Life Cycle of the Brook Trout a Logger’S Prayer Mast (And the Animals Tied to It) a 90-Mile Canoe Race, Meat-Eating Trees, Red Spruce Guitar Tops, and Much More

AUTUMN ’14

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FOREST

Life Cycle of the Brook Trout A Logger’s Prayer Mast (and the animals tied to it) A 90-Mile Canoe Race, Meat-eating Trees, Red Spruce Guitar Tops, and much more

$5.95 on the web WWW.NORTHERNWOODLANDS.ORG

THE OUTSIDE STORY Each week we publish a new nature story on topics ranging from moose noses to damselfly wings.

EDITOR’S BLOG Red was a 20-something Irish-looking kid with a kind face. Georgia was his mutt dog; piebald and floppy-eared with beautifully expressive brown eyes. Gentle. Well behaved.” From The Hiker

WHAT IN THE WOODS IS THAT? We show you a photo; if you guess what it is, you’ll be eligible to win a prize. This recent photo showed a wool sower gall.

Cover Photo by Nancie Battaglia Sign up on the website to get Paddlers in the Adirondack Canoe Classic wind their way through boggy Brown’s Tract near Raquette Lake our bi-weekly newsletter in the south-central Adirondacks. “The photo was made from a small airplane and shows nature coloring delivered free to your inbox. into autumn hues in the meandering marsh, and the challenge faced by the participants in this wilderness For daily news and information, maze,” said Battaglia. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK

VOLUME 21 I NUMBER 3 REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS CENTER FOR NORTHERN WOODLANDS EDUCATION, INC. AUTUMN 2014 Virginia Barlow Copyright 2014 Jim Block Northern Woodlands Magazine (ISSN 1525-7932) is published Elise Tillinghast Madeline Bodin quarterly by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., magazine Executive Director/Publisher Marian Cawley Tovar Cerulli 1776 Center Road, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 Dave Mance III Andrew Crosier Tel (802) 439-6292 Editor Steve Faccio Fax (802) 368-1053 Patrick White Giom [email protected] Assistant Editor Bernd Heinrich www.northernwoodlands.org Robert Kimber Amy Peberdy Subscription rates are $23 for one year, $42 for two years, and $59 for three years. Stephen Long Operations Manager Canadian and foreign subscriptions by surface mail are $30.50 US for one year. Todd McLeish POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Northern Woodlands Magazine, P.O. Emily Rowe Brett McLeod Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 or to [email protected]. Periodical Operations Coordinator/ Susan C. Morse postage paid at Corinth, Vermont, and at additional mailing offices. Web Manager Bryan Pfeiffer Published on the first day of March, June, September, and December. Joe Rankin All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written Jim Schley consent of the publisher is prohibited. The editors assume no responsibility Poetry Editor Michael Snyder Adelaide Tyrol for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Return postage should accompany all submissions. Printed in USA. Chuck Wooster For subscription information call (800) 290-5232. DESIGN Northern Woodlands is printed on paper with 10 percent post-consumer Liquid Studio / Lisa Cadieux recycled content.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 1 Center for Northern from the enter Woodlands Education C

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Well, it took some practice, but I’ve finally learned to pronounce “anthocyanin.” President This is the pigment that manifests as deep, glossy red in staghorn sumac – one Julia Emlen of the earliest shrubs in our woods to change color, and also one of the most Julia S. Emlen Associates spectacular. It’s a chemical nudge, akin to the two-minute warning at the end Seekonk, MA of a football game. Time to do the work that will be hard to do later. Brush Vice President hog the sled run. Remove the wren nests. Roll the studded snow tires out of Marcia McKeague the barn. Katahdin Timberlands At the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, we’re also working down an autumn task Millinocket, ME list. The nonprofit’s fiscal year ends on September 30, so in addition to all the normal activity at Treasurer/Secretary the office, there are numbers to crunch and decisions to make as we consider how, and where, Tom Ciardelli to focus educational resources in the next year. Biochemist, Outdoorsman We’re also heading into our busiest time for subscription renewals. Here’s how that Hanover, NH typically starts: One day in October, a first wave of Northern Woodlands readers rise from Si Balch their dens, sniff the cooling air, and decide that today is the day to renew their subscriptions. Consulting Forester This will continue, on and off, through the second half of December. It’s an awe inspiring Brooklin, ME seasonal phenomenon, right up there with hawk kettles and monarch migrations … but it Sarah R. Bogdanovitch sure gets busy around here. Paul Smith’s College Another fall event that we’re eagerly awaiting is our first annual writers’ conference, taking Paul Smiths, NY place on the weekend of October 17-19 in Fairlee, Vermont. Sponsored by The Trust for Richard G. Carbonetti Public Land, the conference will be hosted by the Hulbert Outdoor Center on beautiful Lake LandVest, Inc. Morey. If you enjoy this magazine, it’s a good bet that you’ll also enjoy the weekend – we’ll have Newport, VT writers’ talks and workshops, as well as walks in the woods, s’mores by the fire, syrup tasting, Starling Childs MFS and opportunities for informal discussions with naturalists, educators, and, of course, the Ecological and Environmental Northern Woodlands crew. So please join us. You can sign up via the link on our website or by Consulting Services Norfolk, CT calling Hulbert’s office at 802-333-3405. And finally, a bittersweet note – this issue of the magazine is the last that will include Ed Esther Cowles Wright and Marcia McKeague on our Board of Directors. Ed and Marcia share bragging Fernwood Consulting, LLC Hopkinton, NH rights for longest tenure on the board – so long, in fact, that they’ve come smack up against the bylaw limit of three successive terms (nine years total). Both have been enthusiastic, Dicken Crane thoughtful contributors to the board’s work and are representative of the forest stewardship Holiday Brook Farm Dalton, MA culture this nonprofit promotes. They will be missed. Timothy Fritzinger Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director, Publisher Alta Advisors London, UK Sydney Lea Writer, Vermont Poet Laureate Newbury, VT Bob Saul Wood Creek Capital Management Amherst, MA Peter Silberfarb Dartmouth Medical School Lebanon, NH Ed Wright W.J. Cox Associates Clarence, NY

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. Programs include Northern Woodlands a culture of forest stewardship in the magazine, Northern Woodlands Goes Northeast and to increase understanding 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 24 The Life Cycle of a Brook Trout ROBERT MICHELSON 30 Theology of a Quaker Logger MARTIN MELVILLE 36 Big Trees of New Hampshire PATRICK WHITE 24 40 Adirondack Canoe Classic KATIE JICKLING 50 Timber Theft KRISTEN FOUNTAIN 56 Autumn’s Unheralded Mast Species SUSAN C. MORSE 62 Timber Rattlesnakes TED LEVIN

departments 2 From the Center 4 Calendar 5 Editor’s Note 7 Letters to the Editors 9 Birds in Focus: The Rockin’ Robin BRYAN PFEIFFER 36 40 11 Woods Whys: Forest Fragmentation MICHAEL SNYDER 13 Tracking Tips: Moose Rub SUSAN C. MORSE 14 Knots and Bolts 23 1,000 Words 50 48 The Overstory: Pin Cherry VIRGINIA BARLOW 66 Field Work: At Work Searching for Sweet-Sounding Spruce ROSS CARON 69 Upcountry ROBERT KIMBER 70 Discoveries 56 TODD MCLEISH 74 WoodLit 77 Tricks of the Trade: The Perfect Splitting Block BRETT R. MCLEOD 79 Outdoor Palette ADELAIDE TYROL 80 A Place in Mind DAVID BUDBILL 62

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 3 CALENDAR

A Look at the Season’s Main Events

By Virginia Barlow September October November FIRST WEEK Blueberries are eaten by white-footed Sparrow migration is well underway, with Monarchs begin arriving at their mice, chipmunks, skunks, and bears, as white-crowned, song, chipping, white- overwintering site in Mexico; some have well as by many birds / The snapping throated, savannah, swamp, tree, and fox travelled 3,000 miles. In March, they’ll turtle eggs that were laid about three sparrows all on the move / Wood turtles head north but will lay eggs part-way months ago are hatching. Some hatchlings return to streams, rivers, and ponds to home, leaving it to the next generations head for the nearest pond, but others will mate before hibernating in undercut banks to get back to New England / Luna moth remain in place until spring / Honeybees and root masses / Hard-up birds may be cocoons, wrapped in brown leaves, have are gathering nectar from goldenrods / eating jack-in-the-pulpit berries, generally fallen to the ground / Some golden- Mourning cloak butterflies are fattening up considered to be a low-quality wildlife crowned kinglets migrate, but some are for hibernation. They overwinter as adults food / Damselflies and dragonflies may still found here through the winter, which is and can be seen flying in spring before the be flying around, mating, and laying eggs amazing considering that they aren’t snow melts much larger than a hummingbird

SECOND WEEK Dry days will cause milkweed pods to October 7-8: Total lunar eclipse / Apple Rattlesnake plantain (it’s really an orchid) open, releasing streams of fluffy para- cider pressing is in full swing / It’s skunks stays green all winter. The leaves are chutes that are each attached to a seed. that leave those small conical holes in covered with a net of white veins and All the seeds in a pod are from just one the lawn while doing pest control for grow in a small rosette / Bruce spanworm flower; it’s the rare flower that makes you: beetle larvae are a skunk favorite / moths, also called hunter’s moths, may seeds / Crickets may move into buildings Halloween lady beetles are seeking shelter be abundant in sugar maple stands on as they search for places to hibernate. in houses. Each one has consumed about sunny days from mid-October through Their incessant chirping can be 300 aphids during its larval stage, but November / Scarves of smoke rise from aggravating at close range / It is quieter these newcomers might be outcompeting deer camp chimneys / Meadow voles in fields and woods, now that fall native lady beetles / Evergreen woodferns are still breeding / Hooded mergansers migration is underway / Beginning of are still bright green and will stay green go south just far enough to find ice-free the month-long moose mating season all winter water. Most of them have left by now

THIRD WEEK Loons are molting and most of them October 22-23: Orionids meteor shower. November 17-18: Leonid meteor shower will have finished growing out their This shower is produced by the dust left peaks, and this year the crescent moon grayish-brown winter feathers before they by Halley’s Comet and is best seen after will not interfere / Snowshoe hares are all migrate / Fall dandelions (Scorzoneroides midnight / Most killdeer leave during white by the end of November, and praying autumnalis) are blooming along roadsides. the last half of October. They will begin for snow / Eastern red-backed salamanders The flowers are similar to, but somewhat to return in March / The nests of paper are headed downwards. Sometimes they smaller than, the dandelion that blooms in wasps become more visible now that the use the burrows of other animals to get the spring / Beaked hazelnuts are ripe, but leaves have fallen. These large structures below the frost line / Shagbark hickory squirrels and chipmunks are likely to get to are begun by a single female (the queen) nuts are falling from their husks. Wood them before you do. Moose, deer, hare, and enlarged over the summer by her ducks and wild turkeys eat them, as do rabbit, and beaver eat other parts of this many offspring / Flocks of juncos arrive many mammals / The last litter of deer shrub from the north mice is on its own

FOURTH WEEK Whitetail bucks tear away the velvet on their Snow geese are migrating, often in huge Moose antlers can weigh 30 to 60 pounds antlers and polish them by thrashing them flocks / At least two species of cluster fly are and have a five-foot spread / Falling birch against shrubs and low branches / Common from Europe. They are experts at squeezing seeds will travel far if blown across crusted green darners are known to migrate more through tiny spaces to get into your house / snow / Christmas fern stays green not just than 400 miles over a period of two months. Fishers are eating apples, berries, and nuts till Christmas, but till next summer. The This usually takes place between August now. Their diet does not consist entirely of individual pinnae are shaped like Christmas and November / Catbirds are fattening up small mammals and house cats / Apple- stockings – another way to remember the on almost any fruit or berry you can think eaters include red and gray fox, eastern name / Males of many migrating bird of. They will soon leave to winter from the coyote, fisher, black bear, raccoon, species don’t fly as far south as the Gulf Coast south to Costa Rica / Crows are opossum, white tailed deer, porcupine, females, perhaps so they can return north collecting and stashing acorns beaver, wild turkey, and pine grosbeak earlier to claim a high-quality territory

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 2014 EDITOR’S note

By Dave Mance III

For those of you who aren’t following the But when we get into particular methods of hunting, as this battle to ban bear baiting in Maine, here’s a ballot question does, things get a lot grayer. I know hunters quick recap: Animal rights groups are pushing who only use a bow – they see it as a way of leveling the playing a ballot measure that will ask voters this field and giving the animals more of a sporting chance. I also November to ban bear hunting over bait, the use know hunters who won’t touch a bow because a shot with a of dogs in bear hunting, and bear trapping. They high-powered rifle will almost always result in a quicker, cleaner claim these methods are cruel, unsportsman- kill. I know hunters who won’t shoot does or sows because it’s like, and unnecessary for population control. Opponents, includ- “wrong” to shoot mothers, and other hunters who, in areas ing sportsman’s groups, guiding services, and state biologists, where herd reduction is the goal, won’t shoot males. I’ve heard disagree. hunters argue that running bears with dogs is anachronistic and I found myself discussing the issue with a friend the other day, others who argue that hunting with dogs keeps bears afraid of who does not hunt and does not live in a rural place. “It’s a mor- people and dogs year round, thus limiting those summertime alistic argument,” I was telling him of the proponent’s logic. “They human/bear conflicts that often end with dead (and wasted) think it’s immoral to shoot bears over a pile of jelly donuts.” bears. He put his pint glass back on the bar and furrowed his brow The point is that reasonable people often have contorted in consideration. Then said: “I had no idea that people liked jelly opinions about the ethics of different methods of hunting, and donuts enough that they’d be willing to fight bears over them.” the way hunters deal with this ambiguity is to form their own Jokes aside, this is a big deal to a lot of Mainers and to sports- personal ethical codes. A young man from the country heads men and women and wildlife managers everywhere who are to a high mountain peak and tracks a bear like an Indian; an worried about the precedent such a ban could set. It’s important older man from the city hires a guide and travels to Maine for to note that the ban does not stem from a perceived threat to the a baited hunt; a farmer sets a trap and harvests a bear for the overall population of black bears in Maine; the bear population freezer that’s been fattened on corn he planted. And as long as has grown by 30 percent over the past ten years and is currently these are all legal hunts that fall under the umbrella of a state- estimated at around 30,000. (Hunters kill around 3,000 in any regulated management system, everything shines on in the big given year.) Rather, the ban is being pushed by people who don’t picture. There’s something very organic about how individual think it’s ethical to hunt bears over bait or with dogs or traps. liberty and personal ethics and state management play together The wildlife management status quo is that state biologists create so well here. hunting and trapping seasons with population objectives in mind; This proposed ban, however, doesn’t feel organic to me. I they calculate how many bears the landscape can support, how think that proponents make a legitimate point that jelly donuts many bears people are willing to tolerate (Maine averages 500 are an unnatural part of any ecosystem. And if there are places nuisance complaints a year), and the desires of people who want where bait piles are acclimating bears to humans and leading to more bears (including both animal lovers and hunters); they then more human/bear conflict, I think it’s reasonable for a commu- set rules and guidelines and hunters help carry out their manage- nity to regulate them. But this blanket ballot question contains ment objectives. This whole idea of citizens dictating manage- no such nuance. If passed, this would be an outright ban on ment particulars via the ballot box is something else entirely. three very different forms of hunting. I don’t live in Maine, and so can’t vote on the matter myself, It’s also worth noting that the driver here is the Humane but I can speak to it as a hunter who cares about the animals I Society of the United States, a national animal rights group, and pursue. I can tell you first-hand that the vast majority of hunters they’re using gobs of out-of-state money to try to make their I know already adhere to a near universal set of ethical consider- own moral code into Maine law. If the idea of an outside special ations. We aspire to make clean shots and limit animal suffering. interest group fighting to ban “objectionable” books, or art, or We don’t kill flippantly – we eat the animals we harvest. If you’ve speech, or love leaves a bad taste in your mouth, this ballot mea- lived in a rural place long enough you’ve come across a jacked sure should do the same. deer that was killed in a wasteful manner, but this was the work But these opinions are my own. I suspect our readers will of a poacher, not a hunter. I’ve yet to meet a hunter who didn’t have strong feelings on this matter, both pro and con. Since go about this business of killing with at least some measure of the matter will be decided before the winter issue goes to press, depth and respect – it’s an ethos that’s passed down from gen- we’ll post this editorial to our website and you can submit your eration to generation and reinforced in hunter safety classes. comments there.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 5 6 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 letters to the EDITORS

A Look Back ourselves. The person to my Maass makes a good point about the growth To the Editors: left said he was a writer for rate of vigorous hybrids. One can experience Hard not to like the 20th anniversary Northern Woodlands magazine, not only the growth from seedling to 17-inch issue [Summer 2014]. The usual good and the whole room spontane- diameter tree (see photo) in a lifetime, but com- stuff and even more, better stuff. ously applauded. fortably within adulthood. One tiny point: I think your then- Founders Virginia Barlow Tim Crane, Dalton, Massachusetts and-now firewood comparison [page and Stephen Long should take 28] is a little misleading. You show firewood use to heart the words of Dick Proenneke [of “Alone has declined significantly, but if you included in the Wilderness” fame], as recounted in Ross A Handle on the Situation wood pellets it might be a different story. Twenty Caron’s article “A Cabin in the Woods” [Winter To the Editors: years ago there was not much of a wood pellet 2013]. Proenneke said he “enjoyed thinking about In the Summer issue of Northern Woodlands, Bill market. Now, every hardware store and lumber what I had done to make reality out of a dream.” Guenther of Newfane, Vermont, writes that the yard in our rural area sells wood pellets, and last Thank you for creating a wonderful reality from so-called monkey grip, when the thumb is not winter a tractor trailer load of wood pellets would your dreams. wrapped completely around the handle, should sell out in two hours in our area. (Obviously, I Fred Hathaway, Oneonta, New York never be used when operating a chainsaw, as looked at the 20-year comparisons carefully and having the thumb around the handle gives better greatly enjoyed them.) control in the case of a kick-back. Ted Cady, Warwick, Massachusetts Hybrid Power I am old enough to remember when cars had to To the Editors: be hand-cranked to be started, and the so-called To the Editors: I was pleased to read David Maass’ article on the monkey grip on the commencing iron handle was In your piece on stumpage prices [“The Story of hybridization of European and Japanese Larch the one to use in case the engine kicked. Having Stumpage,” Summer 2014], you said that the [Exotic Larch, Summer 2014]. In 1981, I left the the thumb around the handle could result in a price for firewood goes up or down depending on Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton, Wisconsin, strained or broken arm. The Fordson tractor was the price of fuel oil. But, dollar for dollar, how do with a master’s degree in paper science and about notoriously prone to kicking. they compare with each other? And what about a dozen of these hybrid larch seedlings left over Wayne Rowell, Wilmington, Vermont wood pellets? from trials being conducted at that time. Gerard Robben, Blue Hill, Maine When I got home to western Massachusetts, I created my own (poorly marked) mini-nursery What’s in a Name? Editors’ Reply: According to the Energy Information on a field edge. The first mowing was a near I enjoyed your essay on plant names [Naming Administration, when fuel oil is about $4 a gallon, disaster. Among the four hybrid seedlings that Names, Summer 2014]. I thought I’d share this you’re paying around $29 per million BTUs. At survived the mower and eventually grew to adult poem on names. $250/ton, pellets buy you the same amount of trees, the tallest and most robust grew at the SPRING NAMES BTUs for $15.15; at $200 a cord, firewood buys corner of our barn in fertile soil and full sun. David Clearly against the snow you the same amount for $9.09. Put more simply, “Red Maples” are gray. switch from oil to pellets and you’ll cut your fuel You must look at the tips bill nearly in half. Switch to firewood and you’ll To see the name and promise. pay less than one-third the price of fuel oil. Joe calls them “swamp maples” Which tells us more perhaps, To the Editors: Yet when the snow is gone Amazing. Twenty years of outstanding reporting We’ll see that both are good. on this great natural resource that we all live in. Prof says Acer rubra Congratulations! And lectures against common names To give you an idea of how much you are Which even Roman kids ignore appreciated, I recall an event that happened in And settle for just plain maple. June of 2013. I was at a workshop in White Creek, Only sap would argue this, New York, that was sponsored by the Bennington It’s now rising swamp to red. County (Vermont) Sustainable Forest Consortium, Pike Messenger, Middleton, Massachusetts the New York State DEC, and the SAF Adirondack Chapter. It was attended by foresters, soil conser- We love to hear from our readers. Letters intended vationists, forest ecologists, loggers, farmers, and for publication in the Winter 2014 issue should be the general public. At the start of the workshop, sent in by October 1. Please limit letters to 400 the instructor asked each of us to introduce words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 7 8 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 BIRDS in focus

Story by Bryan Pfeiffer The Rockin’ Robin

From his perch high on a balsam fir near a bog in northern Vermont, far from suburbia and barnyards, an American robin sings as if he owns the place. And, in many ways, he does. Although hardly an icon of the North Woods, the robin is a paragon of versatility – a songbird of north, south, east, and west – covering forested and fragmented habitats across the continent. Few other birds can claim such range. The robin pulls it off with a blend of moxie and manifest destiny. Food figures big in this story of success. The American robin does not live by earthworm alone. Changing diet with the seasons, the robin tugging worms from your lawn in summer may move to high peaks to feast on mountain ash fruits once snow falls. On the way, he’ll graze on anything from beetles to spiders, from the fruits of poison ivy to the cones of junipers. A study of stomach contents from 1,169 robins featured fruits of 50 genera and invertebrates from more than 100 families. That kind of diet requires dexterity. A robin hunting earth- worms will pause, wait, watch, and adjust its gaze before striking. But robins also run down and nab dashing insects or probe the forest floor by flipping leaves and twigs. On the wing, they can snatch fruits off the vine. On rare occasions, robins have been found to have eaten fish, frog, snake, and skink. The varied diet helps make robins our most cosmopolitan songbird – from boreal forests in Alaska to dairy farms in New England to shopping malls in Miami. In the fir and hemlock forests of the American and Canadian West, I find robins to be regular nesting birds, perhaps more so than in softwoods here in the East, although research suggests robins prefer early- successional forests. As we cleared and fragmented forests for homes, parks, and commerce, robins followed in our wake. They live in edge habitats that include riparian zones, city parks, and even new settlements in the formerly inhospitable Canadian arctic. Once they claim turf for breeding, robins tenaciously defend their nests from predators with what seems to be an enhanced version of the songbird arsenal: harassment, gang warfare, and an occasional thrashing. Confronted with a raccoon, squirrel, crow, or hawk at the nest (or even a human wandering too close), robins spring into a dance of agitation: they hop from The American robin has an attitude – and an appetite. perch to perch, flick their wings, wag their tails, and blurt emphatic, staccato yeep! and chuck! calls. These antics often draw Quebec and central Maine. By pushing the northern edge of additional robins and other songbirds into the fray. Lacking their winter range, robins (mostly males) linger near the front of talons or hooked beaks, songbirds go for strength in numbers. the line so that they can be first to claim high-quality territories Occasionally, robins make at least glancing contact with a and the spring buffet of fruits and insects. predator, usually around the head and neck. One robin was With its undiscriminating diet and brash behavior, the reported to have killed a Steller’s jay by thrashing the jay with its American robin is a lot like, well, a lot of other Americans. wings and feet and then pecking at – and penetrating – its head. If that isn’t enough, robins are pushy. When they head south Bryan Pfeiffer is an author, wildlife photographer, guide, and consulting naturalist who in fall they don’t go too far – some winter as far north as southern specializes in birds and insects. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 9 THE A. JOHNSON CO. Bristol, VT (802) 453-4884

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10 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 woods WHYS

By Michael Snyder

What Is Forest Fragmentation and Why Is It A Problem? BLAKE GARDNER Forest fragmentation is the breaking of large, contiguous, forested areas into smaller pieces of forest; typically these pieces are separated by roads, agriculture, utility corridors, subdivisions, or other human development. It usually occurs incrementally, beginning with cleared patches here and there – think Swiss cheese – within an otherwise unbroken expanse of tree cover. Over time, those non-forest patches tend to multiply and expand until eventually the forest is reduced to scattered, disconnected forest islands. The surrounding non-forest lands and land uses seriously threaten the health, function, and value of the remaining forest. Any large-scale canopy disturbance affects a forest, but it is important to distinguish between a forest fragmented by human infrastructure development and a forest of mixed ages and varied canopy closure that results such interior forest condition. Put differently, reports indicate from good forest management. The former is typically much that the negative habitat effects of each residential building more damaging to forest health and habitat quality, usually with pocket within a forest radiate outward, affecting up to 30 permanent negative effects, whereas the latter may cause only additional acres with increased disturbance, predation, and temporary change in the forest. competition from edge-dwellers. This may not matter to The effects of fragmentation are well documented in all for- generalist species like deer, raccoons, and blue jays, which may ested regions of the planet. In general, by reducing forest health actually benefit from fragmentation, but it is hell on interior- and degrading habitat, fragmentation leads to loss of biodiversity, dependent species like salamanders, goshawks, bats, and flying increases in invasive plants, pests, and pathogens, and reduction squirrels. The smaller the remnant the greater the influence of in water quality. These wide-ranging effects all stem from two external factors and edge effects. A wise person once likened it basic problems: fragmentation increases isolation between forest to ice cubes: the smaller ones melt faster. communities and it increases so-called edge effects. Moreover, as forest fragments become ever smaller, prac- When a forest becomes isolated, the movement of plants ticing forestry in them becomes operationally impractical, and animals is inhibited. This restricts breeding and gene flow economically nonviable, and culturally unacceptable. In turn, and results in long-term population decline. Fragmentation is we lose the corresponding and important contributions that a threat to natural resilience, and connectivity of forest habitats forestry makes to our economy and culture. The result is a rapid may be a key component of forest adaptation and response to acceleration of further fragmentation and then permanent loss. climate change. Here is the tricky part: when fragmentation occurs in a Edge effects are even more complicated. They alter growing heavily forested region like ours, at least in the early going we conditions within the interior of forests through drastic changes are still left with a largely pleasant condition. We sense that we in temperature, moisture, light, and wind. Put simply, the still have lots of woods where we can work, hunt, ski, and walk environment of the adjacent non-forest land determines the the dogs. And to most of us, this seems good enough, even environment of the forest fragment, particularly on its edges. when the perforations expand and those woods are the scattered This triggers a cascade of ill effects on the health, growth, and remains of a fragmented forest. survivability of trees, flowers, ferns, and lichens and an array of But is it enough? At some point when the larger forest is highly secondary effects on the animals that depend on them. Ecologists fragmented, the size, integrity, and connectivity of those wooded suggest that true interior forest conditions – you know, where it’s remnants deteriorate beyond recovery and they are no longer ade- hard to hear cars and lawnmowers and it remains cool, shady, quate for native forest plants and wildlife. After all, when the Swiss and downright damp even during a three-week drought – only cheese has more holes than cheese, the whole sandwich suffers. occur at least 200-300 feet inside the non-forest edge. And so a circular forest island in a sea of non-forest would Michael Snyder, a forester, is Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, have to be more than 14 acres in size to include just one acre of Parks, and Recreation.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 11 12 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 TRACKING tips

Story and photos by Susan C. Morse

In Alaska and the more open terrain of northwestern alpine meadows and muskeg habitats, a rutting bull will flash and flag his massive antlers like “social semaphores,” as described by renowned antler scientist Richard Goss. Rocking his rack side-to-side, he deliberately displays their shape and size to both attract mates and warn off male competitors. Here in our heavily treed boreal and temperate forests, the eastern (or Canadian) moose uses his palmate antler surfaces like satellite dishes to amplify the distant wavering calls of a cow in search of court- ship. But that’s not all. He thrashes pliant shrubs and saplings and rubs larger trees while deliberately clonking his antlers against them. In this way, he uses auditory marking to announce his reproductive intentions and his dominance to cows and other bulls alike. Eastern Native American moose hunters mimicked these antler sounds by using a moose scapula to create similar scraping, banging, and brush-breaking noises, which could often be relied upon to draw a moose out of cover. For a bull in the near company of an estrus cow, wooing can be a slow process. In addition to his soft grunts and visual and auditory antler communications, his urine wallows and rubs stimulate her sense of smell. Concentrated testosterone in his urine and salivary pheromones mixed with other glandular scents concoct a kind of eau de cologne that permeates the environment, enticing her with reminders of his reproductive readiness and desirability as a mate. Large-diameter rubs on balsam fir and white birch are often made in late fall, as a bull’s urge to rid himself of his ponderous antlers increases; if you’re lucky, you may find an antler prize at the base of such a tree. Rutting rubs are made in September and October, and these smaller-diameter trees are extensively damaged, with bark removed, xylem exposed, and limbs twisted and broken. Gouges and scratches may show where the bull rubbed his antler surfaces up and down the tree and where the antler tines penetrated and scored the bark. These rubs serve as visual and olfactory bulletin boards whose chemical depositions function as breeding season announcements. Look for facial hair that has adhered to the tree where the bull rubbed his forehead and pre-orbital glands. Search also for traces of mud and neck hairs that were deposited when the bull rubbed his wallow-soaked neck and bell onto his signpost. Finally, a really fresh rub will reek of his piss de résistance.

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

Clockwise from top: Young Canadian bull moose; these skid marks were created by the smooth edge of an antler palm; hair stuck to a fresh rub; note high placement of this rub on a balsam fir.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 13 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ FORAGING ]

Black Walnut: Harvest and Fellowship

Standing in a supermarket amidst frozen dinners, bakery items, and cereals, it’s easy to forget the work involved in preparing food. While it is wonderful to be relieved of so much work, this luxury has its cost. Food preparation has always been the thing that brings us together to enjoy one of the great pleasures of human life – the company of family and friends. Preparing wild black walnuts (Juglans nigra) is one of my family’s favorite excuses to do just that. The black walnut is not native to much of the Northeast but is widely naturalized and often found in the yards of old farmhouses. The nuts from these yard trees are easier to gather than those that fall in the forest, so hunting for black walnuts provides a great reason to meet new neighbors. In October, ask for permission to gather the fallen nuts and your neighbors may thank you for saving them the chore, as the hard-shelled walnuts are a nuisance to lawn mowers. Bring thick gloves and some five-gallon buckets; on good years, gallons of nuts can be gathered in a matter of minutes. The next step is to remove the sticky, green husk from around the nut – it’s the only part of the process that I tend to do alone. I let the husks rot outside for several weeks in large milk crates; then I work them off with my hands under a hose. Because the husks contain a dark ink, I don clothes that I don’t mind getting stained and long rubber gloves. (Soak the husks in water and you WIKIPEDIA COMMONS can make a purplish-black dye.) Then I let the nuts dry for at least a month. The black walnut can be an intimidating nut to crack, so teamwork is essential. Enthusiasts recommend all kinds of methods, from expensive specialty nutcrackers to running the nuts over with your car. But in our household, we invite friends over and set up a little assembly line. First, someone with a sledgehammer breaks the nut in two over a rock – being careful only to crack and not to shatter the shell. They pass the broken nuts on to someone armed with a smaller hammer and a pair of wire cutters, whose job it is to break or cut away enough of the shell to expose the nutmeats. At the end are folks with nut picks who remove the nutmeat and discard the shells. We do everything over a tarp so that the broken nutshells are not left around to cut any bare feet. Most people know how to cook with and eat the common English walnut, and black walnuts can be used in the same ways. But the flavor of the Black Walnut Muffins Dandelion and black walnut is far superior, with an almost fruity aroma. In our house, most of the walnuts are 2 cups flour 1 tsp salt eaten before they ever make it into a recipe. powder 4 tsp baking The time it takes to procure a quart or two of 1/2 cup maple syrup wild black walnuts makes me grateful for the easy 1 cup yogurt – plain or vanilla 1 egg abundance of prepared foods available in the super- 1/4 cup melted butter or oil market. But I am also grateful for the satisfaction of 1-2 cups dandelion petals, being able to share a meal won through my own separated from the green bracts work and for the chance to experience the fellowship 1 cup black walnuts egg, that has bound our human family together from its Preheat oven to 425°. Grease muffin tins. Mix flour, salt, earliest days as people sang, joked, shared secrets, and baking powder in large mixing bowl. Add maple syrup, and fell in love over the happy chore of turning nuts and yogurt. Mix well. Add butter or oil. Mix. Add dandelion petals and black walnuts. Mix well. Pour into greased muffin into food. tins and bake 10 to 14 minutes until a toothpick comes out Benjamin Lord clean. (Makes one dozen.)

14 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 [ NATURALLY CURIOUS ]

Green lacewings are aptly named for the prominent venation on the adults’ wings. Some species in this insect family have “ears” in the larger veins that allow them to detect the ultrasonic sounds made by hunting bats. Lacewing larvae eat soft- bodied insects, such as woolly aphids. They have long, hollow mandibles that they use to puncture the aphids and suck out their liquefied contents. Some species of lacewing larvae have hairy backs, and they dress themselves in the carcasses of their prey. These woolly husks camouflage the lacewing larvae from predators, including ants that would attack the larva if they recognized it as a lacewing and not an odd-looking mound of woolly aphids.—-Mary Holland/www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 15 KNOTS & BOLTS WAYNE’S CHAINSAW MUSEUM

[ OBJECTIFY ]

Above: An early Cox-branded chain. The Cox Sawchain Below: The illustration demonstrates how a chipper chain works.

Watch old footage of a lumberjack using a crosscut saw (colloquially called He patented the idea, became a misery whip) – or better yet, pick one up at a farm auction and try it out a very wealthy man, and retired yourself – and you’ll come to appreciate how ripe the tool was for innovation. to California with his wife. He died And yet, the birth of the modern chainsaw wasn’t easy. The U.S. Patent Office childless and his wife, upon her issued a patent for what might be considered the first mechanical chainsaw death, split the six million dollars in 1858, but 80 years later loggers were still using crosscuts. Why? Partly that was left of the sawchain fortune because early saws were unwieldy in the woods (one “portable” saw manu- equally among the 42,238 people

factured in 1933 weighed 490 pounds and was mounted on bike wheels.) in Kandyohi County, Minnesota, the MBC DESIGN But also because the “scratcher” chains on the early saws, which simply place where she grew up. They mimicked the crosscut design, didn’t cut well. Inventors were so tunnel- received $142 each. visioned on replacing muscle power with gasoline power that they neglected to scrutinize the design of the chain. As a result, even when engine technology Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of stories about objects that revolutionized had advanced to the point of making a saw light enough to be truly portable, the (rural) world. loggers were abandoning the smelly, loud, quick-to-dull-and- hard-to-sharpen contraptions and going back to crosscuts. Enter Joe Cox, a jack-of-all-trades who took on itinerant work as a logger in the 1940s and was perplexed that the power saws cut so poorly. Legend has it that one day he came across a tree riddled with pine sawyer beetle larvae (Ergates spiculatus). He stopped and admired how they cut through the wood with an efficient, left-and-right, side-to-side motion. He took some home and studied the larvae and the sawdust they created under a microscope. He then went down into the basement of his two-story frame house in Portland, Oregon, and set to work on a chain design featuring alternating cutter teeth that mimicked the larva’s c-shaped jaws. JOHN FOWLER

A pine sawyer larva – the inspiration for the chipper chain.

16 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 a new way of looking at the forest

Dear Northern Woodlands reader,

Please consider making a donation to support Northern WoodlandsDQGRXUQRQSUR¿W the Center for Northern Woodlands Education.

It’s no secret that the population of our region is growing. There are approximately 874,000 more people living in New England and New York today than there were ten years ago. At the same time, younger generations have fewer connections to the land and less familiarity with local nature.

In this context of continued change, there’s a corresponding need for forest education.

Many people care deeply about the environment in the abstract, but lack knowledge about local ecosystems. They enjoy hiking on trails or watching birds, but they see no reason to protect “messy” understories, swamps, or old snags full of woodpecker holes. Similarly, even as public support for local agriculture increases, there is scant public awareness that forests, too, are a traditional and important part of the working ODQGVFDSHDQGEHQH¿FLDOWRORFDOFRPPXQLWLHV

Your contribution helps us reach more people with the message that forests matter. With your help, we spark curiosity, promote learning, and encourage deeper appreciation of our region’s natural wonders.

Thanks to supporters like you, we continue to put Northern Woodlands magazine into new readers’ hands. We help new landowners learn to be thoughtful stewards. We raise awareness of the value of sustainable wood products. We share educational resources with teachers, conservation groups, landowner associations, foresters, and others who are working to keep forests intact and thriving.

Through the magazine, newsletters, special publications, and, increasingly, on-line content, the Center for Northern Woodlands Education makes a difference in how people think about northern forests and how they care for this precious resource. We could not do this work without your help.

Thank you for considering this request.

Elise Tillinghast Executive Director/Publisher

36:HDUHD F QRQSUR¿WVR\RXUFRQWULEXWLRQLVFRPSOHWHO\WD[GHGXFWLEOH $QGWRDGGVRPHIXQ¿OORXWDQGPDLOXVWKHTXL]RQWKHEDFNRIWKLVOHWWHU,I\RXJHW a high score, you’ll qualify to win a “Season’s Main Events” daily calendar.

Northern Woodlands sincerely thanks Adelaide Tyrol for the use of her illustrations, originally featured in The Outside Story. Quiz: Rate Your Woods Savvy (circle correct answer)

Which species is unlikely to share body heat in winter? 1 (a) Skunk; (b) Bluebird; (c) Honeybee; (d) Wood frog; (e) Beaver.

What’s the maximum speed that a peregrine falcon can dive? 2 (a) 80 MPH; (b) 100 MPH; (c) 160 MPH; (d) over 200MPH.

What does the old logging term “hair pounder” mean? 3 (a) A large tree that began to fall down, but got hung up on saplings; (b) A bunch of debris in a river log drive; (c) A person in charge of a horse team; (d) A severe storm that defoliates trees.

What isn’t true about the Virginia opossum? 4 (a) It’s resistant to pit viper venom; (b) It exudes foul green liquid; (c) It imitates owl hoots; (d) It has an average of thirteen nipples; (e) It can eat a lot of ticks.

A friendly stranger appears on your doorstep and offers to “clean up your woods” - for 5 free! You agree. You: (a) Have probably just made a big mistake; (b) Should talk with a consulting forester; F $UHSUHTXDOL¿HGWRSXUFKDVHRFHDQIURQWSURSHUW\LQ9HUPRQW G $OORIWKHDERYH

What is least likely to affect next year’s fawn population? 6 (a) A decline in the number of mature bucks; (b) A long, severe winter; (c) An outbreak of chronic wasting disease; (d) The loss of winter deer yards.

What wood produces the most heat energy when burned (BTUs per cord)? 7 (a) Alder; (b) White oak; (c) Eastern white pine; (d) Black cherry.

:K\GREXWWHUÀLHVJDWKHURQURDGV" 8 (a) To escape predators; (b) To communicate pollen locations; (c) To dust their wings in order to remove mites; (d) To feed on salt and other nutrients.

Which of these plants is least likely to be found in the same habitat as the others? 9 D 3DLQWHGWULOOLXP E $OSLQHELOEHUU\ F 3LQNPRFFDVLQODG\VOLSSHU G &DQDGDPD\ÀRZHU

What does “high-grading” a woodlot mean? 10 (a) Managing it to the highest forestry standards; (b) Making an unrealistically high assessment of its timber value; (c) Cutting the best trees and leaving the low value ones; (d) Harvesting all of the trees of a certain height, regardless of species.

The mission of the Center for Northern Woodlands Education is to advance a culture of forest stewardship in the Northeast and to increase understanding of and appreciation for the natural wonders, economic productivity and ecological integrity of the region’s forests. [ THE OUTSIDE STORY ]

Meat-eating Trees?

Plants are not often thought of as meat-eating That’s when things took a strange turn. All of web. The insects were added to containers of predators. They’re the nice guys. But recent the springtails placed with bicolor deceiver died. bicolor deceiver growing with white pine seed- research suggests that at least one local tree “It was as shocking as putting a pizza in front of a lings. After a few months, they tested the seed- may owe its size to more than just sun, water, person and having the pizza eat the person instead lings and found that 25 percent of the nitrogen and good soils. of vice versa,” Klironomos told Science News. in the trees was radioactive, and thus had come The eastern white pine is the tallest native tree To confirm their findings, Klironomos and Hart directly from the springtails. It’s as if white pine in our region. Give them a few hundred years in fed a few hundred springtails a diet of bicolor were fishermen using the fungus like a giant net ideal habitat, with roots sunk deep into sandy and deceiver while others were fed a diet either to capture their prey. silty soils, and they’ll grow to over 200 feet tall devoid of the fungus altogether or with another Now, new research from scientists at Brock with trunks nearly eight feet in diameter. fungi species. After two weeks, only five percent University in Ontario suggests that this adaptation It takes a lot of nutrients for a tree to grow to of the springtails that ate the bicolor deceiver may be shared by many plants. Green muscardine such grandeur, and one thing that might help the remained alive. In contrast, nearly all the spring- fungus, a soil-dweller found in many ecosystems, eastern white pine is its surprising relationship tails that ate other species of fungi or whose diet has long been known to infect insects. It has now with a meat-eating fungus. was devoid of fungi survived. been shown to associate with plant roots and The bicolored deceiver (Laccaria bicolor) The researchers believe that the fungus first transfer nitrogen from its insect prey to grass and appears above ground as a small tan mushroom paralyzes the springtails with a toxin, breaks them even beans. with lilac-colored gills. It is found in most conifer- down with a special enzyme, and then extends With webs of mycelia hunting tiny prey under- ous woodlands throughout temperate regions fine filaments into them to absorb nutrients. ground to help giants grow and capture the sun around the globe and has a symbiotic relationship So how does this make the eastern white pine above, understanding who is eating whom just with many trees, including the eastern white pine. tree a meat-eater? Klironomos and Hart fed a got a lot more complicated. It forms a mycorrhizal sheath around the small batch of springtails a diet of radioactively tagged Kent McFarland root tips of the tree, where it receives sugars from nitrogen so they could follow it through the food the tree’s photosynthesis, supplies the tree with essential nutrients, and helps to increase water uptake by the tree roots. Such symbiotic relationships between trees and fungi are common. About ninety-five percent of plants get some nutrients from fungi, and fungi play an important role in the food web. In particular, fungi (along with lightning strikes and soil bacteria) are critical for converting atmospheric nitrogen into reactive forms, such as nitrate and ammonia, which other living things can use for growth. What makes the eastern white pine’s relationship with the bicolored deceiver surprising is the way the tree benefits from the fungus’ meat- eating habits – something scientists discovered by accident during a study of tiny soil arthropods called springtails. Many people know springtails as snow fleas, the wingless insects often seen by the thousands jumping across the snow in late winter. Soil ecologists John Klironomos, now at the University of British Columbia, and his colleague Miranda Hart wondered if springtails had an adverse effect on trees since they eat fungi that help secure nutrients for many plants. They set up a simple experiment to feed the springtails a diet of fungi, including bicolored deceiver. The Outside Story is sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: [email protected].

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 17 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ STEWARDSHIP STORY ]

The Pride of Participation

As I make the drive from my suburban home to my country property – a 75-acre woodlot in the northern part of Allegany County, New York – I reflect on that piece of land with great pride. It had been mismanaged for years before I purchased it in 1985. The property was abandoned as farmland in the 1950s, except for a 15-acre parcel kept in production until the 1970s. That area saw its final plowing in 1971 and was then mechanically planted with 15,000 conifers (pine, spruce, and fir). At that time, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation was recommending such plantings to stabilize soil and improve wildlife habitat. In retrospect, we know that this was not a good policy. Today, the stand is a sterile monoculture with little economic or ecological value. The remainder of the property was left to natural succession and, thanks to recent management work, it is now a beautiful northeastern deciduous forest. I purchased this property solely as a hunting cull trees. My friends and I put them on the ground ational trails, and I hope these will be intact after camp. I really didn’t know much about trees or and turned them into firewood. The improve- the logging operation is complete. The remaining what timber management was until state forester ment was remarkable. Now I see tall, clear crop slash will pose no problem, as I will leave most of Paul Kretser evaluated my property around 1990. trees with good spacing and open crowns. I also the tops in place to shelter the regenerating tree He explained that by taking an active steward- began controlling woody invasives like multiflora seedlings. The forest should be ready for another ship role I could improve the deer habitat (and by rose, honeysuckle, and grapevines through cut selective harvest in about 15 years. extension the deer hunting) while also building an stump and basal bark herbicide treatments. This My efforts have produced some prime timber, investment in timber. That concept changed my involves applying an herbicide (I use triclopyr or excellent wildlife habitat, and better access. I world. He drew up a 10-year management plan glyphosate) on the cambium of a cut stump or on am grateful to the forestry experts from the and I went to work. the bottom six inches of trees with a diameter of Department of Environmental Conservation, the I started by improving access to the property eight inches or less. I reduced American beech New York Forest Owners Association, and the by building a series of trails and roads. Then I regeneration with the same methods. Cornell Cooperative Extension. With their assis- started wildlife habitat improvements. I clearcut In addition to this work, I conducted two “worst tance and instruction, I learned proper timber approximately five acres to create early suc- first” harvests to release high-value crop trees. management. In kind, I have demonstrated these cessional habitat and released roughly 50 apple I tackled these jobs on my own – cutting, skid- management practices to others through my trees. I initially decided to put two of those clear- ding, and bidding out the sales. It was a valuable volunteer work as a Master Forest Owner with cut acres into a small Christmas tree plantation. learning experience, but not a wise decision. In the Cornell Cooperative Extension and through Big mistake! After eight years trimming and this case, selling logs on the landing was no more woodswalks on my land. My greatest satisfaction nurturing those 300 trees (most of which I gave profitable than selling trees on the stump. is that my two sons, a few friends, and I have car- away), I converted the area into a wildlife food plot This year I am having a major timber harvest. ried out this work ourselves. This stewardship will consisting of clover, chicory, and brassica. Now I Now that I am wiser, I have hired a consulting provide benefits for years to come – even after I till that plot on a two-year cycle and often enjoy forester to bid out my veneer-grade black cherry, am gone. This forest is my pride and my legacy. visits by wildlife. sugar maple, and red oak. He will conduct the sale Jim DeLellis Elsewhere, I have completed a number of tim- from start to finish with a performance bond held ber stand improvement projects. This work was in escrow. A stumpage sale is safer and a lot less This series is underwritten by the Plum Creek Foundation, largely facilitated by federal cost share programs work for me. My main concern is the presence in keeping with the foundation’s focus on promoting administered through the Natural Resources of heavy logging equipment on the property. My environmental stewardship and place-based education Conservation Service. State foresters marked the sons and I have built and maintain miles of recre- in the communities it serves.

18 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 [ STACK STUMPER ] [ ECOLOGICAL ETYMOLOGIST ]

How solid is a cord of wood? Dear E.E.: How did fisher-cat become Most of us have been trained to picture a cord of wood as a neatly stacked pile measuring the common name in northern 4x4x8 feet. But how much of that 128-cubic-foot rectangle is wood and how much is air? New England for an animal that Searching on the internet, I found the consensus to be that one cord of wood contains does not fish and is not a cat? about 85 cubic feet of solid wood, which means that 43 cubic feet of that must not be wood. That breaks down to roughly two-thirds wood and one-third air. But I’ve stacked a lot of wood, and my instincts told me that couldn’t possibly be right. To visualize what a stack that airy would look like, I took my son’s Lego set and made a wall that was exactly one-third air. Good question. I distinctly remember the first time I There was no way I could stack a row of wood with that much air in it even if I tried. heard its name. An excited friend exclaimed, “Guess But Legos aren’t firewood. To figure out how much air was in a row of firewood, I came what? I just saw a fisher running down the road!” up with the idea of stapling a piece of garden fence to my stack of wood and counting the And the first image that popped into my mind was number of times I found air versus wood at each corner of the 1-inch x 3-inch rectangles. of an old man, wicker creel swinging as he dodged With enough samples, I would have a good approximation of how much wood and how much oncoming cars. air there was. The area of fence that I counted had 200 corners, and I found wood 171 times. At least one science writer claims the term fisher So, in my case, a well-stacked row of wood is 86 percent solid, which in a perfectly stacked derives from the first time Sir Humphrey Gilbert (a row would amount to about 110 cubic feet of wood. sixteenth-century explorer for Queen Elizabeth) saw But my row is not a perfectly stacked cord, nor is each piece cut to exactly the same a sea mink, which he described as a “fyshe like a length. I typically cut my firewood to 16-inch lengths, measured with a stick of wood and greyhound.” The sea mink is extinct now, but looked marked with an axe, hardly a precise method. Sampling my stacks, I found that my pre- an awful lot like a fisher. Maybe the name transferred sumed 16-inch pieces of wood ran between 15 and 17 inches, averaging 15.5. (Nor is every to its terrestrial cousin, but this seems like a stretch. piece cut square on the ends.) My pieces are short by an average of 3.1 percent, so my More likely, the word came from the Old English stacked “cord” is now down to around 106 cubic feet of wood. There’s undoubtedly more word fitchet, for polecat. In England, a polecat was loss in other places, like the bark itself. I’m happy when I come across black locust, but there a generic term used to refer to several species of certainly is a lot of air space contained in its deeply furrowed bark. mustelid (mammals in the weasel family). The word So where did this consensus figure that a stacked cord is two-thirds wood come from? fitchet comes from the Old French word fisseau, which I was able to contact the owner of one of the websites that published that information. He probably comes from the Old Dutch visse, for nasty (in informed me that his figure wasn’t based on measuring a carefully stacked cord but rather temper or smell, I couldn’t say). All members of the on a study that measured the average weight of wood that was delivered to a typical con- weasel family are ferocious predators with pungent sumer. This is quite different than the way I was looking at it. In that context, how would you anal sacs, so this makes a certain amount of scents. know if the cord was really a cord to begin with? I found tables online that gave both the So we have an explanation for fisher, but what weight per cubic foot and the weight per cord of several firewood species, and some quick about cat? Fishers have a bad (sometimes unde- math indicated that there’s roughly 60 percent solid wood in a cord, though it’s not clear served) reputation as domestic cat killers, and I’ve what assumptions they made about size and stacking. heard it said that they eat so many cats they’re Even simple science provides more questions than answers. I think I was able to prove, practically fishing for them. This is an unsatisfactory though, that an honest cord will be, at best, about 82 percent solid wood when stacked. Then answer, I know. Perhaps fishers look a little like cats that cord will shrink as it dries – 6 percent or more. Is it no longer a cord at that point, or is slinking through the grass, but I’m quite sure my own it a cord with more air space? More questions to ponder, but the good thing is that all of the cats would be offended by the comparison. My best BTUs are still there. guess is that it’s a portmanteau, created by blending Brian Lanius fitchet and polecat into fisher cat, though we’ll have The author’s experiment. to live the question for now. BRAIN LANIUS

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 19 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ MANY MILES AWAY ] always do, that the forests were to be the property of the state, with only a few exceptions. If you were an Imperial planner that’s what you would do, Growing Teak in India’s Northern Woodlands too. When British rule was cast off in 1947, state ownership of the forests was not. In a curious twist, Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of stories about how forests are managed in far-away places. the new constitution declared that the forests were national assets but were to be managed by the I’ve always wanted to see teak silviculture, and us moves. We inch forward, lurching a few feet individual states. today’s my lucky day. at a time. After a few minutes, our line of traffic The management practices on state forests I’m in Bhopal, India, visiting Professor Parag swerves into the opposite lane to avoid something. are controlled by rulings from the Supreme Court Dubey of the Indian Institute of Forest Management, A cow, sitting in the roadway, taking up the entire of India. Addressing litigation brought by environ- a major graduate school for forestry and related lane. I suppose if I had to choose between the mental groups, the court ruled that all resources fields. Professor Dubey and his driver pick me up pavement and the mud I’d choose the pavement, must be spent on “degraded” forest before any at the campus guesthouse for the two-hour trip to too. The cow sits, looking bored and tired. No driver can be spent on planting on new ground. The a teak plantation. We are accompanied by Captain or passerby moves to shoo the animal off the road. court also effectively reduced annual allowable Khure, an Indian Forest Service officer with strong I wonder aloud, do these cows have owners? Why cuts by 50 percent. This will sound eerily familiar field experience who prefers to be addressed by do they put them at risk like this? Turns out, it’s to folks in the Pacific Northwest. Harvests from his former Army rank. complicated. First, cows are sacred. They symbol- natural forests fell dramatically. Much of the slack Bhopal is in the midst of Madhya Pradesh, a ize motherhood and may not be harmed. Then in the teak market was picked up by imports from large state in north-central India. The 19 million why leave them in the middle of the road? Aha! Myanmar, which was under military dictatorship at acres of forest here account for a considerable Precisely because nobody will harm them there. the time and said to be overcutting its teak by 100 share of the nation’s total. Private forestland as we Hours of lurching along, stop-start, side to side percent. Partly as a result, India became the second know it in the United States is scarce in India – the to pass or avoid potholes, begin to wear on the largest importer of tropical hardwood in the world majority is in tiny patches less than an acre in size. nerves. Everyone is in a rush and swerving back after China. I wonder if the Honorable Justices and And forest itself is scarce, covering only about 20 and forth to avoid oncoming vehicles is routine. triumphant litigants ever heard of this or would be percent of the land. This is a country that’s roughly Horns are blasting almost continuously. Our driver interested if they did. one-third the size of the U.S., but with more than a takes it all in stride. Arriving at the plantation, we step out and are billion people the forest faces many demands. (To As we leave the chaos of Bhopal, the land turns greeted by a group of uniformed officials and put their population into perspective, one out of six more pastoral with every mile. When we turn onto forest guards who snap to attention to greet the people in the world lives in India.) a one-lane tarred road, we pass women in color- District Director, Mr. R. Dubey, and their foreign Teak has been planted in India since the 1840s, ful robes. Some weed corn by hand, others carry visitor. They are the rangers and forest guards and is what Indian people think of as the queen headloads of wood or gather wild vegetables. who manage this area. They show us detailed of woods – the mahogany of the subcontinent. As We eventually arrive at the plantation, which maps and we walk through, discussing forestry soon as they can afford it, people trade up to teak is overseen by the Madhya Pradesh Forest and natural history. furniture. India is thought to be the home of the Department. This is state-owned land. Years ago, Silviculture in this stand focuses on teak trees, largest area of planted teak in the world, and much when the British came in the form of the East India readily identifiable by their distinctive, huge leaves. of it is grown in Madhya Pradesh. India also imports Company, they declared, as good empire guys This area looks like anything but a plantation – it a lot of teak. When teaching at Yale recently, I had a student from Ghana who worked on government teak plantations, growing wood that mostly went to India. Globalization knows no boundaries. At dawn it is cool under a grey sky. We turn south in a light drizzle. Small groups of people are walking along the road, some with little backpacks, some with rain gear. In every group one person carries a flagpole with a long red ban- ner. They are pilgrims, the captain says, walking, sometimes for days. They seek to honor a local god by bringing water to its shrine. Almost all day we pass them along the roadside. The road is choked with traffic. In the villages, all LLOYD IRLAND the brightly lit little market stalls are open. Barbers ply their trade, as do those selling small hardware items and various foods. Many shoppers and strollers are out and around. The truck ahead of The author, center, with his hosts at a state-owned teak plantation in Madhya Pradesh.

20 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 contains large overstory residual trees and a variety PHOTOS BY LLOYD IRLAND of other species here and there. It is quite patchy and rarely looks uniform. The management regime is described as very mechanical, multiple cleanings in the first three to four years, followed by regular thinnings, then final harvest at age 60. “The rotation for teak is 60 years,” we are told. This was apparently settled long ago. The next step is three coppice rotations of 20 years each, at which time similar tree sizes are reached. At age 120 the coppice is spent, and then the stand is replanted. The work week is long – it’s Sunday and a crew of women is cultivating newly sprouted seedlings, removing unwanted leaves. Others are prepping seeds to be planted. The seeds are spread almost a foot deep in a large cement basin, then a worker turns them over with a shovel and a tractor runs over them to finish the job. This process softens the hard shells for germination. The seeds are so bitter that birds will not eat them. Adjacent is a stack of piping that will supply irrigation water during the upcoming hot dry season. The seedlings, when ready, are processed by hand. The roots are pruned, the tops lopped off, and then they are bundled. This was demonstrated for us. The cuttings are planted with a small dibble and tamped in by foot. Finally, we visit a timber depot. The district hires cutting and hauling contractors who deliver logs to this depot, where they are sorted into small piles based on dimension. The stacks are then auctioned one at a time to dealers in bimonthly auctions. We were told that one tree can be worth $1,000 on the ground here. The wood we saw was unimpressive in size and straightness; it must have been generated from a thinning. Buyers must have a timber transport permit to assure legality. And the mills must be able to produce these for every load. Even India’s few private landowners who want to cut one single tree must have a permit from a local forester and also a timber transport permit. The “license raj” continues to reign, having outlasted the British by almost three-quarters of a century. This entire trip was well off the beaten track – I saw no other Westerners the entire day. Rainy and bumpy and noisy as it was, this was a refreshing change from steamy and smoky Delhi, from reviewing columns of figures and usual business in the lecture hall and office. Now, finally, I’ve seen my teak. Lloyd C. Irland

Forest guard with teak seedling. Inset: Teak logs, sorted into piles based on dimension and waiting to be auctioned.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 21 22 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 1,000 words

Photo by Frank Kaczmarek Photographer Frank Kaczmarek captured this impressionistic photograph at a small pond in northern New Hampshire. “Including the lily pads in the frame, in a small way, reminded me of Claude Monet’s series of paintings depicting lily pads,” he said.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 23 Like sugar maple leaves, the fins and bellies of male brook trout turn orange in fall. Males develop an upward hook in the lower jaw as they age, called a kype. This, along with sharp, saw-like teeth, helps in battles with other males as they jostle for breeding position. Note the white markings on the front edge of this big male’s fins; the white can be used to distinguish eastern brook trout from other trout species.

Eastern brook trout will grow to a length of 4-16 inches, averaging around 6- 8 inches in the Northeast. Females, like the one pictured here, are generally smaller and less colorful than males, with cucumber-shaped bodies.

24 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 The Life Cycle of a Brook Trout Photos by Robert Michelson

People who fish tend to be poetically inclined – it probably has something to do with the hours spent in silent contemplation. And of all their piscatorial muses, the brook trout reigns supreme. Thoreau referred to them as the painted fish. Burroughs was a lifelong seeker. Perhaps the best recent compliment paid the species was by Cormac McCarthy, who ended his grueling, post-apocalyptic novel The Road – a book about a father and son limping through a ruined, colorless landscape – with the image of brook trout in a mountain stream: Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes…. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. McCarthy’s evocation of the world in its In the fall, females use their tail fins to create small nests in the gravel bottoms of shallow, fast-moving becoming is no throw-away sentiment. Brook water. They deposit their eggs – as many as 3,000 per fish – in these redds, where they will be trout were among the first colonizers back to fertilized by a cloud of sperm from a nearby adult male. As the female expands the size of her redd our region after the last natural apocalypse. or adds new nests, she stirs up gravel that is carried downstream to cover previously laid eggs. As the Laurentide ice sheet retreated between 8,000 and 13,000 years ago, you can imagine these cold water-loving trout at the edge of the melting ice, following the newly fissured streams into the greening hills. Because brook trout live in water, their life cycle can seem mysterious to us terrestrial beings – which is why we’re happy that people like Robert Michelson exist. Michelson donned a wet suit and braved freezing fall temperatures to show us the brook trout’s mating rituals, then followed up in spring to capture the results of the spawn. Here’s what it looks like down there. —The Editors

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 25 Getting the Shot

The eastern brook trout is one of the most beautiful fish I have ever had the privilege to photograph, though capturing these images was a less than beautiful experience. The saga began with a 2009 trip to northern New Hampshire during Columbus Day weekend – peak spawning time according to biologists from New Hampshire Fish and Game. It was an unseasonably raw day when I left my home in Massachusetts; five hours later, I arrived at the Dead Diamond River in Coös County to find four inches of snow and temperatures in the upper 20s. I climbed down a very steep embankment with my heavy underwater cameras and snorkeling gear (difficult even in dry conditions) and slipped into the river. It didn’t take me long to see that, on account of the cold, all of the brook trout had left the spawning area early. The following day, I was guided to several other small brooks in the region and found only one three-inch brook trout. A third day was spent diving in a newly restored section of Nash Stream, only to find nothing but more cold water – beautiful area, but no fish! At this point, I began to panic – where and how was I going to capture spawning? There was a small brook in central New Hampshire with a Fertilized eggs need cool, fast-moving water with a lot of oxygen to survive. As the eggs continue spawning population of trout that I knew of, so I to grow, the eyes and spine of the developing brook trout can be seen through the clear shell. It pinned my hopes there. takes one to four-and-a-half months for eggs to hatch, depending on the water temperature. Fast forward to the second week in November – it was snowing and very cold. My wife and I had A newly hatched trout is called a sac fry. The sac fry develop for traveled to the stream six times looking for “the six to eight weeks in the redd, using their yolk sacs for nutrients. shot.” After about four hours in 42° water, I’d lost feeling in the area around my mouth where I was biting down on the snorkel and decided to take a break. My wife, who’d been patrolling the shore, said, “They’re doing something over here. Get back in the water. We are not coming back up here again this year.” Call it luck or the power of wifely persuasion, but shortly thereafter I captured the images you see here. —Robert Michelson

26 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 As stream temperatures rise in early spring, the young trout – called fry – leave the redd. As they grow, they develop dark vertical bars on their sides, which provide some measure of camouflage. This stage of development is called the parr stage. It might be three years before these young trout are mature enough to spawn.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 27 28 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Learn from the Pros!

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Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 29 Theology of a Quaker

30 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 By Martin Melville

riends sometimes express surprise when I tell them that I’m a Quaker logger, and that I find logging to be deeply spiritual work. How, they ask, can it possibly be spiritual when you’re out there raping and pillaging Creation? The fact that my friends can ask such a question earnestly has led to some intro- spection. What is it about this work that is so deeply spiritual? When I spend time in nature, I see God at work everywhere – in Queen Anne’s lace, in bird song, in the order of everything around me. I take the perhaps old fashioned approach that we are to worship the Creator, not the creation (Romans), though I have come to understand that this is perhaps a narrow inter- pretation of the Presence. Logging is where the rubber meets the road in stewardship of God’s creation. It is a weighty commission. My logging is done in the service of silviculture, analogous to agricultural science for farming, but more complex because of the many ecological processes inherent in forests. In many ways, logging mimics what occurs in nature. Sometimes storms blow down large swaths of forest. Seeds germinate in the light that’s let in to the forest floor and grow into trees. We work within this natural model, manipulating forest composition and succession, whether it’s to improve forest health and animal habitat or to harvest a token amount of merchantable timber. Through it all, we strive to keep water clean, to keep the overall forest bal- anced. Large trees have their own order, so do thickets. Every twig has its place. Work is a great way to experience the Presence. Consider Brother Lawrence, a seventh-century monk who found it easi- est to be aware of God while performing menial tasks. Among his favorite places was the monastery kitchen, doing the dishes. Brother Lawrence’s experience lacked the intense physical exertion which can add to the framework of deep meditation, but anything that requires concentration can serve to bring us into awareness of God. Work teaches me patience. The typical logging job is large enough that it won’t be completed in a day, or even a week. You come to understand that those trees will still be there in the morning, waiting for you. Forestry works on an even longer time frame: often the job you begin today will not be yours to complete. Trees grow, but a tree planted today may take 80 years Logger to be harvestable. I’ll not be around to see it. JUSTIN COLEMAN

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 31 “In retrospect, life is a series of serendipitous events. When we are in the thick of it, we lack perspective.”

Work offers lessons in serving your fellow man. In general, far down the mountain I was working on. It was a very similar each person tries to make the work the next will perform a little accident. My hip is becoming arthritic. I could wish I hadn’t had easier. For example, there is usually a range in the direction a the accident, but it had a huge effect on who I became and the tree can be felled. The feller should choose the direction that direction of my career. To say it was bad, I think, would be wrong. will best facilitate taking the tree to where it can be picked up It was interactive, instructive. Which of us was lucky and which by the truck, while minimizing damage to trees that will remain. was unlucky is not ours to judge. Every choice we make opens Job descriptions are fluid. Ultimately, they all boil down to “if it new possibilities and eliminates others. In the end, we must learn needs done, do it.” To extrapolate to life, a range of solutions is patience and forbearance. As a friend told me, “In retrospect, life usually available for any given problem. In most cases, we can be is a series of serendipitous events. When we are in the thick of it, intentional in choosing actions that make the life of those who we lack perspective.” In the end we will see clearly. follow a little easier. If you see a place you can help, part of being In his book, The Company of Strangers, Parker Palmer writes, faithful is acting instead of just watching. “Faith is a venture into the unknown, into the realms of mys- Of course, I tell my friends of the dangers in logging. You tery, away from the safe and comfortable and secure.” I tell my can get clobbered by a springpole, trees can roll, even a piece friends that logging has the same basis. In this business, you of branch two feet long and two or three inches in diameter has don’t know what a load of logs is worth until the check comes in enough force to kill a person if it falls from a sufficient height. the mail. We pay for the trees before we know if they are solid Every day, every action, every night you get to go home, all of or rotten. We live in a world where work can be suspended for life becomes a gift. weeks due to the weather. Equipment is cranky. Employees But the theological lesson here goes beyond the idea that there and managers are human. We are, even as the children of God, are no atheists in foxholes. Thirty-few years ago I was hit by a tree. flawed individuals. All we can do is our best. All we can do is I got a cracked cheekbone and a dislocated hip out of the deal. have faith that we’ll come home at the end of the day, that the The same day, another fellow cutting firewood was killed, not too bills will be paid, that there will somehow be a roof over our heads and food on the table. Working in the woods has allowed me to practice living in the moment. What has happened is in the past and is imma- terial. What will happen isn’t here yet. Much of what I do is simple – felling a tree or driving a skidder or forwarder out of the woods. During these “quiet” times, I pray. At first I was skeptical, but I kept at it. I found that the idea of centering and worshiping wasn’t limited to Sunday morning. The practice of enlisting God’s help and direction didn’t need to be, and in fact shouldn’t be, limited to meeting for business. It was available to me as I lived and worked. I’ve come to understand that chainsaws and machines and the petty aggravations of life are outward noise and need not interfere with the audibility of the inward Teacher. I practice lectio divina on the Lord’s prayer. “Thy will…” I roll it over and over on my tongue. In my mind. “Thy will, not mine, be done.” Submit. Acknowledge who’s in charge here. Give praise in all things to the creator, for the praise is Hers. The work my hands do is Her work. My strength is finite. Hers is not. In every one of these cases my prayer, my conversation with God, was answered. There were times when the answer was “not now,” or “that is not for you to know.” I knew when to quit pushing; I had faith that if I was to know, it would be revealed. I do not mean to suggest that this philosophy is the norm for my peers. It is my simple hope that this short epistle will give a glimpse of how logging is, for me, a deeply spiritual way to care for God’s creation, to earn a living, and to witness His glory.

Martin Melville is a logger from Centre Hall, Pennsylvania.

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34 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 35 “IT SHOULD BE RIGHT UP HERE AHEAD OF US,” each species in the state. “But nobody ever did it,” said Martin, promised Kevin Martin, his focus alternating between his “so I thought, ‘I’m going to go look for those trees and enter handheld GPS and the knee-deep water that surrounded us. them.’” It took a lot of wandering around, but his bushwhacking He was looking for the best (and driest) route to the biggest through the swampy site paid off. He found the trees and submit- black gum tree in New Hampshire. The woods-and-water set- ted the measurements of the largest to the New Hampshire Big ting was appropriate, as Martin has been building and repairing Tree Program, which pronounced it a state champion. wooden boats for three decades. His other passion is big trees. In Martin says the pride of having found a champion tree, and 2013, he authored a guide book on the subject, Big Trees of New what he learned about the ecological and social benefits of big Hampshire, intended to help oth- trees, inspired him to look for others find and marvel at some of the ers around New Hampshire. “I was largest specimens in the state. excited about it and I joined the Martin was a carpenter who New Hampshire Big Tree Program. transitioned to boat-building in They gave me a list of trees to find 1980 when he built a home on in Rockingham County that hadn’t the banks of the Lamprey River in been measured since the 1970s,” Epping, New Hampshire. There, he said. That scavenger hunt rein- he has a workshop and a handy forced the enjoyment of searching place to test out his creations. He’s out big trees, but also the difficulty self-taught and started out read- of the pursuit – either directions ing books to learn the history and were sketchy or the land had been construction of wooden canoes developed or the trees were on and other small boats. “I started private property. by building a strip-plank canoe Though he had no experience covered with fiberglass, inside and as a writer, Martin was determined out,” Martin explained. Wood- to put together a book to help canvas canoes are more his focus others find some of the biggest these days, as there’s more demand trees in the state. Big Trees of New for that type. He restores historic models and got his hands on Hampshire, from Peter E. Randall Publisher, includes 28 trees dot- some vintage steel molds that he uses to build exact replicas. ted throughout the state, all on land accessible to the public with Outside his shop, beside covered racks of project boats, are no more than a short hike. GPS coordinates are included for each, piles of sticked lumber. “I try to use local wood whenever I as are photos and details such as bark texture, uses for its wood, can,” said Martin. “It doesn’t have to be furniture-dry for boats. and other interesting facts. Martin says that hunting for big trees In fact, sometimes, if you want it for ribs, you want it a little is an inherently educational experience. “Especially the introduced green so you can bend it.” Martin typically searches out the logs species. I didn’t know much about them. And I didn’t know how to – cherry, tamarack, ash, oak, spruce, pine, cedar, and others tell some of the different spruces apart. I learned a lot,” he said. – and brings them to a bandsaw mill down the road. Even on this return visit, Martin’s amazement at the huge While the species he seeks out vary, the logs have one thing black gum remains. “See the bark? It looks almost prehistoric,” in common: they’re big. “With this kind of boat work, you can’t he said, running his fingers down the unusually deep furrows of really have knots in the wood because it’s cut so thin. Plus, with the surface. “And as they get older, they get hollow inside, even the planking you need tight grain, and I’ve found that the best down low.” logs for tight grain and clear wood are the butt logs of big, wide Martin has plans to produce a similar guidebook to the big trees,” Martin explained. “So I’m always on the lookout for trees of Vermont in the near future, and currently is hoping to good-sized logs.” locate the biggest tamarack in New England. It’s a species he’s used He never gave much thought to the big trees that pro- in boat-building and for which he has a personal affinity. “They’re vide those logs until serving on the Lamprey River Advisory spectacular. I’d love to find a national champion,” he said. Committee. Some large black gums had been documented along the river during a wildlife study, and the suggestion was made Patrick White is the assistant editor of Northern Woodlands. that they be entered in the New Hampshire Big Tree Program, a volunteer organization that tracks and tallies the biggest trees of Copies of Big Trees of New Hampshire can be ordered at www.enfieldbooks.com.

THE BIG TREE PROGRAM UTILIZES A POINT SYSTEM TO DETERMINE CHAMPION TREES: Circumference at Breast Height in inches + Vertical Height in feet + 1/4 x Average Crown Spread in feet = Total Points State champions are forwarded to American Forests, a Washington D.C.-based conservation organization that maintains a registry of big trees across the country and annually announces national champion trees in each species.

36 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 PATRICK WHITE

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 37 HTS I RE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE PHOTOS: BIG TREES Big Tree Sampler 1 “The first thing you notice is that the trunk is quite hollow,” wrote Martin of the state champion mockernut hickory, which seems to stand on four legs made of bark. “It makes you wonder how much longer it will hold up under some of the strong winds that must blow on the hillside.” 122 inches CBH, 95 feet VH, 48 feet ACS Bragdon Farm, Amherst, New Hampshire GPS: N 42° 54.319’ W 071° 34.519’

2 Forest Lake State Park is home to several Coös County champion trees, including this paper birch (seen with retired county forester Sam Stoddard). “This is a healthy looking tree that should keep gaining in size,” wrote Martin. 1 “It is the third-largest in the state, but in better 2 condition than the other two, so as long as it doesn’t fall over from the lean it has, it could gain on its status.” 104 inches CBH, 80 feet VH, 51 feet ACS Forest Lake State Park, Dalton, New Hampshire GPS: N 44° 21.617’ W 071° 41.282’

3 Known as “Mister Twister” for its distinctive appearance, this is the state of New Hampshire’s largest white cedar. “I am sure the wood under it has the same twisted grain,” wrote Martin. “It is an unusual looking tree that has great character and deserves the honor.” 73 inches CBH, 75 feet VH, 30 feet ACS Webster Wildlife and Natural Area, Kingston, New Hampshire GPS: N 42° 54.042’ W 071° 03.692’

4 Though there are no state champions to be found (based on points), the Big Pines Natural Area features a loop trail that travels through a collection of huge pines, including the tallest in New Hampshire at 148 feet. “On your way down and back to the river, you will notice how damp the air is with the river and streams 3 flowing through here off the hills,” wrote Martin 4 (shown with the biggest of the Tamworth Pines). “The moisture seems to hold and collect, giving that rain forest feel. Maybe that is what helped these trees reach their great size.” 179 inches CBH, 148 feet VH, 51 feet ACS Big Pines Natural Area, Tamworth, New Hampshire GPS: N 43° 53.047’ W 071° 17.71’

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38 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 39 Adirondack Canoe Classic

40 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 By Katie Jickling

n the morning of September 6, 2013, 275 canoes and nearly 700 paddlers converged at Old Forge Beach in New York’s Adirondack Park. Eager anticipation lingered in the air as canoers snacked and stretched and prepped their boats for the Adirondack Canoe Classic, a 90-mile, three-day race from Old Forge to Saranac Lake. Bobbing near the starting line in a C2 (two-person canoe), I perched on the edge of my bow seat and held my bare arms to my chest, shivering from nerves and the morning chill. Silvery tendrils of fog rose from the water. I turned to Ally Kontra, my teammate and boat captain: “Remind me again why we signed up for this?” A gray-bearded man wearing a baseball cap regarded us from a canoe to our right. He raised a scruffy eyebrow. “This your first 90?” Ally and I were part of a team from Hamilton College that featured 22 paddlers and six boats of various sizes and capacities. Eleven pit crew members – our drivers, chefs, cheerleaders, and support squad – filled out the team. The paddlers that surrounded us were of every age: a few teenagers and college students, as well as experienced canoe racers and septuagenarians. Bearded Adirondack natives comprised a substantial proportion, but some hailed from as far as France and Hawaii. Race organizer Brian McDonnell issued instructions from the dock, and at the call we dug our paddles into the black water and our boat lurched forward. Around us, the lake churned as canoes, bumping and jostling, hurried toward open water. A cheer rose from spectators on the beach. We were off. The Canoe Classic was conceived in the late winter of 1982. Bill Hulshoff, who now acts as head timer, came up with the idea during a Saranac Lake Chamber of Commerce meeting. “We were sitting around wondering what kind of event we could do in the summer, and I said ‘You can pretty much paddle from Old Forge to Saranac Lake.’ After a few coffees, it sounded like a good idea.” Paddlers have clearly agreed: nearly 40 have completed the course more than 20 times, and one of them, Ray Morris, has paddled all 31 years. In 1999, Brian and Grace McDonnell assumed responsibility for the event from the Saranac Chamber. Together, the couple runs Mac’s Canoe Livery and the Adirondack Watershed Alliance (AWA), which promotes water sports and stewardship on the waterways of the Adirondacks. “In the 15 years we’ve run it, we’ve been full every year,” Grace McDonnell said, a note of pride lacing her voice. She added that more of the larger boats – C4s and war canoes – have increased the total number of participants. The race follows the “canoe highway” of the Adirondacks, the same route traveled for centuries by Native Americans, woodsmen, and settlers. Now the

PHOTO BY NANCIE BATTAGLIA / ILLUSTRATION BY NANCY BERNSTEIN route is discontinuous, with three timed legs. “It’s doing something you love for three days in a beautiful place,” she said, explaining the reasons the racers return year after year. “It’s a real community.”

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 41 Day 1

Out on the water, we made our way along an inlet toward ress was hardly discernible. First Lake in the Fulton Chain of Lakes. It would be the first of The end of Fifth Lake marked our first of eight portages. 11 lakes – 35 miles – to be covered that day. After a mile or so, (Though Andrew Jillings, Hamilton’s director of outdoor leader- our rhythm steadied to about 75 strokes a minute. Every ten ship and war canoe captain, had informed us that, “if you’re cool or fifteen strokes, Ally would call out a short “Hut!” and we’d and local, you call them carries.”) switch the paddle to the opposite side of the boat. With practice, The canoe’s keel grated against the sand, and we leapt onto we found the switch caused barely a hitch in our tempo; if we the muddy beach. We hoisted the canoe onto our shoulders timed it right, our paddles swung over the boat and dipped into and marched off up the dirt path, stooping slightly under the the surface of the water with mesmerizing synchrony. weight. The paddles and food rattled in the boat; as we moved The canoes thinned and some pulled out ahead, shrinking from the trail onto a paved road, Hamilton pit crew members to dark, blurred silhouettes in the fog ahead. We took our first cheered us on. The canoe seemed to accumulate weight and snack break after an hour, pausing one at a time for a rushed cup bulk as we walked, and we were glad to clamber back into the of applesauce. Earlier that morning, we had duct-taped a battal- boat at Sixth Lake. ion of protein bars, bite-sized Snickers, and applesauce packets Chris Woodward, who has volunteered with the Canoe to the sides of the boat in easily-accessible rows. We had been Classic for over twenty years and raced in it three times, advised to eat every half-hour, to ensure we’d consume at least described the route as “the central waterway from south to half the calories we’d burn. north for, oh, about 10,000 years.” Woodward, who has spent “This isn’t so bad,” I told Ally. “Only seven more hours to go.” most of his life on and near these waters, builds and repairs We passed through First Lake and Second, then Third and Adirondack guideboats at his shop in Saranac Lake. Fourth. The canoe cut through the polished surface of the water, Before the settlers staked a claim on the rugged land, he Inset:and, Aother 22-year-old than hybridthe gradual larch in Maine. shifting of the landscape, our prog- explained, the Native Americans were making use of the routes.

42 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 PHOTOS BY NANCIE BATTAGLIA

The Mohawk hunted and fished in this area, spending summers ever, long after our excitement had lapsed into frustration, then up on the St. Lawrence and traveling along the Adirondack weary and silent resignation. At some point, I did the math and waterways to their wintering grounds on the Mohawk River. figured that by the end of the weekend, I would have paddled Settlers and woodsmen made their way into the area starting nearly 100,000 strokes. in the 1840s, and until the railroads came through the region in Day One finally ended at a grassy beach in Blue Mountain the 1870s, rivers and lakes were the primary mode of transport. State Park. The pit crew waded out to pull us up, and I collapsed “They went by water as much as possible,” Woodward said. “It’s on shore in utter relief and fatigue. pretty hard going otherwise.” That night, we stayed at a nearby campground, setting up a We continued though the legendary Brown’s Tract, an infu- small metropolis of tents spread across several sites. We gath- riatingly narrow sequence of hairpin turns, where any wrong ered at picnic tables to eat, emptying our bowls again and again. maneuver left the canoe lodged amongst the water lilies. Perhaps Exhaustion and a sense of satisfied accomplishment lent an air twenty canoes glided past as we thrashed in the shallows. of joviality to the scene. The Brown of Brown’s Tract, Woodward said, was a distant When darkness fell, Andrew, our leader, retrieved his pad- relation of the namesake of Brown University in Rhode Island. dlers’ map and laid it out on the pine needles. The team circled “He was given a tract of land. He was going to make a utopian around and watched as, by headlamp, he outlined the route for community, but it has pretty thin, acidic soils, so it didn’t go for the following day with a stick, describing wind direction, land- long,” he explained. marks to watch for, and the terrain of each carry. When we finally cleared Brown’s Tract, confident that the And then there was the perpetual retelling of the accumu- end was a mere half-hour away, Ally and I envisioned the fin- lated 90-Miler folklore and stories. “You can’t say you’ve done ish, rejoicing in the food, the warm clothes, the soft grass. We the 90 ’till you’ve peed in the boat,” a two-time racer informed didn’t catch sight of the final buoys for another two hours, how- the group. “While still keeping pace.”

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 43 On Saturday morning, I awoke to an ache lodged deeply in every muscle. Fog still lingered as we located Day 2 our boat amongst the golden, sprawling array. The start line lay at the bottom of the aptly named Long Lake. As we set off, the canoes seemed caught up in the vastness of the surroundings – the forested swells that rose from rocky black shores, the arcing swatches of light that reflected off the wakes of other boats, the sky that changed from pastels at the horizon to azure overhead. As they passed, canoers greeted or encouraged one other, and I grew to recognize many of the boats, though I never learned a single name. “You girls must be experts at this!” one man called to us from his solo canoe. “Basically,” I replied, with a shrug and a half-smile. “We’ve been doing this at least a week-and-a-half.” It wasn’t much of an understatement. Ally and I had practiced together just nine times since we had arrived on campus in August. We had learned the short, vertical stroke that would permit a pace of 70 strokes a minute, lifting the blade from the water before it reached the waist. The captains gradually learned to maneuver their vessels, and in the bow, I learned to keep a rhythmic pace. We learned to gauge each other’s preferences and quirks, adjusting to the boat’s steering and balance. After two-and-a-half hours on Long Lake, we merged onto Raquette River. The canoes thinned to single file, following the meandering oxbows. After each curve stretched another curve. Cedar, spruce, and beech crowded along the banks and arched over the water, thick forests interspersed with reedy, windswept marshes. Motion could hardly be detected in the unhurried current, and the water faithfully reflected the banks on each side. We pulled up to the bank for the sole carry of the day. A kayaker warned us that, at 1.25 miles, it was the “worst part of the race.” Ally and I hoisted the canoe up stone steps, joining the procession of paddlers maneuvering their way up nearly half-a-mile of steep, rocky trail. Partway up, we heaved the canoe onto our shoulders, and the sharp ridgeline of the hull dug into my already bruised col- larbone. The waterbottles, food, and paddles shifted toward the stern as we clambered and stumbled uphill, and Ally let out a small groan. “Slow down a little.” We descended, breathing hard, and eventually lurched our way onto the beach, where a volunteer held out paper cups of water and a platter of Twix bars. It was a relief to paddle then, and we set off for the last twelve or thirteen miles at a brisk pace. We spent the night at Fish Creek Campground, a few campsites away from where we would start the following day. We ate until we were bloated and collapsed into our sleeping bags before 9 o’clock.

44 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 ALEXANDER KERMAN

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 45 Day 3 ALEXANDER KERMAN

On Day Three, we awoke early, to the same persistently bril- The author (arms raised) and paddling partner Ally Kontra celebrate the completion of liant sky. I taped my blistered fingers and shoveled down two a 90-mile adventure. packets of instant oatmeal and a peanut butter sandwich, before cleaning my bowl with green tea. Sometimes Ally and I talked – about our favorite foods, the It was the shortest of the three days, 25 miles to the end of paddlers who passed us, or about ourselves. We learned to esti- Lower Saranac Lake. It would take, we were told, no longer than mate our progress by the number of snacks we had consumed six hours. – an applesauce, two jellybeans, and a bite of Clif Bar since the At the start, wave two moved en masse into the first of the last carry. three Saranac Lakes. Soon a northeasterly wind picked up, shov- “Look at you young whippersnappers!” a canoe of four ing the waves insolently against our canoe. Our exertions felt women called, as they paddled past in perfect uniformity. fruitless; the far bank never seemed to grow closer and the canoe “We’re old enough to be your grandmothers!” paid no heed to our frantic efforts to keep it on its course. We portaged over a lock, deposited the canoe back in the On shore, families wrapped themselves in blankets to watch water, and continued. Soon, we entered Lower Saranac Lake from their camp docks. Some rang cow bells and shouted and the scene spread out before us: “the best view on the route,” encouragement as the canoes slipped by. Andrew had promised. Sure enough, the Adirondacks stood in Two hours into the day, the eight-person war canoes caught all their splendor, a collage of greens framed by the sky above up to us, followed by a steady procession of C4s. Some passed and reflected in the water below. singing; others we’d recognize by their distinctive canoe decora- The final hours of the race condensed into a blur of exertion tions, bumper stickers, or figureheads. Two paddlers, who later and excitement. At last, we rounded the final corner, and as we claimed victory in the tandem guideboat division, wore coonskin passed the buoys our time rang out over the speakers: 19:40:45. caps and called themselves Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket. I raised my paddle over my head with a broad grin. The guideboat, an oval-bottomed boat pointed on both ends, Hands pulled me onto the boat launch, and I turned to throw evolved as the versatile and ubiquitous “pick-up truck” of the my arms around Ally. “We did it!” A flurry of awards and hap- Adirondacks in the mid-nineteenth century. Woodsmen needed piness and food followed. The celebration reflected the deeply a boat sturdy enough to paddle to town or to transport supplies, entrenched culture of the 90-Miler: the solidarity of accom- and light enough to carry between waterways. The boat typically plishment, an over-abundance of chocolate milk, lively stories has overlapping slats along the sides and is rowed like a rowboat, that grew larger the more times they were told. with space for a second paddler or passenger in back. In the midst of the picnic blankets near the beach, I stretched In the late 1800s, when tourism picked up in the Adirondacks, wearily out on the grass and let the sun warm my hair. Nearby wealthy families took the train up from downstate and stayed at were Larry Sweeney, of Suffield, Connecticut, and canoe partner hotels along the lakes. The guideboats earned their name during Brian Finn, who’ve paddled this race 28 times. He and Finn live this period, as locals ferried hotel patrons to their lodging or several hours apart, and they can’t train like they used to. Still, gave tours to hunting and fishing sites. they have no plans to stop. Once, on the choppy water of some interchangeable lake, I “I’m going to keep doing it until we don’t make the cut-off called out to the coon-skinned pair, complimenting their head- time and they kick us out,” Sweeney said. wear. They laughed, noting that the caps weren’t real; they had bought them at a gas station on the drive down to Old Forge. Katie Jickling is a resident of Brookfield, Vermont, and over the last five years has writ- We struggled through three carries that day and navigated ten for several local and state news organizations. She is currently a senior at Hamilton our way up a meandering river, edged with ochre tamaracks. College and has signed up to paddle the 90-Miler for a second time in early September.

46 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 A Consulting Forester can help you

Markus Bradley, Courtney Haynes, Ben Machin Paul Harwood, Leonard Miraldi Make decisions about Redstart Forestry Harwood Forestry Services, Inc. managing your forestland Juniper Chase, Corinth, VT 05039 P.O. Box 26, Tunbridge, VT 05077 (802) 439-5252 (802) 356-3079 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 M.D. Forestland Consulting, LLC with a logger and Deborah Boyce, CF (802) 472-6060 supervise the job Northwoods Forest Consultants, LLC David McMath 13080 NYS Route 9N, Jay, NY 12941 Cell: (802) 793-1602 (518) 946-7040 [email protected] Improve the quality of [email protected] Beth Daut, NH #388 your timber Cell: (802) 272-5547 Gary Burch [email protected] Burch Hill Forestry 1678 Burch Road, Granville, NY 12832 Scott Moreau (518) 632-5436 Greenleaf Forestry [email protected] P.O. Box 39, Westford, VT 05494 (802) 343-1566 cell Alan Calfee, Michael White (802) 849-6629 Calfee Woodland Management, LLC [email protected] P.O. Box 86, Dorset, VT 05251 (802) 231-2555 Haven Neal [email protected] Haven Neal Forestry Services www.calfeewoodland.com 137 Cates Hill Road, Berlin, NH 03570 Fountain Forestry (603) 752-7107 7 Green Mountain Drive, Suite 3 Richard Cipperly, CF [email protected] Montpelier, VT 05602-2708 North Country Forestry (802) 223-8644 ext 26 8 Stonehurst DrIve, Queensbury, NY 12804 David Senio [email protected] (518) 793-3545 P.O. Box 87, Passumpsic, VT 05861 Cell: (518) 222-0421 (802) 748-5241 LandVest Timberland [email protected] [email protected] Management and Marketing ME, NH, NY, VT Swift C. Corwin, Jr. Jeffrey Smith &DOKRXQ &RUZLQ)RUHVWU\//& 5086 US Route 5, Suite 2, Newport, VT 05855 Butternut Hollow Forestry (802) 334-8402 41 Pine Street, Peterborough, NH 03458 1153 Tucker Hill Road www.landvest.com Swift Corwin: (603) 924-9908 Thetford Center, Vermont 05075 John Calhoun: (603) 357-1236 (802) 785-2615 Long View Forest Management Fax: (603) 924-3171 Jack Wadsworth, LPF, ME & NH Andrew Sheere [email protected] Brian Reader, LPF, ME & NH 6$)&HUWLILHG)RUHVWHU Daniel Cyr Jesse Duplin, LPF, ME & NH NRCS Technical Service Provider Bay State Forestry Wadsworth Woodlands, Inc. Westminster, VT 05158 P.O. Box 205, Francestown, NH 03043 35 Rock Crop Way, Hiram, ME 04041 (802) 428 4050 (603) 547-8804 (207) 625-2468 [email protected] baystateforestry.com [email protected] www.longviewforest.com www.wadsworthwoodlands.com R. Kirby Ellis Meadowsend Timberlands Ltd Ellis’ Professional Forester Services Wayne Tripp Jeremy G. Turner, NHLPF #318 P.O. Box 71, Hudson, ME 04630 ) :)RUHVWU\6HUYLFHV,QF VHUYLQJ1+ 97 (207) 327-4674 *OHQV)DOOV +HUNLPHU1HZ

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 47 THE OVERSTORY

Story by Virginia Barlow Illustrations by Adelaide Tyrol

Pin Cherry Prunus pensylvanica

Once upon a time, there was a really bad native tree called pin cherry, a species with no economic value that blanketed the forest floor following major disturbances, delaying the establishment of the more stately and valuable trees that foresters love. But in recent years, this same tree’s reputation has been redeemed and its salvation heralded. It’s even on its way to being an ecological icon. To identify it, start by separating cherry from not-cherry. This is easy if you can taste a twig, for twigs of all the cherries have a bitter almond taste. And distinguishing pin cherry from the other two common cherries in the Northeast isn’t difficult: chokecherry is just a shrubby shrub and its leaves are broader, almost egg-shaped, unlike the rather slender leaves of pin cherry and black cherry. Black cherry leaves are slender but almost always have fuzz, ranging from white to reddish brown, on both sides of the mid- rib on the underside of the leaf. Pin cherries are in a hurry and don’t have time for this decorative touch. On thriving young pin cherry stems, the smooth mahogany-colored bark almost glistens, contrasting sharply with horizontal bands of pale lenticels – it has the best bark of the common cherries. Following a clearcut or fire (the tree’s also called fire cherry), buried pin cherry seeds sprout abundantly – 100,000 seedlings per acre is not unusual – even though there may not have been a single pin cherry growing in the neighborhood for many decades. The seeds are dispersed by birds (it’s sometimes called bird cherry, too), but it turns out that most of the post-apocalyptic seedlings are from seeds that have been in the soil since pin cherry last ruled the site, which might have been, believe it or not, 100 years ago. The factors that trigger this resurrection are not understood: is it increased light, higher temperatures, a greater fluctuation in temperature, some combination of these, or something else entirely? In addition to being abundant, pin cherries are tough little pioneers. At experimental plots in the White Mountain National Forest, seedlings more than quadrupled in height over the two growing seasons of the study, and only 2.5 percent of them died. Their rapid growth resulted in a closed canopy just a few short years after the previous forest was removed. When this happens, rain no longer splashes on bare soil, greatly reducing runoff because a huge amount of water peacefully leaves the scene via evapotranspiration as the growing pin cherries take up water from the upper layer of the soil. Nutrients, meanwhile, are being incorporated into the leaves, wood, and roots of these same cherries. These are money in the bank, for at the end of a pin cherry’s 30-year lifespan, these nutrients will be returned to the soil and borrowed again, this time on a longer-term basis, by successor species such as sugar maple and yellow birch. Searching for a reason for the tree’s short lifespan, researchers fertilized pin cherry stands in the White

48 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Mountains and found that pin cherry’s dominance could be prolonged by applying nutrients. This suggests that this nitrogen-hungry pioneer may die because it can’t compete for resources when species like sugar maple and beech begin to get a foothold. The forest has no interest in producing sugar maple sawlogs – this 30-year delay is only noticed by us humans. But what the forest does seem to be single- mindedly focused on is conserving resources, and here pin cherry plays its role to perfection. This species flowers and produces seeds beginning at age four – which is perhaps not out of line considering that its life span is quite compressed for a tree. Each white flower is on a single stalk, unlike the flowers of chokecherry and black cherry, which have many flowers on each stalk. They supply pollen and nectar to insects, especially bees. Birds also benefit from pin cherry fruits, for this little tree fruits extravagantly. In one study, a 15-year-old stand of pin cherry ripened 1,118,000 fruits per acre. An analysis of forest soils in New Hampshire found from 140,000 to 450,000 viable buried pin cherry seeds per acre. Pin cherry is absent in mature forests, and before Europeans settled here it was probably quite a rare tree. Biologists think that in those times before clearcutting, catastrophic pin cherry-producing events occurred naturally every several hundred to a thousand years in the forests of the Northeast. Fortunately for us and the birds, pin cherry doesn’t only crop up in large openings. Field edges, roadsides, and the borders of yards often grow in to pin cherry, and these trees may well have birds to thank for dispersing seeds widely and at random. More than 25 bird species eat the fruits, including grouse, flicker, all the woodpeckers, great- crested flycatcher, many thrushes, cedar waxwings, catbirds, and bluebirds. Moose and deer browse the foliage. Pin cherry does have its aesthetic downsides. It is often the target of a fungus called black knot of cherry. Unsightly, dark, misshapen blobs in the branches give the impression that somebody has flung the contents of a pooper-scooper into the tree. This disease affects the other cherry species, as well, but doesn’t attack other trees. Eastern tent caterpillars, the moth larvae that make the mistake of having very visible, woven communal dwellings, thus calling attention to themselves, sometimes defoliate cherries. But the pesticides that are lavished on them may affect beneficial insects as well and tent caterpillars are early season insects: if defoliated, the trees usually have time to put out a new set of leaves. So, it turns out that pin cherry, even though small, weak-wooded, and insubstantial, does get to spend some time on center stage – if only between the acts, and perhaps as more of a character actor than in a leading role.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 49 By Kristen Fountain MAINE FOREST RANGERS

50 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 At first, Beverly Kaiser and her husband Phillip were pleased So far, Kessler has been unable to convince any state prosecu- when a father-and-son logging team stopped by their house in tor to file criminal charges. “I’ve tried to encourage cases like Washington, Vermont, in late August 2008. Ken Bacon Sr. and this to go forward, but it’s been difficult,” he said. Because the Jr. of Barton, Vermont, told the Kaisers they had just finished Bacons have the landowners’ permission to cut on their proper- working a job nearby. Since their equipment was in the area, the ties, the outcome is usually seen not as theft or fraud, but as a men offered to cut down the taller trees on the couple’s property, breach of contract, a matter for the civil courts. which partially blocked a panoramic mountain view. The next “If somebody kicked down the front door of your house and day, the Kaisers, then retirees in their late 60s, signed a simple took your TV and your jewelry” it would obviously be a theft, handwritten contract that said nothing more than the price the Kessler said. “If somebody steals a whole bunch of trees, it’s company would pay them per log removed. looked at as, ‘they had an agreement and did it by mistake.’” For the first few weeks, the Kaisers received the money That attitude does not surprise forester Richard Carbonetti, they expected. Then the payments stopped coming. And when head of the timberlands division of LandVest, a regional the Bacons finally pulled out their equipment in late October, consulting and property management company and a Northern Beverly Kaiser said, the woods were a muddy mess: rutted skid- Woodlands board member. der trails, flattened culverts, ditches blocked by slash piles, and Until recently, the only timber theft cases that went to crimi- a severely eroded brook. According to her 2010 court statement, nal court in northern New England were those involving blatant most of the trees planted around the Kaisers’ pond, which they trespassing, when loggers had no business being on a property told the loggers not to touch, were gone; the rest had been cut at all. “The legal system has been very uninterested or unwilling and left where they dropped. The Bacons also took several trees to deal with this as a theft in a criminal sense,” Carbonetti said. from a neighbor’s property, an area from which she also recalled “It is often presented by the loggers as a misunderstanding.” warning them away. In New York, as well as Vermont, this is still largely true. If “They never did cut the large group of tall trees we especially loggers have been contracted to do a job, then take more trees wanted cut for the view,” Beverly Kaiser wrote. “They seemed to than agreed upon or fail to pay full value for the logs they take, choice cut what they wanted and the ones in their way.” they are difficult to prosecute, said Ken Bruno, a lieutenant A small claims case against the company would subsume the with New York’s Bureau of Environmental Crime Investigation. couple for the next three years. Although the verdict was in the “Those are very difficult and are decided on a case-by-case Kaiser’s favor, almost six years later an award has not been paid. scenario, based on the facts,” he said. “Most [district attorneys] The Kaisers were one of at least six landowners in four are hesitant to get involved when there is a contract.” Vermont counties who filed civil or small claims complaints In those instances, landowners are left to try to seek justice against the Bacons between 2007 and 2011. Two cases were and recompense at their own expense. Unfortunately, a civil case, settled out of court; one was dismissed for procedural reasons. even when successful, often does not yield much satisfaction, Of the remaining three, all were decided for the plaintiff. The as the Kaisers discovered. court concluded that the Kaisers were owed $4,500. For another couple in Caledonia County, damages topped $23,000. New Laws and a New Attitude in New Hampshire and Maine Meanwhile, starting in 2008, the Vermont Department of All four northern New England states have civil laws to Environmental Conservation pursued the Bacons for envi- protect landowners against unscrupulous loggers. They allow ronmental violations at several other logging jobs. Over the for recovery of at least triple the value of logs removed without next five years, Bacon Timber Harvesting racked up almost the owner’s permission, as well as reimbursement for the full $41,000 in fines stemming from judgments in three state cases, cost of repairs from damage to the property. The problem with compounded by ongoing non-payment. In early 2010, a court the laws, though, is that some loggers are able to avoid paying ordered the Bacons to notify the agency whenever they planned for verdicts against them by putting their equipment and other to start a new logging operation in the state. But they have assets in a family member’s name. And as the old saying goes, ignored that order and continue to find work from unsuspecting you can’t get blood from a stone. landowners. In response, Maine and New Hampshire have enacted stricter Today, Gary Kessler, chief of the Vermont department’s regulations for logging contracts and sales, making it harder enforcement division, is frustrated. The Bacons and their com- to transport and sell stolen lumber. Also, criminal prosecutors pany hold no assets that the state can seize and there are no tax in those states no longer hesitate to bring felony cases against returns to garnish, he said. He and his colleagues now believe rogue loggers, particularly habitual offenders. A guilty verdict that their activities are in a category beyond his department’s can result in a year or more in prison, serious fines, and tens of jurisdiction. thousands of dollars in restitution for landowners. “Our agency doesn’t consider the Bacons loggers,” he said. “This is a criminal enterprise that just happens to occur by logging.”

“If somebody kicked down the front door of your house and took your TV and your jewelry it would obviously be a theft. If somebody steals a whole bunch of trees, it’s looked at as, ‘they had an agreement and did it by mistake.’”

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 51 Take as an example the recent case of Andrew Pysz of other assets” for a long time. Changing that “has been an edu- Newport, New Hampshire. Like the Bacons, he has a long paper cational process for us.” trail of fines stemming from environmental violations and log- One important step in boosting oversight of logging activi- ging disputes in the civil courts. In January 2014, Pysz pleaded ties has been the establishment of reporting requirements for guilty to two counts of deceptive forestry business practices, all commercial timber harvests. Vermont now requires noti- which has been a felony in New Hampshire since the late 1990s. fication and approval of large cuts – 40 acres or more. In con- He spent almost five months in the state prison in Concord. trast, Maine mandates reporting of all harvests that span more Placed in a home confinement program in May, he’ll now wear than two acres, unless the wood is solely for the landowner’s an ankle monitor for up to four years. Also, because of a 2011 use, and that notification must include a cutting plan describ- law that allows a court to set “enhanced penalties,” Pysz has been ing the type and location of trees to be removed. Since the late permanently banned from logging in the state. 1990s, all logs transported through Maine must carry a trip “We have come quite a long ways in the last 10 to 15 years,” ticket naming the owner of the land it came from and the log- said Brad Simpkins, chief of forest protection for the New ger who cut it. Mills must provide timber sellers with stumpage Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands. “We now have sheets upon delivery, and the logger must provide copies to the county attorney’s offices that are absolutely right on board with landowner at the time of payment. prosecuting a timber case.” The next step was establishing penalties for not following the These changes occurred gradually. Forestry officials describe a rules. Maine law requires that loggers pay landowners within two-pronged approach: enactment of new laws that clarify what 45 days, unless a timeline is otherwise specified in a contract. counts as a logging crime and deliberate outreach and education Failure to pay within that timeframe, regardless of intent, results to lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges about the problem. At the in fines. The third incident of nonpayment within a five-years same time, rangers and others in the business began informing period is treated as a crime with up to six months of jail time landowners about the new legal resources and continued to advise attached. State law also defines timber “theft by deception” as them on how to protect themselves from predatory logging. a form of theft subject to the state’s criminal larceny laws. For “There has been a continual evolution of the law and tools in values over $10,000 that means up to 10 years in prison. terms of prosecution,” explained Bill Hamilton, chief ranger for Simpkins describes a similar evolution in laws and attitudes the Maine Forest Service. “The vast majority of people who work in New Hampshire. “It has taken some time, years of working in the timber industry are very honest. We’ve worked pretty hard with them for the courts to start becoming familiar with the over the last decade to protect landowners from that very, very value of wood and county attorneys to start becoming comfort- small group out there that tries to take advantage,” he said. able with how to prosecute the case,” he said. Both states have an advantage over Vermont and New York In New Hampshire, an “intent to cut” announcement must in that they employ a cadre of forest rangers who are trained be signed by the logger and filed with a landowner’s municipal- in law enforcement and focus solely on forest concerns. The ity. The paperwork is then forwarded to the state’s Division of rangers act as the front lines in investigating timber theft and Forests and Lands. The requirement is waived in a few circum- bringing cases to the attention of district and county attorneys’ stances: harvests of up to 10,000 board feet cut for the construc- offices. Maine’s Forest Service employs more than 65 rangers tion of buildings on the owner’s property; harvests of up to 20 under Hamilton’s command. There are 16 forest rangers report- cords of firewood for use on site by the landowner; or where the ing to Simpkins in New Hampshire. cutting is done for the purpose of development. New York, too, has a longstanding corps of forest rangers. But New Hampshire law defines the “reckless” felling of trees as they get involved in timber theft only when it occurs on public criminal. If the trees cut are worth less than $1,000, the crime is land. Otherwise, it falls under the purview of the 40-odd officers a misdemeanor. Over that amount, the act is treated as a lower- with the state’s Bureau of Environmental Crime Investigation, level felony, with the possibility of up to seven-and-a-half years part of the New York Environmental Conservation Police – a in jail and up to five years of probation. team that is also responsible for enforcing the gamut of envi- Under New Hampshire’s “deceptive forest practices” law, ronmental laws in the state, from those involving endangered loggers can also be found guilty of a misdemeanor if they “reck- species to water quality. Similarly, eight civilian investigators lessly” fail to provide a written contract to the handle logging irregularities in Vermont, but they also respond landowner. The contract must describe the to a litany of other environmental violations, including those agreed upon amount the landowner involving salvage yards and underground storage tanks. will be paid for a set number of logs In Maine and New Hampshire, changes in laws and atti- and when that payment is due. Other tudes were just as important as more manpower, officials said. behavior – “recklessly” taking more According to Hamilton, “timber was treated differently than logs than specified, not paying for

“There has been a continual evolution of the law and tools in terms of prosecution,” explained Bill Hamilton, chief ranger for the Maine Forest Service. “The vast majority of people who work in the timber industry are very honest. We’ve worked pretty hard over the last decade to protect landowners from that very, very small group out there that tries to take advantage,” he said.

52 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 logs taken, not providing scale slips for the wood taken, or falsi- fying scale slips – are misdemeanors if the resulting loss is worth less than $1,000 and a lower-level felony if it’s worth more. Recently, both state legislatures have fine-tuned their timber theft laws to target habitual offenders. A Maine law from 2013 requires all loggers with more than two civil violations of “unlawful cutting” to seek written permission from the division of forestry and, more importantly, to be bonded for a minimum of $500,000 dollars before starting any new harvest. The law gives forest rangers the authority to issue stop-work orders if one or both requirements are not met. In New Hampshire, a law from 2011 addresses loggers who frequently run afoul of civil and criminal law. It allows for enhanced civil penalties of up to $10,000 along with “any other injunctive relief deemed necessary by the court,” including a lifetime prohibition against filing “intent to cut” notices in the state. In both states, the odds are better for a criminal conviction than they are in Vermont or New York. In Maine, rangers investi- gate hundreds of cases of timber trespass and theft every year. Of those, several dozen are prosecuted in criminal court. State law also allows district attorneys to take weaker cases to civil court, sparing landowners the expense. In New Hampshire, the state’s 16 forest rangers responded to 163 complaints of timber theft in 2013, according to Simpkins. Roughly half resulted in an action, ranging in seriousness from a written warning to fines and cease- and-desist orders. Five cases led to felony indictments. In contrast, in New York, the conservation police receive an average of 50 timber theft complaints in a year, though the annual tally has been as high as 95. Vermont received six forest resource-related complaints in 2013 and 20 in 2012. Twelve were found to be true violations, but only eight resulted in formal administrative action. Kessler said only one case in recent memory has gone to criminal court.

Smart Steps for Landowners Despite the new laws in New Hampshire and Maine, there are still many situations in which it is unclear if a crime has occurred, officials said. Mistakes and miscommunication between landowners and loggers do occur. Landowners anywhere can take several steps to protect themselves, Carbonetti said. The most important is to ensure that your boundary line is surveyed and clearly marked prior to cutting in the area. A written contract that includes a cutting plan, a payment schedule, and the expectation that loggers will follow best management practices is also essential. Several models of MAINE FOREST RANGERS standard agreements can be found online, and most consulting foresters will work to customize a contract for a particular job. Finally, in most cases, it is worth the fee many times over to engage a professional forester to assist in planning and carrying out the harvest, Carbonetti said. Any good forester will be very familiar with the loggers in the region and will know those with From the top: Gathering evidence in an illegal timber cutting case. One of the many bad reputations by name. “If you have a forester, they never get incidents of timber theft investigated by the Maine Forest Rangers; in this case, in the door,” he said. summons were issued to the suspected thieves. Maine Forest Rangers check for trip tickets, which must accompany all loads of logs in the state and name the owner of Kristen Fountain is a freelance writer living in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. the land the wood came from and the logger who cut it.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 53 54 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 55 Soft Serve Autumn’s Unheralded Mast Species

By Susan C. Morse

he word mast is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and originally described an abundance of acorns on the forest floor, eagerly devoured by domestic swine. The Old German root meant “to be fat,” and Fagus, the Latin genus name for the beeches, is from the Greek phagein, meaning “to eat.” For animals facing food shortages and the energy-sapping hardships of a long winter’s deep snow and cold, to be fat is crucial. Today, when we refer to mast we mean seeds – the ripened ovules of trees, shrubs, and woody vines. Technically, mast includes all fruit, the structures that enclose and operate to disperse the seeds therein, including nuts, nutlets, berries, drupes, pomes, pods, and samaras. Anyone who spends time in the woods has witnessed the bumper mast years, when trees across whole regions produce prodigious quantities of seeds. Ecologists in California discovered that in a good year, a single blue oak tree may produce ten times its annual average of acorns – over 100,000 nuts. The same tree will produce few or possibly no nuts at all during a bust year. Measured across hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles, interspecific synchronized masting involving millions of trees, all producing an excess of seeds – or not – has profound effects on all that live there, affecting population dynamics, fitness, ecosystem functions, and evolution. Plant ecologists, zoologists, and naturalists have pondered exactly what factor (or combination of factors) causes this. A leading theory is that climate conditions stimulate trees to mast in synchrony across vast expanses of habitat. El Niño and its influences upon ocean currents, wind, temperatures, and precipitation may trigger masting cycles on geographic scales. But why do individual trees invest such huge resources into casting multitudinous seeds to the wind? Ecologists have acknowledged that some sort of economy of scale is at work; presumably, periodic huge vegetative investments diverted to reproductive output instead of growth are more efficient than smaller annual efforts. “Predation satia- tion” is regarded as another cause. Seed-eaters are periodically swamped by a masting season’s over-abundance of seeds, many of which escape consumption and grow new plants instead. Conversely, years of low or nonexistent seed production keep seed-eaters in check and cause declines in their numbers. This is a fascinating concept because it is during these bust years that animal dispersal and colonization of new habitats takes place. Thirty-eight years of season-to-season wildlife studies in northern Vermont’s Green Mountain foothills has enabled me to appreciate that the sudden arrival of gray squirrels and wild turkeys in my study area during the early 1980s corresponded with disastrously low acorn and beechnut mast crops in the Champlain Basin lowlands. Walter Koenig and Johannes Knops describe these masting impacts upon animal populations as “ecosystem- wide domino effects” – effects that reverberate through countless organisms at various levels in the food chain. While the oaks, hickories, and beech trees get most of the press, the reproductive capac- ity and variability of other mast-producing plants – in particular, the shrubs and woody vines – is no less important. Across whole landscapes these diverse species contribute tons upon tons of fruits and seeds to the forest’s cornucopia – often when the masters have quit for the year. Here are some of the more unheralded stars of the show. Bohemian waxwings sharing a meal.

56 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 JIM BLOCK

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 57 Hawthorn Crataegus spp.

In reverting pastures throughout the Northeast and Canada, the wide-spreading, flat-topped hawthorn trees stand in sweltering heat waves with all the grace and grandeur of acacias on the east African plain. Smooth, sharp-pointed thorns bristling from zig-zagging branches keep humans away, though wildlife dive in for the “pommettes,” which do indeed look like little apples. I have seen sign of black bears, porcupines, and raccoons feeding within a hawthorn’s thorny fortress, and I have no doubt that fishers, gray foxes, and opossums partake, as well. Numerous species of birds enjoy these marvelous little fruits.

Back in the sixties, many a mountain dirt road in Vermont was still rural, with only occasional deer camps and tumbled- down remains of long abandoned farmhouses and barns. I loved walking along a certain network of such roads in the Worcester Mountains. One autumn day, I was photograph- ing a handsome hawthorn, resplendent with yellow and red 1 miniature apple-like fruits. An older gentleman (no doubt of 2 the vintage who could remember actually farming these now forested hills), stopped his battered old truck beside me. “What cha lookin’ at?” was all he said. I enthusiastically babbled on, sharing all the virtues of this fine tree and its bounteous fruit. “Damnable tire puncture trees!” was all he replied before he drove away. 1

Beaked Hazelnut Corylus Spp.

Resembling an odd cross between speckled alder and yellow birch saplings, the multi-stemmed thickets of beaked hazelnut proliferate along roadside and field edge habitats. The pale green, fuzzy looking, beaked hazelnut fruits are unique. Paired fruits are encased in bristly bracts that completely enclose each oval nut on one end, with the opposite end culminating in a long beak-like structure. Peel the bracts away and you will find a filbert-like nut inside, which is delicious, sweet, and much like the commercial filberts we enjoy in fancy nut mixes. But who actually gets to harvest many of these wonderful nuts in the wild? Certainly 3 not us. Chipmunks, squirrels, fishers, raccoons, bears, jays, crows, hairy woodpeckers, grouse, and turkeys get there first. 2

Red Osier Dogwood Swida sericea (formerly Cornus stolonifera) The crimson-colored twigs and shoots of red osier dogwood are spectacular, both in autumn and again in spring. Fruit clusters are white, off-white, or grayish-blue. Dozens of bird species and small mammals enjoy the fruit as well as this plant’s exceptional concealment cover and nesting opportunities. I have found evidence of this species’ drupes in bear and fox fecal matter and have watched wild turkeys and crows eating the fruit, as well. 3

58 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Eastern Red Cedar Juniperus virginiana

Punctuating old field pastures with their youthful spires, or their mature irregular crowns, the “invading” red cedars are not cedars at all; they are our only tree form juniper. Throughout temperate North America, eastern red cedars and their related cousins are spread by the birds and mammals that eat their “berries,” which are actually cones. Nearly 30 species of birds in our region consume them, as do numerous mammals, including red and gray squirrels, red and gray foxes, chipmunks, coyotes, fishers, and black bears. I once conducted an experiment and proved that scat- 4 5 scarified juniper seeds resulted in higher germination rates. I suspect this is because mastication and digestion does a great job of removing the waxy, resinous fruit covering and prepares the seed to germinate. 4

Highbush-Cranberry Viburnum opulus Winterberry Ilex verticillata

Of the many colorful fruits out there, the winter appearance of highbush-cranberry and winterberry excite me the most. In his marvelous book Winter World, Bernd Heinrich observed that the fruits of these shrubs are not of interest in the fall and hang untouched for months – then to be suddenly eaten to the last berry by some passing flock of birds. Robins, waxwings, crows, and chickadees will feed on them, especially for the late winter fuel these fruits provide. I’ve found flat, disk-shaped seeds of Viburnum trilobum in spring bear scats and once deciphered a curious arrange- ment of canine rear-end and jumping-feet impressions in 6 7 the snow. A coyote had repeatedly sat and studied her prize before springing upwards to get to the clusters of frosty cranberrybush fruits that were tantalizing and just out of reach. 5 6

Mountain Holly Ilex mucronata (formerly Nemopanthus mucronatus)

Nestled among dark green wetland thickets, the mountain holly shrubs catch the eye. Clusters of pendulous berry-like drupes look like satin ornaments and hang from equally lovely purple-red pedicels. The beauty is fleeting, though, because the fruits are totally gone within a week or two. I have seen five different avian species eagerly working them over at differ-

ALL PHOTOS BY SUSAN C. MORSE ent times: black-capped chickadee, robin, brown thrasher, hermit thrush, and red-eyed vireo. Bear, fox, and coyote feces reveal undigested nutlets from the drupes. 7

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 59 Staghorn Sumac Rhus hirta (formerly Rhus typhina)

The sumac’s compact clusters of red berries are a boon to wildlife, especially in late winter. Eighteen species of birds are known to consume the seeds within the clusters, both winter residents and returning spring migrants alike. But no account I have ever read lists the species that I once saw incongru- ously perching upon staghorn sumac limbs while pecking and probing with its long bill to get at the fruits. An April blizzard had buried Maine’s Cliff Island in two-and-a-half- feet of heavy wet snow, and the American woodcock that had arrived there a week earlier suddenly found themselves with no access to the soil for foraging. The sumacs’ berry spikes were the only game in town and kept them busy and apparently satisfied. 8

Black Elderberry Sambucus nigra (formerly Sambucus canadensis)

The flowers and early fruit sets of red elderberry are attractive harbingers of what is to come. For dozens of birds and mammals, this shrub is a sure winner. For country folks, like my grandfather, the purple fruits of black elder were reverently used to make elderberry wine during Prohibition and the Depression. Some 30 years later, when I was in my teens, I remember him bringing to the dinner table his last 10 dusty bottle from the batch he proclaimed had been his best. Though it was musty, with a vinegary finish, the elder- berries’ flavor was still there, bequeathing to our family’s celebration a deep and unspoken empathy for hard times, frugality, and for the enduring wonder and joy that this plant provides. 9

8 11 9 American Hornbeam Carpinus caroliniana

Hophornbeam Ostrya virginiana

Both of these small, unassuming understory trees are members of the birch family and have attractive hop-like arrangements of their fruit, but the similarity ends there. Hophornbeam’s fruit is a tiny, flattish nut that is enclosed within a bladder-like sac. More than a dozen seed sacs are arranged in overlapping clusters that resemble hops. American hornbeam’s small ribbed nut is attached to the base of a cluster of three-lobed bracts that hang down and partially cover each seed. The hop-like fruits of both species’ bracts gradually weaken in the winter winds and weather, mercifully releasing their seeds to be savored on the snow pack by numerous small mammals and birds. Over 40 species of birds consume the seeds, including common mergansers, wood ducks, and mallards. 10 11

60 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Nannyberry Viburnum lentago

Supposedly named for the wet goat odor of its fruit and flowers, nannyberry is the largest of our viburnums. Robust plants may even appear tree-like; sturdy trunks may rise to 30 feet or more. Its berry-like fruits mature to be bluish-black, elliptical drupes that resemble raisins, especially when dried and shriveled. Over a dozen species of birds enjoy this fruit in late summer and throughout the winter. I once admired a pair of eastern bluebirds feeding on the drupes, and cedar waxwings will regularly flock in for the harvest. This species, along with hobblebush and other viburnums, feed mammals, as well, including mice, 12 chipmunks, squirrels, snowshoe hares, foxes, coyotes, and 13 14 black bears. 12

Black Cherry Prunus serotina

Chokecherry Prunus virginiana

Much attention is paid to the wildlife food values of nutmeats, especially beechnuts and acorns. However, I am convinced that the summer-to-fall fruit harvests provided by wild cherries comprise an overlooked mainstay in the diets of numerous birds and mammals. Given the sheer abundance of cherry seeds one finds in all sorts of animal droppings, the nutritional contributions of cherries must be great indeed. In our managed forests, as well as field- edge farm habitats, all sun-loving cherry species should be released, and competing crowns of other trees thinned, so that these mast producers may prosper and produce even more fruit. 13 14

Common Juniper Juniperus communis

Grazing cows judiciously wend their way among ever- 15 proliferating “fairy circles,” the name old English farmers have given this juniper, due to its habit of growing in circular prickly clumps. Though it would seem likely that only the charmed could penetrate to the center of these sharp- needled fairy circles, a fair number of our wildlife neighbors find them quite passable. Small mammals benefit from the common juniper’s impenetrable cover, and many birds and mammals, including cedar waxwings, jays, robins, red squirrels, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and black bears enjoy the powdery blue to blackish-blue fruits. They either eat them ALL PHOTOS BY SUSAN C. MORSE whole, or meticulously remove the pulp and eat the seeds, as does the familiar chickadee. 15

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 61 Approximately 8,000 years ago, a period of global warming called the Hypsithermal Interval stimulated timber rattlesnakes to move north from the vicinity of Long Island. They followed river corridors – the Delaware, the Hudson, the Connecticut, the Housatonic, the Merrimack – and eventually reached southern Quebec and southwestern Maine. Wherever passageways in bedrock or talus led to frost-free winter retreats, the snakes established colonies. They had an eye for real estate. Indeed, they’re landscape connoisseurs: rising above lakes and rivers and green sprawling valleys like so many solar panels, snake dens face the sun and hold heat on chilly October afternoons. Today, rattlesnakes thrive where the human population is sparse – land that is wide-open, wind-swept, and remote. And like Beethoven, who couldn’t hear the sound of the very music he composed, timber rattlesnakes can’t see the view from where they live. They’re as myopic as Mr. Magoo.

In the Northeast, den-site fidelity is the hallmark of rattlesnake survival. Each fall, they return to their maternal den as directly as a Bicknell’s thrush might return to a particular hillside forest in Hispaniola. When a well-muscled rattlesnake migrates home, it doesn’t undulate in loops and curves as it does when it’s swimming; it flows in a straight line like melting candle wax, belly scales caressing the ground, a thousand little pseudo-feet. Slow … slower … slowest. On a windless afternoon the vague sound of scales brushing leaves gives them away.

Lethargic and predictable and as breathtakingly beautiful as the scenery around them, timber rattlesnakes vary in color from the blackest black to golden yellow. Some are mustard-colored, others are olive or brown or tawny or charcoal gray. Neonates are shades of exfoliated granite. Adults and young have crossbands or chevrons or blotches (or all three) that range in hue from black to gray, chocolate to tan or olive-yellow, and are rimmed (or not) by overexposed yellow or white. Some snakes have a broken, rust-colored, dorsal stripe, a feature that becomes prominent in these animals in the Southeast. Others are patternless black, as dark as an inner tube. Coiled in a bed of October leaves, a timber rattlesnake hides in plain sight unless it rattles, which can be electrifying.

I keep vigil at a den, counting, always counting snakes: a yellow morph, a black morph, a young-of-the-year, a three-year-old, an adult female with a broken ten-segment, untapered rattle – that sort of thing. I note air temperature, rock temperature, snake temperature, cloud cover, and wind speed and direction. Last year, in late August, a few snakes returned to the threshold of the den; more arrived in September. The number peaked in early October, when I tallied more than 80 in one day. I followed two big snakes as they progressed through rock-studded woods to the base of a ledge and then watched them disappear down a crevice. Later that afternoon, when I stood quietly in front of the den’s main portal, a dozen snakes glided by; others poured over the stone rim and then braided themselves together inside the rock foyer before they vanished into the abyss. Two weeks later, I found only three, including a newborn en route to the slumber party.

I don’t spend winters underground below the frost line and I stopped basking decades ago, but sun- warmed rocks feel good to me, particularly when the air is cool and the day short. I go to the slopes to watch rattlesnakes, and I stay until the rocks cool off and autumn’s last whit of heat draws the snakes down below the surface. Like a rain of maple leaves or a flock of migrating geese, the doings of rattlesnakes in October mark a season in transition, the subtlest of autumnal tides.

The snakes at my study site ignore me. I never touch them. I bear witness, my movements ratcheted down to a tic. For the most part, they treat me with indifference. One crossed over my boot. Another moved directly to the rock I stood on; deliberately and delicately, lifted its head above the far edge, flicked its informative tongue half a dozen times, and then proceeded to the den.

Here, in the corrugated Northeast, live a few rattlesnakes born the summer the Beatles released Hey Jude; at least one 40-year-old still bears young. Unfortunately, timber rattlesnakes remain vulnerable to vandals and col- lectors. With the aid of a GPS followed by a website announcement, even a well-meaning hiker who stumbles onto a pod of rattlesnakes and then broadcasts exuberance, could be the unwitting vehicle of their demise. PHOTOS BY JORDAN LEVIN To paraphrase the 1950s television show Dragnet: Ladies and gentlemen, the story you have just read is true. Only the locations have been eliminated to protect the innocent. In this case, the timber rattlesnakes.

America’s Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake, to be published (2015) by University of Chicago Press, explores the intersection between timber rattlesnakes and humanity.

62 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 Timber Rattlesnakes By Ted Levin

In New England, timber rattlesnake colors come in yellow, black, and many shades and patterns in between.

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Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 65 FIELD work

By Ross Caron

At Work Searching for Sweet-Sounding Spruce with John Griffin

If John Griffin had a theme song to describe his life, it might very well be Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” Griffin’s business, Old Standard Wood, is headquartered in Fulton, Missouri, but he spends as much as five months on the road each year in search of high-quality spruce logs that can be processed into parts for stringed musical instruments. Over the past 30 years, he has looked at thousands of standing spruce trees, inspected thousands more logs, sawed and dried spruce lumber, studied and repaired instruments, and played guitars and violins made with spruce tops. It is just possible that Griffin knows spruce better than anyone. Red spruce, often referred to as “Adirondack spruce” in the music business, is prized for its light weight, stiffness, and excellent tonal qualities. It has been traditionally used for the soundboards (tops) of guitars, mandolins, violins, and other stringed instruments. Most pre-World War II American guitars were made with red spruce tops and are still considered, by many, to be some of the best sounding guitars ever made. After John Griffin straps down a load and prepares for the journey home. the war, old-growth Sitka spruce from the Pacific Northwest became more available and red spruce fell out of favor. Sitka Most spruce trees of this size are 150-200 years old, with logs are larger, as well as easier and cheaper to process, and have some occasionally reaching 300 years. To the experienced eye, desirable creamy white wood with tight growth rings. But many the pattern of the rings on each log tells a story. Griffin pointed instrument makers and musicians, Griffin included, firmly out where, after many years of suppressed growth, the tree believe that a red spruce top simply sounds better. broke through the canopy and began putting on size. He noted On a recent log buying trip to an undisclosed (trade secret) the three-inch-wide sapwood and the slowing of growth, but location in the Northeast, he pulled into a sawmill’s log yard with decided that the tree was still healthy when it was harvested. He his one-ton Dodge truck towing a trailer. He stepped out of the explained that some trees, reaching for the sun, will twist, usu- truck, lit a cigarette, and began eyeballing a huge pile of spruce ally to the right. A spruce growing on a steep slope would have logs before walking over for a closer look. An intelligent, inquisi- wider rings on the downhill side. This type of wood is abnormal tive businessman, Griffin is normally soft spoken, mellow, and and called compression wood, making anything sawn out of unhurried. He’s direct and speaks with an easy, slight southern such an area unsuitable for instrument tops. drawl. In the presence of quality spruce logs, though, he becomes Griffin broke the cookie into pieces, held it up to his eye, and animated and intense as he carefully assesses each log. studied the growth pattern, looking for signs of twist, discol- Coming back to the truck, he grabbed a can of black spray oration, pitch pockets, or any other defect that might preclude paint out of the toolbox, headed back for the pile, and marked the log from being processed into quality instrument tops. He the butts of several promising logs. Griffin is a regular visitor to explained that some of these defects might not adversely affect this sawmill and the log yard operator, Craig, soon approached, the sound of the instrument, but that in the world of instrument exchanged greetings, and fired up the log loader. He began making, “appearances matter.” To some extent, buying a log pulling out some of the marked logs for closer inspection. As based on this fairly superficial and subjective visual inspection is Craig swung out an enormous 16-foot-long butt log, Griffin was a gamble, as there is no real way to know for certain what will be already shaking his head. “He’s all twisted, no good.” (Griffin found inside. But thanks to his years of experience, Griffin seems refers to all spruce logs and trees as “he.”) Another was brought to possess a kind of x-ray vision when it comes to spruce logs. out, this one a little smaller in diameter, but “straight as a gun What is desirable is even growth, a well-centered pith, straight barrel” and clear. “He’s a bullet,” remarked Griffin excitedly. It grain, white wood, and no knots. Since an instrument top is was set down in front of him and out came a big Stihl chainsaw made up of two bookmatched pieces and is quartersawn for with a 32-inch bar. He cut a clean inch-thick cookie off the butt vertical grain, large diameter (at least 24 inches for a guitar top, of the log so he could more clearly see the growth rings and the a little smaller for a mandolin) is also a requirement. In a region color of the wood.

66 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 We were soon at an active log landing. The logger, Fred, who has worked with Griffin many times over the years, approached the truck and greeted us. He had located a small grove of big, straight spruce that he thought Griffin might want to look at before they were cut. He likes going directly to the woods so he can have the logs cut to any length without waste. If, upon felling, it’s determined that the tree is unsuitable for instrument wood, the logger simply sends the log to the sawmill. We walked out through an old cutting and were soon looking up at a group of 70-foot-tall red spruce with large trunks and good-sized limbs. John’s axe is 20 inches long and he used it to size up the trees while visibly checking for twist and hidden knots. After selecting three that he felt were promising, Dave, the cutter, expertly felled them and bucked them to length right there in the woods. They looked good and were soon on their way out to the landing in the bunks of a forwarder. By the end of the week, Griffin had accumulated a full truck and trailer load, plus a few extra. The loaded truck and trailer can legally weigh 25,000 pounds, which allows him to haul about 1,800 board feet in a load. The neatly strapped load was impressive and he told me that he frequently has other drivers pull up behind him on the highway or pass him slowly as they look – “ooglers” he calls them. After he dropped me off, I watched as he slowly rolled down where much of the forest has been cut over during the past cen- the road. I wondered how many miles he’d traveled in search of tury, spruce meeting these qualifications can be a rare find. spruce and thought about all the motel rooms and truck stop After spending the better part of a day picking through log diners he’d visited along the way. While Willie Nelson may be decks, Griffin found a few full-length logs and several shorter a fitting soundtrack for Griffin’s lifestyle, he told me that it’s butt cuts that he was willing to take a chance on. He had the a saying, rather than a song, that best sums up his pursuit: logs stacked in a shaded area behind the sawmill for later pick- “Originally in Latin, it goes like this… ‘I grew in the forest until up and spent some time waxing the fresh cut surfaces, as well killed by the cruel woodsman’s axe. In life I was mute; in death I as any areas with bark missing, to prevent drying and checking sing sweetly.’ That says it all.” of the wood. On the road again the next morning, heading for a logging Ross Caron lives in northern New Hampshire and works as a procurement forester. job, Griffin told me how he came into this business. He began He enjoys a variety of outdoor pursuits, reading, working with wood, and managing playing the guitar and fiddle as a kid and spent two years as his family’s woodlots. a young adult studying under veteran instrument-maker and violin expert Robert Tipple. Later, thinking that he might want Wagner Forest Management, Ltd. is pleased to underwrite Northern Woodlands’ series to build a few instruments himself and finding it difficult to on forest entrepreneurs. www.wagnerforest.com locate quality tonewoods, Griffin took a trip to the Adirondacks in a small, diesel powered Volkswagen and returned a few days later with a couple of spruce butts in the trunk. He laughed, remembering that “it was an interesting ride back in a car that had a hard time doing 55 normally.” He started Old Standard Wood in 1984, and since then has traveled throughout the Northeast, as well as the Pacific Northwest and Central America, prospecting for logs. Over time, his company has grown into a large supplier of musical instrument woods for both the individual maker and for large guitar manufacturers. Griffin figures he’s processed over 200,000 spruce soundboards in that time. He now has two trucks with trailers, sawmill equipment, and drying and storage facilities, and has added three full-time employees. Business is good enough that, in recent years, he’s forgone sleeping in his truck while on the road and started spending nights in motels. Gorgeous red spruce logs.

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 67 The Gospel of Red Spruce

We were inspired to learn more about red spruce from an instrument-making perspective, so we visited luthier Don Wilson in Arlington, Vermont, and asked him a few questions.

Why use spruce in guitar tops? How about aesthetics? Probably if you’re a country singer singing It has the best stiffness-to-weight ratio; in this Northern red spruce is notoriously twisty. And has hardscrabble songs, you’re going to want a way building a guitar is like building an airplane pitch pockets. And usually has irregular grain. And guitar made from a tree that had a hardscrabble or a racecar. You want light and strong. the branches don’t self-prune, so there are often life on a northeastern mountain, right? wing knots. I see these things as character, not You’re referring to the voodoo in the wood, and How does red spruce compare, sound-wise, defects, but you have to take them into account. yes, there is that. Any instrument maker will tell to other spruces? Compare this with Sitka, which is so uniform you you there are things you can quantify about the It’s said that red has the brightest, punchiest don’t have to think about it. process and things you can’t. I’m a firm believer in sound of all the spruce – that’s why the blue- voodoo – it’s what makes woodworking exciting. grass guys love it so much. Engelmann spruce So you typically have spruce tops on guitars, [native to western North America] is softer and but the backs and sides are made from We’re always trying to promote locally maybe a bit more expressive – a jazz musician denser hardwood species. Give us a quick sourced, sustainably harvested wood, and or a fingerpicker might prefer this sound. Sitka 101 introduction to how different types of it seems very heartening that northeastern spruce [found along the West Coast, and up into wood interact together in a guitar. red spruce is coming back in vogue. Are you Alaska] is all things to all people. These generic The primary sound coming out of a guitar has seeing a surge in interest in people who want tone descriptors are accurate to a point, but wood to do with the strings and what you hit them guitars built out of local wood? is never completely predictable. And guitar sound with. With an acoustic guitar, you can look at the I think the Northeast Organic Farming Association, is an incredibly complex thing. Some luthiers will soundboard [top] as your amplifier and the body and the locavores, and the foodies, and the artistic tell you that certain woods are the best; others [back and sides] as the speaker and the speaker community have done a great job in promoting will say give me a pallet and I can build you a box. The soundboard imparts volume and certain this idea of how place can play a role in a product, great-sounding guitar. The argument goes on and tonal properties and the back reflects the sound. and yes, that’s opened doors for guys like me. will never be settled. The terroir concept works with wine and veggies – why not guitars? I wouldn’t be able to do this if the market wasn’t receptive to paying a premium for a guitar made with local wood. And even the big companies are taking note. Martin is using cherry and birch for guitar bodies and has a whole sustainable line of guitars now.

How do we keep this ball rolling? Educate foresters and loggers on what makes good instrument wood. The guys in the woods need to know what it is and what the value of it is. I got this red spruce here from a logger who was bringing a load of spruce to a clapboard mill and knew that I’d pay a premium for it. A lot of good tonewood ends up in a load of pulp or a firewood pile because people don’t recognize it.

Go to our website to see photos of Don and his guitars.

An unfinished red spruce guitar top in Don Wilson’s shop. Note irregular grain and discoloration; note, too, the stray chisel mark. The Quakers called these human imperfections “the mark of the hand.”

68 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 up COUNTRY

By Robert Kimber

Squirrel Brains

I recently learned in the course of my wide-ranging, catch-as- we nicknamed him Fat Tail, thinking he might take enough catch-can reading that the average adult human brain weighs offense at that to just quietly go away. I also took Rita’s feeder between 1,300 and 1,400 grams. A squirrel’s brain, this same source off the crossbar and hung it from a maple limb far enough away told me, weighs 7.6 grams. You’d think if you pitted a human being from my setup that not even a squirrel who had taken Olympic against a squirrel in any kind of intellectual contest, the human gold in the broad jump could hope to leap across that gap. would win hands down, heavyweight versus featherweight. I had failed to notice, though our squirrel had not, how close That’s what I thought anyway, so I went up against gray squir- a few branches of our dooryard lilac were to my feeder. So I rels without much doubt that I would emerge victorious. So con- trimmed the lilac back to close that route off. fident was I that when Rita and I needed to replace our battered In the meantime, Fat Tail had been jumping down on top of bird feeders late last fall I didn’t bother to research the many the baffle after every meal and, aided by some heavy winds, had feeders the human mind has devised to keep squirrels from gob- managed to reduce it to a hunk of easily navigable rubble. Quite bling up our black sunflower seeds. Rita, however, is a sensible apart from that, we were now in late winter, and the snow dumped person who will always choose the most straightforward solu- off our roof plus the snow already on the ground was deep enough tion to any problem. She did her homework and bought a clever that Fat Tail could almost walk up onto the feeder anyway. feeder that allows birds, who weigh only a few ounces, access to By now it was dawning on me that a gray squirrel is no push- the seeds but blocks off that access when the weight of a squirrel over, even for an adversary whose gray matter alone outweighs pulls a metal cage down over the feeding ports. the whole squirrel by at least two to one. But what I was also All well and good, I thought, but that feeder doesn’t give the beginning to appreciate much more than I ever had before is squirrels a sporting chance. Furthermore, if I can manage to that the “brains” of this animal aren’t contained in its few ounces transform an otherwise simple project into a complex and chal- of neural tissue but in the amazing combination of attributes lenging one, I will. So I bought a feeder that would hold a couple evolution has given it: those powerful haunches for leaping, of quarts of sunflower seeds and gave the birds access to them those dexterous front paws and nails for picking seeds out of my through a flexible metal mesh reminiscent of the chain mail the feeder, those rotating hind feet that let squirrels descend trees Crusaders wore and fine enough, I thought, to exclude the teeth head first and eat hanging upside down, that tail that helps them of hungry squirrels. keep their balance while performing their aerial acrobatics. Our bird feeding station consists of a peeled cedar pole with Nature has equipped gray squirrels with just the right phy- a cross bar bolted to it about seven feet off the ground. On one sique and the seemingly endless energy and agility they need to end of that bar we hung Rita’s spring-loaded feeder; on the other thrive in the treetops and perfect the art of bird-feeder robbery. end, my Crusader’s feeder. Confronted with that perfection, I’m moved to grudging admi- The next morning, when Rita looked out the win- ration and even to a feeling verging on affection. Any animal dow, she said, “Squirrel on your feeder.” that can be as pesky as a gray squirrel yet still manage to soft- “I’ll show him,” I thought, and I clad the cedar pole soap me clearly has all the brain he needs. I’m glad his isn’t any with some light metal sheeting. larger than it is. “Let’s see him climb that,” I said to Rita, only to watch, an hour or so later, as our uninvited guest Robert Kimber has written often for outdoor and environmental scampered up that armor-plated pole as if it magazines. He lives in Temple, Maine. were one of nature’s own cedars, unadorned. So I installed a cone-shaped aluminum baffle above the metal sheath on the pole. On his next visit, this squirrel contem- plated the baffle from different angles for a few minutes, then jumped up onto Rita’s lower hanging feeder, using it as a ladder to make his way onto the crossbar and thence over to my feeder, where he again settled in for an ample breakfast. This squirrel was so round and well fed that even his tail looked chubby, so

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 69 DISCOVERIES

By Todd McLeish Deer Density Dilemma

When Maine zoned two percent of the northern part of the state as deer wintering areas in the 1970s, its goal was to provide habitat that would increase deer density to 10 animals per square mile. But recent analysis by a University of Maine researcher found that strategy to be ineffective and the goal unattainable. After more than 35 years, the region is thought to have just one to two deer per square mile. SUSAN C. MORSE Professor Daniel Harrison and post- doctoral researcher Erin Simons-Legaard examined satellite data as far back as 1970 to evaluate habitat changes in the 190,000 Despite zoning changes, deer density levels in Maine have not risen as predicted. acres of deer wintering area comprising 981 management units. “Deer require late forest larger than 12.5 acres would need years. But the news isn’t all bad. According successional conifer forests for wintering, to be protected, even though much of that to a University of New Hampshire profes- but a lot of those areas have been subject land would not be useful to deer. sor, white pines throughout New England to harvesting through the years,” said Harrison concluded that the goal of have actually been getting healthier over Harrison. “The perception is that loss of 10 deer per square mile is not achievable the last 20 years, and he attributes it to the deer wintering habitat may be contribut- with current habitat availability, and he lower smog levels in the region. Ground- ing to the fact that deer don’t attain the doesn’t believe that’s an appropriate goal level ozone (smog) levels reached their densities that they used to. But before we anyway. “Oftentimes, the public sets goals peak in 1991, a year after passage of the get into more zoning, I wanted to see how based on what our grandfathers remem- federal Clean Air Act. Since then, smog well historical zoning has performed.” ber seeing, even when those targets never levels have steadily decreased and tree Despite zoning that prohibited the really occurred on the landscape natu- health has correspondingly improved. harvesting of trees without a special vari- rally,” he said. “The deer densities present These results are borne out by the ance to improve deer wintering habitat, in northern Maine in the 1940s and ’50s UNH Forest Watch program, a hands-on Harrison found that 91 percent of desig- and ’60s were an exception, something science program that trained students in nated deer wintering areas contained at that didn’t occur prior to the white man grades K-12 to recognize the character- least one heavily harvested area, and 23 arriving in the north Maine woods. They istic symptoms of ozone damage on pine percent of the mature forest within those weren’t present in 1900. Those densities needles. (The program began monitoring areas had been harvested between 1975 only occurred during a period of time tree health in 1991 and continued this and 2007. More importantly, within a when we had extensive winter cover with mission until early 2014, when a loss of 1.25-mile buffer around the deer winter- harvests providing areas of high quality federal funding brought it to an end.) ing areas, mature conifer forests declined food, and when there were no canid According to Barrett Rock, founding precipitously and what remained became predators.” He believes that deer goals director of Forest Watch, white pines fragmented. “We were investing a lot to for the region should be re-evaluated are particularly sensitive to ground-level conserve core wintering areas, but the and new goals established using a multi- ozone. Exposure to high levels of smog landscape integrity of areas around them species management strategy. causes browning of the ends of the nee- was heavily impacted,” Harrison said. dles, a symptom called tip necrosis, as He also found that, by 2007, less than Pining for Clean Air well as chlorotic mottle or yellow spots on one percent of the landscape included the needles. “There isn’t really anything remnant patches of mature conifer for- Since 2010, many white pine trees in other than ozone that causes those symp- est greater than 250 acres, which is the northern New England have become toms on white pines,” Rock said. “And it’s size deer need for wintering. To reach infected with one of several fungal dis- easy to train a third grader to recognize it the state’s goal of conserving 10 percent eases that have caused yellow and brown and measure its extent.” Students collect of the landscape as deer wintering areas discoloration of one year old needles, pine needles, measure their length, and by 2030, nearly every remaining conifer particularly in wet areas and during wet measure the amount of mottle or necrosis

70 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 to get a percentage. Half of the needles New England, Rock said that white pines about whether our seasons are changing the students collect are sent to Rock to elsewhere probably did not experience and, if so, whether this is linked to climate verify their results with a spectrometer. the same smog-related declines in health. change,” said lead scientist Peter Atkinson, Rock said that white pines across New He also speculates that other tree species a geography professor at the University of England were in ill health in the early and are getting healthier due to improved Southampton. “Our study is another sig- mid-1990s, but needle health improved air quality, but it’s harder to measure nificant piece in the puzzle, which may dramatically soon after the Clean Air Act. improvements in species that are not as ultimately answer this question.” “Ozone levels made a significant drop sensitive to smog as white pines. Atkinson and colleagues Jadunandan from 1997 to 1999, and that’s when we also Dash and Jeganathan Chockalingam saw the tremendous jump in the health of studied satellite imagery of the north- pine needles,” said Rock. “Further [regula- ern hemisphere from 1982 to 2006 to tory] modifications improving ambient air identify seasonal changes in vegetation. quality standards have been made more They measured “greenness” – which they recently, and with each improvement in characterized as physical changes like leaf air quality we see an improvement in the cover, color, and growth – of a wide vari- state of health of pine trees.” ety of vegetation types, from broad-leaved “The lesson here,” he added, “is that deciduous forest and needle-leaved ever- stronger environmental policy changes green forest to mosaic vegetation (grass- have had a dramatic, positive impact on land, shrubland, forest, and cropland). air quality and white pine health. And They found that the most pronounced from my perspective, this good news changes occurred in the broad-leaved and story needs to be told because it comes at needle-leaved deciduous forest groups, a time when there are growing efforts to where autumn has been delayed an aver- trim back on EPA regulations, which are Seasons are Shifting age of one day per year over the last 30 considered to be too restrictive on busi- years. They also found evidence of a ness and industry.” It may be tough to believe after this past slightly earlier spring across all vegetation Data from the Forest Watch pro- year, but it appears that winters are get- types, though signs of a delayed autumn gram covers all of New England and the ting shorter and shorter. By studying the were more pronounced. Adirondacks, as well as Long Island. Since growth cycle of vegetation at daily inter- “Our research shows that even when we there are no corresponding programs vals, a team of British researchers has control for land cover changes across the measuring white pine health in other found that autumn in the northern hemi- globe, a changing climate is significantly regions of the country, it is impossible to sphere is starting much later in the year altering the vegetation growth cycles for know whether similar improvements are and spring is starting a little bit earlier. certain types of vegetation,” said Atkinson. happening elsewhere. But since most of Their research was published in the jour- “Such changes may have consequences for the smog produced by coal-fired power nal Remote Sensing of the Environment. the sustainability of the plants themselves, plants in the Midwest flows directly to “There has been much speculation as well as species which depend on them and ultimately the climate through changes to the carbon cycle.” Although their study primarily focused on areas north of 45 degrees latitude, which includes northern Maine, their maps indicate that signs of an early spring and delayed autumn occurred in much of the northeastern U.S. According to Dash, autumn has become significantly delayed in broad- leaved and needle-leaved forest groups like those found in much of northern New England, especially when compared to

UNH FOREST WATCH other vegetation types. “We have not yet found a specific reason for this, but it may be because their photosynthesis is highly dependent on temperature and, possibly, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, both of Students have helped monitor and document the health of white pine as part of the UNH Forest Watch program. which are increasing over time,” he said.

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Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 73 wood LIT

Taproot: Coming Home to into Romania, the child of Holocaust survivors. The Sugar Season: A Year in “The world of the garden was an escape from the Prairie Hill adults. . . . As living proof that Hitler had failed, I the Life of Maple Syrup – By Martha Leb Molnar was expected to be radiantly cheerful, a chubby and One Family’s Quest for the Verdant Books, 2014 package of pink cheeks and beribboned laughter. Sweetest Harvest But I was thin, serious, and thoughtful, perhaps By Douglas Whynott Follow-the-dream memoirs comprise a good made so by the emotional husks with whom I Da Capo Press, 2014 chunk of North Country literature – probably lived, whose reliving of the horrors they’d experi- because so many of us came here looking for enced in words and glances, in tormented faces, When I was a kid, we stopped by neighboring a better life. Taproot is one such book, and from accompanied every moment.” sugarhouses a few times a year to pick up a gal- the first page it draws the reader in with warm Building her own life and following her own lon of Grade B. I’d hold the plastic jug in my lap on and graceful prose that places you both in the dream often brought a struggle against guilt and the ride home, and on a few of those lucky trips, landscape and the author’s heart. Martha Leb ancestral ghosts, whom she tells: “For twenty the gallon was still warm to the touch. Molnar followed a dream with her move from centuries you have endured so I can live free from Syrup seemed very expensive in Vermont in the New York City to a Vermont hilltop overlooking the terror.” This gives the memoir a keen edge and mid-1970s – my Mom reminded me of it every Taconics and Adirondacks; and she indeed put poignancy that remind the contemporary reader time I tilted the jug towards my pancakes – but down a taproot: of a gratitude we must never lose. apparently the farmers weren’t able to earn a liv- “I needed a new life in a place big enough, In keeping with the taproot theme, the book ing making it. This is the kind of thing that makes open enough, private enough to encompass all itself is deeply embedded in place. The cover is by no sense at all to a kid: how can something so the old and new cravings, and future dreams too. an important Vermont artist, the content was edit- good, and so expensive, not be a sure-fire way to The concept of a big piece of green and silent land ed by a well-known Vermont editor and published earn a living? began to grow, its taproot embedding itself in my by a local house, then printed by a Vermont indie The historical statistics tell the gloomy tale: brain. It grew and strengthened, spreading out bookstore/press. The author herself has become maple production peaked in the United States at multiple stems until I forgot that this was a buried a commentator for Vermont Public Radio and a nearly seven million gallons in the 1860s, when childhood dream recently brought to light of day. I freelance writer on Vermontiana, after a career in every available sugar maple north of the Mason- began to believe that it was the only logical direc- public relations and newspaper reporting. Her skill Dixon Line was tapped to make table sugar. After tion for my life.” shows in every word on every page. the Civil War, production began to fall, and it con- We learn her story through vignettes, out of The paragraph that most resonated with this tinued to fall steadily for the next century until, by sequence in time but clearly showing the progres- reader likely will with others who have walked the 1980s, the total had sunk to below one million sion from dream to reality. Each chapter captures parallel paths: gallons. Fewer and fewer people were making a an experience and its associated profundity. “Loving the little daily miracles of a place is living in the sugarbush, with no reason to think (“[L]ife was better lived by the rising and setting like loving a person. After the first flush of infatu- the trend line was headed anywhere but down. of the sun.”) ation, a maturing follows, a deepening brought Which is why the present state of affairs is so You don’t need to be a transplanted Vermonter about through intimacy and understanding.... surprising: sugaring is back. There’s a real chance to appreciate the story. Anyone who has moved Recognizing a plant among many others and that the old Civil War-era record might fall, if from city to country, who has built a home, who knowing its name is like picking out a loved one not next year, then likely before 2020. Canadian has made the transition from family and career from a hundred people walking away from a production is already six-fold greater than it was mania to an empty nest, who enjoys the journey concert, knowing him by the tilt of the head, the in the 1860s. The world is now producing and of discovery, will find the narrative poetic and swing of an arm.” consuming more maple syrup than at any time in insightful. Surely most everyone who lives in the You might need multiple copies of this book: a history. What, exactly, has happened? Northeast knows this syndrome: “By November, I pristine one for your library, several for gifts, and “There is more to the maple industry than begin the countdown to the winter solstice . . .” one to dog-ear the pages and highlight the many people realize,” says Bruce Bascom, in one of Unique to Molnar’s story is its historical con- passages that strike your heart. the more understated lines in the new book, text. She grew up in a part of Hungary absorbed Carolyn Haley The Sugar Season, by Douglas Whynott. Bascom

74 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 should know: his farm in Acworth, New Hampshire chronicles in the book, had the warmest March stepping out from behind the veil of drabness that – where, among other things, he sells maple sug- since records started being kept, in 1895. is the required style of technical scientific writing aring equipment, sets more than 60,000 taps a In the end, The Sugar Season is a great read these days and personalize the story by describ- year with his extended family, and engages in for anyone with an interest in maple sugaring. I ing their own interactions with this amazing tree international syrup arbitrage – can hold about as find myself thinking about it whenever I tip a quart and the ecosystem it shapes. You’ll learn much much syrup in the warehouse basement as used of our home-made syrup over my pancakes. Will about hemlocks that will make your time in the to be produced in all of the United States in a typi- the all-time U.S. production record be broken in woods richer and your knowledge of ecological cal year back in the 1970s. the next few years? Will the Yanks break up the history deeper. However, the reading is all the The Sugar Season is likely to be an eye-opener, Cartel Quebecois? Will Maine pass Vermont in more interesting because the authors share their even for people conversant in things like vacuum overall production? Or will our grandchildren be feelings about being in a hemlock woods and releasers, check valve spouts, and the various hosting cherry-blossom festivals instead of sugar conducting objective science while the foundation other trappings of twenty-first century sugaring. on snow? Stay tuned. of the ecosystem is collapsing. Whynott focuses less on the new technology Chuck Wooster This book is not a reiteration of facts and and more on the economic implications of that figures, but a well-written portrait of hemlock, its technology as he follows Bruce Bascom and his Hemlock: A Forest Giant role in New England’s forests, and the lives and extended network of suppliers, associates, and character of the foresters and other scientists middlemen through several sugaring seasons on the Edge who have studied it. Rich, full-page black and around the Northeast. David R. Foster, Editor white photographs by the authors and from the We meet the Harrison family in northern Yale University Press, 2014 Harvard Forest archives illustrate the text. If you Vermont, who recently built a 100,000-tap sug- enjoyed “The Pisgah Forest” by David Foster in arbush primarily as an investment vehicle. We I had never thought of eastern hemlock as a for- the Spring 2014 issue of Northern Woodlands, meet David Marvin of Butternut Mountain Farm, est giant until I visited the mountains of western you’ll enjoy this book. one of Bascom’s biggest competitors, who also North Carolina. In my northern New England Rob Bryan speculates on currency exchange rates and syrup experience, an old-growth hemlock was a good- futures. And we meet Robert Poirier, Bascom’s sized tree, often equal in girth to eastern white middleman along the Quebec-Maine border, who pine, but lacking the pine’s impressive height. But buys and transports many millions of dollars that old-growth hemlock stand in the southern Raking of syrup from along Maine’s Golden Road and Appalachians had many trees over 140 feet tall Quecbec’s St. Aurelie region to the Bascom cool- and 400 years of age, and it changed my measure From a distance, you might think ers in west-central New Hampshire. of a species that has no ecological counterpart I’m practicing ballroom here in my yard, All of this could become overly dry and techni- in our eastern forests. But now those southern dance being the gathering of motion cal, but Whynott, a New Hampshire-based jour- giants are gone, killed by hemlock wooly adelgid, into an order. The sweeping moves nalist who teaches writing at Emerson College and as I sit here in my office on the Maine coast, pull through the arms and shoulders in Boston, does a lovely job of jumping back and the naked limbs of the first hemlock in our yard and from the trunk too, the body’s core. forth between the arcane world of arbitrage and to succumb to this exotic insect portend things to I’ve made a neat pile. the many back-woods sugarhouses he drops by come. Hemlocks grow thickly in this cool, moist, throughout the season, some with as few as a coastal environment, and it’s hard to imagine And then the wind, the leaves’ other partner, dozen taps. The juxtaposition reveals the essential our woods and stream banks without their deep comes and swirls them, making its own music nature of sugaring, which is that it transcends shade, or spring without the songs of black- for a dance, dance being the release of order time and technology. Whether it’s Bruce Bascom throated green warblers and blue-headed vireos into motion, the light touch of the hand on the phone with his international suppliers or or the brilliant orange flash of a blackburnian to the small of the back, the leaves unstacking Peter and Deb Roades, nearby neighbors who warbler high in the canopy. in turns and steps across the yard, boil on an evaporator in continuous use since the In Hemlock: A Forest Giant on the Edge, editor precise randomness, scatter’s two-steps. 1930s, everyone is thinking about the same thing: David Foster (director of Harvard Forest) and co- what’s the weather going to do overnight, and authors explore the natural and human history of MICHAEL CHITWOOD what’s it looking like into next week. hemlock from the end of the last ice age through from the book Living Wages (forthcoming: Though The Sugar Season is in many ways its recent and precipitous decline as the adelgid Tupelo Press, 2014) a celebration of sugaring’s resurgence, Whynott races northward. This is not a chronological his- doesn’t shy away from two problems looming tory or a depressing gloom and doom monologue. on the horizon, one immediate and the other Rather, it is a fascinating story told as the authors long-term. More immediately, sugaring’s resur- explore the results of nearly a century of research gence has been powered by price-setting by the projects about what they call a “foundation spe- Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, cies,” one that is abundant in the ecosystems which controls the vast majority of the world where it is found, is at the base of the food web, market and which may be creating a price bubble and has many species that interact with it. As they and excess supply. In the longer term, the specter also note, a foundation species is something that of climate change hangs over nearly every page we will miss when it’s gone. of the book. The 2012 season, which Whynott The authors take a refreshing approach by

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76 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 TRICKS of the trade

Story and Photos by Brett R. McLeod

In Pursuit of the Perfect Splitting Block

Wood-splitting is a rural pastime rooted in tradition and experience – experience that’s often measured in broken axe handles and creative curses directed at knotty chunks of cordwood. And, while the debates over preferred firewood species, splitting technique (in-line or over-the-shoulder), and tools (maul or splitting axe) are likely to continue, there seems to be agreement that seeking a worthy splitting block is time well spent. Why a splitting block? While some folks opt to split firewood directly on the ground, placing a splitting block under your bolt of firewood provides several 1 benefits – first and foremost, safety. Splitting on an elevated block means that the final resting place of the axe is further from your feet. Splitting with a block also decreases the chances of hitting rocks, preserving the bit of your axe by ensuring that it only ever comes into contact with wood. There’s more splitting power; if you try to split firewood on soft ground, you’ll find that much of the force from your swing is absorbed by the earth below. Finally, a good splitting block, when used in conjunction with the tire method (see below), can equal more firewood and fewer backaches.

Block Selection: The most impossible bolts of firewood (read: knotty, ugly rounds) make the best, and longest-lasting, splitting blocks. The curly grain of elm creates a split-resistant block that’s tough to beat. If a block of elm isn’t readily available, look for a knotty block or a flared stump of some other species. The height of the 2 block should be between 12 and 16 inches; if you go much shorter than that, the block is likely to split prematurely. In terms of diameter, your block should be several inches wider than the wood you’re splitting for both stability and safety.

Surface Angle: Do yourself a favor and set up two splitting blocks, one with a perfectly flat top and the second with the top cut at a 10- to 15-degree angle. Sooner or later, you’ll have a piece of firewood with an angled base that refuses to stand on the flat block. By matching the angle of your firewood with the angle of the block, you’ll be able to make even the most crooked pieces stand upright.

Semi-Permanent Blocks: If your woodshed is near an old stump, consider yourself lucky. The twisting grain of the root flares makes for a durable, split-resistant surface that can last a surprisingly long time and will never fall over.

New Life for Old Tires: If you’re tired of chasing split firewood around the yard, 3 consider screwing the sidewall of an old tire to the top of your block. Not only will it keep the wood from falling off, you’ll also find that an armload of wood is easier to pick up.

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1. Two good splitting blocks: a Scotch pine block on the left with a whorl of knots and an aptly named knotty hard maple block on the right. Note how the pine block is mated with the firewood angle to prevent the log from sliding RII6WXPSVPDNHKDQG\VXUIDFHVDQGUHVLVWVSOLWWLQJ 7KHWLUHLVDWWDFKHGWRWKHEORFNZLWKODJVFUHZVWR hold things in place; once the firewood is split, you’re left with an armload of wood that’s well off the ground. 4

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 77 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

78 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 the outdoor PALETTE

By Adelaide Tyrol

Snake River Spiral, 2012, River stones, water, and light

What is the definition of environmental art? The simplest, shortest explanation is that it is art that addresses environmental or ecological concerns. Historically, environmental art grew out of a movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Europe and the United States. Many artists with a sensibility to nature were turning away from the confines of the museum show and away from art as a commodity. Sales and formal exhibitions were seen as deterrents to expressing a pure artistic relationship with, and responsibility to, the environment. Vermont artist and stonemason Thea Alvin was approached two years ago by the Center of Wonder Project to create an ephemeral and environmentally sustainable work on the Snake River outside of Jackson, Wyoming. She was invited to conceptualize, design, and complete this work – the only caveats were that it be completed in four days, she use only materials found on site, and she cause no harm to the environment. The Center of Wonder had designated a section of river that passed close by U.S. Route 89 – a road travelled by millions of visitors to Grand Teton National Park each year. The high visibility was an important aspect of the project. The intent was that this visual statement would reach as many people as possible and spark ideas and discussions about our relationship with nature. Alvin is known internationally as an innovative stonemason, an environmentally sensitive practitioner, and a hard worker. Stone is her language; in fact, she often refers to her work as “poems in stone.” This particular poem in the Snake River lasted for about six months. Anticipated floodwaters came through, and the patterns were reconfigured by the natural forces. Like a sand mandala, Snake River Spiral celebrates the transitory nature of life.

Thea Alvin can be reached through her website: www.myearthwork.com. She will be participating in open studio weekend October 4-5, 2014, at her studio in northern Vermont. To view a time lapse video of the creation and dissolution of the Snake River Spiral SOHDVHIROORZWKLVOLQNZZZ\RXWXEHFRPZDWFK"Y SS-5[[YM0 OLVW 88PN/<+9JU7.VE%\4$

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

Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014 79 A PLACE in mind

David Budbill

I’ve lived in the same place for more than 45 years. My down-country friends tell me that’s some kind of record. To be precise, but not too precise, my wife and I live in the southwest corner of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. We live just up the hill from the great and remote, wild and lonely Bear Swamp. There are lots of Bear Swamps in northern New England, but this is our Bear Swamp. I’ve got a friend who was taking pictures from an airplane one day and shot what he called “the wildest spot I’d ever seen in Vermont.” He sent it to me on a card and wondered where it was. It was our Bear Swamp. Two friends from Montreal and I have been among the few people to canoe down that stream before the new spring growth of the alders makes it all but impassable. And even at that, you have to portage over one beaver dam after another. The alders make it so forbidding and inaccessible almost no one ever ventures into our Bear Swamp. When we came here in the late 1960s, our neighbors just down the hill were Frank and Eva Colgrove. They were true hill farmers, the real thing: both of them born and raised on this hill; they heated with wood, milked about 15 Jersey cows, had a huge garden, raised a pig, ate the cows as they came off the line, sugared, and Eva put everything by, two big freezers full, plus she canned everything you can think of, including wild cranberry jelly from the plants in Bear Swamp, and made head cheese from the meat in the pig’s skull and dandelion wine, too. When we were barely 30, Frank and Eva were our mentors and friends. They were models of conservation, living examples of the old New England adage: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Both Frank and Eva have died, and their place, one of the most beautiful places on earth, was put up for sale. We imagined the worst: somebody would make a killing on the farm, and wouldn’t it be the perfect place for a bunch of condos? Luckily, the economy tanked and Jim Ryan came along and bought the place. Three years ago, Jim and his partner, Katie, started an organic farm: cows, pigs, chickens, two greenhouses, and every kind of vegetable you can think of. How could we be so lucky? We are now the old couple up the road and that feels strange. But rather than pass on old ways, we are learning new approaches to organic gardening and preserving land, not only from Jim and Katie but from all the other kids we have come to know. Around harvest time Jim and Katie have a big party – they call it Swamp Fest – out back of their house among their gardens. They invite all the carpenters and their families who have worked on the place, patrons of the farm, all the neighbors for miles around, and everybody else they can think of. Maybe a hundred people come, from babes in arms to eighty-five year olds. First, supper: potluck. Tons of great food, every kind you can imagine, headlined by crock-pots full of pulled pork and baked beans. Plus scores of desserts. And when supper is done and it’s getting dark, Jim and Katie turn on the little white lights they’ve strung gracefully everywhere. There are tents out in one of the fields for those spending the night. There is an enormous bon- fire and a band that plays well into the next day, the music floating out over Bear Swamp and up the hill to our house. This essay began with the great and remote, wild and lonely Bear Swamp, one of the most remote places in Vermont, but what I’ve done so far is talk about people, which says something about northern New England. In this part of America there is, and has been for centuries, an intimate connection between wildness and people, a shared love of place, an experience of wilderness and human community. And that is the reason I live here.

David Budbill is a poet and playwright.

80 Northern Woodlands / Autumn 2014

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