The Blister Rust Battle Resumes a Cornucopia of Cones New Fiction by Howard Frank Mosher Vaccine Ravioli, Ukrainian Forests, Cashing in on Carbon, and Much More

AUTUMN ’15

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FOREST

The Blister Rust Battle Resumes A Cornucopia of Cones New Fiction by Howard Frank Mosher Vaccine Ravioli, Ukrainian Forests, Cashing in on Carbon, and much more

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Cover Photo by Roger Irwin Photographer Roger Irwin called this bull moose down from a ridge of East Mountain, near Line Brook in the town of East Haven, Vermont. “I could hear him coming for 15 or 20 minutes before he came into sight,” says Irwin. “It is always a thrill to call in a nice bull; they will stop every so often to rake the bushes with their antlers. I took this shot as THE OUTSIDE STORY he was leaving….He had decided I really Each week we publish a new didn’t look like a cow moose!” nature story on topics ranging from bee mimics to edible weeds.

EDITOR’S BLOG “At the water there was a sky like in a Hudson River School painting. Seabirds – common terns, I guess – were circling, and feinting, and then plunging through golden light into the gunmetal sea.” From: On The Coast

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 three American chestnut seeds.

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VOLUME 23 I NUMBER 3 REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS CENTER FOR NORTHERN WOODLANDS EDUCATION, INC. AUTUMN 2015 Virginia Barlow Copyright 2015 Jim Block Northern Woodlands Magazine (ISSN 1525-7932) is published Elise Tillinghast Marian Cawley quarterly by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., Executive Director/Publisher Tovar Cerulli Steve Faccio 1776 Center Road, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 Dave Mance III Giom Tel (802) 439-6292 Editor Bernd Heinrich Fax (802) 368-1053 Patrick White Mary Holland [email protected] Assistant Editor Robert Kimber www.northernwoodlands.org Stephen Long Amy Peberdy Subscription rates are $23 for one year, $42 for two years, and $59 for three years. Benjamin Lord 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 / Autumn 2015 1

Center for Northern from the enter Woodlands Education C BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Last autumn, at our first writers conference, we set up a table featuring 10 Richard G. Carbonetti LandVest, Inc. different brands of maple syrup from around New England, New York, and Newport, VT Quebec and encouraged people to pick their favorites. Picture the scene: a Vice President too-small table, teetering stacks of paper cups, spilled syrup, and a crowd of Bob Saul happy, sugar-buzzed, smack-talking partisans from different states. In other Wood Creek Capital Management words, a mess – but a happy mess. We came to no conclusions about which Amherst, MA part of the Northeast makes the best syrup, but we did score a photo of the Treasurer/Secretary Northern Woodland’s crew and staff alumnus Chuck Wooster, posed with a bottle of Log Tom Ciardelli Cabin™’s finest. Biochemist, Outdoorsman This year’s conference will take place over the weekend of October 16-18. The Trust for Hanover, NH Public Land is once again our sponsor, and the Aloha Foundation’s Hulbert Outdoor Center Si Balch is our co-organizer and host. We’ll have some great speakers, including plenary talks by Peter Consulting Forester Forbes, David Macaulay, and Bernd Heinrich. The schedule encompasses a range of interests: Brooklin, ME there will be writing workshops and discussions, a bark identification walk, presentations on Sarah R. Bogdanovitch black bears and cougars, an outdoor illustration class, a children’s book workshop, and an Paul Smith’s College educator’s panel discussion led by David Sobel. Also on the agenda are good meals, cozy cabins, Paul Smiths, NY and s’mores by the fire. Teacher professional development certificates are available. Heck, Starling Childs MFS there’s even an open mic session. Ecological and Environmental All of this is a lot of fun, but there’s a serious purpose behind it – to encourage more people Consulting Services Norfolk, CT to talk, write, create art, and otherwise share their interest in forests. I’m inspired by The Trust for Public Land’s “Parks for People” vision, which imagines “a park or natural area within 10 David J. Colligan Colligan Law, LLP minutes of every person in the country.” Riffing on that language, how great would it be if Buffalo, NY every person in the Northeast was never more than a couple of hours or a turn of the page away from some expression of why someone cares about forests, and maybe they should, too. Esther Cowles Fernwood Consulting, LLC You can learn more about the conference by looking on the right column of our homepage, Hopkinton, NH www.northernwoodlands.org. And while you’re there, skim through the bears, hawks, and Dicken Crane bobcats in our readers’ photo gallery archive. This is a project that we started last December, Holiday Brook Farm and it has been steadily growing. Again, the purpose is to connect with a broader audience Dalton, MA than we reach with the magazine. Julia Emlen Finally, speaking of galleries, I encourage you to check out the advertisement on page 51 of Julia S. Emlen Associates this issue. Subscribers of this magazine know Adelaide Tyrol as our Outdoor Palette columnist Seekonk, MA and the illustrator of Virginia Barlow’s articles. She has also, for the past 13 years, contributed Timothy Fritzinger illustrations for our weekly Outside Story article series, supported by the Wellborn Ecology Alta Advisors Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Her fall shows include some of that work, London, UK as well as her fine art paintings. Sydney Lea Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director, Publisher 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 54 28 Where is Don Quixote? HOWARD FRANK MOSHER 36 High-Hanging Fruit: Conifer Cones SUSAN C. MORSE 42 An Old Enemy: White Pine Blister Rust JOE RANKIN 52 The Power of Microbursts JOHN BURK 54 A Part of Nature BARBARA MACKAY 60 The Diminishing Woodpile JONATHAN STABLEFORD

departments 2 From the Center 4 Calendar Editor’s Note 28 5 36 6 Letters to the Editors 9 Birds in Focus: Common Nighthawks BRYAN PFEIFFER 11 Woods Whys: Can I Fertilize My Forest? MICHAEL SNYDER 13 Tracking Tips: Beavers SUSAN C. MORSE 14 Knots and Bolts 27 1,000 Words 62 Field Work: Forest Carbon Offsets PATRICK WHITE 66 Discoveries TODD MCLEISH 70 The Overstory: Mountain Ash 42 VIRGINIA BARLOW 73 Tricks of the Trade: Chainsaw Carving BRETT R. MCLEOD 75 Upcountry ROBERT KIMBER 76 WoodLit 79 Outdoor Palette NONA ESTRIN 80 A Place in Mind 52 MIKE MINCHIN

NorthernWoodlands / Autumn 2015 3 CALENDAR

A Look at the Season’s Main Events

By Virginia Barlow September October November FIRST WEEK North winds will increase the number of The beautifully colored leaves of white Watch for the last autumn meadowhawks migrating hawks. Look for them in the ash, in all shades of purple, are among (Sympetrum vicinum) hunting from sun- middle of a sunny day / Woodchucks the first to fall / White pines drop half their warmed rock walls or gravel drives. This are packing it in, especially at dawn and needles every autumn. Don’t be alarmed / small, red-bodied skimmer is still active in dusk, to create a layer of fat that will last Tiny spiders go ballooning on strands of November / Unseasonably warm weather all winter / Virginia creeper and poison gossamer and may remain aloft for two stimulates peepers to sing from woods ivy leaves are red, attracting migrant weeks. In the right light conditions you can and fields, sometimes far from ponds, birds to their ripe berries / The plaintive, see their silken threads in the sky / Some before they go belowground for the three-note, whistling song of the eastern golden-crowned kinglets go south of our winter / Owl pellets consist of the wood peewee can still be heard, although region in winter but others stay. Somehow indigestible parts of recently eaten food, most of these flycatchers have headed these tiny birds survive bitterly cold nights usually the hair, teeth, skulls, and claws out by now of mice, shrews, and voles

SECOND WEEK Bunchberries have turned red / Jack-in- Crush a few leaves of sweet fern, a shrub Snow buntings may be seen. They’re the-pulpits may be changing gender. of dry or sandy soils, to recapture the almost always in flocks / Cold weather The size of the corm determines whether fragrance of summer / It’s sparrow time. will bring more and more birds to the it will be a Jack or a Jill next spring / Lots of sparrow species are still here, all feeder: mourning doves, downy and hairy Asters, in colors ranging from white, blue, looking for seeds to fuel their migrations / woodpeckers, and chickadees, as well and pink to deep purple, are blooming The bright yellow stringy flowers of witch as a few late migrants / When beechnuts along roads and at the edges of fields / hazel are blooming. They’re pollinated by and acorns are scarce, bears will search White-tailed deer begin to shed their moths / The eastern comma, like some for food over a wide area / Bullfrogs summer coats and grow a new, thick other anglewing butterflies, is flying now usually spend two winters as tadpoles / winter coat. The new outside hairs are and will overwinter as an adult. An obvious Chipmunks will keep coming out if it is hollow and beneath is a dense undercoat / white “comma” decorates its underwing warm / It’s a good time to find bird nests, Beech drops are flowering now that leaves are off the trees

THIRD WEEK The trees are full of migrating warblers, October 21, 22: Orionids meteor shower, Nov. 17, 18: The Leonids meteor shower just as in May / Fluffy white stuff among caused by dust particles from Halley’s is best seen after midnight, as by then the shrubs and low trees might be the plumed Comet, peaks / A hard frost will send moon will have set / As pond ice thickens, fruits of virgin’s bower, a long, twisting vine thick showers of leaves to the ground. By beavers will be stuck in their lodges or found in moist areas / The holes made by now, oak, poplar, apple, and lilac are the below the ice till spring / Now that leaves maple leafcutter larvae sometimes make a only deciduous trees that still have green have fallen, the bright red berries of tattered mess of sugar maples at this time leaves / It’s easier to see birds now that winterberry holly are much more visible / of year / Muskrats may or may not store the leaves are down, and sparrows are Some northern saw whet owls migrate. food for the winter. Those that do are hard actively looking for seeds. You might see After the first snowfall, those that stay at work packing their burrows and lodges chipping, fox, song, white-crowned, or shift from hunting red-backed voles in with arrowhead (duck potato) bulbs white-throated sparrows / Milkweed seeds the woods to hunting meadow voles in are airborne open fields

FOURTH WEEK Sept. 28: Total lunar eclipse as the moon Oct. 28: Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will be Let’s have lots more gray jays: they’ve passes through the Earth’s shadow, in a tight one-degree triangle, a rare event been seen picking winter ticks from the beginning in this region at about 8 p.m. The called a conjunction. Look in the east just backs of moose / Also, they’re often quite moon will turn a deep, rusty red / Patches of before sunrise / Skunks sleep for weeks unafraid of people, perhaps because they bracken are now one-third green, one-third at a time during the winter but their body associate us with many choice foods, from yellow, and one-third brown / Crows migrate temperature drops by only a few degrees. bread to animal carcasses / If pond ice is and ravens don’t, though ravens may wander They may come out of their dens on warm clear, you may be able to see cold-hardy long distances, usually on a southerly days / Empty bird nests might be taken backswimmers below as they chase their course / Chipping sparrows and white- over by mice and used as storage bins for tiny prey / Squirrels and bears love beech- throated sparrows that nested farther north their winter food supply / Chipmunk cheek nuts. Grouse turkey, wood ducks, jays, are passing through on their way south pouches are bulging with sugar maple seeds chickadees, and woodpeckers also eat them

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.

4 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 EDITOR’S note

By Dave Mance III

We cut about 10,000 feet of white pine last winter off a little nob in the south end of the sugarbush. This summer we’ve been turning the logs into lumber for the home we’re building. By the time you read this in September, it’s a safe bet that we’ll still be milling. Part of the allure of building with your own wood is the pioneer spirit of the whole endeavor. From a structural perspective, I’d be much better off buying kiln-dried, dimensionally accurate lumber. And while I’m quick to delude myself into thinking of all the money I’m saving, really, this math only makes sense if I don’t put any dollar value on my time. Still, taking a tree to a board to a building is soulful, a value not included in traditional economic accounting. The other thing that makes the whole endeavor satisfying is the idea that these trees were growing on a family woodlot, meaning we’re building with “our trees,” the lumber a by-product of managing “our woods.” And yet even as I put those grammatically suspect quotation marks around the phrases, they seem silly. The trees are around 80 years old, which means I wasn’t alive for the first half of their lives. And it’s impossible to miss the fingerprints of other people as you walk through the stand. We were skidding the logs out through old stone walls constructed when Able Webb owned the land in the 1870s; on farm roads probably constructed when Gertrude Bates owned the land in the 1920s; through a sugarbush that reflects the management efforts of Fairfax Ayers in the 1940s and 50s. And these are just the landowners; the human fingerprints in these woods begin to resemble a touch screen on an ATM when you consider the loggers, hired hands, and work crews who played a part over the last three centuries creating the forest we see today. While gathering art to illustrate Joe Rankin’s story on white pine blister rust on page 42, I came across an old map showing blister rust control efforts in the exact stand of timber where I cut the pine trees; a treatment prior to 1933, one between 1933 and 1940, and then a spot treatment after that – probably in the 1950s. If the trees were seedlings around 1935, they may have owed their very existence – I may owe their very existence – to these skirmish lines of ropy, Depression-era men, six yards apart. Bursting through the thick growth of a patchy, starting-over forest, hand-pulling pasture gooseberries, calling out loudly with every plant they pulled. Whether you grow and harvest trees yourself, or simply work with wood, it’s impossible to escape the history that’s tied up in every fiber. And as any social studies teacher will tell you, what we really learn by studying history is how to move forward into the future. Over the past century, humans in the Northeast have developed an environmental ethic that celebrates biodiversity – the ethic serves as an angel on our shoulder who reminds us, when we fire up our chainsaws, that we’re not the only creature in the woods and we’d better make harvest decisions that reflect this. But there’s another, more anthropomorphic, ethic that gets less press in environmental media – call it the management ethic; it’s another little angel who reminds us that we owe somebody for what we take. In the 1930s, there was a crew of guys who are probably dead now who helped white pine flourish on a little cobble in Shaftsbury, Vermont. And 80 years later I come along and cut some of these trees down and turn them into a roof over my family’s head. You better believe I’m thinking of ways I can pay this forward.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 5 letters to the EDITORS

Department of Corrections onto the site) that were deter- agriculturally based industries that can be not The photo of the prescribed fire on mined to have an adverse only noisy but also smelly. The Marine District page 33 of the Summer issue should impact on the character of includes the eastern and western perimeters that have been attributed to Joel Stocker. the neighborhood, a neigh- border our saltwater rivers where the land is suit- borhood developed before able for productive uses of maritime resources Local Disputes Over the applicant’s activity. – hence, noisy fishing boats early in the morning. Working Lands The conflicts between rural With differing minimum lot sizes, along with To the Editors: activities and residential uses the usual regulations, we recognized that our I am chair of Putney’s Development will always continue. Is it OK roads might someday look different, but our lands Review Board and Planning Commission and a to have your roosters crowing at four a.m. in a would keep working. It didn’t stop the growth long-time subscriber to Northern Woodlands. I am village center; can you have a cow behind your completely in those areas, but it pushed the resi- writing as an individual, and do not speak for the condo? And having attractive village residential dential growth into areas where people wanted Putney DRB or PC. areas will not alone solve the rural sprawl prob- smaller yards to maintain (something we also The spring editorial presented the Bowen case lem. But the planning and zoning processes do planned for with regulations) closer to the areas of in Putney as a simple case of traditional rural make a difference. The citizens involved in this other nearby towns’ commercial areas. And when values associated with a small-scale firewood work care deeply about these issues. Regulatory people choose to build in these “working land” and farming operation bumping up against NIMBY processes to achieve planning land-use goals districts, they know they’ll be hearing the sounds neighbors. But as someone intimately involved have problems, but I think they are essential. As of skidders and tractors and chainsaws and the with the case, I can tell you that the issue was new techniques are developed, like the work of roar of boat engines. They know what is coming. more nuanced than that. Jens Hilke of Vermont Fish and Wildlife in devel- No one is surprised. Without going too deep into the regulatory oping overlay zoning districts to show areas of There are still some flaws to be ironed out, details, among the very limited things that the critical wildlife habitat connectivity, development even all these years later, but it was and remains DRB was to determine was if the firewood review will improve. That is something to write an important that the people of Edgecomb voted and operation would have an adverse affect on the editorial about. passed a set of rules to preserve the traditional “character of the area affected.” To do so, the Phil Bannister, Putney, Vermont land-use patterns that are at the core of why we DRB was mandated to “consider the objectives are the people we are. of the zoning district in which the proposed use To the Editors: Amanda Russell, Edgecomb, Maine is to be located and specifically stated policies When reading the Summer 2015 issue’s Editor’s and standards of the Town Plan.” The lots in Note concerning residential growth conflicting To the Editors: question lie in what is an area designated “village with traditional land-use based industries (wood I have just finished reading the summer issue, and residential;” the Plan says this district’s purpose is harvesting, agriculture), I couldn’t help but think it is great, as usual. Dave Mance’s piece describ- to “provide attractive neighborhoods of relatively back to my tiny town of Edgecomb, Maine (popu- ing the conflict between the Bowens, who wish to concentrated residential development.” There are lation 1,249 and wedged between the two tidal farm their 10 acres, and neighboring artist retreat other zoning districts in Putney that are intended rivers of the Sheepscot and the Damariscotta) owners, who object, is a prime example of the to accommodate rural activities, including agricul- and what our Planning Board instituted more than northern forest’s wildland-urban interface. In this ture and forestry. a decade ago. We passed the Z-word, but it was age of ever-increasing regulation, the group that The DRB determined that the requested firewood a different type of zoning. The Marine District, the should engage in the deepest introspection are processing activity would have an adverse effect Rural District, and the Woodland District are based land-use planners. In 1970, the architects of Act on the character of the neighborhood. I see this on historic and traditional land-use patterns as 250 and the Vermont Health Department subdivi- determination as support for the basic notion of well as every type of map you can imagine sion regulations decreed that 10 acres was the zoning districts and support of a village residential illustrating existing soils, lands, and waters. All threshold for on-site septic systems and other area – maintaining its attractiveness for residential districts allow commercial and residential uses development regulation. Since then, many towns and related uses, and providing an alternative to because we want people to work where they live have adopted 10 acres as the minimum lot size in scattered rural residential development. and live where they work. “rural” zoning districts. The problem is that rural The editorial ended by wondering if 10 acres is The zoning districts don’t restrict uses, but they means too many different things. enough to sustain a rural way of life. I think the educate people that, for example, if you live or Ten acres of lettuce, pole beans, and sweet answer is a qualified yes. Vermont’s agricultural want to build in the deep interior of our town, the corn beside an old farmhouse heated with a zoning exemptions and right to farm laws support Woodland District, these are lands that are suit- Defiant are a wonderful example of the working many rural ways of life. But in this specific able for recreational uses such as hunting, fishing, landscape, but the same acreage containing beef instance, the “rural way of life” was proposed and hiking, as well as wood harvesting operations cattle and a firewood processor with attendant for an existing residential neighborhood and that can be noisy and smelly. Surrounding the manure pile, dirty tractor, and retired one-ton are included what the town considers to be non- Woodland District is the Rural District, where both a blight on the neighborhood. The immigrants agricultural activities (processing logs trucked the infrastructure and the lands are suitable for who expect pastoral serenity on a 10-acre lot

6 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 are deluded, but they probably have enough “Kate’s Frozen Individual Chicken Pot Pies,” I could On the Road Again (with Turtles) resources – accrued in an urban career – to hire a see where that would be a home industry that To the Editors: lawyer to press their case. Similarly, anyone who would require a whole host of permits and legal Following up on “Confession of a Turtle Killer” [A engages in a smelly or noisy working landscape fees. I just don’t see where taking wood – a plant – Place in Mind, Summer 2015], I have to relate business on a 10-acre lot should not be surprised from its raw state and simply changing its size and one episode of a snapping turtle: I had gone to my at objections from neighbors. shape isn’t part of an agricultural process; I don’t mailbox on the highway and saw a car stop some All too often, land-use metrics of lot size, set- see how it’s any less agricultural than processing couple of hundred feet down the road. A man got backs, soils, slope limits, and permitted uses are chickens. Just as we provide meat for your table, out and picked up something from the road and intended to prevent egregious or incompatible we also want to provide heat for your hearth. put it on the mown shoulder of my neighbor’s outcomes. These same metrics assure how the We decided not to reapply or appeal the board yard. The man then drove off. Curious, I peddled area will be developed. Permitted uses should be decision. We were urged by a board member not to down there and saw it was a roughly 14-inch more comprehensively identified for rural areas. reapply because they didn’t believe any accommo- snapping turtle. The neighbor was in his back If a prospective resident can’t abide the full list, dations made would change the Board’s mind. We yard so I went and told him of this event. With a then go elsewhere. If a prospective farmer needs can’t afford to appeal it in Vermont Environmental little grunt he went into his house and pretty soon to buy a bigger property further from markets, so Court. We spoke to some other firewood producers came out with a shotgun with which he removed be it. If he must charge more for his produce, the around the state who had lost similar hearings. the snapper’s head. In fairness, he nurtures a customers must pay it or buy a substitute from Already the time and energy this fight has taken, number of ducks and geese in a pond on his California at the supermarket. compounded by the loss of income, has us on property and is aware of the threat snappers are Mance’s article demands an update in the next the brink of total collapse. We are responsible for to the young of his water fowl. But what a stark issue. trucking 100 cords of logs, once destined for our contrast in values and ethics. Russ Seaman, Rougemont, North Carolina Russell S. Reay, Cuttingsville, Vermont neighbor’s wood stoves, off our property. Not only does this hit us financially, but ethically the fuel we An Interruption Postscript to Working Lands are using to truck this wood back to the landing A boy had stopped his car On May 5, the Putney Development Review voted where it was cut seems ridiculous. Talk about a To save a turtle in the road; to disallow Kate and Mark Bowen’s firewood way to “ungreen” firewood: truck it twice! I was not far processing operation. It was a 3-2 decision. We want to raise awareness of these issues, Behind, and slowed, According to a draft decision, the reason was “on and gain some momentum to get legislation And stopped to watch as he began the grounds that the home industry, as presented, changed. In our view, processing firewood should To shoo it off into the undergrowth– would adversely affect the residential character of be considered an agricultural endeavor and should This wild reminder of an ancient past, the neighborhood in which it is located.” See the be protected under right-to-farm laws. Another Lumbering to some Late Triassic bog, letter by Phil Bannister, chair of the DRB and one thing we learned in this process is that Vermont’s Till it was just a rustle in the grass, of the “no” votes, at the beginning of this section, right-to-farm laws do not protect new farms like Till it was gone. which explains his decision in more detail. ours. Your farm has to have been there before I hope I told him with a look The Bowens were disappointed, to say the any neighbors who complain, and it can’t have As I passed by, least. And they pointed out that Putney’s zoning changed how it’s used. My fear is that they could How I was glad he’d stopped me there, regulations also state that their farm falls in a dis- smack us with a lawsuit citing the flies, manure, And what I felt for both trict where “agriculture and forestry are permitted and tractor noise. If the whole goal in Vermont is Of them, something I took uses” and that “nothing in these regulations shall to encourage working lands and young farmers, To be a kind of love, restrict accepted agricultural or farming practices, they’re going to have to build more flexibility into And of a troubled thought or accepted silviculture practices.” this protection. I had, for man, The question at the heart of the matter here Our small family farm mirrors those that you Of how we ought is whether processing firewood is an agricultural would have found throughout Vermont pre-World To let life go on where activity or a “home industry.” We asked Kate for War II. We’re a family that works together with And when it can. her follow-up thoughts, and here’s a portion of the seasons to produce and raise a variety of Robert S. Foote, Hartland, Vermont what she wrote: livestock, crops, sap, and forest products. Since Yes, we were processing firewood, but we 1999, we’ve made up for a lack of vast farmland weren’t dramatically changing the wood; we by diversifying what we produce to increase the More on Taxes and Easements weren’t taking logs and turning them into violins return per acre. The solution we were given by To the Editors: or furniture. I compared it to the chickens that we opponents was to move somewhere else and buy If one donates, sells, or otherwise transfers a process on our property. We buy them as chicks, more land. For young farmers like us, the financial conservation restriction on their land that results in raise them, humanely kill them, pluck them, and reality is that purchasing 200 acres of Vermont a reduction of the value, then they are eligible for finally bag them for sale. Now, if I were making farmland is impossible. a federal tax deduction [Letters, Summer 2015].

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 7 It is straightforward: the reduction in value is there. Unfortunately, these rules don’t address the discourage us average-size Americans from wood considered a charitable contribution. In most cases noise pollution and destruction to the terrain that burning more than those eight-pound monsters. this reduction in value must be documented by an the less responsible individuals cause. We need four- or five-pound, short-handle mauls appraisal (and be sure to use an appraiser who is It is going to be very interesting to see how the and sharp wedges; then wood splitting would be acceptable to the IRS). When filing your taxes, IRS residents of Coos County address these issues. I a pleasure. Form 8283 is used; you may deduct in each year sincerely hope that they have considered how to Timber Brooks, New Ipswich, New Hampshire up to 50 percent of adjusted gross income, and handle those less responsible individuals and their this may be carried forward for a longer period destructive acts. I also hope that another article than other types of donations. It is best to check will be forthcoming on just how successful their Immature Eagles Acting Immaturely with a local land trust as most are familiar with endeavor has been (or not). I wish them well. To the Editors: the process. Philipp Schuessler, Preston Hollow, New York In reference to Awkward Adolescent Eagles Ted Cady, Warwick, Massachusetts [Summer 2015], I observed three immature (adolescent) bald eagles collectively harass a loon by Heavy Lifting swooping down on him, forcing him to dive but Worries Over ATVs To the Editors: not before giving repeated alarm calls. Upon the To the Editors: Northern Woodlands is both interesting and infor- loon’s resurfacing, the three mischievous trouble- I read the article “Conservation and Recreation” mative. The first thing I check is the balance: we makers continued to force the loon to dive again. [Summer 2015] about the new ATV trail in north- were promised at the outset of your magazine a This happened repeatedly, until the loon was able ern New Hampshire and finished it with mixed publication on forests that is educational, infor- to distance himself from the eagles’ play area. All emotions. Although I totally identify with the peo- mative, recreational, and economically related the while, an adult bald eagle watched from high ple in the rural areas needing a source of income to logging, maple syrup, firewood, timberland in a pine tree several hundred yards off. All of this in this changing world, I also have experienced improvement, etc. So far you’ve done a pretty played out on the Androscoggin River (north of the results of the non-responsible motorized trail good job. Errol, New Hampshire). users in our woods and on our back roads. On another note, I recently found myself in Paul Fillion, Colebrook, New Hampshire One of our rules up here in the woods of upstate a hardware store marveling at a “battle axe” of New York is that one takes out more than what he an eight-pound splitting maul! With a yard-long We love to hear from our readers. Letters intended for takes into the woods. In other words, clean up the handle! Have you ever tried picking one of these publication in the Winter 2015 issue should be sent in litter that others leave, should you come across it. up? When are manufacturers going to produce by October 1. Please limit letters to 400 words. Letters Another is that one leaves no sign of having been a maul comfortable to use? Few things will may be edited for length and clarity.

8 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 BIRDS in focus

Story by Bryan Pfeiffer

Common Nighthawks: Two Strikes and a Temporal Mismatch

On a warm August evening at Boston’s Fenway Park, everything had fallen into place by the fifth inning: The Red Sox were beating the Angels 6-0. My pals and I in right field were enjoying two of baseball’s four food groups – beer and peanuts. And a half-dozen common nighthawks were feeding on big white moths high above the outfield grass. It was a fitting display for an odd bird with a dubious relationship to people. But first, a dubious name: the common nighthawk – hardly common anymore – is not purely a nighttime hunter and is not at all a hawk; rather, it’s a member of the family Caprimulgidae, which translates from the Latin to mean goat-milker. Nighthawks and their BRYAN PFEIFFER relatives (including the whip-poor-will) yawn wide-open mouths to inhale insects on the wing or, as the legend goes, to suck milk from the udders of goats. Nighthawks nest in prairies and grasslands, coastal sand warms, some insect species now reach peak abundance earlier dunes, forest clearings (including burns and clearcuts in mixed in the season. So it’s possible that nighthawks, wintering in or coniferous woods), rocky outcrops, and even on flat rooftops. South America, don’t get the memo and are failing to adapt to In quieter cities and towns across the county, our summertime global warming at the same rate that their prey are responding. dawn and dusk choruses once featured the buzzy peent calls of A lot of this remains speculative, and our search for a nighthawks foraging for insects attracted to street (or stadium) cause of aerial insectivore decline is complicated by the usual lights. threats: habitat loss (here and in the tropics), pollution, indus- But no more. During the past 30 years or so, nighthawks have trial agriculture, housing development, and invasive species. vanished from most northeastern communities. The cause is not It does appear that the aerial insectivores that migrate farthest clear. It may be due in part to the use of new rubberized roofing – particularly common nighthawks, which make one of the materials which lack the gravel that once served as nighthawk longest migrations of our land birds – fare worse than those camouflage and probably kept eggs from rolling around. that migrate shorter distances. It could be that the demands of Or perhaps the decline of nighthawks signals something a big migration compound the other threats. It’s difficult to say, more troubling in our skies. Biologists and birdwatchers are though, because we know so little about what happens to these now documenting population declines among a number of birds once they leave us in the fall. other North American birds that hunt insects on the wing, But we can still watch common nighthawks on their journey including whip-poor-wills, swifts, swallows, and flycatchers – a south. From mid-August through mid-September here in the suite we call aerial insectivores. Northeast, nighthawks migrate in plain view, sometimes in In the search for a cause, it’s reasonable to investigate the big numbers. Look for them moving in the late afternoon or common denominator: airborne insects, which we humans evening along river valleys or lake shores. Decades ago, particu- have been attacking with pesticides for more than half a cen- larly in the Midwest, birders could sometimes see nighthawks tury. Even so, not all aerial insectivores are declining; some are in migration by the thousands, but here in the Northeast, we’re doing fine. The other complication is that we know relatively more likely to count dozens or, on a good evening, a hundred or little about the status of insect populations. We’ve been counting so. It’s not a bad way to pass the time during the waning days of birds for more than a century, but are only now beginning to summer – especially if your favorite baseball team is no longer understand insect abundance and population trends. in the pennant race. Another theory involves what conservationists call temporal mismatch. Migratory birds generally synchronize their breeding Bryan Pfeiffer is an author, wildlife photographer, guide, and consulting naturalist who with peak food abundance or availability, but as the planet specializes in birds and insects. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 9 10 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 woods WHYS

By Michael Snyder

Can I Fertilize a Forest Like I Fertilize a Garden?

Forest soils certainly benefit from the addition of plant nutrients. Elements like nitrogen, phos- phorous, potassium, calcium, and magnesium are the building blocks of leaves, twigs, trunks, and roots, and they regulate or activate countless physiological processes in the microscopic life of DAVID DICKENS / FORESTRY IMAGES plants – functions like water movement, enzyme activation, and stress signaling and response. No mineral nutrients in the soil below, no living plants above. Some forest stands are naturally flush with nutrients. Plant-available minerals in the soil come from the weathering of rocks, deposition of airborne particles relocated from somewhere else, Foul-looking forest fertilization using fowl feces. and from the recycling of decomposed organic matter from dead plants and animals on the site. Their continual cycling between impractical and, unless you’ve got your own aircraft, prohibi- soils and trees is vital to the maintenance of soil minerals. tively expensive. Moreover, there are many possible reasons But not all soils contain sufficient nutrients for healthy tree beyond fertility why a forest stand might exhibit slow growth, growth. Some soils are just naturally depauperate, some have discolored or misshapen foliage, or dieback. been exhausted by erosion or poor management practices, and Fertilization simply will not fix the limitations of a site that some have been depleted by repeated harvesting and removal is too wet or too dry, and it cannot overcome destructive log- in the form of grass, wool, milk, or logs over many decades. ging practices that erode soils or damage tree stems and roots. Minerals can also be leached from soil in drainage water. Similarly, fertilization cannot prevent defoliation by insects (in Recently, we’ve learned that some minerals, like calcium, can fact, it might just nourish them). And an overcrowded stand be leached at accelerated rates by inputs of acid precipitation. where trees have no room for expansion will likely benefit far Such losses of essential nutrients lead to deficiencies that reduce more from a good thinning. growth and jeopardize forest health. Fertilization won’t improve the growth of trees already So can you fertilize a forest? Yes. Fertilization of forest trees growing on a nutrient-rich site, and if overdone, it can actually – particularly with nitrogen – has been a common practice in have a deleterious effects on trees and the greater environment. intensive plantation silviculture in the Southeast and Northwest Indeed, high soil concentrations of even the most essential since the 1960s. Most is applied by aircraft, unless there is nutrients can be toxic to plants and excessive nutrients can run adequate spacing between rows of trees where it can be done by off and pollute nearby waters. Effects on wildlife have not been tractor or skidder-mounted equipment. The vast majority of such adequately studied and remain largely unknown. applications use dry, pelletized forms of synthetic fertilizers. Fertilization may be a workable idea if your forest is a young There have been experimental applications of fertilizer to plantation of southern pines and your sole objective is growing northeastern forests. For example, in 1999, a 30-acre hard- timber as fast as possible, or if your forest is an abandoned wood stand at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New surface mine and you are heaven-bent on restoring its vegetation. Hampshire was amended with over 50 tons of calcium dropped Otherwise, it’s probably not worth the associated expense, from a helicopter in an attempt to restore that which had been practical difficulties, or environmental risks. If you really want leached away by acid precipitation. By following the forest to enhance your forest soil’s productivity, advocate for clean air, ecosystem’s response over the past 16 years, researchers docu- retain leaves, twigs, and branches from harvested trees, practice mented that increases of calcium in such conditions stimulated good silviculture and careful logging, and return your raked a significant increase in growth of forest vegetation. yard leaves to the woods from whence they came. While these findings are significant, they do not necessarily indicate that amending forest soil with a helicopter is the best Michael Snyder, a forester, is commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, solution to a forest health problem. For starters, it is highly Parks, and Recreation.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 11 12 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 TRACKING tips

Story and photos by Susan C. Morse

Beavers at Home for the Winter

Most folks know that stream-flow ponds impounded by dams built of sticks, stones, and mud are created by beavers. Conical or dome-shaped lodges surrounded by water are also recognizable signs of Castor canadensis. As summer slips into autumn, reminding us that winter is not that far away, how do we know that beavers are actually in residence within a given pond complex? Here are four signs of active beaver occupancy that one can easily find: Look for an abundance of freshly cut trees, saplings, and woody shrub stems in the vicinity of the pond. During autumn, beavers shift into overtime for food gathering. A colony may need to store hundreds of woody stems to have enough food for the winter. Fresh-looking sap and wood chips will be obvious evidence on and around recently cut stems. Freshly peeled sticks and mud will have been added to the dam. It is critical that the dam is strong enough to hold. The pond and its associated canals allow these semi-aquatic rodents an effective means of minimizing their exposure to predators while collecting food. In addition, the pond’s watery environment makes it easier for beavers to access and transport their foods. A pond is perfect for the creation of a safe, weatherproof lodge in which beavers can escape from enemies, rest, keep warm, mate, raise families, and eat during winter. Look for fresh mud plastered on the lodge. In all but the most gravel-bottomed habitats, beavers will gather and apply a seal of mud to the surface of the lodge, covering all but the air vent. This serves both as weather shield and, when frozen, a cement-hard fortification against predators. In our region, coyotes, bobcats, occasionally bears, and historically wolves and cougars all prey(ed) on beavers. Above: Beaver; Orange Seek to find evidence of food caches. In preparation for County, Vermont, winter, beavers collect branches and construct a raft of less forester David Paganelli desirable species whose collective water-logged weight will admires a recently push down and hold the food branches they like, including mudded lodge. poplars, willows, maples, red osier dogwood, and yellow Left: Forester Gaetan birch stems. When the pond is frozen, the beavers benefit by Champagne inspects having underwater access to their preferred foods. The raft’s a beaver dam in the branch tips can be seen protruding from the water or even Sutton Mountains of the frozen pond’s icy surface. Species that are not generally Quebec. Note that sticks eaten, such as eastern hemlock, red spruce, white pine, and have been arranged alder will be visible poking above the surface of the raft. parallel to the direction of the water flow, lending strength to the dam. Susan C. Morse is founder and program director of Keeping Track in Huntington, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 13 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ FORAGING ]

Cattail Rhizome: Flour from the Marsh

It is not an exaggeration to call the cattail (Typha spp.) the supermarket of the marsh. Food can be procured from cattails during any season – even the dead of winter – and nearly every part of the plant is edible. Perhaps the most distinctive food that comes from the cattail is its rhizome, a root-like, under- ground stem that is one of the richest wild sources of edible carbohydrates in the Northeast. Cattail rhizomes can be harvested at any time of year, but the best time is after the plants have died-back in late autumn, when the cattails have stored starch for the next growing season. It takes a large number of rhizomes to produce a sufficient quantity of food, so it is best to gather from a sizable population. Since cattails readily accumulate metals and other pollutants, choose your location carefully. Rhizomes can be gathered from anywhere within the patch, but digging them out of the thick tangle at the center requires a lot more work. The best way to gather them is to wade out to where the cattails give way to open water and follow a stem several inches down into the mud with your hand, until you feel a finger-thick, spongy, rope- like stem leading horizontally away from the plant. Give it a little tug. If it is connected to another cattail nearby, you can often see that plant wiggle as you pull. Cut both ends with a knife and pull the rhizome out of the mud. PHOTOS BY BENJAMIN LORD

14 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 The cattail rhizome looks like a strange, reddish- bag suspended in a sealed jar. The powdery brown, alien tentacle with rings of threadlike roots starch keeps fairly well and can be used as a every few inches along its length. The outer layer gluten-free flour replacement. is spongy and inedible. Remove this outer layer My favorite method is to vigorously work the with your thumbnails, pushing off the spongy rind peeled cores in a basin of water. The starch without pulling up any of the core’s fibers. It takes settles to the bottom and most of the water can a bit of practice to get this right. The inner core be decanted, leaving a batter-like mixture. This should be firm, fibrous, and white. Any cores that can be used as the basis of a latke-like pancake, aren’t should be thrown out. added to breads or baked goods, or used as a From here, you could simply chew the starch thickener in stews and casseroles. This method from between the long fibers. This is convenient takes practice; additional information can be but messy. Some people roast the unpeeled found in Samuel Thayer’s excellent book, The rhizomes and flake off the charred rinds before Forager’s Harvest. chewing. This does improve the flavor, but is even Regardless of how you process them, there’s messier. no way to avoid the fact that harvesting cattails Another possibility is to slice the peeled cores is messy work. Still, there are few wild foods as into coins, leave them to dry, and grind them in a hearty as the cattail rhizome. You will be well- food processor or grain mill. This yields a starch rewarded for getting a little messy. and fiber mixture that can be sifted with a jelly Benjamin Lord

[ NATURALLY CURIOUS ]

Eye Protection

You and I have two opaque eyelids, one above the eye and one beneath. When we blink, they meet in the middle. Some birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and mammals have

three eyelids – two similar to ours, and a third NATURALLYCURIOUSWITHMARYHOLLAND.WORDPRESS.COM translucent or transparent eyelid, called a nictitating membrane. This membrane moves horizontally from the inside corner to the outer edge of the eye, much like a windshield wiper, when needed for protection, to clear debris, or to moisten the eye. Although this juvenile bald eagle’s nictitating membrane makes it look blind, it isn’t. Because the membrane is translucent, the bird can still see.—Mary Holland

NorthernNorthernWoodlands Woodlands / Autumn 2015 15 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ STEWARDSHIP STORY ]

hemlocks to the 1600s, and a few proved to Managing Ecological Change in a have been saplings when the Pilgrims landed at Nonprofit Working Woodland Plymouth in 1620. Nothing about them leaps out at you as being Great Mountain Forest (GMF) occupies slightly the forest, but also educate the public about the ancient – nearby there are much younger trees of more than 6,000 acres at the southern end of the actions we are taking. other species that are as tall and broad – yet you Berkshires, in northwest Connecticut. The forest Perhaps the best example of this centers don’t need an increment borer to know that they was under private conservation and manage- around GMF’s hemlocks. Hemlock makes up were well established before the first European ment for nearly a century, but a decade ago it about 40 percent of Great Mountain Forest (mixed reached these woods in the mid-1700s. Their became a nonprofit and operates under a Forest with oak in some stands and with other hard- heavy, plated bark is the giveaway. So is the Legacy easement. I’m the director, and my job is woods elsewhere), including a handful of very old sense of grandeur that settles on you if you spend to engage the public with both the work and the hemlocks in the forest, and there are a few more a little time beneath them. forest’s story. Forestry decisions are the purview on Nature Conservancy land adjoining. There is It’s something of a mystery that these stands of our forest manager of 38 years, Jody Bronson. a coolness and quietness to all hemlock groves, survived as long as they have. Northern Litchfield Our roles increasingly overlap, as we must not but these old trees have a palpable gravitas. County was at the heart of nineteenth-century only make the best management choices for Researchers in the 1950s dated many of these iron production, and most of the forests in Norfolk and Canaan were cut several times to produce Forest stewards and scientists with a downed old-growth hemlock. From left to right, Jody Bronson, Hans Carlson, charcoal for local blast furnaces. There are old Carole Cheah, Russell Russ, forest technician Wesley Gomez, and John Winiarski. colliers’ hearths and roads within a quarter-mile

16 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 [ ECOLOGICAL ETYMOLOGIST ] of the old-growth stands, and there were tanner- Dear E.E.: The boys at our camp ies in this area, too. They razed whole forests to out on Whiskey Brook want procure the hemlock bark used to tan leather. to know where the word deer We will likely never know what circumstances comes from. Our best guess is saved these trees from the nineteenth-century onslaught – maybe it was as simple as disputed that it’s Abenaki. Thanks for all ownership – but today, the rather sad fact is that your interesting information – these stands appear to be falling apart. Many are we keep a collection of still outwardly healthy, but in the last few years Northern Woodlands at camp. some of the oldest trees have been wind-thrown or their tops have been snapped off. At nearly 400 years old, they have not yet reached their natural It’s not a bad guess. Moose is Abenaki (or age limit, but new stresses are affecting all the maybe Narragansett), but deer is English, hemlock in the forest. at the very least we will have a good supply of through and through. The very sound of the Last fall, we spent a day monitoring hemlocks construction timber for our own use. word makes me think of an English grand- across the forest with Carole Cheah from the Large sections will have to regrow and some mother, sipping tea with her husband, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, try- parts may need replanting. Nursery work and waiting for their sons to return from the ing to judge the encroachment of hemlock wooly planting stopped here in the 1990s, but we once hunt. I hope they get a deer, dear. adelgid and hemlock scale. Because we are home produced our own Norway, white, blue, and meyeri When I first looked into deer I wasn’t to some of the highest elevations in the state, spruce, as well as red pine. These non-native sure what I’d find, but it turns out to be we have many places that look a great deal like trees are strung out along the road that makes a pretty interesting story. It starts five to northern New England. Norfolk is well-known as up our western entrance, forming curious ethnic ten thousand years ago with dheu, a word the “icebox of Connecticut,” and our cold climate neighborhoods in the Yankee forest. The real that meant, simply, breath. Over time, this may have helped hold off these pathogens for a exotics are remnants of a different era of forest evolved into dheusom, or an animal that time, but their arrival was inevitable. management, and we will certainly not replant breathes. Imagine you’re a hunter on the We covered only part of the forest that day, but with tiger-tail spruce or King Boris fir, but some moors of ancient England, out looking for we found no areas free of both scale and adelgid, of the spruce and pine offer valuable information a breathing animal to sustain you. even in the coldest hollows. This was dishearten- in our current situation. Some have adapted well, Deer (or dear, as it was spelled) showed ing, but a second examination by Cheah found and others are struggling or near-dead. All this up in writing for the first time in the that last winter’s deep freeze killed upwards of 99 offers clues regarding which trees we should Lindesfarne Gospels. This was an elaborate percent of the adelgid at her monitoring stations. focus on in our plans to start a new nursery. illuminated text, created between 600 and Still, cold winters are an increasingly random Whether we cut hemlocks or leave them stand- 800 a.d. Picture monks on a tiny island off event here, and the adelgid is a prolific breeder, so ing, it will all be messy for a while and people will the coast of Northumbria, England, faithfully we are likely to eventually see significant mortal- not like it. For the last century, GMF was funded copying the gospel in Latin – and then taking ity. The loss of the hemlocks will change every- by family money, but now that we are a nonprofit, the radical step of adding a tiny English thing in this forest, ecologically and aesthetically. public perception and support are paramount translation between the lines. In the Gospel If we look at the big picture, losing these trees concerns. Public input will shape the forest now, of Luke, the monks used the word dear will restart the process of growth that began more as much as hemlock pathogens. to mean wild animals, and so the word’s than a century ago with the end of charcoaling. Smart foresters at least consider public per- meaning became narrower still. We’ve spent decades cutting trees in an attempt ception when planning their work, but managing No one knows how it came to mean to break up the even-aged character of the forest a working forest as a nonprofit is something new cervids, specifically. Maybe it was because that was left by the nineteenth-century industrial in forestry. In order to continue stewardship of deer were a favorite game animal. Maybe clearcuts; it seems our successors will be doing Great Mountain Forest, we will have to educate because the Normans invaded, bringing similar work. people so they see the community value in local a whole new vocabulary with them. In We’ll do some salvage cutting when the hem- forestry as they now understand the value of local any case, it’s something to locks succumb, but there’s not much of a market agriculture. It is here where forest management think about in the woods for hemlock even in the best of times. When red and outreach will intersect. this fall, when you’re out pine scale hit the forest in the 1990s, there was Hans M. Carlson hunting for dheu, for breath extensive salvage cutting and a ready market, but and life itself. this will not be the case now. A lot of our hemlock This series is sponsored by the Stifler Family grows in places where we couldn’t cut without Foundation, in support of forestry practices that doing damage to soils and watersheds, so we will promote healthy and sustainable forests and leave a lot of trees to die, too. We have a mill, so wildlife habitat.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 17 KNOTS & BOLTS IHOR SOLOVIY

[ MANY MILES AWAY ] bears, wolves, and lynx. The primeval beech forests of the Carpathians are particularly special, and have been inscribed on the World Heritage List. Ukrainian Forests These forests are unique for the research of biological processes in non-disturbed ecosystems and are continuously studied by Ukraine’s 26.7 million acres of forestland covers about 15 percent of the both Ukrainian and American researchers (including those from the Carbon country – a sizable holding by Eastern European standards. The Carpathian Dynamics Lab and the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Mountains and Polissya (a region of swamped woodlands) in the west and Resources, both at the University of Vermont). north of the country have the most forest, including stands of beautiful pine Ukraine has a long tradition of forest management, though as one might and larch, but there are pockets of oak- and beech-dominated deciduous expect from a country that was under communist rule for much of the forest throughout the central and southern steppes. twentieth century, most involves the management of state-owned forests. Intensive forest exploitation in Eastern Europe began in the eighteenth cen- While today the law allows for municipal and private forest ownership, in tury, when forests were cleared for timber, as well as for potash and charcoal practice, state ownership predominates. State-owned forests total 9.66 production. Wood was exported to Germany, France, England, and Poland. The million hectares, while municipal forests represent just 40,000 hectares. need for new agricultural land, much of it cleared for the sugar beet industry, The major public owners include the Agency for Forest Resources and the caused a disastrous reduction of forest area in the nineteenth century. Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food. Today, the prevailing tree species are Scot’s pine (Pinus silvestris), European Property restitution was not practiced in Ukraine following the breakup of oak (Quercus robur), European beech (Fagus silvatica), Norway spruce (Picea the U.S.S.R.; this was due to various historical circumstances in the different abies), European white birch (Betula pendula), black alder (Alnus glutinosa), regions of Ukraine and the public’s fear that sustainable forest management European ash (Fraxinus excelsior), European hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), would not be practiced on private forests. Even today, there’s a five-hectare and silver fir (Abies alba). There is a nearly even split between coniferous and (a bit over 12-acre) limit on the forestland that an individual can own. This, hardwood forests in Ukraine, with pine the most common species (making up combined with a lack of forestry skills in the private sector, has limited pri- 33 percent of the total forested area), and oak and beech together representing vate forest ownership and management. Individuals can lease forest plots for roughly another third. As is typical in Europe, a large share (more than 45 up to 49 years for recreational, educational, and other non-industrial uses. percent) of forests are planted, but Ukraine’s Carpathian region also boasts the In its role managing the majority of the forests in Ukraine, the State Forest largest surviving reserves of old-growth forests on the continent. Resource Agency (logo above) is charged with developing and implementing The Carpathians are home to more than half of Europe’s population of national policies regarding forest management, including the protection,

18 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 TOP: WWW.LIS.CK.UABOTTOM: LLOYD IRLAND

Left to right: Life in rural communities is tied to the forest environment and forest resources; an old-growth beech forest in the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve; forest restoration work in the Cherkassy Region; a harvesting operation in the Lviv region.

conservation, and regeneration of forest resources. The state is also charged involving both timber and non-timber crops in Ukraine. They noted reduced with managing game animals. forest cover from both legal and illegal logging, overharvesting (especially In contrast, most of the wood processing facilities are privately owned. by outsiders coming to the forest to cash-in on lucrative berries and mush- About 7.2 billion board feet gets harvested in the Ukraine each year, but much rooms), and destructive harvesting techniques that increase short-term of this wood is exported and processed in European Union countries, Turkey, harvests but hinder regrowth. They also blamed climate change for reducing and China before a considerable amount of that wood is shipped back to forest cover, drying marshes, increasing disease, and changing the distribu- manufacturers in the Ukraine. This is not so different than in the northeastern tion of forest products like mushrooms and cranberries. U.S., where pine logs are shipped to Canada only to return as 2x4s. To try to The war with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the coun- promote domestic wood processing, a law was recently enacted to prevent try is leading to the loss of life and property and posing serious threats to the raw, unprocessed timber from leaving the country. There are still concerns environment. At least 33 protected natural areas in the Donetsk and Lugansk that not all wood will be sold on the domestic market and worries that high- regions have been damaged by the fighting; one fire caused by the conflict quality wood will end up being used for bio-energy or the production of pal- damaged nearly 100,000 acres of forest. Despite the massive pressures on lets, because these uses are more profitable. If the export ban fails to achieve the economy and the fragile situation in the eastern part of the country, the the intended result, it’s likely some other solution will be tried. conditions for building a successful economy in Ukraine have never been Beyond commercial uses, Ukrainian forests are relied upon to play an as favorable as they are today. Political and economic reforms designed to important environmental role, particularly in terms of protecting soils and eliminate corruption and increase transparency, as well as the association water. They also are used to create more favorable microclimate conditions with the European Union, are creating a more favorable climate for invest- for agriculture (especially in the southern region), as well as for recreation ment, including in the forestry sector. and for cultural heritage conservation. Ihor Soloviy Non-timber forest products, such as mushrooms and berries, are of great importance to local communities and can be collected free of charge. Dr. Ihor Soloviy is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the Gund Institute for However, recent surveys conducted as part of the international FLEG (Forest Ecological Economics, University of Vermont, and also associate professor at Law Enforcement and Governance) program cited problems with harvests the Ukrainian National Forestry University.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 19 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ RACCOON RABIES ]

How to Kill a Zombie

We’re in the midst of a disease outbreak that is turning some of our four-legged neighbors into slavering zombies intent on biting everything around them. The disease is raccoon rabies, and it’s been present in the Northeast since the early 1990s. Rabies comes in different variations, and each variety has a preferred host. There are nine common terrestrial variants of rabies, among them fox rabies (a problem in Texas, Arizona, and Alaska) and two kinds of skunk rabies (making headlines in the plains states). Raccoon rabies has been the big concern in the Northeast. First noted in Florida in the 1950s, it moved up the coast, spreading slowly through raccoon populations. By 1990, the virus had reached New York, and three years later that state had set the record for greatest number of lab-confirmed animal rabies cases in the history of the U.S. at 2,747. It moved into Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in the early 1990s, with annual rates in Vermont and New Hampshire jumping from the single digits in the late 1980s to more than 150 by 1995. The raccoon rabies virus is now firmly ensconced across the entire Northeast and has even made forays into Quebec. Living in a country that has reduced human rabies cases to a handful a year, largely through

successful pet vaccination campaigns, it’s easy Occupational hazard – that’s not a raccoon! to forget just how devastating the disease can be. According to the Centers for Disease Control and vaccines costs about $1,000 per person. The Prevention (CDC), rabies kills more than 55,000 New York State Department of Health estimates people around the world each year, which works that the increase of rabies exposures due to the out to about one person every 10 minutes. The raccoon rabies outbreak is costing New Yorkers majority of these victims are from developing $2 million per year – that price tag includes countries in Africa and southeast Asia and most the costs of post-exposure treatment, laboratory are under the age of 15. testing for rabies, and programs to control rabid

PHOTOS BY USDA, APHIS Rabies has the highest fatality rate of any animals. The CDC puts the costs of rabies for the known disease. Once symptoms start, a patient whole country at $300 million. is almost certain to die, which is why it’s so To help control the spread of rabies, and to important to get vaccinated after a bite from reduce the need for these expensive vaccinations, an animal suspected of being rabid. Those who the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal do receive post-exposure vaccines have a very and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has Ravioli bait good chance of recovery, but a course of rabies created a National Rabies Management Program

20 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 An unwilling patient.

virus vector that has been modified to have an antigen known to trigger an immune response to rabies. In other words, the bait vaccines can’t cause rabies, so there’s no concerns about family pets inadvertently eating the bait. In the Northeast, bait drops typically take place from mid-August to mid-September, mostly in the northern counties of Vermont and New York, to prevent raccoon rabies from circumventing the Great Lakes and then moving west through Canada. New Hampshire and Maine use a lesser amount of bait dropping on their northern borders, but currently are focused on enhanced surveillance of the disease. In Massachusetts, Cape Cod is the only area that has vaccine baiting, with some enhanced surveillance. In remote areas, vaccine baits are dropped from small planes operated out of Plattsburgh, New York. Unfortunately, raccoons love urban and suburban places with their concentrations of scavengeable trashcans and APHIS prefers not to rain baits from the sky onto unsuspecting homeowners. As a result, APHIS hand-places baits in cities like Burlington, Vermont. There, Fred Pogmore describes tossing handfuls of baits beyond the fences of the waterfront bike path where raccoons can get to them but dogs can’t. Such efforts have already shown that it is possible to halt the spread of rabies: raccoon rabies did make it across the border into Québec in 2006, but was declared eliminated in 2009 after a bait-dropping program using the ravioli- that has been working to vaccinate raccoons and wildlife biologist with APHIS, describes as type bait vaccine. against rabies. The idea behind vaccinating looking like a square ravioli. It’s a blister pack of Rich Chipman, coordinator of APHIS’ National animals is that the vaccinated, and therefore vaccine coated in fat, vanilla, sugar, and dye, like Rabies Management Program, says the goal is immune, animals can act as a buffer between a frosted cookie with a gooey vaccine center. now to move beyond containing raccoon rabies diseased animals and potential new hosts. The ravioli baits cost $1.65 each and the in the Northeast, and instead to “push it into Raccoons are not going to book themselves ketchup packets are $1.23, and APHIS aims to the sea,” that is, using the bait dropping to a vet appointment, so how can APHIS vaccinate distribute up to 150 baits per square kilometer in narrow the area affected by raccoon rabies until enough wild animals to make a difference? While areas with high raccoon numbers. Last year, they it disappears. humans typically receive vaccines through a placed baits in 15 states, with 8,198,991 baits That’s what has happened with the grey fox shot, some vaccines can work if taken orally. In distributed over 162,902 square kilometers. The rabies variant in Texas, which has been nearly fact, rabies may have the longest history of oral goal is to treat about half of the raccoon population eradicated after APHIS efforts that are part of the vaccination of any disease: there are reports of in the coverage area. APHIS estimates that each same program being employed in the Northeast. Bedouins roasting the livers of rabid dogs and year the bait-dropping program costs $58-148 Eradicating rabies, any rabies, is an ambitious feeding them to dog bite victims 900 years ago. million nationally, as opposed to the $48-496 goal, especially considering that the disease has Thankfully, APHIS does not need to use the million that unchecked rabies would cost. been with us at least as long as we’ve been roasted livers of rabid raccoons for their vaccine So how do these oral vaccines actually work? writing history. APHIS is only just beginning the program; they use vaccine baits. The first was a Raccoons don’t have to eat the vaccine baits, they elimination phase for raccoon rabies and it will no sachet coated in fishmeal – basically a ketchup just have to bite into them. The liquid vaccine gets doubt be a tough fight. Yet, if successful, it will be packet full of liquid vaccine with a fish-flavored into their mouths and down their throats, where a huge win in a long struggle for both animal and shell. In 2011, APHIS began field-testing a second it triggers an immune response. Neither vaccine human health. bait vaccine that Fred Pogmore, district supervisor contains actual rabies virus; both use a standard Rachel Sargent

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 21 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ ECONOMICS ] federal tax revenue. An additional 309 people have jobs that are indirectly related – foresters, equipment manufacturers, mechanics, and book- keepers. The wages in these supporting indus- The Ripple Effect: Timber is a Big Part tries are estimated at $13 million. of the Granite State Economy But the ripples continue. The IMPLAN model extrapolates additional value by looking at where Timber harvesting is one of those economic Hampshire’s timber harvesting industry. Partnering these wages are spent. The model predicts that activities that flies under the radar. It happens with Plymouth State University’s Center for Rural timber harvesting supports an additional 488 jobs most often in rural parts of the state on Class V Partnerships, the association designed a survey (waitstaff, gas stations, health care, and the like) or Class VI roads, and only once or twice in an to capture economic data from New Hampshire that generate an additional $22 million in local average landowner’s tenure on the land. timber harvesting companies. These figures were wages. The model indicates that these wages So how can we gauge the effect that timber then entered into an IMPLAN economic impact create about $89 million in non-wage economic harvesting has on the economy of an entire state? model. activity in the state. Totaling these figures suggests In 2013 and 2014, the New Hampshire The survey results suggest that more than that New Hampshire’s timber harvesting opera- Timberland Owners Association received generous 1,100 people in the state work in jobs directly tions contribute $168.7 million annually to New grants from the Plum Creek Foundation, the related to the commercial harvesting of timber Hampshire’s economy. French Foundation, and the Neil and Louise – from the one-man cable skidder set-up on up As the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Tillotson Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable to a fully mechanized cut-to-length operation. Association program director, I travel throughout Foundation for a research project that quantified These jobs generated an estimated $69.7 million the state. While on the road, I often count the the direct and indirect economic impact of New in wages and over $20 million in local, state, and number of log trucks and chip vans I pass, noting TONY FISCHER/CREATIVE COMMONS. SIGN: MBC DESIGN

22 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 what species and product they are carrying. The generates $32 in wages. To put this into perspec- economics involving these businesses in future exercise serves as an informal barometer for tive, if you pass an 18-wheeler on the highway, economic models. how much work is taking place in the woods. But the wood it’s carrying has created around $1,000 Eric Johnson thanks to this study, we’re now able to assign a in local wages. dollar value to this wood as it relates to wages. If Of course, timber harvesting is just the tip of Eric Johnson is the program director emeritus for the we assume that there are about 3.28 million tons the iceberg in New Hampshire’s wood economy. New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association. He is of wood harvested each year in New Hampshire Sawmills, biomass and firewood producers, wood a former professional logger and maple syrup producer (that number is from timber tax data collected in pellet manufacturers, and pulp and paper producers from Andover, New Hampshire. 2012), we can calculate that every ton of wood all make huge contributions, too. We’ll tackle the

[ THE OUTSIDE STORY ]

Woolly Bears: Forecast Flops?

Autumn is coming to a close. The brilliant fall foliage is past peak, if not already layered in the compost bin. The last geese are honking their way toward winter homes. Predictions are proffered (sometimes cheerfully, mostly not) for how cold and snowy this year’s winter will be. Sources for seasonal predictions vary. The Farmers’ Almanac and traditional old wives’ tales are often cited. How soon those geese head south, for example, is supposed to indicate how hibernate. They may wander surprisingly far in their quest. Choice spots are difficult winter will be. We trust these bits of folklore because they seem to under leaf litter, in a wood pile, even behind loose bark. Here they are out of work. (Research is advised, however; never assume that country wisdom is the elements, but by no means protected from freezing. In fact, they must reliable enough to calculate, say, your oil pre-buy needs.) freeze in order to survive the winter. Sometimes the cuteness factor plays a role in our willingness to believe. Like frogs, woolly bears make a substance that acts like antifreeze. As the Take the woolly bear caterpillar, whose fuzziness often tempts people to pick late autumn temperature drops, the caterpillar gradually fills with glycerol. it up and, coincidentally, to discover that the bristles, called setae, are actu- This viscous substance basically prevents organs and sensitive tissues from ally stiff and hard, not soft and cuddly. It is on the prowl in late fall, crossing getting freezer burn. The setae also contribute to the winterizing process lawns, logs, and roads. According to tradition, the wider the rusty-orange by drawing water out of the caterpillar’s body. Deadly ice crystals form band around its middle, the milder the coming winter. The relative size of its harmlessly on the bristles instead of inside the body, where cells critical to two black sections is also supposed to have meteorological significance. If life reside. Eventually, only the interior of each cell remains unfrozen, safely the front one is larger than the back, the beginning of winter will supposedly surrounded by cold-tolerant glycerol. have colder temperatures than the end of winter, and vice versa. With ice on the outside and glycerol on the inside, the caterpillar is ready to In fact, woolly bears are better predictors of the past spring and summer endure a long period of cold weather. This period of arctic diapause is so critical than the coming winter. Like all caterpillars, the woolly bear goes through that a mild winter can spell doom for woolly bears. (So, too, can soft-hearted several stages of development, called instars. Each instar is a period of but misinformed “protectors” who relocate one to the garage, “so the poor steady eating and growth, culminating in the shedding of now too-tight skin. caterpillar won’t freeze to death.”) Protected from snow and wind by its leaf or During each molt, some of the black-bristled segments are replaced with log shelter, the frozen caterpillar can withstand temperatures well below zero. orange ones. Fall is well under way by the fifth or sixth instar, just when we Looking like a crispy tortellini, it lies as though lifeless until spring tempera- begin comparing the forecast and the caterpillar. tures warm it up. Once it thaws, it resumes ravenous eating as though never What this means is that the ratio of black to orange actually depends on the interrupted. After a few days of gorging on tender greens, the banded larva caterpillar’s age and developmental stage. Very young woolly bears are almost finds a site to spin a cocoon. Woodpiles are again favorite spots, but any secure entirely dark. If spring came early, the woolly bear will have had additional surface will do. Every year I find four or five inside an empty wren house. time for growth, resulting in a wide orange band by fall. On the other hand, A miraculous transformation takes place over the next one to two weeks. lack of rain in the spring and summer may limit its food supply (dandelions, Then one day a delicate yellow-orange Isabella tiger moth (Pyrrharctia grass, clover, nettles, and birches are preferred) and delay growth. Looking at isabella) emerges without warning. You’re not likely to see it unless you have a stressed, spring-size caterpillar in November may tell you something about a porch light, however, as it is both nocturnal and short lived. It will mate, lay the previous months’ weather conditions, but it won’t be much help with the eggs, and die in a matter of weeks, leaving its offspring to carry on the role question of whether your wood pile needs supplementing. of pretend prognosticators. As autumn edges closer to winter, these caterpillars seek out a place to Barbara Mackay The Outside Story is sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: [email protected].

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 23 24 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 25 A Consulting Forester can help you

Markus Bradley, Courtney Haynes, Ben Machin Steve Handfield Make decisions about Redstart Forestry Consulting Forester managing your forestland Juniper Chase, Corinth, VT 05039 178 Ruby Road, Poultney VT 05764 (802) 439-5252 (802) 342-6751 Design a network of trails www.redstartconsulting.com [email protected] Anita Nikles Blakeman Ben Hudson Improve the wildlife Woodland Care Forest Management Hudson Forestry P.O. Box 4, N. Sutton, NH 03260 P.O. Box 83, Lyme, NH 03768 habitat on your property (603) 927-4163 (603) 795-4535 [email protected] [email protected] Negotiate a contract Herbert Boyce, ACF, CF Grahm Leitner, CF with a logger and Deborah Boyce, CF Greenwood – Mad River Forestry, LLC supervise the job Northwoods Forest Consultants, LLC 1212 Camels Hump Road 13080 NYS Route 9N, Jay, NY 12941 Waterbury, VT 05676 (518) 946-7040 (802)793-7224 Improve the quality of [email protected] [email protected] your timber Gary Burch M.D. Forestland Consulting, LLC Burch Hill Forestry (802) 472-6060 1678 Burch Road, Granville, NY 12832 David McMath (518) 632-5436 Cell: (802) 793-1602 [email protected] [email protected] Beth Daut, NH #388 Alan Calfee, Michael White Cell: (802) 272-5547 Calfee Woodland Management, LLC [email protected] P.O. Box 86, Dorset, VT 05251 (802) 231-2555 Scott Moreau [email protected] Greenleaf Forestry www.calfeewoodland.com P.O. Box 39, Westford, VT 05494 (802) 343-1566 cell Richard Cipperly, CF (802) 849-6629 North Country Forestry [email protected] 8 Stonehurst DrIve, Queensbury, NY 12804 (518) 793-3545 Haven Neal Fountain Forestry Cell: (518) 222-0421 Haven Neal Forestry Services 7 Green Mountain Drive, Suite 3 [email protected] 137 Cates Hill Road, Berlin, NH 03570 Montpelier, VT 05602-2708 (603) 752-7107 (802) 223-8644 ext 26 Calhoun and Corwin Forestry, LLC [email protected] [email protected] 41 Pine Street, Peterborough, NH 03458 (603) 562-5620 Michael Powers Bay State Forestry LandVest Timberland [email protected] 469 Tanglewood Drive Management and Marketing www.swiftcorwin.com Henniker, NH 03242 ME, NH, NY, VT R. Kirby Ellis (603) 325-5430 5086 US Route 5, Suite 2, Newport, VT 05855 Ellis’ Professional Forester Services [email protected] (802) 334-8402 P.O. Box 71, Hudson, ME 04630 www.landvest.com (207) 327-4674 David Senio ellisforestry.com P.O. Box 87, Passumpsic, VT 05861 Meadowsend Timberlands Ltd (802) 748-5241 Serving NH & VT Glen Gifford, ACF [email protected] P.O. Box 966, New London, NH 03257 VP – FORECON, Inc. (603) 526-8686 1890 East Main Street Jeffrey Smith www.mtlforests.com Falconer, NY 14733 Butternut Hollow Forestry Jeremy G. Turner, NHLPF #318 (716) 664-5602 ext. 301 1153 Tucker Hill Road (603) 481-1091 foreconinc.com Thetford Center, Vermont 05075 [email protected] (802) 785-2615 Ryan Kilborn, NHLPF #442 Charlie Hancock [email protected] (802) 323-3593 North Woods Forestry Jack Wadsworth, LPF, ME & NH [email protected] P.O. Box 405, Montgomery Center, VT 05471 (802) 326-2093 Brian Reader, LPF, ME & NH [email protected] Jesse Duplin, LPF, ME & NH Wadsworth Woodlands, Inc. 35 Rock Crop Way, Hiram, ME 04041 New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts require foresters to be licensed, and Connecticut requires they be certified. Note (207) 625-2468 that not all consulting foresters are licensed in each state. If you have a question about a forester’s licensure or certification [email protected] status, contact your state’s Board of Licensure. www.wadsworthwoodlands.com

26 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 1,000 words

Photo by Frank Kaczmarek Photographer Frank Kaczmarek took this shot in early October along the banks of the Connecticut River. “The sun was just breaking out of a morning fog when I first heard, then saw, the approaching geese,” he explains. The image was captured on Fuji Velvia film using a 400mm telephoto lens. “The moment inspired me to write the following Haiku poem,” says Kaczmarek: hunting season geese pierce the light

NorthernWoodlands / Autumn 2015 27 28 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 WHERE IS DON QUIXOTE? Story by Howard Frank Mosher. Art by Matthew Gauvin.

Elizabeth would have known what to do about the wind towers. Unfortunately, Kinneson’s wife had passed a year ago. Passed where? Kinneson had no idea. From time to time he still heard her voice in his head, calm and practical, but thus far she had said nothing to him about the towers.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 29 Elizabeth had been the one person whose opinion, other than Kingdom Common, and at eighty he couldn’t keep up with the Patchett’s own, Patchett had the slightest regard for. On those twice-a-day regimen of milking one hundred and fifty cows occasions when Kinneson needed to get his hired man into gear, alone. Therefore, he hired two hardworking Mexican brothers he’d say, “Liz told me we should cut the north hayfield today.” Or, to help run his outfit. Mexicans were already running most “Liz said this forenoon would be a good time to start tapping up of the remaining farms in Kingdom County and, as nearly as back.” Up back was the maple orchard on the ridge above the Kinneson could tell, running them more efficiently than they barn. So far as Kinneson knew, Patchett himself had never been had ever been run before. In Kinneson’s estimation, the recent married. Forty years ago he’d appeared at Kinneson’s door out of influx of Mexican workers was the best thing to happen to the a blizzard, sudden as a revenant, a young man with an old man’s Kingdom since his great, great grandfather, James Kinneson I, face. Elizabeth had fed him supper and he’d stayed on. In time and a like-minded handful of James’s neighbors, had declared he’d bought a third-hand Airstream and set up housekeeping its independence from Vermont and the United States and in it between the farmhouse and the hardtop road at the foot of governed it as a free-standing republic for thirty years. the lane. A month after Patchett had quartered himself on them, A few weeks after Kinneson hired on the Sanchez brothers, Kinneson asked him a question. Was Patchett his first or last the leach field below his farmhouse failed. Juan and Luis could name? Patchett had given him a long, slow, wondering look, and have put in a perfectly serviceable new one for the cost of several neither of them had broached the topic again. truckloads of sand and gravel, a few hundred feet of PVC piping, Patchett might have known what to do about the wind towers and the rental of a backhoe for half a day. Before they could get himself. Now an old man with a young man’s face, Patchett knew started someone, Kinneson suspected it was old man Potts from how to fix things. Given time enough, and someone to hand him over behind, reported the failure of his septic system to the state tools and listen to him complain, Patchett could fix anything, authorities. In waltzed Montpelier again, this time in the person from a broken flywheel on Kinneson’s ancient Oliver tractor to of a spindling little know-all scarcely out of his teens, who called the hard drive of the desktop computer Elizabeth kept the farm himself a sanitation hydrologist. Empowered by an abrupt letter accounts on. Quite possibly, Patchett could have fixed the wind from some official or other, the hydrologist made Kinneson towers. Fixed them, in some subtle and untraceable way, so that install, to the tune of $18,500, a new, state-of-the art septic system they’d never generate a single kilowatt of green power again. But thirty feet long, twelve feet wide, and ten feet high, which in a few weeks after Liz passed, Patchett had hooked his Airstream Kinneson’s estimation could have accommodated half of the behind his pickup and lit out for Big Sky Country. waste of the village of Kingdom Common. To pay for it, he’d What had caused Patchett to jump ship? Montpelier’d made been constrained to cash in a whole-life insurance policy whose him take down his sign beside the hardtop road, claiming that proceeds, now that Elizabeth was gone, he’d intended to leave in it violated Vermont’s anti-billboard legislation. Patchett had trust with his son and daughter for his grandchildren. written to Montpelier asking how a square of cardboard from a Mason shoebox with “Fish Worms for Sale” and a hand-drawn arrow pointing up at his Airstream could qualify as a billboard. Montpelier did not reply so Patchett, seeing the handwriting on the wall, hit the high dusty, leaving the offending cardboard sign duct-taped to Kinneson’s door with the message “Gone Fishing” printed just below the arrow. Patchett being Patchett, he had not troubled himself to say where he had gone fishing. Ten days later, Kinneson received a postcard from Gulch, Montana, depicting a Early one evening that summer Kinneson looked out his kitchen range of snowcapped mountains that dwarfed Vermont’s tallest window over the top of the Indian burial mound, as he’d come peaks. It read, “I’m here. Patchett.” to think of the new septic system, and saw four coyotes chasing Kinneson had a grown son in Boston and a grown daughter a deer across the water meadow along the river. Before he could in New York. After Elizabeth passed and Patchett pulled up load his rifle, they ran her down and tore her to pieces. The next stakes and went west, they urged him to unload the farm and morning a this-year’s fawn, still in its spots, tottered into his move closer to them. Kinneson abided his adult children, as barnyard. Kinneson put the orphaned animal into an empty stall, they did him, and enjoyed his grandkids, but if there was one where the coyotes couldn’t get at it, and drove into the Common place he detested more than Boston, it was New York, and and bought a baby bottle. He coaxed the fawn into lapping a little vice versa. His was the last working farm in the township of warm milk off his fingers, then drinking from the bottle.

30 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 “My name is Ezekiel Kinneson. I own the last working farm in this town. I milk one hundred and fifty cows, tap a thousand maple trees, fish the brooks that run off that ridge and hunt along the Post Road. I am a seventh-generation Commoner who does not care to be told what to do, or bribed into doing anything, by anyone. For all these reasons, I’m opposed to the towers.”

Against the advice of the Sanchez brothers, who had recently beautiful place, but from just down the Post Road, Kinneson moved themselves and their families into two brand-new double- heard voices. Through the underbrush, he made out two men in wides near the former site of Patchett’s Airstream, Kinneson white hardhats, coming his way with surveying instruments. called the local game warden to report the killing of the doe “Hello, old-timer,” one of the surveyors called out. “What and his discovery of the fawn. Over the phone line he heard a brings you up here?” sound like a person sucking in air between his teeth. “I wish you “My grandfather’s great grandfather built this road,” Kinneson hadn’t told me that, Zeke,” the warden said. The warden called said. “What brings you up here?” his supervisor in St. Johnsbury, who called the head warden in The surveyor handed Kinneson a business card with the Montpelier, who showed up at Kinneson’s place the next morning words “Northern New England Green Power” printed on it. with his two subordinates and ordered Kinneson to release He told Kinneson that his company planned to buy the Post the fawn back into the wild and let nature run its course. This Road from the township and erect twenty-one wind towers on Kinneson refused to do. The coyotes, who lived on the ridge up it. There would be an information meeting at the town hall in back, were nearly as large as the timber wolves their ancestors Kingdom Common the following Thursday evening. had interbred with, and fully as ferocious, and would snap up an When Kinneson did not favor him with a reply, the surveyor unattended fawn within hours. The head warden shrugged and said, “Well, no rest for the wicked,” and made a small, dismissive told his employees to get the deer out of the barn and let it go in gesture with the back of his hand, as if to shoo Kinneson off the alders beside the river where, the following day, Kinneson his own property. Kinneson’s grandfather would have wrested came across its bloody hide and partially eaten hooves. Nature the surveyor’s transit out of his hands and given him a severe had run its course. drubbing with it. His father, who made it a practice never to Above Kinneson’s maple sugar orchard, along the ridge-line leave his house unarmed, would have run off the interlopers at marking the west boundary of his property, a faint, north-and- gunpoint. This was a different era. As a rule, Kinneson did not south-running trace cut through the woods, now mostly over- believe in taking the law into his own hands. grown with hobblebush, grey birch, and striped maple. Nearby, “Yes, sir, gentlemen,” he said, and started back down the at the top of the maple orchard, Kinneson and Elizabeth had slope toward the farmhouse. placed a granite marker inscribed with their names and birth dates. Here their ashes would be buried in a single urn now containing Elizabeth’s, which Kinneson kept in the pie safe in her former pantry. The trace, which was known as the Canada In general, Ezekiel Kinneson regarded meetings, including Post Road, and was owned by the township of Kingdom Vermont’s fabled, grass-roots town meetings, as a waste of time. Common, had been built in 1812 by Kinneson’s great, great, In his view, the sole purpose of meetings was to find reasons great grandfather, Charles Kinneson I, whose aim it was to not to get things done. Patchett had disapproved of meetings, attack Canada and annex it to Kingdom County. In the event, too. It was one of the few things they’d agreed on. Therefore, Charles and his militia of would-be invaders were driven back Kinneson’s neighbors were surprised to see him at Thursday’s across the border by a dozen angry Quebecois habitants armed information meeting. “When did you make bail, Z?” old man with pitchforks and squirrel guns. Potts brayed out at him as he entered the hall. One afternoon Kinneson walked up through his maple trees Green Power had hired a Burlington law firm specializing to check on the grave marker. The stone stood where he’d left in litigating environmental issues. The firm’s senior partner, a it, facing out over a prospect of most of the Kingdom. It was a meticulous man in his sixties, offered the township of Kingdom

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 31 Common $750,000 for a two-mile stretch of the Canada Post Several months passed. Everyone from Kinneson’s grown Road running along the ridge top above Kinneson’s farm. children to the local postmistress who’d read Patchett’s postcard Kinneson, for his part, paid little attention to the attorney as he and ignited the dynamite rumor had advised Ezekiel not to make nattered on, and less attention yet to the speeches that followed, any life-altering changes during his first year as a widower. Other pro and con, from his fellow townspersons. When it was his than hiring on the Sanchez brothers, which Kinneson regarded turn to speak, Kinneson rose and looked around the crowded as the smartest thing he’d done since marrying Elizabeth, he’d hall and frowned. “See here,” he said. “My name is Ezekiel made no changes at all. Juan and Luis subscribed to several Kinneson. I own the last working farm in this town. I milk one dairy-farming periodicals. They brought in agricultural con- hundred and fifty cows, tap a thousand maple trees, fish the sultants from the state university, and began looking into local brooks that run off that ridge and hunt along the Post Road. I vore projects such as beekeeping, cheesemaking, and raising am a seventh-generation Commoner who does not care to be organically fed beef cattle. Their wives enrolled in community told what to do, or bribed into doing anything, by anyone. For college courses, the children were well-mannered and studious. all these reasons, I’m opposed to the towers.” Kinneson enjoyed taking them fishing and playing catch with Less than ten minutes later, the town voted 245-181 in favor of them. He liked thinking that they were the future face of the selling the Post Road to the power company. Kinneson went home Kingdom, and wished he could see the expression on old man and wrote a two-page, outraged letter relaying the news to Patchett. Potts’s face when they grew up to be selectpersons and road Two weeks later he received a reply on one of Patchett’s Big Sky commissioners, schoolboard members, deputy sheriffs, state postcards. The message read, “Blow them up, come West.” legislators, members of Congress and, yes, presidents. One of Overnight, word spread throughout the Kingdom, emanating the boys was a gifted ballplayer. Kinneson envisioned him in from the post office like circles on a trout pond, that Kinneson pinstripes and a New York Yankees cap, pitching a no-hitter in had thrown in with a cadre of eco-terrorists. Report had it that Fenway Park. he had driven to New Hampshire, where you could buy, with In the late afternoons he sat out on the wraparound porch no questions asked, anything in the way of ordnance necessary of the farmhouse, where he’d sat evenings helping Elizabeth to “live free or die,” and purchased fifty-three cases of dynamite. shell peas and cut up apples, and watched the towers rising ever Patchett himself was said to be posting east, with a posse of higher on the ridge top. mountain men and survivalists, to deal with the as yet non- “What do you look at, grandfather?” the Sanchez children existent wind towers. The county prosecutor caught wind of the inquired. rumors and wangled an order from the district-court judge to “Those windmills up on the hill,” Kinneson said. send out the sheriff with Dr. Frannie Lafleur Kinneson, the local “Why do you look at them?” GP and three-afternoons-a-week consulting psychiatrist at the “Because they bear watching,” Kinneson said. “Like you county hospital, to examine Kinneson and determine whether young scamps.” he had gone around the bend and become dangerous to himself By August all twenty-one of the towers were in operation. or others. They stood four hundred and sixty feet high. At night their red Dr. Frannie, as she was universally referred to in the warning lights blinked on and off. More than half of the time Kingdom, was Kinneson’s great niece by marriage. She had their vast blades were motionless since the higher mountains two grown sons herself but was still, in Kinneson’s estimation, immediately to the west blocked the prevailing wind. Nor, as cute as a button. She asked him the day of the week and Kinneson had recently learned, could the antiquated electrical his date of birth. Then she wanted to know the name of the lines leading to and from the Kingdom accommodate more president. Kinneson winked at her and said Abraham Lincoln. than half of what meager power they generated. Kinneson Dr. Frannie gave out a raucous belly laugh and snapped watched the wind blades not turning. He had never for one min- off her recording machine and said she only hoped ute doubted what the scientists said about climate change, but that she’d be as sharp as Kinneson when she the stationary blades would do little to combat it. was eighty. The sheriff, John “Uncle Johnny” Throughout his life Kinneson had been an Kinneson, who detested the projected avid reader. After Liz passed, he’d had trouble wind towers because they would destroy following anything longer than the court news his secret deerstand on the Post Road, or obituaries in the Kingdom County Monitor. smiled and drove Dr. Frannie back to He’d look out the window to check on the wind the village. towers, then return to his book only to realize

32 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 that he was rereading the page he’d just finished. One afternoon Patchett, he figured, until he found a place of his own. Late he found himself in the village library again. Ruth Kinneson, the that afternoon he’d brought the grave marker from the maple librarian and Kinneson’s second cousin by marriage, was boxing orchard down off the ridge, on a stoneboat behind his Oliver, up some outdated westerns for an upcoming book sale. and gee-hawed it up into the bed of his pickup. He didn’t sleep “Welcome, stranger,” Ruth said. “What do you hear from Mr. much that night. Except for a year in Korea when he was in the Patchett?” service, he’d spent only a few nights away from his own bed. Now For the briefest moment, Kinneson wasn’t sure who she he was leaving the Kingdom forever. He imagined that he could meant. Ruth was the only person who ever referred to his former hear the low, throbbing hum of the windmills. Once he heard hired hand as Mr. Patchett. Elizabeth say, very distinctly, “A red-and-yellow grasshopper “Not much,” Kinneson said. “Since that penny postcard got fly, fished wet, is a good bet out there this time of year.” all over town.” He was up at first light. He limited himself to one cup of Ruth smiled. “Mr. Patchett is Mr. Patchett,” she said. “I think coffee so he wouldn’t have to stop five times before he was out he always felt the draw of the West.” of Vermont. He removed the urn containing Liz’s ashes from the She removed a book from the box: Zane Grey’s Riders of the pie safe and wrapped it in his hunting jacket and stashed it in the Purple Sage. There was Patchett’s name on the check-out card, bottom of the toolbox behind the pickup cab. The rig coughed, printed neatly a dozen or so times. ground out, coughed again, and started. He’d have Patchett “Mr. Patchett read and reread every one of these books,” Ruth throw in a rebuilt starter when he arrived. said. “I’m sure you knew that.” The river was invisible in the September mist. Higher on the Kinneson had known no such thing. He wondered what else ridge, the clouds had dispersed. In the rising sun, the twenty- there might be about Patchett that he didn’t know. After that day, one wind towers lit up as red as Armageddon and the fiery many years ago, when he had inquired about Patchett’s name, blades began to turn like the big and little wheels of Ezekiel’s he had never asked him a personal question. Now, looking at biblical namesake. Well before he reached the hardtop road Patchett’s block printing on the library card, he realized that where Patchett had started all this with his fish worms sign, his friend had not been fleeing anything, including Montpelier Kinneson knew that, for him, Big Sky Country was no solution. and its thousand-and-one regulations, when he’d struck out for “How was Montana?” Juan called to him a minute later as he Montana. Rather, Patchett had been realizing a life-long dream. pulled back into his dooryard. At that moment, Kinneson knew exactly what he must do. “Montana’s all right if you like it,” Kinneson said. “It isn’t the That evening, he summoned the Sanchez brothers to the Kingdom.” farmhouse kitchen. Without preamble, he said that he was Still, Kinneson realized, as he returned Elizabeth’s ashes to prepared to sell them his seven hundred and sixty acres, the barn the pantry, that it was not his beloved green fields or hundred- and livestock, and the machinery at assessed or book value. He year-old sugar bush or six generations of forebears that had would hold the mortgage himself, zero percent interest and no changed his mind about leaving the Kingdom. What brought down payment. After his death, the monthly payments would him back was the wind towers. Looking up at their blades, go to his son and daughter. He would retain the farmhouse and looming high above the county in the mild fall sunlight like two acres for his children and grandchildren to use as a getaway. so many winged, alabaster idols, Kinneson pursed his lips. As Juan and Luis thanked him and said they would keep up the he’d told the Sanchez children, the towers bore watching. It had place, of which Kinneson had no doubt. He enjoyed thinking fallen to him to watch them. That might not be much, but it was of old man Potts’ consternation when he learned that the last the one thing left in his world that he was certain of. working farm in the township was now owned by Mexicans. The brothers returned to their trailers to share the news Howard Frank Mosher’s new novel, God’s Kingdom, will be published this October by with their wives. Immediately, before he had second thoughts, St. Martin’s Press. Kinneson began packing. He wouldn’t need much. His fly rod, deer rifle, winter clothing, and boots. He could bunk in with Matthew Gauvin is a book illustrator living and working in Lyndonville, Vermont.

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Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 35 High-Hanging Fruit Boom and Bust Seed Crops of Conifers

36 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Story and Photos By Susan C. Morse

or portions of two days, I watched a red squirrel clipping and caching cones from the crown of a towering white spruce. It was a bumper crop that season, and thousands of cones hung in bunches throughout the tree. The squirrel seemed intent on visiting every bunch in the upper branches as it feverishly clipped and cast cones down to the forest floor. I was curious and counted all the cones I could find lying beneath the tree. I came up with 235 before I quit, and there were hundreds more that landed on the branches above me. Researchers have found that a hard-working squirrel can clip and store upwards of 12,000 ripe, unopened cones before seedfall. Conifers produce cone crops erratically; there will be years of complete cone failure, years of poor to moderate cone production, and, periodically, years in which a staggering number of cones burden the trees. In such a year, our squirrel’s single white spruce may produce 10,000 or more. Bumper mast years produce such an excess of cones that predators can’t possibly consume them all – guaranteeing the tree opportunities for successful seed dispersal, germination, and recruitment. The relationship between mast crops and the animals that feed upon their seeds is a remarkable, though not fully understood, phenomenon. For example, ecologists have noticed that prior to a bumper cone crop, squirrels may produce an additional litter of young, presumably to benefit from the surfeit of food later on. What tips the squirrels off? One theory suggests that the over-abundance of male pollen cones in the spring cues the squirrels, causing them to increase their reproductive output and hence benefit from the bonanza of cones that will follow by summer’s end. Vertebrate cone seed predators in our region include red squirrels, red-backed voles, cedar waxwings, black-capped and boreal chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, common redpolls, white-throated sparrows, pine grosbeaks, and pine siskins. Of course, others occasionally take part, too. During a period of severe food shortage on Baccalieu Island in Newfoundland, red foxes were seen climbing balsam fir trees and eating the cones. In the West, scrub, stellar, and pinyon jays, along with Clark’s nutcrackers and pine squirrels, collect and cache millions of pine seeds, and grizzly and black bears dig up and consume many of these nutritious, oil-rich food stores. Native peoples throughout North America have used conifer cones in many ways. Seeds were ground up and made into a powder that served as a delicacy when mixed with deer fat. Dried juniper berries were mixed with fish oil or animal fat, as well as with other fruits, such as mountain cranberries, and made into the original PowerBar. Juniper berries were also brewed as a hot beverage. When all else failed, green twigs and cones of spruce were boiled in maple syrup to produce a potent beer. Medicinally, spruce cones were relied upon to cure toothaches, indigestion, diabetes, hyperactivity, fever, pneumonia, arthritis, colds, snake bites, tapeworms, and urinary problems. An all-purpose apothecary for breeding was helpful for contraception, inducing labor, assisting women after childbirth, and curing venereal diseases. Cones come in a variety of shapes, from globose to ovoid to cylindrical; they may have blunt or pointed ends, and they may point up, like the firs, or down, like the spruces, hemlocks, and white pine. Not all cones are seed cones. Seed cones are the female fruits of conifer species, and a typical seed cone’s woody scales cover and protect the ripened ovules underneath them. Seeds are impressed against the inner wall of each scale. In the case of our squirrel’s white spruce, there are two seeds per scale for a total of approximately 130 seeds per cone. Though they don’t look the same, the male reproductive organs that provide pollen are also considered to be cones. They are found on the lower branches of most conifers or on the tips of juniper branches. (Most species of juniper are dioecious, meaning that a particular plant has male or female cone flowers on it, but not both). Male flowers are exquisitely intricate and colorful. What follows is a look at some of our region’s cones.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 37 Creeping Juniper Juniperus horizontalis Draped over rocky outcrops on coastal headlands and cliffs in Maine and southeastern Canada, creeping juniper is a low prostrate shrub that instantly impresses upon us that life is indeed tenacious and heroic at times. The same species bravely occupies exposed serpentine slopes and ridgelines in both eastern and western mountains. The powdery blue- to-blackish berries are the pollinated female cone fruits whose fleshy scales have fused together and are covered with a resinous coating. The slight ridges and bumps that we see on a berry’s otherwise smooth surface are all that can be seen of the woody scales that enclose seeds.

Juniper berries are relished by red squirrels, chipmunks, coyotes, foxes, ruffed grouse, willow ptarmigan, downy woodpeckers, black-capped chickadees, and yellow- rumped warblers and are a preferred food for robins, cedar waxwings, and evening and pine grosbeaks. I have seen creeping juniper seeds in the scat of black bears in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Notice the lovely orange 1 male pollen cones on the foliage tips of the creeping juniper 2 photograph that accompanies this description. 1

Tamarack Larix laricina Eastern tamarack is technically a conifer or evergreen, though it completely loses all of its needles in the fall. Among dark, black spruces the luminous yellow autumn foliage of tamaracks lights up the boreal north woods, as well as New England and New York’s sub-boreal and northern mixed hardwood habitats, where poorly drained wetland soils support their growth. Tamarack and others of the Larix genus boast the most northerly distribution of any conifer on earth. Tamaracks thrive at the tree line in Quebec and in Labrador’s subarctic barrens, where they stand smallish, but as trees, in contrast to the black spruces, willows, and birches, which appear dwarfed and shrub-like, if not flat-out prostrate, in such environments. Erect, immature seed cones are the color of a red Bordeaux wine, and they mature to be pale tan. They are ovoid to globose in shape, more egg-shaped when immature, more round when mature and fully opened. Willow ptarmigan and spruce and ruffed grouse eat tamarack buds and new needle shoots, while red squirrels, robins, purple finches, pine siskins, and crossbills eat the seeds. 2

38 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 White Cedar Thuja occidentalis White cedars clinging to limestone cliffs are picturesque with their upsweeping branches and fan-like sprays of foliage. White cedars are among the Northeast’s longest-lived trees; some specimens range from 500 to 1,000 years old, and deceased trees have been calculated to be nearly 1,900 years old. Also known as arbor vitae, the white cedar has small, attractive oblong cones, especially appealing when they are yellow and immature (as seen in this photo). Tiny seeds inside are dispersed by wind and carried away from the opening cone on two long, lateral wings. Robins, pine siskins, house finches, and common redpolls are known to eat the seeds. Dozens of species of birds and mammals benefit from the protective cover of white cedars. 3

White Spruce Picea glauca White spruce can be found in an extraordinary diversity of northern habitats, from Maine to Labrador’s coastline, across the continent to the Northwest Territories and interior Alaska, north to the tree line. Disjunct populations of unique white spruce “varieties occupy habitats as diverse as South Dakota’s Black Hills, western Wyoming, and scattered locations in Alaska.

The following species of mammals and birds feed on the seeds of the cylindrical, rusty-brown seed cones: squirrels, chipmunks, voles, mice, red crossbills, white-winged crossbills, pine siskins, red-breasted nuthatches, boreal and black-capped chickadees, cedar waxwings, wood and Swainson’s thrushes, pileated, hairy, and downy woodpeckers, evening and pine grosbeaks, purple finches, white-throated sparrows, and mourning doves. Even mallard ducks are known to feed on white spruce seeds. 4

3 Balsam Fir 4 5 Abies balsamea Henry David Thoreau described the dark pyramidal silhouettes of balsam fir as “plumes plucked from the raven’s wing.” Dark and shadowy against the glow of neighboring hardwoods, they are enchanting embodiments of the north woods. Everything is special about this tree: its soft, lustrous aromatic foliage, its striking shape and symmetrical form, the way it punctuates the view at the bend of a wild river.

Balsam fir grows best in cooler, moist organic soils, around wetlands, and climbing to the higher terrain of most northeastern mountains. Erect seed cones are two to four inches long, cylindrical in shape, and purple or dark purplish-green when immature. They are rarely seen unless you look down upon fir crowns from above. Weather, birds, and squirrels pick at the cones and contribute to their natural habit of disintegrating, scale by scale, leaving only the central axis shaft of the cone to be seen after the scales and their seeds have been scattered to the forest floor. 5

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 39 Jack Pine Pinus banksiana Serotinous species, like jack pine and black spruce, have persistent cones that remain on the tree for years. Such cones are sealed shut with a thin film of resin until a forest fire in the understory melts the seal and releases the seeds to repopulate the burned forest. These fire cones open only when the temperature climbs to 122 degrees. Ripe seeds may wait and remain viable within their cones for decades before fire frees them to fall to the earth. Other cones on the same tree may open and shed seeds during hot, dry weather, with the result that both persistent and open cones may be seen on any jack pine or black spruce.

Short, twisted needles, contorted trunks, gnarly branches, and the presence of messy-looking, persistent cones throughout the crown detract from the aesthetic qualities of this species. One of my botanist heroes, Russell Peterson, described the jack pine as “scrubby, scruffy, and terrier-like.” Still, the accompanying photo of jack pine’s lovely male pollen cone flowers (on the left, accompanied by a female seed cone on the right) shows there is beauty, too. The magnificence of this species is the role it plays in its environment. It is the most northerly pine in North America – growing up to the boreal forest and arctic barrens, where it provides extensive vital cover and lichen food habitat for thousands upon thousands of wintering caribou. 6

Black Spruce Picea mariana The sharply columnar spires of black spruce make this my 6 favorite tree. Though I had never met them as a very young 7 child, I nonetheless identified with their boreal muskeg and subarctic habitats, and yearned to be there – sled dogs, caribou, wolves, and all. Black spruce’s ovoid-shaped cones are unusual, not only for their habit of persisting in patient preparation for fire, but also for the stout, curved stems (see photo) that attach the cones to the branches. No doubt these rugged stems help prevent wind, snow, and ice from prematurely detaching the cones. A number of small mammals and birds eat the seeds, pollen cones, new needles, and buds of black spruce, including red squirrels, voles, chipmunks, spruce and ruffed grouse, willow ptarmigan, hairy and downy woodpeckers, black- capped and boreal chickadees, American robins, cedar waxwings, wood thrush, evening grosbeaks, white-throated sparrows, purple finches, pine grosbeaks, pine siskins, and red- and white-winged crossbills. 7

40 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 41 An Old Enemy White pine blister rust, once largely defeated, may be mounting a comeback.

By Joe Rankin

Hollis Prior knew he was in trouble when the bull got between him and the fence. He hadn’t paid much attention to the herd lying in the shade chewing their cud and shaking off flies as he led his crew into the pasture. That is, until one of the men yelled, “Bull!” The others hot-footed it for the fence. Prior climbed a tree, then yelled for one of the crew to go fetch the farmer. For the next four hours he directed his Ribes eradication crew from his perch as the three-year-old Holstein snorted and circled the trunk. “He wouldn’t go away. He just kept bellering and pawing the ground. He wanted to get me,” Prior, now 76, remembers. Livestock was just one of the hazards for the crews fighting one of America’s largely unheralded wars: the War on White Pine Blister Rust, a major disease of five-needle pines.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, Ribes eradication crews scoured several New England states, pulling and spraying the plants in an effort to prevent the spread of white pine blister rust. VT FORESTS, PARKS & RECREATION ARCHIVES

42 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 43 That war lasted for seven decades, cost tens of millions of tion from pines to Ribes plants can travel hundreds of miles dollars, and was fought by thousands of foot soldiers like Prior, on the wind, the basidiospores that carry the infection from who were charged with taking out one of the pathogen’s hosts Ribes to pines can only travel a couple of miles. Plus, the spores – plants in the genus Ribes, which includes gooseberries and that infect pines are somewhat fragile and require cool, wet currants. Like many wars against undesirable plants, it didn’t end conditions to thrive. And the rust can’t survive the winter on in victory. The rust was never completely vanquished. And now, Ribes plants (though it is perennial on pines). more than a century after it was discovered in North America, a You’d think, with those caveats, that white pine blister rust new mutated version of the rust is on the loose in New England would be an easy enemy to defeat. Not so. and eastern Canada. Forest pathologists are worried that it could The rust is native to Asia, so North American pines have no pose a renewed threat to one of the Northeast’s iconic (and most resistance to it. Interestingly, it arrived here via Europe on eastern valuable) trees. Especially as a new generation of homeowners white pine seedlings. The first European settlers were in awe of our and berry producers are once again enthusiastically growing eastern white pines – very tall, straight grained, a plentiful source currants. of easily worked wood – and so they took seeds and seedlings Barbara Schultz, the forest health program manager for back to Europe with them. Two hundred years later, Paul Bunyan Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, said and his ilk had chopped their way through much of eastern North she’s very concerned about the recently detected strain of rust America’s mature pines. And in an attempt to re-establish the that’s attacking newer cultivars of currants thought to be resis- eastern forest, America imported seedlings from Europe, where tant, and what it may mean for the future as the region’s mature highly efficient tree nurseries had been propagating eastern white pines are cut and younger ones, which are more vulnerable to pine for a long time. It was on some of those seedlings that white blister rust, grow in. “I’m also concerned that people are developing a taste for local currants, but Clockwise from top left: A close-up view of the aecia of white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) on a pine branch. might not be aware there’s a downside. I A look at one past research project aimed at finding white pine blister rust resistance in seedlings. Eradication efforts want to get the word out, so growers and lasted for decades and involved federal, state, and local agencies. What the eradication crews were after: currants. consumers understand that the risk to Currant leaf showing signs of white pine blister rust. Inset: Basidiospores seen germinating in stomata, magnified 40x white pines is going to increase wherever with fluorescence. The basidiospores are produced on Ribes plants in late summer or fall and then travel to pines. currants are planted nearby,” she said.

An All-Out Assault White pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) has been called one of the most destructive diseases of five-needle pines in North America. It attacks whitebark, sugar, and limber pines in the West, and white pines here in the East. Its life cycle is complex. Pines are infected by spores – called basidiospores – that are produced on Ribes plants in late summer and fall. The spores ride the winds to nearby pine trees and alight on the needles, where they enter through the stomates, the tree’s pores. Masses of slimy spores grow under the bark, rupturing it. The disease spreads along a branch to the trunk, where it slowly strangles the tree. A different type of spore – called an aeciospore – is produced on infected pines and then windblown and spread back to Ribes plants, where the process starts all over again. But the rust faces several challenges: While spores from one Ribes plant can infect other Ribes plants, a pine cannot transmit the rust to another pine. And although the spores that spread the infec-

44 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 USDA FOREST SERVICE / FORESTRY IMAGES H.J. LARSEN / FORESTRY IMAGES MIKE SCHOMAKER / FORESTRY IMAGES. INSET: USDA FOREST SERVICE / FORESTRY IMAGES pine blister rust hitched a ride to North America. The rust is believed to have arrived in shipments of seedlings from Germany in 1898 and it began spreading west and north. A separate introduction via a nursery in British Columbia was an unwelcome second punch. In 1912, the U.S. government prohibited the importation of pine seedlings. Canada did so two years later. Early on, plant pathologists recognized that the rust’s two- host life cycle could be used against it. Laws were passed pro- hibiting the movement of currants and gooseberries west of the Mississippi and authorizing destruction of domesticated currants. States imposed bans on planting the shrubs. By then, of course, the disease was already widespread, but eradicating it by wiping its alternate host out was seen as doable. What was undertaken was, as one scientist writing in the journal Phytopathology in 2003 described it, “ecological warfare on a biblical scale.” During the Great Depression, the storied Civilian Conservation Corps sent a veritable army of men into the woods to seek out and destroy Ribes plants. States fielded their own crews, with the help of federal money. The eradication campaign far outlasted the Depression. In fact, some states continued eradication work even after the federal government stopped funding the effort in the 1960s. COURTESY OF REX WAITE Hollis Prior joined the Vermont program as a crew chief in 1959 and worked at it until 1966. He has fond memories of the job. “I loved being outdoors. I loved being in the forest,” he said. There was really no pressure or conditions placed on how he

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 45 did the job, except a requirement to map the pine stands that would be targeted, a prerequisite to getting money from the towns to support the work. Some nights, Prior found his dreams sprinkled with currant leaves. Prior was a roving crew leader, and at any given time had crews working all over Vermont. “They started us in the central- western part of the state. They handed me a snakebite kit and said that I would need this.” He didn’t know why, but found out that rattlesnakes (along with the occasional angry bull) were an occupational hazard for Ribes hunters in parts of the Green Mountain State. They learned to step up on a log and look before stepping over, and to throw a rock down in a ravine and listen for the rattles before venturing into it. Still, he saw only two or three dozen rattlers in his years on the job. The work was concentrated mainly around pine stands. Crews, usually made up of six people, would walk through the woods six feet apart, the crew chief following behind, said Prior.

In his early years, they used the infamous herbicide 2,4,5-T (one USDA FOREST SERVICE / FORESTRY IMAGES of the ingredients in Agent Orange), but after questions began to be raised about its health effects, they went back to pulling plants by hand. Some days they might kill 50 or 60 plants, other days thousands. Each team kept a running tally shouted out along the line of march. Most victims were native Ribes species, the “pasture gooseberry” being the most common. But cultivated gooseberries and currants were killed, as well. Sometimes, said Prior, a homeowner would try to keep the Ribes crew talking on one side of the house in an effort to keep them from spotting lovingly tended currant bushes on the other side. Maine. All you could say was they were welcome to try to change Rex Waite joined the war on Ribes in 1965 as a crew chief, the law, but their plants, especially near significant pine stands, leading patrols into the woods of southern Maine, armed with were to be destroyed. Sometimes when you stopped at a farm- topographic maps, flyers outlining the state law giving them house to explain yourself, if you found an older housewife she access to private property, herbicide sprayers, plenty of fly dope, would whisper that she certainly had no currants, but if I went to and what he calls a “Ribe stick” – a walking stick that doubled as the next house.... A few old scores were settled that way.” a tool to poke through the brush looking for plants. Always in the back of a picker’s mind were bears. No one Gooseberries and currants were easy to spot early in the year, wanted to stumble through the brush into a sow with cubs. he said, because they green up earlier than other plants. They Waite said he only saw two in his many years as a crew chief. found plants growing around old cellar holes, where settlers had “One time I was walking a trail when I looked up to see one planted them, and along stone walls, where bird-dropped seeds ambling toward me, totally unaware I was there. I had a clip- found the perfect combination of soils and moisture to thrive. board, my walking stick, and a sheath knife, none of them at “We were trained to check the plants for signs of the spores, as that moment big enough to suit me. With each step I began to well as looking for sick pines,” Waite said. “There we used the clap the stick and clipboard together. The bear stopped, peered classic expression ‘it looks as if a giant had grabbed the trunk my way, and slowly drifted sideways into the brush. By the time and squeezed it.’ Many times you would spot the dead tops of I got to that point I couldn’t see or hear a thing, but I kept mov- the young pines or one dead branch where the disease worked ing at a quick step.” its way in.” The Ribe-pickers, as they called themselves, got a chance to Currant Cultivation see some great views and walk trails and old wagon roads that Currants and gooseberries are present throughout temperate few people trod. Some pickers were extra diligent about check- regions of the northern hemisphere and along the mountain ing around old cellar holes for treasures they could take away. ranges of Central and South America. Some 150 species have Others noted trout streams and bird covers for future reference. been identified. They’ve served as food for humans for prob- OREYOF REX WAITE COURTESY There were also down-sides to the job. In addition to the hordes ably thousands of years and have been cultivated at least since of biting bugs in the springtime, there were “cranky farm dogs” the Renaissance. American Indians used them. Early European to contend with and cranky landowners, as well. settlers imported them from the Old World. “Some people were defiant about their plants,” said Waite, According to histories of currant cultivation, red currants “despite a Maine law making it illegal to have them in southern have been cultivated since the 1400s for food and medicinal

46 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Clockwise from top left: “Rust” seems an appropriate term for this shot of an infected purposes, initially across the area from The Netherlands to the eastern white pine. A log detailing the painstaking work (and the record keeping) done Baltic countries. And it wasn’t long until plant breeders were by eradication crews. A keepsake photo of Rex Waite’s days as a currant eradication working to improve them. Ribes have since been bred for every- crew chief in southern Maine. “The little red arrow by the truck showed the crew which thing from berry size to juice content, cold hardiness to disease way I’d gone,” he explains. resistance. A century-and-a-half ago, U.S. garden catalogs offered multiple varieties and a good percentage of the yards in the U.S. and Canada had at least one currant or gooseberry bush. The fruit was used to make jams and jellies and wine. Then came blister rust, followed by efforts to breed a rust- resistant currant cultivar. By the mid-1930s, a Canadian fruit breeder, A.W. Hunter, had succeeded in incorporating a Siberian currant’s natural resistance into European black currants, according to a fascinating paper on Ribes domestication in the journal Forest Pathology in 2010. But the resistant varieties – Consort, Crusader, Coronet – didn’t have great fruit and were vulnerable to powdery mildew, a major disease of Ribes plants. Other efforts in Europe produced the currant variety Titania, which has its own draw- backs, including poor quality fruit and the fact that the plants don’t lend themselves to machine picking. The search continues even today for a truly great-tasting cultivar that is resistant to rust and a good half-dozen other major diseases and pests. Other scientists tackled the rust problem from the other end, working to breed blister rust-resistant pines. While much of the work has been done on sugar pines and the western white pine, University of Minnesota researchers are working on screening eastern white pines for resistance and trying to figure out how the resistance mechanisms work. The promise of rust-resistant Ribes cultivars was undoubtedly a factor in the eventual dissolution of the Ribes eradication effort, said Dave Struble, the Maine state entomologist. But there were others. After decades of war on Ribes plants, the domesticated European black currants, which were a prolific producer of rust spores, had been largely wiped out. But it was apparent that eradicating native Ribes plants – 15 species are native to the Northeast – was a losing proposi- tion. They could reproduce from long dormant seeds or portions of root left in the ground. The region’s pine stock, moreover, had grown. Mature pines are much less susceptible to the disease and so less of it was seen. In addition, the eradication program was increasingly seen as too expensive. By some estimates, $150 million was spent on eradication. In 1966, the federal government removed the national ban on planting gooseberries and currants, and states in

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 47 the Northeast took separate approaches to the issue. Some main- What’s going to replace it is younger trees, and those are going tained scaled-down eradication programs. Vermont’s secretary to be more susceptible to the rust. We need to encourage disease of state determined in 1998 that any bans on growing Ribes had management. I think it can be managed, but the key is not to be lapsed, though just when is something of a mystery. New York complacent.” designated berry-growing zones where Ribes could be planted. Research has shown that pines under nine feet tall are most New Hampshire relaxed its ban beginning in 1999, allowing the vulnerable. That’s because the spores are more likely to land on planting of resistant gooseberry and currant cultivars with a them and find favorable cool, moist conditions to keep them via- permit. As of 2012, there were 144 towns in Massachusetts that ble until they enter the stomates. A young pine’s shorter branches still prohibit Ribes plantings. also mean a shorter journey from needles to trunk, where the dis- Despite perennial pressure from would-be berry growers, ease can girdle and kill it. Still, trees of all ages can be infected. however, Maine never let its guard down. The eradication pro- It’s too early to say whether the new strain of rust is more gram was abandoned in the 1980s, though the state continues to virulent than the original or just able to infect “rust-resistant” educate private landowners on Ribes eradication techniques if Ribes varieties, said Munck. And given the fact that the mutated they ask. Maine forestry officials successfully fended off repeat- strain was just discovered, it’s likely too early for plant breeders to ed attempts to alter Maine’s statewide ban on the plants. begin work on developing a new line of currants resistant to it. “In the southern part of the state, we have a viable white pine sawmill industry and people were very protective of that Protecting the White Pine resource. And it’s going to take a long time to replace it if we lose The new rust pathogen poses a threat not just to the white it,” said Struble, Maine’s state entomologist. pine industry of the Northeast, but also to the small, until now Struble said one reason that forest pathologists in the state growing, gooseberry and currant business. remained concerned was because all the resistant cultivars “I think it probably spells the end of it, unless they can come had the European black currant, Ribes nigrum, as an ancestor. up with new varieties that are resistant, which I’m sure they’re That species, when infected with the rust, produces prodigious working on. But then there’s probably going to be another one. numbers of spores. Maine forestry officials worried about what New disease strains come on, new pests come on,” said Peter could happen if a resistant variety hybridized with native Ribes Hingston of Cherry Hill Farm, Vermont’s largest producer of and passed that trait along to its offspring. currants and gooseberries, with 18,000 bushes, mostly black currants. The fruit is sold pick-your-own and to wineries and Not So Rust Resistant ice cream and frozen yogurt makers. In the end, the concern seemed prescient, though the new threat Hingston wasn’t surprised at the news of the mutated rust didn’t come from precisely that direction. pathogen. “I thought I had seen it before,” about seven years ago, In 2011, Connecticut researchers announced that white pine on the supposedly resistant currant cultivar Titania he grows. blister rust had been confirmed in a large planting of Titania But no tests were done and an expert at Cornell assured him currant, a variety supposedly resistant to the disease. Titania was resistant. Earlier this year, researchers announced that DNA testing Then, last year, something attacked his currants. “Titania is had confirmed the presence of rust on 17 of 19 Ribes cultivars not a great variety, but it’s always performed reasonably well. sampled in New Hampshire, including four varieties of black But last year it pretty much totally failed on us. The leaves fell currant that had the Cr gene that supposedly conferred resis- off and it just looked awful. We put the machine through and tance. Spores collected from New Hampshire Ribes plants and picked everything we could. But it was pretty pathetic. The pines were then used to infect resistant Ribes cultivars stored fruit looked good, but there was very little of it. You can’t judge in the Canadian Clonal Genebank, proving the existence of a something by one summer, and maybe it’s something else, but I mutated race of the rust. The researchers also said that sampling feel that that’s what that was,” said Hingston. showed that the chances of finding rust-infected white pines He sounds resigned, and often uses the past tense when he near rust-infected Ribes plants in New Hampshire was much talks about his currant and gooseberry crop. “I’ve enjoyed it. I greater than near non-infected Ribes plants. really enjoyed growing them. They’re a nice crop to grow. But “Results from this study suggest that the breakdown of that’s not a very good reason for me to be growing them if there’s Cr-based resistance in Ribes poses a threat to the white pine definite proof that I’m going to do harm to the pine industry. resource and to cultivated Ribes production,” the researchers There’s plenty of alternatives in the fruit world for people to eat.” said in a draft version of a study slated for publication in the Currant growers could probably combat the rust with a regi- journal Plant Disease. men of chemical sprays. But Hingston doesn’t want to engage in Isabel Munck, a plant pathologist with the U.S. Forest what he calls a “high-tech chemical” battle with the rust. For one Service’s State and Private Forestry Program and the lead author thing, he’d have to find a new market. For his pick-your-own on the study, said the confirmation of a mutated pathogen is customers, heavily sprayed berries are “an absolute no-no.” “definitely cause for concern.” While some experts, like Munck, say it’s unlikely that the “It’s a huge deal if it’s ignored,” she added. “Most of the white days of Ribes eradication programs will return, given the rising pine resource is older. Because of that, it’s likely to be harvested. popularity of growing them among homeowners and small

48 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 farmers, Hingston is not too sure. New Hampshire reinstituted Northeast. Together they saw lumber worth, conservatively, $80 its ban on planting Cr-type Ribes after the rust was found. He’s to $100 million. heard talk of a ban in New York. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a Banning cultivation of gooseberries and currants is one total ban comes on again,” Hingston said. thing. Bringing back the expensive and labor-intensive blister rust war of the early- and mid-twentieth century is another. But Making a Difference experts like Struble and surviving Ribe pickers like Waite and Maine, which still bans growing currants and gooseberries in Prior say that the campaign worked. southern regions and black currant varieties statewide, is “in “I’m sure of it,” said Prior. “There was a period of time that a better place than some of our neighbors are, and I don’t take you saw very little infection in the pine and it was very dif- any delight in that and no pride,” said Struble, Maine’s state ficult in the area to find a Ribes plant.” Part of that might have entomologist. Yet, since spores can travel hundreds of miles on been the fact that Vermont’s weather was a little dryer then and the wind, the existence of a mutated strain is “still worrisome” spores didn’t live to make it into the needles, he said, adding he for the state, he said. believes that it was a combination of the two factors. Maine has some 700,000 acres of white pine and is the larg- Struble said that studies done in the 1980s show that Ribes est producer of eastern white pine lumber in the nation, sawing control did cut the incidence of the disease around southern 200 million board feet a year. It has the highest-production Maine white pine stands, and an analysis of the economics white pine sawmill in the U.S. and three of the top five in the showed that the program was worth the cost. The biggest payoff was in areas where white pines were regenerating, and particu- This map of just one town shows how crews worked parcel by parcel to eradicate larly where the regeneration was scattered and every young pine currants. And then returned, sometimes a decade later, to re-eradicate. counted, Struble said. Maine has included Ribes plants in the list of species monitored as part of its Forest Inventory Analysis plots. The data are mined for all sorts of information on tree and shrub species and growth rates. It shows that the “frequency of Ribes inside the blister rust management area and outside it are markedly different,” Struble said. “You can find Ribes everywhere, but when you get to southern Maine the frequency is way down,” showing the efficacy of the eradication and the fact that the state is still benefitting from the efforts of yesteryear. These days the ranks of the old Ribe pickers, who kept an eye out for rattlesnakes, bears, and bulls as they tramped rough ground, eyes peeled for the distinctive leaves of currants and gooseberries, are growing thin. Both Prior and Waite say they’re among the last of their crews. Waite is left with fond memories of his days as a crew chief on Ribes patrol. “I still have my Ribe stick, carved and stamped with my name, sections of shotgun barrel pinned at each end to prevent splitting. I cannot imagine the miles I walked with it. I still have some of my VT FORESTS, PARKS & RECREATION ARCHIVES reports, too, and a couple old signs and posters from the day. It was a great job for someone happier in the woods than in a cubicle somewhere.”

Joe Rankin writes on forestry and nature from his home in central Maine.

This article was supported by Northern Woodlands’ Research and Reporting Fund, established by generous donors.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 49 50 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 A golden Acroneuria stonefly emerges as a winged adult directly from its larval skin. Imitating the life cycles of insects on the river is the mission of fly-fishers. Inset: Caught-and-released fish like this brown trout rarely swallow artificial flies, resulting in greatly reduced mortality. 52 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Story and photo by John Burk

IN THE EARLY MORNING OF OCTOBER 8, 2014, an autumn thunderstorm unleashed winds of more than 100 miles per hour as it crossed the western slopes of Mount Tom, a familiar landmark in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts. Within a matter of minutes, thousands of trees in a mile-long corridor were uprooted or snapped. Fortunately, there were no human fatalities. The damage was a testament to the power of microbursts, which as their name suggests, are small columns of sinking air that produce strong straight-line winds on the ground. They were first identified by noted meteorologist Theodore Fujita in the 1970s, after an analysis of storms that had caused fatal plane crashes. As explained by Mount Washington Observatory staff meteorologist and observer Ryan Knapp, “Thunderstorms have an upward and downward component that most often stays in balance, but occasionally, a stronger upward movement causes an opposing reaction to evolve and ultimately send a small shaft of air to the ground.” The strongest winds, which are at the point where the downdraft reaches the ground, can exceed 100 miles per hour, comparable to a small tornado. The outflow then spreads away from the initial contact point, like water being poured onto a floor, until friction causes the winds to dissipate within a matter of seconds or minutes. Downbursts where the swath of damaging wind is less than 2.5 miles in diameter, as was the case at Mount Tom, are classified as microbursts, while those that impact larger areas are called macrobursts. When a group of storms combine to produce consistent straight-line winds along a front that’s hundreds of miles wide, it’s called a derecho. Because of their rapid formation and short lifespan, all of these phenomena are notoriously difficult to forecast. Microbursts occur with greater frequency than tornadoes, which require more complex weather conditions to form. The orientation of fallen trees is one of the primary clues meteorologists look at when trying to determine the type of storm that struck. Tornado damage produces a swirling pattern indicative of rotating winds, while downburst windfall is linear or radial. It is possible for a storm to produce both straight-line and tornadic winds, which happened during the July 2006 storm that damaged the Wendell State Forest in central Massachusetts. Though microbursts in the Northeast are most likely to occur in interior regions, where mountains and hills pinch the wind into a thinner slice of atmosphere, causing it to accelerate, they can strike anywhere. Microburst storms in 2014 caused damage in areas ranging from Mount Mansfield, Vermont, to the Maine and Massachusetts coasts. In July 1995, straight-line winds in New York’s Adirondack Mountains damaged 125,000 acres of forest and brought back memories of the 1950 derecho that blew down 800,000 acres. The strongest wind gust ever recorded in the U.S. was at the summit of Mount Washington and was of the straight-line variety. Because of its cool climate, the Northeast generally experiences fewer thunderstorms than hotter regions of the country, and therefore has fewer microbursts. The storms in the eastern U.S. are considered wet microbursts, meaning they are associated with rainstorms. In arid regions, especially west of the Rocky Mountains, dry microbursts often occur without accompanying precipitation. Though forest damage often appears catastrophic following microbursts, such disturbances are part of the natural cycle. Some trees that are blown down can still be suitable for lumber, while the remainder can often be salvaged for firewood or chips. And when left undisturbed, the fallen wood, snags, and early successional regrowth will benefit a variety of wildlife that have suffered from the loss of such habitats in recent decades.

A view from the Mount Tom ridgeline shortly after an October 2014 microburst shows clear evidence of the damaging straight-line winds.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 53 By Barbara Mackay ince childhood, I’ve been bringing home unusual rocks, vibrantly colored maple leaves, intact snakeskins. At some un-remembered point, I decided to take a more formal approach and purposefully gather items for study and preservation; afterwards, I’d document and display the collections. While this fit right in to my work as an elementary school teacher, I found collecting and preserving to be an enjoyable hobby in its own right – something that anyone who loves the outdoors could take part in. If you’d like to try your hand at this, you might start by gathering specimens from a

54 NorthernWoodlands / Autumn 2015 A sugar maple display

single tree throughout the year. Fall is a great time to collect colorful tree leaves, and ripe seeds are often available, too. Winter is a good time to sketch a silhouette of the tree, as it’s most plainly visible then. You can also snip a twig with buds on it. In spring, you can photograph the buds as they swell and collect the tree’s flowers when they pop. Summer is a good time to take a bark sample or rubbing and to finish out the collection with some green leaves. Putting these parts together creates a comprehensive picture of a tree – one that’s impossible to see in a single encounter in nature. Here are just a few techniques to turn a tree collection into a permanent display.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 55 Leaves ake leaves directly from a tree – they preserve better than leaves taken from the ground. Place them in a plastic bag between two damp paper towels so that they don’t dry out before you get them home. There are several ways to preserve deciduous leaves, and each method has advantages and disadvantages. One of the simplest is to dry them in the middle of a thick, folded newspaper or inside a big telephone book, making sure the leaves don’t touch each other. Set about 15 pounds on top (heavy books work well) to keep them flat as they dry. Move the leaves to a fresh newspaper each day, and again cover with weight; after three days, a five-pound load is sufficient. Depending on the moisture and thickness of the leaves, they should dry in about a week. This method preserves most of the color of an autumn leaf, but I find that it also causes them to become brittle over time. Sandwiching a leaf between sheets of clear contact paper preserves its true color, creates an attractive ornament when hung in a bright window, and lasts for years, but you lose the tactile aspect and the finer details of the leaf, such as its tiny hairs. Wipe off any dew or moisture and place the leaf front-side down on the sticky side of a piece of contact paper. Gently press on every part of the leaf’s surface to remove any air bubbles. Cover with the second sheet and press again. Immersing a fresh leaf in a glycerin solution makes it soft and supple and easy to examine with a lens. Unfortunately, the original color darkens a bit. A glycerin solution can be made by mixing one part glycerin (available at pharmacies) with two parts water. Leaves must remain submerged for three or four days, with large or thick leaves taking a little longer. After removing them, blot the excess solution from the leaves and set them aside to dry over the next few days. My preferred method of showcasing leaves is to press and dry them, then paint a decoupage mixture on each side. The solution dries clear, preserving the color, but it does make the leaf shiny and less supple. Decoupage is available in craft stores, but I make my own by mixing three parts white school glue with one part water. Generously paint one side and lay the leaf coated side up on wax paper. The next day, coat the other side, laying it on a fresh piece of wax paper. On the third day, I hang the leaf by Twigs and Buds its stem to allow it to fully air-dry. The excess decoupage can be snipped or me, this is a winter activity. I study many buds before away with scissors. selecting a twig to take. Specifically, I look for a good If you want to mount leaves, be sure to include two specimens so both the front representation of terminal and lateral buds, evidence of and back can be shown. If the leaf is large – a compound ash leaf, for example – bud scales, leaf scars, and any special markings such as bend the stem in the middle and fold it up next to the leaflets. lenticels. At home, I cut off and save the bottom inch so the pith can be examined with a lens. In spring, I return to photograph the swollen buds, and do so again just as the buds open. I take a final round of photographs as the nascent leaves unfurl. I make a display card with the pith piece (the bottom inch of the twig that I had cut off earlier) taped to it and a sketch of the pith shape. To display the twig upright as part of your display, tie it onto a poster with a string that reaches around the twig, through holes to the back, where it is tied.

56 NorthernWoodlands / Autumn 2015 Flowers use styrofoam meat trays to carry flowers as I collect them. The non-slip surface supports their structure and helps keep small parts from falling away. Some species require a special approach. To collect birch seeds, for example, set out several trays for the seeds to fall onto. To carry the tray home, place it into a paper bag – flat-bottomed lunch bags are perfect. In many cases, I add the tray directly to my display without pressing or drying the flowers. If you prefer to glue a flower onto a card, Fruit the flower should be pressed (see photo at right) and dried first. like to collect three similar fruit samples from a focus tree. I keep Drying flowers is similar to drying leaves: I use a six- or seven- one intact, showing the fruit as a whole. I open the second sample pound weight so that the flowers are flattened but not crushed. but keep the seeds inside to show their arrangement. I remove a Instead of trying to move the flowers directly, I lift the paper they single seed to display from the third sample. If a seed has interesting are lying on and transfer that to the fresh newspaper. Flowers internal features, I display one opened up, as well. may take up to two weeks to dry. After drying, delicate flowers can be stored in glassine envelopes, which are available at the A display of fruit and seeds really pops when placed on a white paper Post Office or philately supply sources. set in a shallow tray. I attach a photograph of the fruit when fresh, as some seeds, especially berries, change color as they dry. If applicable, White school glue works well to adhere pressed flowers to a card: a display card is included to explain how I use the fruit. For example, I dilute it one to one with water and use an artist’s paintbrush to make jelly with highbush cranberries and flour with acorn meats. dab it onto the paper. Place the flower on top of the glue, cover with a sheet of wax paper, and press with a two- or three-pound To display cones, I collect both an unopened and a fully opened book. A couple of hours is usually enough to ensure that the one. Between the two seasons, I gather seeds from an opened cone flower parts have dried into the glue. before it is devoured by critters and birds.

Bark ark appearance varies considerably between different trees. Collecting and displaying samples is a great way to illustrate this diversity. To include the most detail possible, I preserve bark from three areas: a new branch, an older branch, and the main bole. There are three ways to add bark samples to your collection. One is to collect a piece of actual bark, another is to make a rubbing, and the third is to take a photograph. I like to combine the three. To collect bark, use a heavy hunting or utility knife to slice a representative section from a recently downed or dead tree; if you’re cutting live trees for logs or firewood and want to collect some bark as well, the best time to do this is in early July, when the bark is loosest. Each type of bark is a little different. With black cherry, for instance, the sample might be four by eight inches to include a full “potato chip” curl. Try to include the inner bark on your selections. Bark rubbings can be made with tagboard (on heavily textured barks) or paper (on smoother barks), and a selection of crayons or oil pastels. Combining colors usually lets you produce a close match to the bark. Rub steadily with large strokes. Pressing the paper very slightly into nooks and crannies will help them stand out on the finished product. Photographing bark can be as simple as a close-up snapshot. Taking pictures in both the sun and the shade can sometimes reveal different characteristics of the bark.

A nature collection can be as formal or as casual as your time and interest dictates. For those more serious about the endeavor, plant presses can be purchased or made with plywood and corrugated cardboard. Mounting paper can be acquired from a biological supplier or its substitute picked up at a local store. Display cases can be custom-built. Alternatively, you can keep things simple and just exhibit everything on a small table. However you choose to build and organize your collection, I hope that your connection to nature deepens as you gather, study, preserve, and share your outdoor treasures. Barbara Mackay is a teacher and naturalist who lives in northern Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 57 58 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Learn from the Pros!

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Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 59 The Diminishing Woodpile

By Jonathan Stableford

all should be a placid time. From my porch I pilfer from it in September knowing it will last into November can see ample firewood for this year and because each stack is a little more robust than a month’s needs. I next, but it must be natural when you reach a like coming into the house and saying to my wife, “It’s Veteran’s certain age, with most of the adult responsibilities Day and we are still using the October wood.” And so it goes in behind you, to obsess about the trivial. a normal year, the wood and my smugness in a kind of Doppler Like everyone who heats with wood, I keep a watchful eye on effect, seven piles for nine months and a little left over for the my woodpile. Last winter was exceptional with its streak of bitter following year. nights throughout February and March, day after day without Last year, I must have had an intimation of what was coming a thaw. It turned me from watchful to nervous and raised the because I built our early fires not with wood from the October curtain on a false drama of survival. Yes, a furnace will come on stack but with odd pieces that had accumulated for years near in our house if the wood runs out. But running short is anathema my splitter, wood too chunky or gnarly to stack. The first time for me, with the deep woods just a few hundred yards away and I touched the October pile there were snowflakes in the air, and the knowledge that if I am willing to work hard enough a wood everything looked good into November. Then the sun seemed stove should heat our house all winter. to disappear for three months, and I heard a tremor in my voice There are many ways to go about getting wood in for the one day as I said, “I think we may have to dip into next year’s winter, but mine all involve summer days made for laziness, wood.” I began seeing posts on the local listserv from people sunrises when the ground is already warm and the air filled with looking for wood. One Sunday morning in February I was out the sounds of dog-day cicadas. On Sunday mornings in August, for a run on a remote and snowy road, and I saw two fuel trucks the sounds of chainsaws ring in the hills like church bells. making emergency deliveries. Long ago, I learned the value of dry wood the hard way. We Why obsess when there is no real danger of the house going had turned our house over to a renter who bought his wood so cold? It’s a matter of principle, but perhaps more than principle, it’s late that all he could find was green, and twice that winter I had the feeling of control that motivates me. Despite all the idealism to drive a few hundred miles to clean the chimney. Now we live and the truckloads of wood loaded on hot summer days, despite in the house year-round and it’s tighter, too. We have replaced the afternoons at the splitter and the memory of the soreness in our temperamental wood furnace with an efficient stove, and my back, there is always the possibility of running short. each summer I cut and split the wood we will burn two winters As it turned out, we didn’t. Spring hesitated at the doorstep, down the line. then entered like a prodigal son. On some chilly mornings, Even in a normal winter I obsess on my wood supply. Every rather than start a fire, we put on sweaters and trusted the sun armful I bring into the house diminishes what remains outside, to warm the house. Somewhere in my past I learned that if and there is always a point when I begin to calculate how many you never use more than half of what you have – money, food, days it will take to run out. My goal, of course, is to start the fall toothpaste – you will never run out. But last winter issued a with more wood than I could possibly need, so when I’ve built warning, and from now on I’ll cut and split just a little more the last fire some time in May, there will be a little left to carry firewood. over. Until that day arrives, however, there is always doubt. Our porch runs into a hillside, and under the roof there is room for Jonathan Stableford was an English teacher for 43 years. He and his wife now live seven stacks. I like to think of the near one as October’s wood. I year-round in South Strafford, Vermont.

60 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 CHRIS MAZZARELLA

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 61

FIELD work

By Patrick White

set credits – estimated to be about 200 million credits ($2 At Work Developing Carbon Offsets billion, at current prices) between now and 2020. While the with Finite Carbon requirement applies only to companies doing business in California, the program will issue offset credits to verified Carbon has gotten a bum rap lately. Once called the fundamental forest projects anywhere in the continental U.S. For forestland building block of life, it’s now better known as the thing that’s owners in the Northeast, this creates an opportunity to sell carbon going to destroy the planet. As if this weren’t confusing enough, credits, though it’s an expensive and painstaking process. at the same time carbon is being demonized it’s also an asset That’s where Finite Carbon comes in. “We provide all of – something of value that someone else will pay money for. the capital and all of the expertise,” explains Sean Carney, the This is the world that Finite Carbon works in. As a “developer president of the Pennsylvania-based company and one of its of forest carbon offsets,” the company helps landowners get three co-founders. “It costs a couple hundred thousand dollars paid for the carbon that’s stored in their trees by selling carbon for every project we do to get it off the ground, and it takes a lot credits through the State of California’s cap-and-trade program. of effort to do this work. We provide all of that up front, so it’s a To grossly simplify the backstory, California requires heavily turnkey solution for the landowner. At the end of the day, they polluting companies (think large petroleum and electric com- receive credits and we sell those credits for them. They get paid, panies) to offset their emissions by buying carbon permits from and we get a percentage of the credits that we create for them.” the state or carbon offsets from landowners who have been While there are other types of offsets (like agricultural issued credits for verified projects. Typically, the offsets sell for a methane gas destruction) accepted by the California program, little less than the state permits, so most companies buy as many Finite Carbon works exclusively with forestland. Although the as they can – up to eight percent of a company’s total emissions California program is now just a little over two years old, Carney obligations can be met this way. says there is growing knowledge among larger landholders about Unlike past carbon offset offerings that were voluntary just how it works. The very early adopters of the carbon offset (helping companies to bolster their environmental cred), the marketplace tended to be land trusts, he notes. The New England California Air Resources Board program is compliance-based, Forestry Foundation and the Downeast Lakes Land Trust were which creates a more-or-less guaranteed demand for off- two of the first groups that Finite Carbon worked with. “They were the ones who really wanted to be at the forefront and show Seth Clifford of Fountains Forestry works on the inventory for the Downeast Lakes Land that this could work,” says Carney. “When the Downeast Lakes Trust’s Farm Cove project; developed by Finite Carbon in 2013, it was one of the first Land Trust held up that check and said, ‘Look, money came out of forest carbon projects to be issued offset credits by the California Air Resources Board. these trees for practicing responsible forestry,’ that was a big day.” COURTESY OF FINITE CARBON

62 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Once the program was shown to work, other entities – includ- Finite Carbon’s foresters overseeing everything in conjunction ing large timber investment and publicly traded forestry com- with the local firms. “Quality control is incredibly important. panies – followed suit. In the last two years, Finite Carbon has Because after we finish all of our work, a verifier who has been worked on projects with The Forestland Group, Lyme Timber, approved by the state of California comes out into the field and Molpus Woodlands, and Potlatch, among others. The Forestland does a random sample of all the plots that we measured and Group, for example, had two projects – one on 102,899 acres in goes through them tree by tree,” Carney explains. “Failing on the Adirondacks and another on 141,062 acres in northern New even one tree in a plot can cause you to fail the verification.” Hampshire – successfully registered with the California offset While a typical inventory is capturing just a snapshot in program in 2014. Together, these projects were awarded roughly time, a carbon inventory needs to be a tool that can be used 1.3 million offset credits, which generated nearly $12 million to monitor that forest for a 100-year timeframe – the life of a in revenue. The Passamaquoddy Tribe of Maine is currently carbon project. Plots are mapped, marked with rebar, and will working with Finite Carbon to have a 99,000-acre parcel accepted be monitored regularly for the next century. into the California program, and the expectation is that it, too, It’s not only the carbon identified in the inventory, but also will generate more than one million credits. the management plan that will ultimately determine how many While the payoffs are big, so is the commitment required to offset credits California will issue to a project. “It becomes a get the credits. One of the first steps is to be sure a particular calculation of how much of your growth you’re harvesting. parcel of forestland is suitable for the program. For starters, it The golden rule of a forest carbon project through the state of needs to be big in order to make economic sense. Figure a bare California is that you don’t harvest more than annual growth,” minimum of 2,500 acres, and usually much larger than that, says forester Dylan Jenkins, the company’s vice president of given all of the costs involved. portfolio development. “You can absolutely actively manage The forestland also really has to start with above-average these forestlands. Almost all of our projects are actively stocking levels because part of the initial credits issued will managed for a mix of forest products and forest carbon offsets. essentially be a reward for past behavior. For example, if a forest So the revenue a forest landowner receives [for carbon] can be has 100 tons of carbon per acre and the comparison level is 80 additional. It’s not necessarily alternative revenue.” tons per acre (based on U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Once a project has been completed and verified, the state of Analysis datasets for similar forests), then the landowner will California issues a certain number of compliance offsets (credits), receive credit for 20 tons per acre. based on all of the parameters of the project. These credits There are different ways that forestland owners can earn can then be sold directly to an individual buyer. Here again, offset credits in the California program: Avoided conversion Finite Carbon handles the process for the landowner, which is projects are those that keep land that otherwise might be cleared good because the big buyers are mostly the big oil companies – or developed in forestland. Improved forest management projects, Chevron, BP, Shell, and so on – and negotiating with which are the most common, are based on forest owners multinational corporations is beyond the expertise of most managing in a way that will sequester more carbon than would landowners. “There are some pitfalls you want to avoid, and normally be the case. That’s what creates the offsets. having extensive transactional experience helps us look out for Once the land is deemed suitable, the real work begins, our sellers and protect them,” says Carney. starting with the mother of all inventory jobs. “When a traditional At the moment, Finite Carbon has 18 projects under forester looks at an inventory, they think merchantable product,” development across the U.S. on over 1.3 million acres generating says Carney. “We’re thinking about a merchantable product, over 20 million offsets through 2020. Given the built-in demand too. Except that our merchantable product is carbon.” A carbon coming out of California, Carney expects the number of carbon inventory is focused on biomass, he explains. “That’s everything offset projects to increase. But will the program ever make sense – the roots, the stumps, the tops, the branches, all of that gets for smaller landowners, say those with a 500-acre woodlot? factored in. When we go out to do a measurement, we’re looking “I really hope it will. But since we started in 2009, the cost of to calculate total carbon, not just board feet or cords. So within doing these projects has increased dramatically,” he explains. every plot being sampled we have to measure diameter on every “I would say the cost to verify a project has doubled, and the tree one inch DBH and up; we have to measure the merchantable cost to inventory a project has quadrupled. So things are going tree height and the total tree height on every tree. As you can in the wrong direction, and the minimum size requirements imagine, when you’re in an eastern hardwood forest, this is not just keep going up.” He hopes that, in the future, there may be an easy task at all.” Even standing dead trees are accounted for. different sets of program requirements for different-sized projects, Finite Carbon’s own foresters design the inventory and bid allowing those with smaller parcels to get paid for their carbon. the job out to local forestry firms who have been trained in the nuances and precision of the work, which can take several Wagner Forest Management, Ltd., is pleased to underwrite Northern Woodlands’ series months. Field crews as large as 10 people are not uncommon, with on forest entrepreneurs. www.wagnerforest.com

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 63 Just what is SFI®?

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative is a program with tough stewardship objectives that are practiced and promoted by many landowners in the Northeast and across the country.

Performance of these objectives is certiﬁed by an independent third party. If you have questions or concerns about any forest practices in Maine, New Hampshire, New York or Vermont or if you want information about forestry tours being offered, Please call 1-888-SFI-GOAL (1-888-734-4625)

www.sﬁprogram.org

64 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 ersosimo Lumber Co., Inc. Family owned and operated for 61 years! Our experienced Woodlands Staff is available to assist you in achieving your goals in managing your woodlot. Contact our Woodlands office in Brattleboro, VT today for more information. 1103 Vernon Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301 Tel: (802) 254-4508 Fax: (802) 257-1784 Email: [email protected]

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 65

DISCOVERIES

By Todd McLeish

Extra Genes = Killer Fungus

A scientific investigation into the genetics of 20 fungi that infect trees has turned up an unusual explanation for why one particular fungus is killing plantation- grown poplars. According to Richard Hamelin, a forestry professor at the University of British Columbia, the fungus Mycosphaerella populorum has co-evolved

with wild poplars, and the wild trees and LEIF RICHARDSON fungus have come to a sort of truce. The fungus causes round black spots on the leaves in mid-summer, and the leaves fall off a little earlier in the fall than usual, but the trees in natural settings are other- each parent, and it works the same way Bee foraging on turtlehead (Chelone glabra). wise unaffected. But in the hybrid poplars with fungi,” Hamelin explained. “But the typically grown in plantations, the fungus surprising thing we found with this patho- tissue is unusual,” he said. “Most fungi are infects the stems and woody tissue, which gen is that the extra genes in the stem- beneficial; the ability to kill living plants is often leads to the tree’s death. Hamelin infecting form were inherited through a an exception. We’re trying to understand said that’s because the fungus that infects horizontal gene transfer in a way we don’t the genetic makeup that kills trees.” the stems has “extra genes.” yet understand.” Mycosphaerella populorum lives exclu- When Hamelin sequenced the genome He speculates that as leaves fall to the sively on poplars, but its close relatives of the fungus attacking the stems of plan- ground, microbes and other organisms use wheat and bananas as host plants, tation trees, he found genes that are not that live nearby could cause a gene trans- while other relatives cause pine blight in the variety that only affects the leaves. fer. “It’s probably rare, but it appears to and sudden oak death. “We’re still on the And when he analyzed those extra genes, be more common than we ever thought,” lookout for what is causing the other fungi he discovered that they were not inherited he said. to become tree killers,” he said, “and we’re from close relatives but from a completely Hamelin said that as scientists sequence finding some pretty exciting stuff.” unrelated species. the genomes of more and more species, “The way human genes are inherited, they are finding it to be common that your progeny get half their genes from some organisms tested have more genes Chemicals That Bees Need than others of the same species. And those extra genes are frequently acquired We hear a great deal in the news about the by horizontal gene transfer from an unre- decline of managed honeybee colonies, lated species. but little has been reported about the cri- What those extra genes do is usually sis facing native bumblebees. According to unknown, but Hamelin believes that the Leif Richardson, a University of Vermont extra genes in the poplar fungus pro- postdoctoral researcher, more than a third duce a toxin that affects the tree tissue. of North America’s 50 bumblebee species “The genes we found code for secondary are considered rare or endangered, and metabolites, which are typically toxin pro- some of these species have experienced ducers,” he said. “We haven’t yet identified rapid declines in recent years. what the toxin does, but that will be our Richardson focuses his research on next step.” how naturally produced chemicals in nec- The discovery of the extra genes in the tar and pollen affect bumblebees. He said RICHARD HAMELIN poplar fungus was somewhat surprising. that plants produce these chemicals in Hamelin and his research team set out to their leaves and other tissues as a defense compare the genomes of various fungi that against herbivory. And he hypothesized infect trees to determine what genetic fac- that the chemicals may benefit pollinators Poplar tree with a stem canker caused by Mycosphaerella tor turns a fungus into a tree-killer. “The like bumblebees by providing an “anti- populorum. ability of a fungus to infect and kill plant parasite benefit.”

66 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Parasites have been implicated as benefits and costs.” contributing to some bee declines, so Based on his results and those of follow- Richardson inoculated newly emerged up studies, Richardson says he may come worker bees with a common parasite, up with recommendations for how farmers Crithidia bombi, that lives in the gut of and land managers can expose bees to bumblebees, making the bees sick. He more of the beneficial chemicals and less then fed half of the bees sugar-water laced of the harmful ones. “It may be that some with one of eight naturally occurring bees are eating health food and others are chemicals found in plant nectar, while the eating more junk food,” he said. other half was fed a control diet. A week later, he counted the number of parasite cells in the bees and found that four of the Technology Tells the Tale chemicals – thymol from basswood tree nectar, catalpol from turtlehead flowers, For decades it was hypothesized that and nicotine and anabasine from plants blackpoll warblers, tiny black-and-white in the tobacco family – had a strong nega- songbirds that breed in boreal forests and tive effect on the parasite. The other four winter in South America, migrate south K.P. MCFARLAND chemicals also had a negative effect on entirely offshore in a nonstop flight. Only the parasites, but not to the point of being recently have technological advancements statistically significant. allowed that hypothesis to be tested and “We demonstrated pretty conclusively confirmed. A blackpoll fitted with its “backpack” and ready for that bees can benefit from an enhanced “Blackpolls had been singled out as a migration. diet of these nectar and pollen chemi- migratory champion because this feat is so cals,” said Richardson. “We found that the unbelievable,” said Bill DeLuca, an ecolo- annual mortality occurs,” he said. “So chemicals had no effect on the survival of gist at the University of Massachusetts at to compensate, they may just fly over the bees, and the bees getting the chemi- Amherst. “There were a number of papers the ocean to get the journey over as cals had a lower parasite load.” that provided indirect evidence that it was quickly as possible. Migrating over land But his results made him wonder true, but it had been debated for years.” has its own problems: hawks, housecats, whether there were any longer-term con- Recent advances in geolocator tech- development at their stopover sites. Both sequences of consuming the chemicals, nology enabled DeLuca and colleagues routes are risky.” especially whether there were negative from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies Besides, DeLuca said, blackpolls are implications for bee reproduction. So and elsewhere to capture 40 blackpolls in physically able to complete the two- or he did another experiment focusing on Vermont and Nova Scotia in 2013 and three-day flight. The birds double their anabasine, the chemical that had the attach dime-sized devices to the birds’ weight in fat before departing and are strongest effect in the first experiment. backs to identify the routes they take dur- highly efficient fliers. Once they are navi- This time he found that the chemical had ing migration. When the birds returned gating their way south, they reduce the no effect on the lifespan of the bees, but north the next year, five of them were size of some of the organs they are not the bees did start laying eggs two days recaptured and were found to have flown using, like their digestive systems. And later than those not fed the chemical. offshore for about 1,500 miles to Puerto there is evidence that other physiological “Is a two-day delay a problem?” Rico, Cuba, and the Greater Antilles before adaptations occur to help the birds maxi- Richardson wondered. “We’re unsure. It continuing on to South America. mize their oxygen intake; this enables may depend on other factors, like available “Some of them flew really far offshore, them to fly at higher altitudes than other pollination resources and environmental so they’re making a full-on commitment,” songbirds. conditions.” DeLuca said. “Once they’re out there, Now that the migratory pathway of “But these bumblebees are probably they’re either going to make it or they’re blackpolls from the Northeast is known, exposed to much higher concentrations not. They can’t just jump back to the coast DeLuca wants to use the same technology and diversities of plant chemicals than if they’re in trouble.” to document the route taken by blackpolls those tested in our lab experiment,” he Because a water landing would be fatal that breed in Alaska and western Canada. added. “So we probably underestimated to the birds, the logical question is why Based on records of blackpoll sightings the effects of the chemicals. We fed them do they take the risk of flying over water during the migration season, it is believed only one chemical, but in the life of a rather than traveling via a land route like that those birds fly across the continent bumblebee colony, they’re consuming a most songbirds? No one really knows, but and join their eastern counterparts in lot of pollen and nectar and eating a DeLuca has a guess. migrating south over the Atlantic. DeLuca number of plant chemicals from differ- “Migration, for most birds, is the riski- intends to find out if that is true or if they ent sources, so there could be even more est time of the year, when most of the use a different migratory strategy.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 67 68 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 69 THE OVERSTORY

Story by Virginia Barlow Illustrations by Adelaide Tyrol

Mountain ash Sorbus americana

Our front yard is home to the most godawful-looking mountain ash on earth. It’s been pecked by sapsuckers for most of the past 20 years and, aside from a bustle of green shoots low on the trunk, is either dead or half-dead. Well-intentioned pruning has only made the situation worse. Why is it still standing? Every time I’m about to reach for the chainsaw, it comes up with some redeeming feature: bees love the flowers, birds eat the fruits, the leaves are pretty, the birdfeeders it holds are close to the house. Plus, a visitor just last week reminded me of the widely held belief that a rowan tree in the yard brings good luck. Mountain ashes thrive in the boreal forest’s rocky slopes at high elevations or bordering cold wetlands. Among goldthread, partridge berry, starflower, and bunchberry – wherever the song of the white throated sparrow is heard – that’s where mountain ash is at its best. They’re compact trees, usually 20 feet high or so, and can be lovely, especially in autumn when yellow leaves complement the bright orange-red of many clusters of berries. That’s why mountain ash is known as the holly of the north woods. The pinnately compound leaves have 13 to 17 leaflets, and it is this superficial similarity to the ashes that led to its name. True ashes are in the olive family and have opposite compound leaves. The mountain ash is in the rose family; it has alternate leaves with lots more leaflets, and the leaflets have sharply toothed margins. Technically, the fruits are pomes, not berries, despite the fact that at about three-six- teenths of an inch in diameter, they look more like berries than apples to most of us. There are well over a hundred species in the genus Sorbus. They grow worldwide in temperate regions and are most diverse in the mountains of western China. In North America, they are restricted to cooler regions: eastern Canada and the northeastern states, plus high in the Appalachians south to Georgia. In yards and gardens, especially in warmer climes, sapsuckers are not their only problem. This little tree is often short- lived due to fire blight, mildew, and boring insects. They don’t grow well in urban areas if the air is polluted. The name rowan was originally given to a European species but now is used for many other Sorbuses. Nobody knows exactly how many Sorbus species exist because its members hybridize freely and sometimes reproduce without fertilization. This occurs in other plants, too, and is called apomixis. It’s when viable seeds are produced without pollen. Unlike most other plants, Sorbus species often cross with species in other genera. The shipova, a Pyrus (pear)-Sorbus cross, for instance, has been traced back to the early 1600s.

70 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Though the wood is light, soft, weak, and of limited commercial value, it is strong enough to be used for walking sticks, where the good luck it brings is believed to out- weigh its frailty. How this little tree gained a reputation for warding off evil is lost in the mist of time, but it spans many cultures as well as many eras. Perhaps it began when someone saw that the fruits are marked at the base with a pentagram, believed to be a sign of protection. In olden days in England, it was thought that bewitched horses could only be controlled with a whip made of rowan, and pieces of the wood were tacked over doors – to the stable, the cattle byre, to the head of the bed, and so forth – as charms to ward off evil spirits. In Finland, rowans were planted in the yard in the belief that lightning never strikes near the tree. It’s not just humans that seem to revere mountain ash. In summer, our tree is often full of wasps, butterflies, beetles, flies, ants, and opportunistic hummingbirds, all seeking out the newest, most productive sapsucker wells. When the sapsuckers return in May before most flowers have opened, hummingbirds follow them to filch sap and to pick off any small insects that are doing the same thing. The creamy white flowers open in May, after the leaves are out, and are borne in beautiful dense clusters about three inches across. Bees of all kinds gather both nectar and pollen. Deer, moose, and snowshoe hare browse the leaves, twigs, and bark. Though the fruits aren’t a first choice for many birds, they stay on the tree all winter and by spring have been eaten by grouse, robins, brown thrashers, wild turkeys, catbirds, waxwings, grosbeaks, and bluebirds. Squirrels, other small rodents, and bears also eat the fruits. People have used the fruits over the years, as well, although they are very acidic when raw. They contain anti-oxidants, iron, and vitamin C, and have been used as a gargle for sore throats and to treat malaria and scurvy. The fruits are said to make a reasonably good wine, though waiting to harvest the pomes till after a hard frost reduces the sourness. The jelly that can be made from them is best used with meat. Keeping evil spirits at bay may still be the best human use for mountain ash. In addition to having to worry about bad luck and lightning strikes if we cut down our ugly specimen, the sapsuckers will no doubt redirect their efforts to the nice apple tree that’s nearby.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 71 72 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 TRICKS of the trade

Story and Photos by Brett R. McLeod

Chainsaw Carving 101 1 2

Teaching at a forestry school, I’ve noticed there are certain hobbies that students naturally gravitate towards. I’m not talking about Netflix marathons or dorm room design parties; I’m talking axe throwing and chainsaw carving. While axe throwing might be thought of as a big game of darts, chainsaw carving is akin to painting with a 10-pound motorized paintbrush. Like most art, chainsaw carving is far more difficult than it appears. Invariably, people want to make their first carving a bear or some other fairly complicated woodland creature. I would recommend beginning by carving a simple chair, a project that introduces and helps to develop the same skills – such as bore-cutting, ripping, and judging the depth of cuts – that are needed for more complicated carving. Better yet, this project can be done without the use of specialized carving bars and micro-pitch chain. 3 4 Begin by selecting a three-foot log section, at least 12 inches in diameter. Make sure the ends are cut squarely and stand the log on end. The first cuts will form the legs and will allow you to practice angled cuts and notching to the proper depth. In this case, the goal is to make a “V” that is approximately four inches deep. 1 Keeping the same angle, cut parallel to your V-notch to form the legs. Make sure the legs are at least a couple inches thick for stability, and then cut from the outside of the log in, meeting the angled leg cut. 2 The outside legs of the chair can be dressed up with a simple notch cut. With the legs complete, you can begin cutting the chair back. As you make this bore-cut, it is essential that you use the lower corner of the chainsaw bar, which is the “attack” portion of the bar. Never try to bore-cut with the top corner of the bar – the saw will kick back! 5 6 Bore entirely through the log, and continue cutting at a slight angle to form a curved seat back. 3 The process of cutting with the grain is known as ripping. Before making the final cut, check to make sure your bore-cut is at an even height on both sides of the stump. If not, adjust as necessary before making the final cut from at the front of the log. 4 If you’ve matched up your cuts, the chair will break away from the stump with the final seat cut – voilà, you’ve got a chair! 5 This same procedure can be used to make larger seats, too. 6 No matter the complexity of the project, the keys to successful chainsaw carving are a sharp chain and the ability to envision where each cut will intersect the next.

Brett R. McLeod is an associate professor of Forestry & Natural Resources at Paul Smith’s College and the author of The Woodland Homestead: How to Make Your Land More Productive and Live More Self-Sufficiently in the Woods (Storey Publishing, 2015).

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 73 Ad Index A. Johnson Company ...... 35 Adelaide Tyrol Art Shows ...... 51 Allard Lumber Company ...... 65 Bay State Forestry Services ...... 64 Berry, Dunn, McNeil, & Parker ...... 41 Brattleboro Museum...... 8 Britton Lumber Co., Inc...... 72 Catskill Forest Association, Inc...... 10 Cersosimo Lumber Co., Inc...... 65 Cersosimo Lumber Mill ...... 69 Champlain Hardwoods ...... 59 Champlain Valley Equipment ...... 35 Classifieds ...... 34 Colligan Law ...... 58 Columbia Forest Products ...... 59 Consulting Foresters ...... 26 Econoburn ...... back cover F&W Forestry ...... 50 Forecon ...... 50 Fountains Forestry...... 74 Fountains Real Estate ...... 41 Gagnon Lumber Inc...... 41 Garland Mill Timberframes ...... 72 Greenleaf Forestry ...... 24 Hollow Hill Forestry, LLC ...... 74 Hull Forest Products...... 68 Itasca Greenhouse ...... 64 Land & Mowing Solutions, LLC ...... 68 LandVest Realty ...... inside back cover LandVest, Inc...... 72 Lashway Lumber ...... 12 Lyme Timber ...... 58 Maine Forest Service...... 35 McNeil Generating...... 58 Meadowsend ...... 69 N.E.W.T.: Northeast Woodland Training ..... 59 NE Forestry Consultants, Inc...... 12 NE Wood Pellet ...... 50 NEFF ...... 24 Northern Forest Land for Sale ...... 64 Northland Forest Products ...... 25 Oesco, Inc...... 12 Scotland Hardwoods...... 10 Scythe Supply, Inc...... 74 Sustainable Forestry Initiative ...... 64 SWOAM ...... 68 Tarm USA, Inc...... 69 The Taylor-Palmer Agency, Inc...... 10 Thompson School, UNH ...... 25 Timberhomes, LLC ...... 65 Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation ....10 Vermont Woodlands Association ...... 65 VWACCF...... 78 Walden Hill Company ...... 24 Wells River Savings Bank ...... 12 Winterwood Timber Frames ...... 74 Woodwise Land, Inc...... 72 Yankee Farm Credit ...... 50

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74 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 up COUNTRY

By Robert Kimber

Country Mice, City Mice

Rita and I are country mice, through and through. So strong is our attachment to our old farmhouse and to this little upland valley in western Maine that Rita once said, “I think this place has gotten into my DNA.” “I’m sure it has,” I said, in full agreement with her metaphor, if dubious of its biological accuracy. But, that said, we are not above making occasional visits to the city. If we’re feeling bold and feisty enough, we’ll even take on New York, though not too often. Boston is more our speed. For one thing, it’s a lot closer, just three-and-a-half or four hours by car. For another, it’s the unofficial capital of New England, maybe not politically but spiritually. Don’t people in the north- ernmost reaches of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire all the world has been the work of many hands over many decades, root for the Red Sox? Bostonians may be city people, but they’re but considerable credit for shaping the arboretum as a scientific still New Englanders. We speak just slightly different dialects of institution as well as a park for the education and enjoyment of the same language. And despite the crop of skyscrapers Boston the public must go to its first director, Charles Sprague Sargent. has sprouted over the last several decades, it still feels more Collaborating with Frederick Law Olmsted, Sargent chose to orga- like a big village than any other megalopolis I know. It’s got the nize the plantings by family and genus. “It is hoped,” he said, “that Charles River and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace such an arrangement, while avoiding the stiff and formal lines of of parks winding through it. It has lots of ponds. It has cobble- the conventional botanic garden, will facilitate the comprehensive stones on Beacon Hill and streets that meander every which study of the collections, both in their scientific and picturesque way. It also has old friends of ours who are roughly our age, aspects.” Over the next 54 years of his directorship, he had the which makes them old friends indeed. satisfaction of seeing those hopes realized many times over. In Aesop’s fable of the country mouse and the city mouse A second case in point: The next morning we took a bus – and in the many adaptations of it ever since – the country downtown to the Museum of Fine Art, where Rita and I had mouse goes to the city, drawn by the promise of fancy foods not been since long before the new Art of the Americas wing his city cousin claims are far tastier than any rural fare. Though opened in 2010. Once there, we headed straight for an exhibit we grant there’s some good eating to be had in cities, venison of photos by the great African American photographer Gordon tenderloin from the Maine woods and fresh kale from Rita’s Parks. This collection records Parks’ return to his home town of garden can hold their own against anything an urban five-star Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1950 to find and photograph 11 classmates restaurant can cook up; so what we’re looking for on our city with whom he had graduated from the segregated Plaza School visits is a different kind of nourishment, a connection with the in 1923. If Karen Haas, a curator at the MFA, had not happened energy and imagination and productivity that critical masses of across a single photo by Parks showing a young couple outside people engaged in shared pursuits can generate, whether in the a movie theater, she might not have been moved to contact the arts, sciences, or whatever. Gordon Parks Foundation, which had the other 42 photos from A case in point: On our last Boston visit, we stayed with a the series that Parks had shot on that assignment for Life maga- young couple who live in Jamaica Plain just a block away from zine. Never published in Life or shown anywhere else in Parks’ Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. After we’d arrived on a Friday lifetime, this collection is but one of the thousands of treasures afternoon, we walked over there and wandered around until dark the staff of the MFA has found and made available to us all. Get among all the exotic trees on the arboretum’s 281 acres. Despite enough talented, public-spirited city mice together and these are the distant origins of those trees, the genera of many of them the kinds of wonders they can work. are familiar to any visitor from our northern forest: Acer, Tsuga, I’m happy to report, too, that the restaurant in the spacious Pinus, Quercus. I’ve rarely, if ever, met a tree I didn’t like, so I take atrium of the new wing serves up a superb lunch, and unlike the particular pleasure in making the acquaintance of Japanese or mouse cousins in Aesop’s fable, we could enjoy our meal in peace Chinese or Korean cousins to our own maples, hemlocks, pines, without being chased away from our food by a pair of dogs. and oaks, seeing how much alike yet also how different they are. The creation of this extraordinary living collection of some Robert Kimber has written often for outdoor and environmental magazines. He lives 3,800 primarily woody plants from temperate regions around in Temple, Maine.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 75 wood LIT

Apples of Uncommon Character: unusual attribute. “The apple has one of the In the end, of course, the best thing about largest genomes of any food plant, and it’s full of apples is that you get to eat them. Besides letting 123 Heirlooms, Modern Classics, recessive genes and genetic switches. In every you know which ones are best for eating fresh, and Little-Known Wonders apple seed, the genetic deck is reshuffled, new Jacobsen includes over 20 creative and tasty By Rowan Jacobsen combinations of genes interact in mysterious recipes. Plus, he doesn’t believe in peeling, so Bloomsbury, New York, 2014 ways.…What this means is that apples do not there’s a big draw. come true from seed,” writes Jacobsen. The vast Earlier I called this a beautiful book, and that Apples are so common that it is easy to mistake majority of seeds lead to the likes of crab apple deserves emphasis. Jacobsen’s writing is bright them for commonplace. In Apples of Uncommon trees. When you find a winner, the only way to and lively, and Clare Barboza’s striking photo- Character: 123 Heirlooms, Modern Classics, and reproduce the same apple is by grafting. graphs complement it perfectly. Every turn of the Little-Known Wonders, Rowan Jacobsen enter- In our time, we have both universities with page presents yet another interesting way to look tainingly proves just the opposite. For more than apple breeding programs that rely on DNA testing at an apple. two centuries, thousands of varieties of apples to determine which seedlings are the most prom- Tom McKone have sustained homesteads across the continent, ising progenitors and “apple sleuths” who track only to dwindle over time to a handful of varieties down rare or ancient apple varieties. Jacobsen Mushroom Guides for that were easy to store, easy to transport, and appreciates the work of both. easy on the eyes. Fortunately, we are in the midst At the heart of this beautiful book, though, are Field and Forest of an apple renaissance and, Jacobsen tells us, the apples themselves. He includes useful infor- Skyhorse Publishing, New York “we have more varieties of extraordinary apples mation about each variety, including its aliases, within reach…than any people who have come origin, appearance, flavor, texture, season, and North American fields and forests harbor myco- before us.” uses. And there are great stories that bring out the logical treasures, but the good edibles constitute For Jacobsen, a well-established writer with personality of each variety. “Like Forrest Gump, a tiny fraction of the myriad mushroom species. A several books and two James Beard Awards for the Newtown Pippin has managed to intersect good field guide is a reliable roadmap to the wild excellence in food writing behind him, the moment with an improbable number of historic person- world of mushrooms, helping the forager confi- of apple enlightenment came a decade ago when ages and places over the course of its career, dently distinguish the deadly from the delicious. he and his wife bought an 1840s farmhouse in and has shown a knack for effortless success The most well researched, thorough, time- Calais, Vermont, with an old orchard beside it. at whatever it was called upon to do . . ..” I have tested guides are Gary Lincoff’s The National Having previously lost interest in the apples gener- been re-reading the info and stories about the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American ally available in supermarkets, he was intrigued by apples I am eating. The book has a slight bias in Mushrooms [Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, the unusual trees he now owned: favor of apples from the Northeast, which is fine 1981] and David Aurora’s Mushrooms Demystified “But the apples hanging in these trees didn’t with me. [Ten Speed Press, 1986]. Lincoff’s The Complete look like any I’d ever seen in a store. In one tree, Even before you reach Jacobsen’s conclusion Mushroom Hunter [Quarry Books, 2010] is more they were large, round, and striped red and yellow – “There has never been a better moment to be an accessible and equally scientifically rigorous, with like little beach balls. In another, they were brown apple geek in America” – it is obvious. Interested sidebars that describe the sociocultural dimen- and fuzzy, more like miniature Asian pears than in planting your own orchard? He lists resources sions of mushrooming and in-depth chapters what I thought an apple was supposed to be. I for buying hundreds of different varieties. The on poisonous, medicinal, and psychotherapeutic tried one. It was strangely dry, yet very sweet, “portraits” of the apples will help you decide which mushrooms. crunchy, and nutty….” trees you may want to get. Want just the apple and Adding to these standards are several recent Unlike most fruit trees, apples can flourish not the tree? He lists mail-order options for apples offerings from Skyhorse Publishing designed to even when uncared for, so many older trees are you may not find near home. Looking for hard help mycophiles find and identify the safest and still around and productive. That’s not the only cider? An apple festival? He lists those, too. most delectable species. Edible Mushrooms, by

76 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 Last Day on Earth

If it’s the title of a movie you expect everything to become important—a kiss, a shrug, a glass of wine, a walk with the dog.

But if the day is real, life is only as significant as yesterday—the kiss hurried, the shrug forgotten, and now,

on the path by the river, you don’t notice the sky darkening beyond the pines because Barbro Forsberg and Stefan Lindberg, is a stand- Holmberg and Hans Marklund, emphasizes safety you’re imagining what you’ll say at dinner, out field guide for the forager interested in learn- and clarity while providing tips on picking, cleaning to find and safely enjoy the culinary gems of ing, preparing, and preserving each species. This swirling the wine in your glass. the mushroom world. All of the major groups of book is conveniently sized for use in the field You don’t notice the birds growing silent or the cold towers of clouds moving in, charismatic, gourmet species are profiled through and has a classification system that ranks edible clear writing and vivid photography that facilitates mushrooms by their risk of confusion with other because you’re explaining how lovely confident mushroom identification. One gets the edible, inedible, mildly poisonous, and danger- and cool it was in the woods. And the dog sense that the authors, from the mycophilic ously poisonous species. This book contains had stopped limping!—she seemed country of Sweden, have been foraging since plenty of useful photographs, featuring specimens childhood. Forsberg and Lindberg’s passion for of each species at different maturity levels as well her old self again, sniffing the air and alert, mushroom hunting comes across in the colorful as cross-sectional images. For more experienced the way dogs are to whatever we can’t see. And I was happy, you hear yourself saying, stories and sensory descriptions that introduce mushroom hunters looking to branch out, this each species – the cauliflower mushroom “smells book provides detailed direction on identifying because it felt as if I’d been allowed of pine and turpentine,” and the aroma of fresh gilled mushrooms, including the Russula (brittle- chanterelles is “like a full-bodied aftershave.” to choose my last day on earth, gill) and Lactarius (milk-cap) species – favorites and this was the one I chose. Lindberg’s wide-angle photographs of the wet in eastern European nations that are often over- woods are so vivid you can almost smell the looked by North American hunters. LAWRENCE RAAB, from Mistaking Each Other mycelium, providing a visceral feel for the proper Readers should note that these four guides for Ghosts (Tupelo Press, 2015) habitat. Edible Mushrooms was so engaging that, from Skyhorse Publishing are written by European after reading it, I promptly grabbed a basket and authors. Nearly all of the species they cover fruit knife and headed to the nearest woodland in in North American fields and forests, as well, but pursuit of morels. Lost in the Woods: foragers from this continent should be aware Mushrooming Without Fear and Mushrooming of some important distinctions. The Leccinum A Photographic Fantasy With Confidence, both by Alexander Schwab, By Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick (scaber stalk bolete) species profiled in all four provide beginning and intermediate foragers with Carl R. Sams II Photography, 2004 of these Skyhorse field guides, though widely a set of ground rules for safe and rewarding consumed as a staple throughout Europe, have mushroom hunting. The rules, including “Never, Lost in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy is an been reported to cause gastrointestinal distress never take a mushroom with gills!” and “Never, award-winning children’s picture book that is among North American foragers. Only Forsberg never eat a wild mushroom raw” may be over- sure to delight young and old. The photographs broad but are useful basic guidelines. These and Lindberg’s Edible Mushrooms explicitly notes will enthrall young children, while adults hoping books feature checklists and photographs to the risks this genus – notoriously difficult to iden- to nurture young nature enthusiasts will consider ensure proper identification, as well as descrip- tify at the species level – may pose to mushroom this book a lucky find. tions of notable look-alikes of the edible species. hunters in North America. Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick, internationally Both of Schwab’s guides have close-up photo- There is no substitute for a foray with an recognized nature photographers, skillfully tell the graphs that distinguish gills, ridges, tubes (pores), expert, and books should not be used as the sole story of a newborn fawn left alone by his mother and spines (teeth). By sticking to the species with basis for identifying a gourmet mushroom. Still, a at the “edge of the meadow where the trees start ridges, pores, teeth, or the “mavericks” such as good field guide is indispensable. Throw one of the forest.” Various creatures of the forest, each the giant puffball or black trumpet, beginning for- these books in your basket, put on your forager’s stunningly photographed, assume the fawn is lost agers can safely hunt for the table while avoiding eyes, and head to the nearest forest today – tasty and offer their advice. The fawn assures them the possibility of deadly look-alikes. treasures await the patient and prudent hunter. he is not lost, but that, “Mama said to wait, to The Pocket Guide to Wild Mushrooms, by Pelle Ari Rockland-Miller wait right here.” He stretches his legs as Mama

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 77 advised, “to make them strong,” but his courage Bear-ly There sounds of the bear breaking into his family’s grain begins to falter as Mama doesn’t return. By Rebekah Raye shed. Movement in the house frightens the bear When the sounds of voices come into the for- Tilbury House, Thomaston, Maine, 2009 back into the woods and Charlie finds out the next est, the fawn nestles into the tall grass, remem- day that it has been visiting the neighborhood bird bering his mother’s warning to “lie still, oooh so Bear-ly There is a Moonbeam Award-winning feeders and compost piles. Neighbors don’t know very still.” A well-camouflaged tree frog congratu- book by Maine children’s author and illustrator what to do and some talk of shooting the bear. lates the fawn for hiding so well and eventually a Rebekah Raye. In this book, Raye deftly blends Charlie does research to learn how to keep the saw-whet owl warns of someone approaching. rich, informative text on black bears with vibrant, bear away from people and in the woods – from The fawn is relieved to discover that it is his detailed illustrations. safely storing grain, birdseed, and garbage, to mother who has returned; as she licks him in Bear-ly There begins in the spring as the sun is cleaning barbecue grills after use. greeting she explains her absence was because “melting patches of crusty snow on the hillside,” Charlie’s family moves the grain into the cellar he is “a newborn, born without a scent...I have to and a bear is coming out of hibernation. The full- and makes a plan in the event the bear comes leave so trouble’s nose cannot find you.” As the page illustration accompanying this first page back. The bear does return to the storage shed, fawn spends his days getting stronger, he meets shows the friendly face of a huge black bear. The but is successfully frightened away by the clanging a chickadee getting ready to fledge and a young bear pulls himself out of his den and promptly of Charlie’s cymbals, the banging of mom’s pots, raccoon who is practicing tree climbing. Finally, treats himself to an obviously satisfying back and the blare of dad’s air horn. Later that summer readers see the fawn bound across the meadow scratch that “also left his scent to tell other bears while the family is blueberry picking, they catch when Mother Doe decides he is ready to accom- he was there.” He continues on in search of food, one last glimpse of the bear as he is enjoying pany her into the forest. at which point readers are treated to a picture of some blueberries. The scent of the humans quickly Although all the animal photographs are incred- a very happy bear lapping army cutworms off a drives the bear back into the forest. ible, the photos of the fawn are especially heart dead log. Unfortunately, with his excellent sense Raye’s illustrations always portray the bear as warming. Children as young as three years old will of smell, the bear is drawn out of the woods by a huge but friendly looking creature. This book enjoy this adventure as it gives them a peek into the aroma of grain and bird seed stored in a would be suitable as a read-aloud for children the lives of forest animals. family’s shed. ages four and older. Lorraine Ravis Young Charlie is awakened that night by the Lorraine Ravis

78 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 the outdoor PALETTE

By Nona Estrin

Rescue, Oil on Panel, 2012, 72” x 24”

For 16 years, Adelaide Tyrol has been writing this Outdoor The above work, entitled “Rescue,” is a diptych – a painting Palette column. Since she’s an accomplished artist in her own made up of two parts. In the left side, the viewer’s attention is right, we thought we’d turn the tables this time and put the thrust to the upper-left corner by the directional flow of both spotlight on her. sea and sky. Here, the burnt sienna clouds are breaking, and Readers will know Tyrol’s illustrations from the “Overstory” we see the promise of a ship on the horizon. But less than an and “Outside Story” columns that appear in every issue of inch away, in the right panel, the horizon dims, and the viewer Northern Woodlands and in newspapers around the Northeast. is swallowed by the dark green, turbulent waters of the sea. “I What most won’t know, however, is that Tyrol splits her time wanted to impart a sense of uncertainty – balancing a sense of between Vermont and New York City, where she’s a principal panic with a sense of hope,” said Tyrol. The work conveys the artist at Oliphant Studios. Her work involves creating backdrops power, and force, and wildness of nature, through a humbled and environments for television, movies, and events such as human perspective – one that teeters between silence and Fashion Week, where she builds fashion runway interiors for top salvation, sea water black and sunset gold. designers. The work is done at break-neck speed for exacting clients under high pressure. Adelaide Tyrol has two solo shows this fall: one at McGowan Fine Art in Concord, New The attention to detail that Tyrol exhibits in her “Outside Hampshire (running September 8 through October 9), and another showcasing her Story” illustrations, and the style and technique of her set work illustrating “The Outside Story,” to be held at The Montshire Museum in Norwich, design work, both inform her studio paintings. With her canvas Vermont, from October 16 through November 12. She will also be exhibiting in a group stapled to the floor and her large brushes attached to the ends of show at the Great Hall in Springfield, Vermont, from September 17 through April 29, bamboo poles, Tyrol walks around her canvas. She works with 2016. Along with McGowan Fine Art, Adelaide is represented by Furchgott-Sourdiff speed and urgency, her technique automatic and gestural as she Gallery in Shelburne, Vermont, and West Branch Gallery in Stowe, Vermont. She may splashes, drags, and sponges pools of paint. also be reached through her website: adelaidetyrol.com

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

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015 79 A PLACE in mind

By Mike Minchin

Horns Pond

It was still dark when my friend Alex and I pulled onto Route not be the truth. Still, the small trout we did catch were beautiful 27, just north of Farmington, Maine, our fly rods and gear – their underbellies golden-yellow and their bright red spots tossed in the back of Alex’s Subaru. The autumnal equinox had encased in hazy blue halos. We sent them back into the water. passed a few days prior and the leaves had started to turn, their Let them grow bigger, we thought. Mostly, I lost a few flies to colors getting deeper by the day. We were pushing the end of the trees and spent a good deal of time practicing my roll cast the fishing season, just a day or two shy of October, and the air and tying on new tippets with numb fingers. At times, I stood on was already infused with the kind of cold that makes you think boulders just beneath the surface, wearing a fleece hat and thin about firing up the wood stove for the first time. gloves, watching my fly rest on the water, sink, and lift again as We were set on exploring Horns Pond, a three-acre glacial I false-cast to dry it off. For hours we cast in near silence as the tarn about 3,000 feet up in the Bigelow Range. It was a place I’d sun colored the sky around us. hiked by a few times but had never thought to fish. Alex had It is not the fishing that makes Horns Pond special; I can heard there were trout up there, though, so the whole way in I think of several more productive fishing spots, all of them with was imagining thick-bellied brook trout swimming in the 20 or far easier access. But the difficulty of getting there and the chal- so feet of water out in the middle. lenge of fishing it has etched Horns Pond into my mind. Or We hiked up from the southern edge of the Bigelow Range, maybe it is just the feel of the place I’m drawn to, the strangeness through a damp, semi-dark forest, before turning northwest of fishing high up on the shoulder of a mountain. Despite its up the steep Horns Pond Trail, a narrow swath cut through proximity to the Appalachian Trail, that day it felt as secluded fir and spruce trees that grew progressively more dense as we and peaceful as any place I’ve found in Maine. went. Despite the cold, we were down to T-shirts by the time I looked over at Alex at one point that morning. He had we linked up with the Appalachian Trail and hiked the last few switched over to his hand-tied muddler minnows, and he was tenths of a mile. There were no other people around, though in having more luck than I was. He was standing waist-deep in the warmer months the campsite near the pond is popular with the pond, wearing his wide-brimmed hat, his rod tip bending backpackers. That morning, we didn’t even see the caretaker under the weight of a fish. He looked over and smiled; neither for the lean-tos. Most of the north-bound thru-hikers were of us said a word. probably well on their way to Katahdin. The woods were quiet and the pond still, the water dark and reflective and dotted with Mike Minchin’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Green water lilies and boulders near the shore. From above, Horns Writers Press, Mud Season Review, and Vermont Magazine. Originally from Maine, he Pond is an irregular teardrop of water cradled by rock ledges. now lives in central Vermont with his wife and two children. North and South Horn – the mountain peaks for which the pond is named – rise several hundred feet higher to the east. As we began to cool down, we pulled our waders on over thermals and set up our rods with small, number-12 Adams dry flies, then stepped out into murk that felt spongy and bottomless. I could feel the cold pressing around my legs, and I wondered if the water had ever warmed up over the summer. I was suddenly wishing I’d brought another layer. With the spruce trees crowding the shore, I had to wade out as far as I could to avoid losing flies in their branches, and I was quickly up to my chest in water. Alex moved up the shore and waded in, and after only a cast or two he had a strike and pulled in a brook trout, maybe eight MARY MAXAM inches long. I would like to say we caught some bigger ones that day, but that would

80 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2015