. Fuerst into cross-sections, then carves and polishes each one, drilling a mused that it has something of an oriental aspect to it, acknowl- hole through the center. “Each handle is kind of unique for the edging that it “pushes the bounds of my collection, which is basket,” Sockbeson said. Sockbeson gives careful attention to about half traditional nineteenth century and half modern. For color combinations and uses a fiber-reactive dye developed for many years, I resisted the more modern basketry because I was dyeing textiles. “I like the vibrant colors and I like the modern into the ‘authentic’ tradition. But I came to realize that it’s an look on something that’s really traditional and natural.” evolving art. The work that the really good people are doing at George Neptune, a Passamaquoddy basketmaker and the this point is so good that I really wanted to be part of it.” museum educator at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, said he’s turning his baskets into sculptures. One piece incorporated a raw piece of log with woven flowers on the basket and hum- Ash Under Assault mingbirds woven from ash appearing to sip from them. “They’re all slight adaptations on traditional methods I’ve While part of the evolution in basketmaking is attributable to been taught,” Neptune said. “I’m kind of taking traditions and borrowing ideas from other art forms and cultures, including putting my own spin on them. I guess I get inspired from what other tribes in North America, another part is more practical: I see around me and what I see in nature.” the black ash’s days may be numbered. Neptune admits his works draw mixed reactions. “Some col- The emerald ash borer has now been found in two dozen lectors really, really like it. Others think it’s kind of crazy.” states, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and two While black ash splints and sweetgrass are staple materials, Canadian provinces. The borer is in the back of every Maine more artisans are experimenting with others, including birch Indian basketmaker’s mind, evidenced by the educational post- bark and the soft inner bark of the eastern white-cedar, both of ers at the Bar Harbor show. which were once primary weaving materials. Sockbeson paints “The irony is that we’ve kind of broken into the art market scenes on birchbark that she incorporates into the tops of some scene nationally, and now we’re threatened with emerald ash of her baskets. borer that could destroy our resource,” said Neptune. “It’s fun to play around with new things,” Sockbeson said. The Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance is working with the “Some of them never make it out of the workroom. If I’m Maine Forest Service and the University of Maine to find ways experimenting, I’ll usually do one and see what kind of reaction to slow the spread of the bug and to make contingency plans it gets. I think natives, in general, have always used what they for when it does arrive. Under the auspices of the University had available for materials. This is just the evolution of that.” of Maine’s Senator George Mitchell Center, the partners are Neptune said much of the experimentation today is by young- mapping black ash stands, looking at whether long-term pres- er weavers, though traditionally, Indian basketmakers have been ervation of harvested ash trees is possible, and saving ash seed. an innovative lot. It sometimes happens that a basketmaker will They’re also making videos that show “basket tree” selec- try something “and feel like they’re being tion, processing, and weaving techniques super innovative” only to later come on – a recorded legacy that could be used to an antique basket that incorporates bring the art back generations hence if the same technique or material, she the ash is wiped out and subsequently said. “They were pushing it back restored. then, too, in terms of creativity, “We have a deep, profound, and with new styles and ideas.” spiritual relationship with this tree, But Clark said the more avant and we feel we have a responsibility garde basketry is drawing in to do what we can to save it,” said new collectors who wouldn’t Neptune. Because black ash exists have been there based on the in pockets rather than scattered previous styles. throughout the landscape, “some JoAnne Fuerst, of Mount people are hopeful emerald ash Desert Island, has been collecting borer may not spread as fast in Wabanaki basketry for decades. Maine. Right now all we have is At the Bar Harbor show, she was hope.” thrilled to walk away from Jeremy Frey’s booth with a miniature point Joe Rankin writes on forestry, natural history, and vase. “I have pieces by many, many sustainability from his home in New Sharon, Maine.

Left: Jeremy Frey’s basketmaking style emphasizes small, tight weaves. His baskets are among the most highly prized by modern collectors. Above: A brown ash “work basket” (this one for potatoes) by Richard Silliboy.

NorthernWoodlands / Winter 2014 51 52 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 53 THE OVERSTORY

Story by Virginia Barlow Illustrations by Adelaide Tyrol

Eastern Hemlock Tsuga canadensis

If you stop for a while in a dense old hemlock forest, dark and still, it may seem like an eternal place, a place where nothing has changed or ever will. The small needles are tightly packed, layer after layer, until almost no light reaches the forest floor. Needles carpet the ground and there is very little sound. But these dear trees, far from being timeless, have experienced catastrophes in the past and now face almost certain disas- ter, perhaps even complete extinction in the near future. The culprit is the hemlock woolly adelgid, a tiny but deadly aphid-like insect that arrived from Japan and has spread relentlessly since the 1950s. It’s easily dispersed by wind and birds, not to mention people, and in 1985 it made a beeline for much of New England, perhaps after being blown across Long Island Sound by Hurricane Gloria. Eastern hemlock and Carolina hemlock, a more southern species, are equally susceptible and, unless something unexpected happens, in a few decades they will no longer be a significant part of the forest. But this is not the first hit they have taken. Eastern hemlock headed north during the retreat of the last glacier, beginning about 10,000 years ago, and by 8,000 years ago it was flourishing as never before – or since. But then something cataclysmic happened. By looking at the pollen record, researchers at Harvard Forest discovered that, very suddenly, 5,500 years ago, Eastern hemlock almost disappeared throughout its range, which covers the colder parts of the eastern U.S. and Canada. Many possible causes have been suggested – among them an insect outbreak, disease, drought, climate change, or a combination of the above – but the available evidence is inconclusive. For whatever reason, during a span of about 1,500 years there was almost no hemlock in the Northeast. Then, just as mysteriously, it staged a dramatic comeback that lasted until the arrival of Europeans. New settlers were a plague to hemlock. Trees that weren’t felled to make room for agriculture were stripped of their tannin-rich bark, which was used to tan leather. At one time, there was a tannery in almost every village. Much more leather was used per person in the pre-plastic era: for saddles, harnesses, shoes, boots, coats, and belts for both trousers and machinery. At first, tanning was a cottage industry but by the late-nineteenth century, leather-making was the fifth largest business in the country. Although oak bark was a more common source of tannin in the southern states, in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, the industry depended on hemlock. The bark was stripped from trees from the first full moon in May till the last full moon in August and allowed to dry until the ground was frozen and heavy wagonloads could be moved without miring in wet soils. Four to six trees yielded a cord of bark, and a cord treated 200 pounds of sole leather. Tanned leather and hemlock bark extract were also shipped to Europe and South America. In the federal government’s 1877 Report Upon Forestry, Franklin B. Hough observed, “It is a matter of common experience that extensive areas once covered with a heavy growth of hemlock, as, for example, in Greene and Ulster Counties, New York, have, within a period comparatively recent, been wholly or nearly exhausted of their tanning materials, and that extensive tanneries in many places have been wholly abandoned, their owners, if continuing the business, being compelled to seek new localities.” An 1893 story in The New York Times tells the same tale: “A tannery is like a flea. It is always on the jump. It is built as cheaply as possible, so that when the supply of

54 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 bark gives out it can be abandoned and a new tannery put up or dug out somewhere else.” That “somewhere else” was usually on a river, since tanneries required a lot of waterpower to grind the bark and it was handy to send all of the polluted effluent downstream. Fire often swept through the debris- littered forest following a hemlock harvest, which further degraded the site. Synthetic tanning materials began to be used in the 1880s, too late to save most of the Northeast’s hemlock groves. Now, chromium salts are used in over 90 percent of leather production. Hemlock is both slow growing and slow to recolonize a denuded forest, so it’s taken the species a while to reclaim its lost ground. Still, over the past 100 years, hemlock has become a large part of the forest in the Northeast. In areas yet to be infested by hemlock woolly adelgid, hemlock is still increasing its share of the forest, and its benefits here are huge. Its dense growth keeps steep slopes from eroding and shades and cools streams. Deer winter best nestled under hemlock stands in winter, where the thick blanket of needles overhead greatly reduces snow depth and wind chill and moderates nighttime low temperatures. Wild turkeys, grouse, and other animals hunker down in hemlocks, too. It’s not uncommon for hardwood stands to be dotted with single trees or small patches of hemlock, and these provide cover and nesting spots for many birds, most notably the black-throated green warbler, but also the black-throated blue warbler, Blackburnian warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, and junco. Porcupines sit high in the trees in winter, eating bark and twigs. Deer sometimes make good use of the litter of branches that the porkies drop. Snowshoe hare and red squirrels also eat the foliage, and mice eat the seeds. Hemlock’s ability to live in deep shade is legendary. A seedling can sit in near darkness, almost comatose, waiting patiently for one of its giant neighbors to succumb. One seedling, measured with a microscope, grew less than half-an-inch in 60 years. Two- to three- inch diameter saplings sometimes are approaching their 200th birthdays. But after that lucky day, even the frailest little hemlock can spring to life and grow rapidly – and for a long while. Though not eternal, 400-year-old stands that somehow avoided the axe and saw are not uncommon. The oldest recorded hemlock was 988. The shadow of doom that hangs over this graceful conifer is saddening indeed. It seems likely that history will repeat itself and this species will soon vanish from New England’s forests. For now, we can simply appreciate it: icon, symbol of permanence, protector of streams, haven for deer. And hope that this time it doesn’t take 1,500 years to recover.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 55 56 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 57 FIELD work

By Joe Rankin

At Work Mining Timber with Tom Shafer

Tom Shafer’s business is mining trees. It’s not really harvesting; maybe re-harvesting. “Recovering a forgotten forest” is his company motto. He likes to think of it as mining. And Shafer’s not just selling lumber to panel offices and bars. He’s selling history. He’s selling green. Shafer, a former stock trader, and his business partner, Steve Sanders, founded Maine Heritage Timber in 2010 to exploit a vast trove of sunken logs in Quakish Lake in the economically ailing North Woods town of Millinocket. It is a long way from Wall Street, but it’s apparent talking Quakish Lake was dammed up and grew to about 1,000 acres in 1899. Log drives to Shafer that the man has a passion for his product. And, in a used the lake to move millions of logs during this era, but many of those logs sank sense, he’s still selling, just not stocks. and never made it to the mill. Quakish Lake covers 1,000 acres. For over a century, it served as a vast holding pond for the Great Northern Paper Company’s Shafer said. huge mill. Millions of logs were floated into it to await the The original business plan called for selling most of the logs pulping process, and many of them sank. Bathymetric surveys for paper pulp, with a small milling operation to turn the best show the lake holds an estimated 750,000 to 1,000,000 cords of of the best into lumber. But with the closing of the local Great wood, both hardwood and softwood, said Shaffer. Northern Paper Company pulp mill right around the time While many of Maine’s lakes have a wooden legacy of the Maine Heritage Timber was getting started, the partners had to great river drives lying in the mud of their bottoms, there are no retool their business plan and became a producer of “heritage” others like this, Shafer said. “It’s the honey hole of honey holes.” lumber for use as paneling and flooring, with scraps and low Shafer and Sanders began by getting a raft of permits and quality offcuts sold as biomass. permissions from the owners of the mill, from the state, from The lake’s timber is a product of the log drives of the 1800s the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, from the U.S. Army and 1900s. Much of it is virgin timber, with tests showing that Corps of Engineers, and from Katahdin Forest Management, some of the trees began growing as early as 1500. Most of the which owns the right-of-way. “It was an extensive process,” softwood is spruce and fir in four-foot pulp lengths. The hardwood is mainly tree-length stuff that was felled and left to be covered by water when a dam was put in and Quakish Lake was expanded from 400 acres to 1,000 acres in 1899, Shafer said. “The thing I find most interesting is it was basically a natural resource that is coming out in log form. You have this lost product that has been underwater, in some cases for 150 years. And the only thing that’s happened to it is time and water have transformed the patinas in the wood into something that others try to duplicate with chemicals, but find it difficult to do,”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MAINE HERITAGE TIMBER said Shafer. Instead of feller-bunchers and forwarders, Maine Heritage Timber has a fleet of 11 (10-by-40-foot) barges, 15 industrial sized waste containers, a tugboat, and an excavator with a log loader-type grapple. The excavator and containers are parked on the barges and towed into the lake. The excavator fishes the

An excavator outfitted with a log-loader grapple pulls wood from the lake bottom. Logs are stacked up and smaller pieces placed into a container. Maine Heritage Timber operates 11 barges like this on Quakish Lake.

58 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 logs from the water and puts them into the containers. Then The wood salvaged from the lake bottom is srubbed of mud, debarked, sawn into they’re towed to shore and loaded onto trucks for the mile-and- boards 1.375 inches thick, and then slowly dried. a-half trip to the company’s sawmill. Once there, the logs are loaded onto a shaker screen to scrub off the worst of the mud and rocks and put through a debarker. “It’s a process that’s extremely labor intensive. It takes five men to run that,” said Shafer. Logs smaller than five inches are set aside for chipping. The good stuff is sawn 1.375 inches thick. It then goes to Pride Manufacturing in Burnham, Maine, for drying. While the retrieval and milling are unconventional, it’s in the drying that things get especially tricky. Robert Rice, a professor of wood science and technology at the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources, worked with Shafer to develop drying schedules for the lumber. Compared to freshly cut green wood, submerged wood isn’t supersaturated with water, Rice said. The tree’s cells, after all, can only hold so much. “But, depending on the depth to which they’ve been sunk, When he’s talking up his line of products to prospective cus- some of them are subject to decay over time,” Rice said. Deeper, tomers, Shafer isn’t just selling them a wall covering with a nice colder water inhibits decay; wood from shallower, warmer patina, though. He’s selling them the whole Paul Bunyanesque waters will still see some decay. Quakish is a relatively shal- story: the vast virgin forests, the tough lumberjacks toiling in low lake and much of the wood shows some deterioration. But deep snow, the daring log drivers dancing across a river of logs it’s the decay that makes it unique, and it can be a challenge to on calked boots, and the old growth trees resurfacing more than preserve its integrity in the drying process. a century after the people who felled them died. “The story “We approach the drying fairly carefully so that any defects, makes it so powerful. People love to tell stories, and our story is or character as Tom would call it, within the log is preserved,” 100 percent true,” Shafer said. said Rice. Tests showed that the lumber needed extra time in the He also pushes the “green” product angle. After all, he said, dryer to avoid what Rice describes as a “pressure cooker” effect, you can’t get any greener than bringing up logs preserved at the where evaporating water simply destroys the fibers. bottom of a lake. “We save a thousand acres of forestland from “We go slowly and dry the wood more carefully,” said Rice. being cut every year we operate,” Shaffer said. “The final temperature is about the same, the ramp rate to get Another green selling point: Maine Heritage Timber is also there will take us an extra day or two compared to normal restoring Quakish Lake, now “nothing but a landfill of wood.” spruce-fir dimension lumber we would dry in a kiln.” And another: They sell their waste as bark mulch and biomass The resulting product is not structural by any means, but a fuel. “As far as being sustainable and a green project, well, there unique decorative lumber, said Rice. is nothing greener than what we do. It really is that simple,” he Maine Heritage Timber offers two types of product: wall said. And, by the way, they’re creating badly needed jobs in a paneling and a line of flooring created by resawing the lumber historic paper mill town without an operational paper mill. and then bonding the thinner stock to half-inch structural So far, they and their investor have sunk (no pun intended) plywood at a flooring mill in West Virginia. four million dollars into the project. Annual operating costs So far, the main customers have been restaurants, offices, about one million a year; last year, revenues covered about and bars. “We’ve found our sweet spot is the commercial $600,000 of that, said Shaffer. They hope 2015 will be their side of things,” said Shafer. “We even offer a line of conference break-even year. tables just rolled out last spring.” Their products have been Maine Heritage Timber has already removed about 25,000 installed in restaurants in Bangor, Bar Harbor, and the Sugarloaf cords of wood from Quakish Lake. Even accounting for and Sunday River ski resorts in Maine, and they’ve filled increased production, Shafer figures there’s 20 years worth left orders from California to Boston and Fargo, North Dakota, to in the Quakish wood bank. “It’s not going to run out soon,” he Jacksonville, Florida. “We’re a nationwide supplier of millwork said. “But once it’s gone, it’s gone.” and customized heritage wood,” Shafer said. The wall paneling sells for $5 to $7.50 a square foot; the Joe Rankin is a forestry writer. He lives in central Maine. flooring can be $8 to $12, depending on species and width. Shafer said that’s “kind of middle of the road as far as price,” Wagner Forest Management, Ltd., is pleased to underwrite Northern Woodlands’ series when compared with similar products. on forest entrepreneurs. www.wagnerforest.com

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 59 60 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 61 Northern Forests – Timber, Recreation, Estates

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62 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 up COUNTRY

By Robert Kimber

Flummy

I know several men who are excellent cooks. I’m sorry to say I pick up and flatten out into a round cake pan or frying pan, the am not one of them. But let me be clear: my failure to achieve bottom of which you have dusted with flour before you even distinction in the kitchen is not rooted in disdain for the culinary started mixing the dry ingredients. The flour works like grease arts. I have nothing but admiration for all those cooks, male or oil to keep the flummy from sticking to the pan. or female, who are not just talented dilettantes who put on an Next, you bore a hole into the middle of the dough with your occasional festive meal now and then but who – like my wife trigger finger and set the pan over a low enough campfire that – perform at a high level over the long haul, day after day, year you don’t burn your dough but not so low that the dough won’t after year. bake and rise. After 15 minutes or so, or whenever the flummy Cooking well calls not just for the craftsman-like virtues of is baked firm enough to hold its shape, you turn it over and discipline, persistence, attention to detail, but also for the artistic jiggle the pan often so that the flip side won’t burn. In the winter, imagination to combine seemingly incompatible ingredients when you’re cooking on a tent stove, you control the baking into a hitherto unknown taste treat, a kind of fresh gustatory temperature by sliding the pan around on the stove to find the metaphor. Faced with Rita’s ability to work that kind of magic exact amount of heat you need. and conjure savory meals out of just about nothing, I realized A little scorching on one side or the other can be toler- early in our marriage that I stood little chance of ever catching ated, but the one cardinal flummy sin is soggy dough left in up with her. So I decided to leave the cooking entirely in her the middle. The Labrador adjective for this baleful condition hands; almost entirely, I should say, because there are a couple is “dunse,” etymology again uncertain. The “u” in this word is of staple items in our diet that she leaves to me. The most pronounced somewhere between the “u” in “dunce” and the “e” important of these is flummy, and if I haven’t produced one for in “dense,” which would suggest that anyone who produces a quite a while, Rita will remind me that it’s high time I did. dunse flummy is a dense dunce. Flummy (etymology uncertain) is the Labrador trapper’s trail Having an oven in our kitchen at home, I haven’t hesitated bread. I learned how to make it from Horace Goudie, the last to use it in pursuit of the perfect flummy, and I offer herewith of the Height of Landers, those amazingly skilled and rugged my prize-winning recipe: two cups all-purpose white flour and trappers who traveled each September 200 miles upstream on two cups whole wheat, a heaping tablespoon of baking powder, the Grand River (designated on maps now as the Churchill a teaspoon of salt, and a tad under two cups of water. Bake for River) to reach their hunting grounds on the Labrador plateau. 25 minutes at 450 degrees; turn it over for 10 more minutes at On a canoe trip down that same Grand River undertaken in 350, and perfection is yours. Note, however, that a four-cup the fall of 1990 to celebrate Horace’s retirement from guiding at flummy is – in my experience – best reserved for oven baking at age 68, we Yankees cajoled Horace into showing us, on a warm, home because it takes a lot of time and attention to get it baked sunny layover day, the fine points of flummy-making. through over an open fire. The ingredients: three cups flour, a rounded tablespoon And remember: should you ever produce a failed flummy, of baking powder, a scant teaspoon of salt, a scant cup- keep Horace’s admonition in mind next time and stick and-a-half of water. The total absence of shortening religiously to his mixing routine, complete with poking a hole is one thing that separates flummy from bannock or in the middle of the dough before baking. The magic biscuit. But another thing Horace stressed is that is all in the mixing. success with flummies is “all in the mixing.” Okay, so you stir the dry ingredients Robert Kimber has written often for outdoor and together as you would for any old batch of environmental magazines. He lives in Temple, Maine. biscuits. But then you dig a deep well into the center of the mix and pour the water in. With a spoon, you slowly peel the flour from the sides of the well into the water, stirring and peeling, until you can’t stir anymore. Now you start folding the remaining flour in from the sides and working it down into the dough with your fingers, half folding, half kneading. Handle the dough only enough to round it into a ball you can

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64 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 65 DISCOVERIES

By Todd McLeish

Go Jump in a Lake

The Clean Air Act, passed more than 40 years ago, continues to provide positive outcomes. The latest good news comes from a University of New Hampshire environmental scientist who reports that lakes throughout New England and the Adirondack Mountains are rapidly recovering from the effects of acid rain. His research was published last summer in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. William McDowell, director of the New Hampshire Water Resources KELLY BAUMANN Research Center, said that water bodies in the region “were under assault from the large quantity of acid going into the lakes and watersheds” prior to the Clean Air Act. Emissions of sulfur dioxide and same rate – local soils and bedrock have Adam Baumann sampling Lonesome Lake in the White nitrogen oxide were converted into sulfu- an effect on a lake’s recovery rate – but Mountains of New Hampshire, with a view of the north- ric acid and nitric acid in the atmosphere almost all are improving. Whether the eastern extent of Franconia Notch and the Mt. Lafayette and subsequently deposited on the land water quality in the lakes is back to ridgeline. and lakes when it rained or snowed. “normal” is uncertain, since there is no But McDowell’s analysis of data collected water quality data prior to the 1980s. in all cases. They concluded that defores- since 1991 (he looked at 31 sites in New “It also gets complicated because some tation may provide greater climate ben- England and 43 in the Adirondacks) lakes are clean and clear and others are efits in some areas than leaving trees showed that sulfate concentrations in naturally brown with organic acids that standing. Their study, published in the rain and snow declined by more than come in from vegetation and wetlands,” journal Climatic Change, is the first to put 40 percent in the 2000s, and sulfate con- McDowell said. “There is no one condi- a value on albedo, a measure of the snow’s centrations in lakes are declining at an tion that is considered normal.” ability to reflect the sun’s energy. increasing rate. Nitrate concentrations While McDowell believes that the long “In many areas where snow is frequent, are also declining rapidly. term monitoring of lakes in the region the overall climatic influence of the high “Long-term monitoring of lakes in has proven the effectiveness of the Clean albedo from snow may counteract the New England started in the early 1980s Air Act, he and his colleagues plan to cooling benefits of carbon storage,” said to document whether the Clean Air Act continue monitoring lake water quality postdoctoral researcher David Lutz. works to clean up lakes,” McDowell said. to assess future changes to the environ- Lutz and colleague Richard Howarth “And the answer is, yes. They’re becom- ment. He is particularly interested in agree that sustainable forestry practices ing less acidic and the water chemistry learning how climate change affects water provide important climate benefits in has improved to become more hospitable quality, speculating that a longer ice-free forests with high growth rates. But at to lake biota.” period may lead to anoxic conditions and high latitudes where snowfall is com- According to McDowell, several factors increased algal blooms. mon and timber productivity is low, an work together to reduce the acidity of open landscape with a large field of snow lake water. Recently, rain and snow falling can have a cooling effect by reflecting directly into lakes has been less acidic. The Case for Snow incoming solar energy, outweighing the This “replacement effect” is bolstered by value of lost carbon storage. They suggest soils filtering out acids before they reach Trees sequester carbon from the atmo- that snow-cover albedo be factored into the lakes. “The water is getting more and sphere and play a key role in mitigating existing and proposed carbon trading more pure in many of our lakes, so we’re the effects of climate change. But a study programs, like the California Greenhouse getting to the point where it’s challenging by researchers at Dartmouth College Gas Cap-and-Trade Program run by the to even measure it,” he said. found that from a climate perspective, California Air Resources Board, which Not every lake is improving at the forestation isn’t necessarily a good thing they say is already generating forest car-

66 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 bon projects in New England. The researchers recognize that defor- Červený recruited a team of 23 hunters In their study, the researchers created estation may have significant negative and biologists who observed 84 different what they call an integrated assessment effects on biodiversity, wildlife habitat, foxes make nearly 600 mousing jumps in model that places an economic value on and other ecosystem services, so they rec- a variety of locations throughout the year timber, as well as on albedo and carbon, ommend that forest managers consider and in all kinds of weather. They found and examined how these values would those factors when working to maximize that the foxes were successful at captur- affect forest harvesting rotations in the timber production, carbon storage, and ing their prey 73 percent of the time White Mountain National Forest. Their albedo at mid- and high-elevation forests. when pouncing toward the northeast and results suggest that the value of albedo can “My hunch is that the working forest con- 60 percent of the time when jumping in shorten optimal forest rotation periods cept with sustainable management prac- the exact opposite direction. But their significantly compared to scenarios where tices is the best option for our region,” success rate declined to 18 percent when only timber and carbon are considered. said Howarth, “taking into account the pouncing in any other direction. (When In high-elevation areas near tree-line that diverse values associated with forests and red foxes can clearly see their prey, direc- receive substantial snowfall, and where the links between communities and land- tional heading obviously plays an insig- forests grow slowly, the optimal forest scapes. But the science of how forests nificant role in their hunting success.) size from a climate-cooling perspective interact with climate is an important “Mousing red foxes may use the mag- is near zero. piece of the puzzle, and that’s more com- netic field as a range finder or targeting plicated than a simple focus on carbon.” system to measure distance to its prey and Lutz and Howarth are now expanding thus increase the accuracy of predatory their model to evaluate more than 500 for- attacks,” wrote Červený in the journal est sites across New Hampshire to include Biological Letters. “A fox that approaches many different tree species, varying eleva- an unseen prey along a northward com- tions, and differing amounts of snow cover. pass bearing could estimate the distance They also plan to incorporate a wide range of its prey by moving forward until the of other forest values into their model, sound source is in a fixed relationship from shelter and foraging habitat for wild- to the magnetic field. This would con- life to recreational, cultural, and aesthetic sistently place the fox at a fixed distance values. “We’re adding these aspects one at a from its prey, allowing it to attack using a time at the moment,” Lutz said. “From that highly stereotyped leap.” standpoint, we are far from making any This explanation is plausible, he says, prescriptive statements about what forest because the Earth’s magnetic field tilts owners should or should not do.” downward at a 60- to 70-degree angle in the northern hemisphere, so as a fox inches toward the sound of a mouse, it is Fur-Bearings looking for the point at which the angle of the sound matches the angle of the mag- Detecting small mammal prey beneath a netic field. That’s when it knows precisely thick covering of snow is among the more how far to leap. challenging skills that some predators The physiology of how a fox’s magnetic must develop to survive New England detection sense operates is uncertain, and winters. Most use exceptional hearing Červený has been unable to prove it even and an acute sense of smell. According to exists, but he believes that he has ruled a researcher in the Czech Republic, red out all other environmental explanations. foxes also use the Earth’s magnetic field to And he knows that many other creatures orient themselves when hunting. can detect magnetic fields, including Red foxes jump high to surprise prey birds, bats, sharks, and turtles. He deter- from above in a behavior called “mous- mined in a 2008 study, for instance, that ing,” and when doing so, according to cows and deer must have the same ability, Jaroslav Červený, a wildlife biologist at since they tend to align themselves in a the Czech University of Life Sciences, north-south direction, and their align- they strongly prefer to pounce in a north- ment is disrupted by the magnetic fields

CHRIS MAZZARELLA easterly direction. He said this directional coming from high-voltage power lines. preference enhances the precision of their But red foxes are the first animal believed hunting by aligning themselves with the to use this “magnetic sense,” as Červený Earth’s magnetic field. calls it, to capture a hidden meal.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 67 Advocating for a Strong, Sustainable Forest Economy

The Massachusetts Forest Alliance promotes the adoption of policies that support a strong, sustainable forest economy, responsible forest management practices, and the continuation of working forests on public UniƟng the interests of and private lands. forest landowners and industry professionals Founded in 2012, The Massachusetts Forest Alliance was established with one clear message through the combination of the MA Forest Landowners Association, the MA Wood Producers Association, and the MA Association of Professional Foresters. With the resources of these three organizations now combined into one, forest landowners and industry professionals have the necessary means to provide a consistent and uniﬁed voice on matters of forest policy, ending the era of underrepresentation in the Commonwealth. Join today! MassachuseƩs Forest Alliance 249 Lakeside Avenue Marlborough, MA 01752 For Landowners For Professionals (617) 455 – 9918 For Citizens Committed to Our Local Forest Economy www.MassForestAlliance.org

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68 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 69 70 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 71 Ad Index A. Johnson Co...... 64 Allard Lumber Company ...... 10 BayState Forestry Services ...... 52 Berry, Dunn, McNeil, & Parker ...... 69 Betsy Rogers-Knox Botanical Art ...... 69 Britton Lumber Co., Inc...... 61 Cersosimo Lumber Co., Inc...... 64 Cersosimo Lumber Mill ...... 57 Champlain Hardwoods ...... 60 Chief River Nursery ...... 71 Classifieds ...... 36 Colligan Law, LLC ...... 26 Columbia Forest Products ...... 37 Consulting Foresters ...... 45 Econoburn ...... back cover Farm Credit ...... 61 Fountains Forestry...... 72 Fountains Land ...... 62 Gagnon Lumber, Inc...... 56 Garland Mill Timberframes ...... 52 Hull Forest Products...... 64 Innovative Natural Resource Solutions ...... 53 Itasca Greenhouse ...... 70 Land & Mowing Solutions, LLC ...... 72 LandVest ...... 26 LandVest Realty ...... insde back cover Lie-Nielsen ...... 62 Lyme Green Heat ...... 10 Lyme Timber ...... 69 Maine Forest Service...... 52 Massachusetts Forest Alliance ...... 68 McNeil Generating...... 71 Meadowsend ...... 57 N.E.W.T.: Northeast Woodland Training ..... 26 NE Forestry Consultants, Inc...... 65 NE Wood Pellet ...... 60 NEFF ...... 12 New England Forest Products ...... 70 Newcomb, NY ...... 52 Northern Timber ...... inside front cover Northland Forest Products ...... 61 Oesco, Inc...... 53 Ohana Family Camps ...... 12 Sacred Heart University ...... 62 Scotland Hardwoods...... 71 Sustainable Forestry Initiative ...... 10 SWOAM ...... 56 Tarm USA, Inc...... 65 The Taylor-Palmer Agency, Inc...... 53 Thomas P. Peters II and Associates ...... 65 Timberhomes, LLC ...... 10 Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation ....71 VWA ...... 70 VWACCF...... 57 Wells River Savings Bank ...... 70 Winterwood Timber Frames ...... 60 Woodwise Land, Inc...... 68

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72 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 TRICKS of the trade

Story and Photos by Brett R. McLeod

Small-Scale Charcoal Production

After bucking this year’s firewood, I found myself with a collection of odd-shaped ends and crotches, perfect for charcoal-making. Charcoal is essentially wood that’s been “cooked” in the absence of oxygen, a process known as pyrolysis. After a few hours in the kiln, what you’re left with is nearly pure carbon that’s energy-rich and perfect for grilling, or even firing up a forge. Based on how much you’re looking to make, this same process can be scaled up (using large metal drums) or down (using small paint cans), consistent with the method described below. 1 2

Step One: To make charcoal you’ll need two barrels: one to hold the charcoal (the crucible), and a second larger barrel to contain the fire (the kiln). For this project, I used a 10-gallon metal trash can as the crucible and a 40-gallon metal trash can as the kiln. Drill a half-inch-diameter vent hole in the crucible lid and approximately 20 vent holes of the same size around the base on the kiln, evenly spaced. (Photos 1 & 2)

Step Two: Fill your crucible with split chunks of hardwood about four inches long. (This batch was a mix of American beech and sugar maple.) Pack the wood tightly 3 4 and to the top of the can (the photo shows just the first layer of these small pieces) to minimize air space. Replace the lid, crimping the edge with a hammer. (Photo 3)

Step three: Prepare the kiln by stacking two courses of firewood in the bottom, the first perpendicular to the second; this will form a base with good air circulation for the fire. Next, place the crucible inside the kiln on the prepared base and pack wood slabs between the crucible and kiln. (Photos 4 & 5)

Step Four: Light the kiln fire and maintain even heat for 5 6 3-5 hours. You can stack additional firewood on top of the kiln; just make sure the crucible vent is clear. (Photo 6)

Step Five: As the charcoal nears completion, you’ll notice a short flame shooting from the crucible vent. Maintain the fire until this flame dies out, then plug the hole with a wet rag, and allow the kiln and crucible to cool. (Photo 7)

Step Six: Finished charcoal, ready for your next BBQ. (Photo 8)

Brett R. McLeod is an associate professor of Forestry & Natural Resources at Paul Smith’s College. 7 8

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 73 wood LIT

Beetles of Eastern North America a list of other families that have a similar appear- who contributed to this collection of essays, the By Arthur V. Evans ance, together with their relevant page numbers answer is obviously no. They take on the “neo- Princeton University Press, 2014 in the section on family treatments. greens” in the conservation community who As Evans points out, in eastern North America promote the concept that wilderness is only a Thanks to the recent rapid compilation of insect there are 115 families of beetles holding around social construct and the idea that humans can be photos at www.bugguide.com and other websites, 15,000 species, and his book treats only 1,409 rambunctious gardeners in charge of domesticat- identification of insects has never been easier. Art of them. Many beetle species are small and only ing the planet. Evans has taken advantage of these resources a coleopterist will ever see or be able to identify Keeping the Wild is an anthology of essays and, working with these photographers and a them; understandably, there is no single resource that present a countervailing case on behalf of number of beetle specialists, he has produced a that covers all of these species. This book does wild nature. There are three sections: Clashing well-edited book that provides a comprehensive an admirable job of introducing beetles and their Worldviews, Against Domestication, and The Value treatment (560 pages) of the beetles of eastern biologies at the level of family, and through the of the Wild. The scene of battle is well set by co- North America. photographs treats many of the more distinctive editor Tom Butler (of Vermont) in his passionate The core of the book is the description of beetle genera while providing an opportunity to quickly yet reasoned and clear introduction. families, where each family is introduced, charac- identify many of the beetles that naturalists will The essays are written by scientists, phi- terized, and compared with other similar families, encounter. losophers, writers, academics, and conservation and their habitat/collecting techniques are dis- It is valuable to more experienced naturalists activists from North and South America, Europe, cussed. Following this introduction, there are one in that it also covers the families dominated by and Australia. Inevitably, when twenty-two authors to many photographs of commonly encountered LBB’s (little brown beetles), that become more are focused on the same issue there is some species. This section of the book is particularly commonly encountered as interest in beetle redundancy. But the wide variety of voices keeps strong due to the excellent photos, which nicely diversity grows. This is a wonderful book for the reader attentive. Names that may be familiar combine the diversity within the family with the beginners working with insect biodiversity, for to readers of Northern Woodlands include Terry more commonly seen species in eastern North use in schools, and for naturalists. It is by far Tempest Williams, Roderick Nash, Dave Foreman, America. Associated with each photo is a para- the most complete and useful book in providing George Wuerthner (also from Vermont), Michael graph discussing the biology, distribution, and an introduction to beetles and their biologies for Soulé, David Ehrenfeld, and Harvey Locke. They distinguishing features of the species. eastern North America. The one disadvantage is are not arguing for pristine wilderness, though For those who already know a bit about that at 8x10 inches, it is too large to be used as a we can certainly use some of that, but rather for beetles, this is a wonderful resource when you pocket field guide, though it will fit comfortably in “wild lands,” where, if human management is have a specimen or photo inhand, as you can a backpack. present, it mimics natural processes as much as is feasible. It is to a large extent self-willed. They look through the pages in a relevant section and Donald S. Chandler quickly narrow the possibilities down to the likely also argue for restoration of lands degraded by family. If uncertain about a specific family place- human exploitation in order to reclaim something ment, you can read through the notes describing of nature’s native biodiversity and resiliency. They families that are similar in appearance and see Keeping the Wild: Against the feel that the neo-greens should have more humility, if you can find a better fit. If you are more of a Domestication of Earth for we have been and continue to be fallible beginner, there is a very nice introductory portion Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, gardeners. of the book where the commonly used anatomical and Tom Butler In making their cases, the writers frequently terms are explained and well-illustrated, together Island Press, 2014 cite the positions and counter the arguments with an extensive treatment of beetle biology, made by those on the forefront of the so-called behavior, collecting and photographic techniques, “Is the great purpose of our species to steal the Anthropocene movement, including Peter Kareiva, and how to begin a collection. The key to fami- lives and homes of millions of species and bil- Emma Maris, Stewart Brand, and Dan Botkin. lies is short, emphasizing the more commonly lions of creatures?” asks David Johns, one of the These are folks who argue, essentially, that nature encountered and easily recognized families, but writers featured in Keeping the Wild: Against the in the twenty-first century will be a nature that we associated with each of these keyed families is Domestication of Earth. For Johns and the others make; we will become gods, so we might as well

74 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 get good at it. If you subscribe to this premise, you that plants are now flowering weeks earlier than wanted it, the company of the natural world when should read what the other side has to say. they did in Thoreau’s time. Some species have he wanted it, and still maintain a connection to The so-called conservation movement has declined and some have disappeared. And the society because he wanted it.” always had its differing factions, but the neo- changes aren’t just with the flowers: his research Primack envisions two future worlds: the one greens are opening up a major division in the includes ice-out dates, the effects on migratory we appear to be headed toward, and one we ranks. They are postmodern deconstructionists. If bird arrivals, and many other topics. (Bird-watch- could still have. Despite reporting disconcerting you, like me, have been fuzzy on the meaning of ing was uncommon in Thoreau’s time, and his bird trends, his final chapter is a call to action and this appellation, the fine essay by Harvey Locke data are the oldest collected in Massachusetts.) includes steps we can take to become observers is a must read. It behooves us all to ponder and Although Primack has written for scientific jour- and to join observer networks. understand the consequences of a gardened nals, Walden Warming is for those of us who love to Many of Thoreau’s neighbors viewed him as world for our humanity and for our fellow beings walk in the woods, for botanists and birdwatchers, a loafer and questioned why a Harvard gradu- on this small, blue planet. Is it ethically appropri- for those who would like a better understanding ate would not pursue a “serious” career. His ate for the behavior of one species to exercise the of how climate change is affecting our immediate on-again, off-again great friend Ralph Waldo power of life and death over millions of others? environment. With an engaging narrative style, Emerson lamented that Thoreau “had no ambi- If I am judging the readership of Northern Primack shows readers how he works and how tion.” “[I]nstead of engineering for all America, he Woodlands correctly, the vast majority has expe- he approaches research challenges. was captain of a huckleberry-party.” Thoreau was rienced and love wild lands, but they also believe Primack frequently quotes from Thoreau’s very aware of his critics, commenting, “If a man that good science-based management of some iconic Walden, as well as from the writer’s journal. walk in the woods for love of them half of each land squares with their belief in care for the Earth. He understands Thoreau and doesn’t get caught day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; I think they will find this book immensely stimu- up in the mythology around him. “Thoreau was but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, lating and will add strength to that ethic. not (as some have made him out to be) a radical, shearing off those woods and making earth bald Larry Hamilton antisocial individual who shunned humanity and before her time, he is esteemed an industrious saw value only in wild places. Walden Pond itself and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no inter- was not a wilderness by any stretch of the imagi- est in its forests but to cut them down!” So, in the Walden Warming: Climate Change nation…. Thoreau’s point in going to Walden was end, Thoreau gets the last laugh. More than 150 Comes to Thoreau’s Woods not so much to avoid being around people – and years later, we are still reading what the “captain if you read his journals, you find that for all his of a huckleberry-party” had to say, and he is still By Richard B. Primack solitary walks, he did still interact regularly with arguing for preservation. University of Chicago Press, 2014 the local residents – but to find solitude when he Tom McKone

Most news about climate change focuses on the dramatic and the exotic: melting glaciers, rising sea level, the loss of polar bear habitat. Boston Hardwood University field biologist Richard B. Primack makes it more real for us. He brings it right into Ash our backyards, right now. say ash a fire laid Primack was well established as a tropical with three logs botanist when, a decade ago, he decided to seek because a fire must have evidence of climate change closer to home. He was thrilled to discover that Henry David Thoreau something to aspire to collected data, created tables, and made observations in his journal, recording first-flowering dates third log on top to catch for 300 different species in a wide area around Walden Pond from 1851 to 1858. Primack set out this silence to follow in Thoreau’s footsteps – walking miles in the fields and woods of Concord, Massachusetts, the fire needs to burn to collect comparative data. the fire needs to burn In Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes up to Thoreau’s Woods, Primack uses Thoreau’s detailed records as the starting point to take sometimes I’m just split wood readers through a series of investigations about sometimes I’m what’s caught how higher temperatures have affected plants, a quiet thing birds, insects, and other life in the Northeast. The flowers and birds Primack tracks – from a lady’s trying to say slipper to a bobolink – are ones we know well. ash Climate change doesn’t feel far off at all. again Assisted over several years by his undergradu- ate and graduate students, Primack discovered JODY GLADDING, from Translations from Bark Beetle (Milkweed Editions, 2014)

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 75 William and Laurie Danforth Ross Caron With Special Thanks Peter and June Davis John C. Cavender Frederick V. Ernst Champlain Hardwoods Fernwood Consulting, LLC Chippers Fraxinus Fund of The New Hampshire Winston G. Churchill Charitable Foundation Coolidge and Ann Churchill Timothy C. Fritzinger Allen Clark Concept2 Fund of The Vermont David Snyder and Sara Coffey Community Foundation Charles Collins Gilbert Verney Foundation Paul Collodi Nicholas and Marjorie Greville Jim and Mary Connacher Dana Hudson and Steve Hagenbuch Robert Busby and Maureen Conte

BETSY ROGERS-KNOX Carroll S. Harrington William H. Cooley Harold R. Hiser Frederick M. Coonradt Kristin Graham and Tom Hulleberg Philip Culhane J. K. Adams Co. David Y. Parker Family Trust Tom and Liz Kelsey Martha Ann Davies Margo and Joe Longacre Andrew G. Davis David and Cheryl Mance David and Elizabeth Dawson David and Roxanne Matthews Carolyn and David Demers Peter Maxson Charles Denoncourt Sue and William Morrill Kenneth Descoteaux Evelyn Conroy and William Morris Betty J Dobson Elizabeth Nichols Henry Dobush O’Brien Forestry Services Charles Dodge Colleen M. O’Neill Anne Donaghy James and Susan Ozanne Laurence J. Donoghue Garry Plunkett Gordon Douglas R. Scott Prosser Al and Laura Duey GIFTS $10,000+ GIFTS $500-$999 Gordon and Patricia Richardson Lawrence C. Eaton Anonymous Anonymous William and Sharon Risso Neil Eberley Allan B. & Frances M. Roby Charitable Trust Sidney and Lila Balch Charles and Linda Ryan William and Pamela Eddy Wellborn Ecology Fund of The New Kennett F. Burnes Mark and Cindy Slane Michael J. and Donna Eisenstat Hampshire Charitable Foundation– Starling W. Childs Freda and Henry Swan Christopher M. and Kirsten Elwell Upper Valley Region James T. Curtis David and Elise Tillinghast Carl and Pauline Emilson Elena and Jere Daniell The Meril Family Trust Benjamin and Dianna Emory GIFTS $5,000–$9,999 Earl Downes Stephen M. Weld John T. Ewing Anonymous John Duryea Stephen Wilder Sally Fairbairn Elizabeth Haartz and Walter E. Davis Quentin Faulkner Jeremy Wintersteen Charlotte and Charles Faulkner Emily Landecker Foundation Don and Susan Foster Wyman Family Fund of the New Stephen A. Feltus Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Frog Hollow Forestry Hampshire Charitable Foundation Myra and Allan Ferguson Riverledge Foundation Michael K. and Cleo Gewirz Paul Westin Young Frederick A. Ficken Glenmeadow Sue and John Foster GIFTS $1,000-4,999 Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., LLP GIFTS $100–$249 Freeman’s Garage Berry, Dunn, McNeil & Parker Martin B. Hammond Emory Ackley Calvin B. Gammon Sarah R. Bogdanovitch Peter and Donna Hollinger Axel Aldred Robin Garcia Frederick and Judith Buechner Tim Ingraham Adelbert Ames GE Foundation Richard and Emily Carbonetti George and Helen Keeler Stephen Anderson John and Pamela Gerstmayr Tom and Andrea Colgan Robert and Carrie Ann Mark Reed Anthony Frederick Gerty Dicken Crane John and Barbara Matsinger Robert Potter and Roberta Arbree Margaret D. Gibbs Tim and Patty Crane Alan M. Robertson Norman Arseneault Ronald L. Gilliland Julia S. Emlen David Schoop Brian Bailey Eric Girardi French Foundation Leigh Seddon and Ann Aspell Peter F. Baily Goodridge Lumber LandVest Corporation Susan Shea Michael Baram Dan Goulet Robin Barone and Sydney Lea Nicholas A. Skinner Virginia Barlow Ilse H. Govoni Lintilhac Foundation The Echo Charitable Foundation Robert T. Barnes Douglas Graham Linville Family Foundation Charles H. Thompson Sally Barngrove Clive Gray Marcia McKeague Hill and Alice Wellford Ann and Bruce Beane Green Acre Woodlands Norcross Wildlife Foundation Edward Wright Ronald L. Benoit Steele and Teresa Griswold Alan Patterson John and Linda Wulff Steve Bien Alexander S. Guida Patricia Polk Marielle Blais Shirley T. Gulvin Robert S. Saul GIFTS $250–$499 Bluewater Constructors Kris Hammer The Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation Anonymous Paul and Judith Bohn Rick and Emily Hausman The Lyme Timber Company John and Fran Adams Doug and Barb Boston George and Joan Hawkins The Marshall Fund Jane and Stephen Alpert David and Janet Bowker Barbara L. Hennig Robert T. Vavrina John and Bonnie Ansbro Francis and Margaret Bowles Lynne and William Holton Susan Kirincich and Charles Wooster Clay S. Bartlett Brian Lanius Susan F. Houston Charles Beaudette David R. Brittelli Sherry Huber Ronald Becker Robert R. Bryan Andrew C. Irish Harvey Brotman Thomas Bryson Jolyon Johnson Bruce M. and Sarah T. Schwaegler Fund Richard Bulger Kathryn Jorgensen of The New Hampshire Charitable Edward Buttolph Nancy W. Kaplan Foundation – Upper Valley Region Beverly and Matthew Caldwell Douglas Bates and Lynn Kay

76 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 Thomas Harris and Doreen Kelly Lorin and Nanci Rydstrom Raymond T. Beloin Joyce D. N. Jones Paul King Lawrence Safford David Betts John Kashanski David Sears and Ellen Kingman James L. Sanford Amy H. Blitzer Natalie Keller Debora and Alfred Klein Amy Bodwell and Carol Saunders Putnam W. Blodgett Carolyn and George Kelley Peter Klose Eileen Murphy and Arlen Schrock Barbara and Charles Bohn Lois Klatt Leo Laferriere Charles and Helen Schwarz Clark Bothfeld Beverly Perry Koffler John E. Lafferty Bruce Seddon Darby Bradley William F. Krusell Marc P. Lefebvre Donald Sharaf William H. Brainard Linda and Benjamin Labaree Jeffrey J. Leon Ann and Peter Silberfarb Grace Brigham Kenneth S. Lamb Patricia J. Liddle Richard E. and Lois Sippel Betty L. Brooks John W. Lanier E. Christopher Livesay Ronni Solbert Paul and Carol Brouha Ross M. Lanius Arthur and Aurelle Locke David and Ann Somers Robert and Agnes Brown Deborah Ann Laramie Claire C. 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Constable Suzanne and Gary Magoon Levering McCormick The Coca-Cola Foundation Stanley and Carol Corneille Main Street Millwork Winifred P. McDowell The Cushman Design Group Page P. Coulter David T. Mance III John and Constance McKeague The Frank and Brinna Sands Foundation Emily T. Crane William Maracle Elisabeth McLane The Marvin Family Edward Craxton Anne Margolis Cynthia Garrett and Eben McLane Judith P. Tibbetts James and Sarah Crosier James A. Martin Judy Gross and Robert Merwin John H. Valentine Nancy B. Curley James P. McCann Peter M Moloney Jimmi Van Keuren Michael and Carey Curtis H. Stafford McCoart David and Anne Moore Elena Sansalone and Jan Van Meter Edward N. Dane William M. McDermott Roland and Pauline Morin Carol Anne Vassar James Davidson Michael and Kelli McGrath Elizabeth Hamlin-Morin and Jeffrey Morin Timothy D. Veltman Ann W. Davis Nadia McIntosh Henry H. Moulton Frances Von Mertens Elinor Def Crane David P. McKay Amy L. Mower Russell A. Waldie James R. 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Nolan Henry W. Parker Sanford Witherell John H. Field NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Northam Parr John M. Woolsey Lisa and George B. Foote Robert Parker Partners HealthCare Development office William and Katherine Wunder Paul E. Gagne Bill and Sue Parmenter Ann and Thomas Parziale Mariko Yamasaki George Gibson Raynold Passardi Elizabeth Ellison Patton Thomas K. Yoder Lawrence and Elizabeth Gile Steven G. Patrick Paul Poulin Logging Jon and Sara Zagrodzky Karl B. Gimpel Dennis W. Pednault Amy Peberdy Scott and Glenn Zambon Andrew Goeller Margaret S. Blacker and Michael J. Perkins Gary S. Peck Anne K. Zopfi Lynda Goldsmith Michaeline Mulvey and Michael Peterson William R. Peelle Gordon and Patricia Gould Renate R. Plaut Kinny Perot GIFTS $50–$99 Emily Moore and Jerry Graham Lorna Chang Post Lynn Peterson Don Abelson Kate Graham Sabrina A. Powers May H. Pierce Tom and Mimi Adams Roger T. Gray Prelco, Inc. Edmund and Pamela Piper Simon Carr and Lynn Adams Scott K. Gray Philip Primack Martha McDaniel and Stephen Plume Verne and Pauline Adams Thomas Hahn Robert and Laura Pulaski Irwin and Melissa Post Charles Ams Lawson and Priscilla Harris Gilbert H. Raab Carl Powden Hjalmer and Christine Anderson Diane and Peter Harrison Paul Ralston Paul K. Praus Jay Appleton Marvin C. Harvey Jerry and Judith Rankin John Quimby ArborScape LLC Diana Hayes Harold Raynolds Joshua Rapp Theresa A. Armata Bob and Christie Hedges Michael G. Reed John C. Rathjen Joseph and Ann Armstrong Charles and Judith Herr Joan L. Regan David P. Renslow R. Philip Arnold Darren Higgins Walter and Susan Richter Galen Rhode Severance Babcock Thomas and Yvonne Hobbs Field Rider Solon Rhode Ken and Wendy Bailey George and Laurentina Hubbard Linda and Frederick Roesch George and Judith Rogers William and Margaret Bancroft Jonathan and Anne Huntington Bruce Rogers Paul Rubino David and Susan Beattie Judith Irven Lewis and Claudia Rose Elisabeth W. Russell James C. Beedy Lola and Raymond Johnson Gary Salmon

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 77 Robert A. Sandberg Elizabeth Borden Peter S. Helm Joan W. Pierce Karen and John Sanders Michael Bosworth Carolyn Plourde and William Herp Joseph A. Poland Joseph and Jo Scanzillo Jean and Anthony Bouchard Donald Hill Elaine Kellogg and Peter Pope Bill Schmidt Elaine Bourbeau Harriet Hofheinz Sally Schlueter and Richard Prescott Jeremy P. Schrauf Kathleen Bower John and Linda Holmes John L. Preston Paul Sellmann David Bowman John and Susan Hood Marie and Keith Raftery David Sequist Louis F. Bregy Robert and Doreen Hopkins Donald and Carol Randall Seven C’s John and Mary Brennan Janet and David Houston Shanna Ratner Steven J. Shaw Beth Ann Finlay and Tim Buess Dennis Hoy Jan and Bob Reynolds Shrake Construction Company Sylvia G. Burrill Joan E. Hutchinson Stephen D. Reynolds Anne Sincerbeaux David Butler Joseph Hyland Mary Richards Alcott L. Smith Michael Caldwell Salvatore and Barbara Iannuzzi Warren Richardson Kenneth and Sally Smith David Cassidy Alice Ingraham Chris Rimmer Douglas H. Soules Louis and Mary Catalanotto Steven Ives Jean F. Roberts Joseph W. Spalding John and Theresa Cederholm Theodore and Martha Izzi Andrew A. Robinson Stephen C. Sperry Robert Chalecki Peter Jeffries Milton A. Robison Martin L. Spottl Robert and Janice Chapman Paul and Jane Johansen Robert Reiber and Mary Ann Rogers Orson L. St. John Franklin C. Clapper Kenneth W. Johnson Elizabeth P. Rouse Stark Mountain Woodworking Company Ingeborg Hegemann Clark Suzanne Wymelenberg and Paul D. Sachs Thomas F. Stauffer Stephen C. Clement K. Kaffenberger Sage Mountain Lewis Sternberg Philip B. Clough Marielena Kamienski Robert Sandberg William and Nancy Stock Paul A. Comtois George Kiefer John H. Sanders Arlington Supplee Laura E. Conkey John Swepston and Jennifer Kiewit Gary D. Sargent Paul Svetz Clifford Cook John Kirk Tom Seeley Carol B. Swart Kathy and Ronald Cormier Dave and Anne Marie Kittredge Marc R. Shnider Spencer Thew Paul R. Costello Roberta Hodson and Herbert Korn Christine Brown and Henry Sienkewicz James and Beverly Thomson William G. Coughlin Neal Kozodoy Theodore P. Simmons Stephen Titcomb Joseph and Mary Crisco Glenn Kreig C. G. Simpson Nancy and Craig Troeger Priscilla Crochetiere Norbert and Jane Kuk Steven D. Singer Catherine Tudish David Curran John and Donna Kunkel Edith and Thomas Sisson John and Peg Underwood Richard M. Czaplinski Joan and Ronald Larsen Nancy and Robert Smith Jacqueline D. Vaughan Roger H. Damon Walter and Trude Lauf Torrey and Ben Smith David and Anna Mary Wallace Elizabeth Davis Kevin N. Lawrence Michael J. Sorenson Andrea Wasserman Christine and Lawrence Davis Jack Learmonth Kermit and Hazel Spaulding Michael H. Webb Nicholas Day John M. Leavitt Kate Seeger and Dean Spencer Alice N. Wellman John B. Derick Roger D. Leidel Raymond Spink Beverly D. 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Taylor Gail Yearke Ernest and Sheila Friedli Jim and Lucy McCullough Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary Robert and Marilyn Zimmerman Laura and Toby Fulwiler Edwin and Ruth McGlew Ralph and Nancy Timmerman Robert and Diane Giffen John J. and Victoria D. McInerney Tin Mountain Conservation Center GIFTS UP TO $49 Jeffry Glassberg Timothy and Betty Jane McKay Robert K. Tracy James and Jeanne Abels Charles and Tamaran Goldensher Charles McWilliams Robert L. Van Hoof James and Colleen Abrams Alice B. Gollnick Sarah J. Medina Geoffrey and Patricia Vankirk Carl Albers Gerald P. Goupee John B. Messina John and Mary Vass A. Russell Allan Richard E. Graffam Elizabeth S. Mills Alane Vogel Judith L. Allard Frederick Gralenski Stephen Morris Hilary Wallis Alice and Laurance Allen Robert L. Greene Kenneth and Deborah Morse Carrie Kerr and Dick Warner Joseph F. Bachman Peter S. Hacker Bambi Jones and Tracy Moskovitz Tom Warner Richard W. Balt Patrick and April Hackley James K. Mossman Glenn R. Washburn Allen W. Banbury Helen R. Haddad Suzanne Motheral Stephen W Webster James F. Barbieri G. Henry Hagar Richard S. Mulligan Henry and Linda Webster Dean T. Bascom Thomas M. Hagler Michael and Jane Newman Marjorie A. Wexler Jeffrey P. Benson Robert and Blair Hall William Nichols Richard and Lavohn Weyrick Bonnie Lee Benton Frederick K. Halliday Timothy Ojala Kelly Wheatley Erick and Kathleen Berglund Rita M. Hammond John and Suzanne Olson Ruth B. Whipple Margaret J. Bergman Stephen and Diana Hanssen Daniel R. Ouimette John G. Whitman Edwin and Margaret Berry Thomas E. Hartnett Robert and Sharon Payeur Timothy Wiley Charles G. Bigelow Robert and Margaret Hartwell Roland A. Payne John and Christine Wiley Tad M. Blackington Catherine and Richard Hatfield Jean B. Peelle Phoebe K. and Roy C. Williams Karen A. and Gregory Blot Robert J. Haynes Dennis and Christine Perham Nancy Brunswick and Edward Yargeau Kenneth A. Bluemer Elizabeth M. Hazen Julia Peterson Micki Colbeck and Carl Yirka Joseph H. Bolduc Barbara and Jon Hebert Gloria Switalski and Victor Piekarski Joseph Zuaro

78 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 the outdoor PALETTE

By Adelaide Tyrol

So It Goes, 2012, 18’ x 10’ x 2’, poplar, wire

“The closer the connection we feel to nature, the more we’re likely to stand up and defend it.” Charles Johnson

How do hundreds of sawn discs hanging from a ceiling evoke a sense of being in the woods? I don’t know, but Elizabeth Billings’ assemblages mirror the patterns of nature in an uncanny and profound way. Consider “So It Goes,” an installation that hangs in the stairwell leading to the South Royalton Legal Clinic at the Vermont Law School. The clinic provides free legal services to low-income local residents, and Billings wanted to design a piece that would impart a sense of nature, light, and playfulness to the building. The installation reflects that intent by inviting the viewer into a world of organic matter that is dancing through the air, animated by the moving perspective of the viewer and the changing light. The hundreds of poplar rounds trace a musical path in the aerial environment – one is reminded of the hammers and strings of a piano. You can nearly hear a clackity-clack as you pass beneath it. When asked how she describes herself as an artist, Billings explains that she was trained as a weaver – both in the U.S. and Japan – and uses this knowledge to inform her work with wood, fabric, wire, and string. Her artistic practice is clearly inspired by the rhythm of weaving and the rhythms of nature. Fittingly, she chooses to work primarily with natural, sustainable materials. As you approach and then pass beneath “So It Goes,” you feel surprised, uplifted, and also encouraged to be part of this complex visual symphony. An otherwise unremarkable stairwell in a public building has been transformed.

Elizabeth Billings may be reached through her website: elizabethbillings.com. She maintains a strong exhibit record both nationally and internationally. Her work, both solo and in collaboration with Andrea Wasserman, can be seen at the Burlington International Airport, Philadelphia International Airport, through the Vermont Law School, and at The City University of New York School of Law.

Call for entries: Send us your Outdoor Palette submissions. Contact Adelaide Tyrol at (802) 454-7841 or [email protected] for details.

Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014 79 A PLACE in mind

Andrea Lani

On New Year’s Day of the first winter we lived on our land, I put our son, Milo, into a little blue backpack and took him for a walk in the woods. The day was warm and sunny. Melting ice dripped from the eaves and the softening crust of snow yielded to my footfalls. I followed my husband’s snowshoe tracks from our house down to the river. Deer tracks mingled with the trail, crisscrossing in the elaborate embroidery of the animals’ winter travels. The trail led us across an old field, into deep hemlock woods, and along the bank of the Eastern River, a shallow and narrow rivulet, milky-green with new ice, its surface slushy and puddled. Today our trail loops back up from the river, through a young fir wood, and along a bony ridge back to our house, but that first winter it ended in a clearing at the base of a big white pine, a sentinel left behind as a seed tree, perhaps, when the land was clear-cut 10 or 15 years before we came to it. A thick coverlet of needles carpets the ground at the base of the tree, deterring the wild raspberries that spring up everywhere else that sunlight penetrates our woods. Only a few scrappy low-bush blueberries grow in the clearing, and we have talked of putting a picnic table there or setting up our tent and camping, but we never have. We spend most of our time in the woods farther downstream, where the river bank slopes gradually to the water and big fallen willows make crossing possible, but not easy. During the brief windows in early spring and late fall, when it is both warm and bug-free enough to sit still without shivering or slapping, I rest my back against the thick base of the tree and breathe in sun-warmed pine air, but otherwise we merely pass by on our way to somewhere else. As Milo and I approached the big pine that first New Year’s Day, I noticed from a distance that one of the broken limbs low on the trunk angled upward in a shape that resembled an owl. Scoffing at myself, I raised my binoculars to my eyes and saw, to my surprise, that it really was a barred owl. “Milo, look,” I whispered as we edged closer. “There’s an owl in that tree.” I knew Milo had seen the owl when he laughed out loud. As we neared the tree, a deer bounded out of the clearing, but we barely noticed, our eyes fixed on the owl. “Hold it?” Milo said. “No, you can’t hold the owl. Just look.” We walked within 10 feet of the tree, crossing to the other side of the clearing and looking up at the sleepy bird. Occasionally, the owl squinted open his dark eyes and monitored our progress. “Owl, nap,” Milo said. “Eye.” We stood, backs arched and craning our necks, watching the owl for 10 or 15 minutes, until Milo said, “Bye-bye, owl,” letting me know he was ready to go home. As we walked back past the tree, Milo’s sippy cup fell out of my pocket onto the snow, and the owl, fed up with our disturbance, spread his wings and flew off to another perch. “All gone, owl,” Milo said. Since that day, we have called that big pine Owl Tree, even though we’ve never again seen an owl in its branches. Milo is nearing his thirteenth birthday and the top of his head reaches my eyebrows when we stand toe-to-toe. I just noticed this winter that Owl Tree, too, has grown in our 11 years on this land. “I wish we had measured it when we moved here,” I say, and my husband, once an arborist, talks of diameter at breast height and basal area. But I imagine a kind of white pine growth chart, like the animal poster with a ruler down one side, on which we’ve ticked off our children’s height every six months. Milo and I take a walk one afternoon in early spring, to see the ice start to break up on the river. We stop alongside Owl Tree on our way, look up into her high branches, note the fresh needles littering the ground at her roots. “Help me measure Owl Tree,” I say, and wrap my arms around the trunk. Milo reaches around from the other side. Our hands just overlap. I want to stay here, holding Owl Tree with my son, but Milo will indulge his mother’s whims for only so long. We let go of the tree and walk along the river, a brown ribbon of water threaded between sharp banks of ice, then turn and follow the trail home.

Andrea Lani is a human ecologist, public servant, and writer. She lives with her husband and three sons on 20 acres of woods and fields in central Maine and can be found online at www.remainsofday.blogspot.com.

80 Northern Woodlands / Winter 2014

Northern Woodlands WINTER 2014