Where the Wild Things Go: How Young Animals Disperse

SPRING ’13

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FOREST

Where the Wild Things Go: How Young Animals Disperse The Ballad of Amos Congdon A Gym Floor from Local Trees Old Logging Films, Squirrel Sap Taps, Chainsaw Sharpening, and much more

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THE OUTSIDE STORY Each week we publish a new nature story on topics ranging from how trees survive the cold of winter to why some animals’ colors aren’t true blue.

EDITOR’S BLOG If you’re a sugarmaker who sells any amount of bulk syrup, you should look at the sugarhouse certification being pushed by the Food and Drug Administration, because this is where the industry is going. And it’ll be region wide.

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 shows a steam donkey.

Cover Photo by Chris Mazzarella Sign up on the website to get our bi-weekly “I paddled past this mink on my kayak last spring in northern New Hampshire. With my camera at newsletter delivered free to your inbox. the ready, I was able to snap a couple quick shots before his curiosity expired and he was gone. I For daily news and information, captured this image with a 70-200 mm f2.8 lens on my Canon 5D Mark III.” FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK

VOLUME 20 I NUMBER 1 REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS CENTER FOR NORTHERN WOODLANDS EDUCATION, INC. SPRING 2013 Virginia Barlow Copyright 2013 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, Editor Andrew Crosier Tel (802) 439-6292 Meghan Oliver Carl Demrow Fax (802) 368-1053 Assistant Editor Steve Faccio [email protected] Giom www.northernwoodlands.org Amy Peberdy, Operations Manager Bernd Heinrich Subscription rates are $21.50 for one year and $39 for two years. Canadian Emily Rowe Robert Kimber and foreign subscriptions by surface mail are $26.50 US for one year. Operations Coordinator Stephen Long POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Northern Woodlands Magazine, Jim Schley, Poetry Editor Todd McLeish P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 or to [email protected]. Susan C. Morse Periodical postage paid at Corinth, Vermont, and at additional mailing offices. Bryan Pfeiffer Published on the first day of March, June, September, and December. Michael Snyder All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written Adelaide Tyrol consent of the publisher is prohibited. The editors assume no responsibility Chuck Wooster for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Return postage should accompany all submissions. Printed in USA. 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 / Spring 2013 1 Center for Northern from the enter Woodlands Education C

BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Among the many priorities crowding school budgets, environmental education Julia Emlen often gets short shrift. Many educators see the value of bringing more Julia S. Emlen Associates Seekonk, MA nature into the classroom, but the reality of other costs – from textbooks to health insurance – leaves very little money for what is broadly defined as Vice President “enrichment” spending. Marcia McKeague Katahdin Timberlands So how do schools fund demonstration gardens, live animal encounters, Millinocket, ME and field trips to beaver ponds? Often, individual educators and community members dedicate their personal time: they apply for grants, sell cookies for cents on the Treasurer/Secretary Tom Ciardelli dollar, or seek in-kind donations. In the end, all too often, they dig into their own pockets. Biochemist, Outdoorsman This year, the Center for Northern Woodlands Education is testing out a new way for Hanover, NH schools to raise funds for environmental education, with much better margins than your Si Balch standard bake-sale brownie. In January, we launched Subscriptions for Schools in Maine and Consulting Forester Massachusetts. The concept is simple: Northern Woodlands will support local fundraising Brooklin, ME campaigns for up to 50 schools in each state, permitting PTOs and other school volunteer Sarah R. Bogdanovitch groups to sell subscriptions to the magazine for $21.50 and keep $10 per sale. Paul Smith’s College Northern Woodlands couldn’t offer this program without the support of donors, both Paul Smiths, NY individuals and nonprofit organizations. In the Bay State, the Massachusetts Forest Alliance Esther Cowles (www.massforestalliance.org) is cosponsoring the program. Founded in 2012, the MFA was Fernwood Consulting, LLC formed when several groups concerned with forest stewardship joined together. It represents Hopkinton, NH forest landowners and industry professionals, provides continuing education and public Dicken Crane outreach, and advocates for a strong, sustainable forest economy. Holiday Brook Farm Another key participant in the Massachusetts program is the Hitchcock Center for the Dalton, MA Environment (www.hitchcockcenter.org). This highly respected nonprofit serves over 6,000 Timothy Fritzinger children, youth, and adults each year through educational programs that foster a greater Alta Advisors understanding of the local environment. The Hitchcock Center will be using Subscriptions for London, UK Schools to raise money for the children of low-income families to attend its summer camp. Sydney Lea In Maine, we recently had the opportunity to share information about the program at the Writer, Vermont Poet Laureate annual meeting for the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine (www.swoam.org). Newbury, VT Incorporated in 1975, SWOAM has an impressive history of promoting forest stewardship and, Bob Saul through its land trust, protecting forestland while also promoting multiple-use management. Wood Creek Capital Management So, Maine and Massachusetts readers, please check out these organizations, and help Amherst, MA spread the word about Subscriptions for Schools. More information is available by calling our Peter Silberfarb office at (802) 439-6292, or by emailing us at [email protected]. Dartmouth Medical School One other school-related note: on page 21, you’ll find an essay by high school student Kia Lebanon, NH Amirkiaee, focusing on the value of working forests in Vermont. This is the winning essay Ed Wright in a contest supported by the French Foundation, Vermont Woodlands Association, and W.J. Cox Associates Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. Congratulations, Kia! Clarence, NY Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director, Publisher

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

2 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 in this ISSUE

features 30 Amos Congdon TONY DONOVAN 42 Protecting Nature. Harvesting Timber. How Conservation Groups Got into Managing Forestland, and the Lessons They’ve Learned. JOE RANKIN 50 Cutting the Apron Strings: How Young Animals Disperse KURT RINEHART 58 From Forest to Floor: the Gym a Community Built JULIA SHIPLEY 30 42 departments

2 From the Center 4 Calendar 5 Editor’s Note 6 Letters to the Editors 7 1,000 Words 9 Birds in Focus: Misfit Migrants 58 BRYAN PFEIFFER 11 Woods Whys: Is Soil Scarification Good or Bad for the Woods? MICHAEL SNYDER 13 Tracking Tips: Squirrel Sap Taps SUSAN C. MORSE 14 Knots and Bolts 26 Field Work: The Treehouse Guys KRISTEN FOUNTAIN 56 The Overstory VIRGINIA BARLOW 62 Discoveries 50 TODD MC LEISH 22 65 Tricks of the Trade CARL DEMROW 67 Upcountry ROBERT KIMBER 68 WoodLit 71 Mill Prices 79 Outdoor Palette ADELAIDE TYROL 80 A Place in Mind JOHN ELDER

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 3 CALENDAR

A Look at the Season’s Main Events

By Virginia Barlow March April May FIRST WEEK Praise be to the mole, for shrews, mice, Sugar molecules in evaporator steam can Star-nosed moles give birth in May or and voles all use its tunnels / You might seed clouds and produce microbursts of June to three to seven young. Look for hear a saw-whet owl at night. This little sugar snow – it’s sort of like falling maple them in wet, mucky areas. They use their bird sounds like the beeping made by syrup-flavored ice cream / “If it thunders excellent swimming skills to hunt aquatic heavy equipment when it’s backing up / on All Fools’ Day, it brings good crops of prey such as leeches and crustaceans / Pussy willows will soon begin to open. corn and hay.” / Phoebes are back, often The first litter of chipmunks is born. Bring some indoors for an early taste of choosing nest spots where they are sure Another batch will be born in mid-summer / spring / Red-breasted nuthatches nest in to be disturbed and causing everyone to Marsh marigolds are blooming / Male old woodpecker nests or natural cavities. stop using the front (or back) door for a few house wrens return. They build nest They smear the entrance with pitch, which weeks / Aspen leaves unfurl. Bears may foundations of coarse twigs and the may deter red squirrels from enlarging climb the trees to eat these early greens females will use grasses and feathers to the hole complete the cup-shaped nest

SECOND WEEK “When the wind is from the north and Winter-killed animals are now food for Great spangled fritillaries overwintered west, that’s when sugaring is the best.” / emerging bears. Not fussy, bears will eat as caterpillars. They are now feeding on Male goldfinches are showing more bright the maggots if a carcass has begun to the leaves of violets. Almost all fritillary yellow and their black caps are getting putrefy / Willow pollen is the first spring caterpillar larvae feed on violets – all kinds darker / After snow melt is a good time food for many bee species / Watch for of violets / Porcupines must be happy in to eat wild cranberries from bogs, after returning yellow-rumped warblers. They spring. The buds of many trees have more mixing them with a bit of sugar. The use a variety of techniques for catching than 22 percent crude protein compared fruits stay on the plants all winter / insects and will work over decaying logs, to the two to six percent in the bark and Among the earliest migrants are many bark, or litter; sometimes they hawk for twigs that have sustained them for the last water lovers: gulls, geese, eagles, and insects / Both male and female cardinals six months / Daddy longlegs are hatching ducks are pouring north / Ermines are are singing. Usually just male songbirds from eggs laid late last summer turning from white to brown get to do this

THIRD WEEK The opposite of homebodies, opossums April 21-22: Lyrid meteor shower. The Newly emerged Canadian tiger swallowtail rarely spend more than a couple of nights Lyrids usually produce about 20 meteors males congregate in puddles for moisture in the same nest. They are mating now per hour at their peak and they leave and nutrients / Brown creeper nests are and their tiny offspring will move from the bright dust trails that last for several being built behind loose slabs of bark. uterus to the pouch in two weeks’ time / seconds / The hermit thrush’s song now It may take them a month to complete Queen bumblebees are collecting pollen heard at twilight has been translated as construction / Ruffed grouse chicks leave from the flowers of red and silver maples / “oh holy holy, ah purity purity, eeh sweetly the nest within hours of hatching and can Woodcocks will soon be searching for sweetly,” with distinct pauses between fly at 10 to 12 days / The chestnut-sided earthworms. Nerves and blood vessels in the phrases / Wood turtles emerge from warbler has a long chestnut colored stripe the tip of a woodcock’s bill allow it to sense streams. They stay near water at first but down its side and is singing “pleased odors and movements as it probes into will expand their foraging area over the pleased pleased to meetcha” from shrubby the soil next few weeks or edge habitat

FOURTH WEEK Gray comma butterflies may fly on warm Bring in the birdfeeder to keep hungry bears May 25: A lunar eclipse will be visible days. They overwintered as adults and this from developing bad habits as they come out throughout most of North America, South first generation doesn’t need flowers, of hibernation / Balsam shootboring sawflies, America, western Europe, and western preferring rotten fruit, carrion, and dung / A about the size of large blackflies, may be Africa / May 28: Venus and Jupiter will be female spring peeper may lay as many as abundant in Christmas tree plantations at within 1 degree of each other in the evening 900 eggs, attaching each one to underwater midday in the warmth of the sun / Ruby- sky. The planet Mercury will be visible vegetation / The turkey vultures now returning crowned kinglets are coming through. Most nearby. Look to the west just after sunset / are rarely preyed upon. Their diet of putrefied of the year they live in coniferous forests, Honeybees may swarm, especially on a warm carrion makes them unpalatable / Eager but when they first arrive in spring, they sunny day following days of rain or cool Canada geese are pressing north, seeming are everywhere / Gypsy moth eggs begin to cloudiness / Most newborn fawns are walking to fly faster now than in the fall hatch when shadbush flowers and nursing when less than one hour old

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 / Spring 2013 EDITOR’S note

By Dave Mance III

While it’s pretty audacious to reduce the Northeast, a region with hundreds of unique ecosystems, to three generalized parts, if pushed, you can do it. There’s the North Woods, stretching through Northern Maine, the Whites, the Greens, and the Adirondacks. Then there’s the middle, hill-country forest in mid-Maine, southern New Hampshire and Vermont, the Berkshires, the Catskills. And, finally, southern New England, with its flatter land and proximity to the population centers on the coast. You can see these rough divisions on forest maps – the sub-boreal regions of the far north transition to the Acadian hill forests in the midlands before becoming oak/hickory forests in the south. You can see the lines on settlement and forest cover maps: dark green in the still sparsely populated North Woods morphing into a light green mix of farms, forests, and development before becoming heavily populated pink and red fingers that point toward Portland, Boston, Providence, and New York City. These north/south divisions give us a framework for telling stories about land conservation efforts, too. In the North Woods, the big story in land conservation over the past 25 years has been the fate of large blocks of industrial forestland – Joe Rankin’s story on page 40 relates to this. From the moment Diamond International sold 1,000,000 acres of forest in 1988 to the Finch Paper-to-The Nature Conservancy-to New York DEC deal that was recently completed in the Adirondacks, the burning question in conservation circles has been, How can large blocks of forestland and the rural ways of life (animal and human) that are attached to them be kept intact? In the middle region, where most parcels are more modest in size, the conservation questions tend to revolve around forest health and development pressure. How can income be generated from a forest that, through generations of high-grading, has been reduced to a fiber supply? Or from a forest that, through simple farmland reversion, is stocked with 50-year-old pasture pine and red maple? And, as development pressure increases and tax rates go up, how do you keep a 135-acre lot of marginal timberland from becoming five neat 27-acre lots? In the south, of course, the high population density shifts the paradigm, and conservation becomes more about preserving what’s left. As fate would have it, right after we received Rankin’s piece, Chuck Wooster sent us an update on carbon credits (page 18). For years there’s been buzz around the idea that a carbon credit could become a saleable forest product, and since the new California initiative went into effect on January 1, the buzz has increased. I’m as confused by the idea of buying and selling an invisible product as you are. And even proponents of carbon credit trading agree that there’s a host of open questions about the endeavor’s viability: Is the math reliable enough to establish a carbon baseline on a property, from which someone can measure an increase or decrease in carbon storage over time? What about the problem of fixing the price, even if you can quantify the increase in stored carbon? How do you deal with the fact that forest ownership is constantly in flux? (And nature, too – how do you factor a forest fire into your sequestration plans?) And what greater good has been accomplished when relatively well-off landowners in the Northeast, where there’s a long tradition of sustainable forest management, are paid to take their forestland out of production, and the hole left in the global wood market is filled by black market Cambodian hardwood that’s being cut from a steep hillside by some poor logger making $5 a log so he can put food on the table? I’m skeptical, frankly. If the Emperor is wearing clothes, he’s wearing a flesh-colored body suit and my eyes are getting old. But it helps if, instead of considering the whole idea based on a small woodlot in the middle or southern part of the region, I picture it working on one of those big parcels up north, where there are greater social and ecological benefits to be gained from preventing fragmentation. If timberland owners can use carbon credits to diversify the management portfolio on their 50,000 acres; and if the associated management for carbon improves the land’s carbon storage capacity and also makes it more productive in a traditional cords-and-boards sense (thus allowing the carbon credits market to complement the wood products market, not compete with it); and if this market-based “solution” to emissions control really does push polluters to clean up their acts, and the entire system doesn’t just become a twenty-first-century version of the old Catholic system of indulgences (commit a sin, pay your way to absolution) – as some fear – or a drain on the economy – as others fear – then, well . . . We’ll see. NW

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 5 letters to the EDITORS

Friend & Farrier To the Editors: I was relieved last week when my friend and farrier John Hammond showed up as scheduled. After reading, “For Donald and John” by Sydney Lea (Winter 2012), I was afraid he may have abruptly relocated to the South Pacific or some other locale suitable to the slow pace and leisurely life of retirement. When I put the question of his continued employment to him he assured me that he is still at it. As he got the winter shoes on one of my team, we passed the late fall morning in our usual fashion: catching up, reminiscing, and pondering the minor weaknesses and admirable strengths of MARK COWDREY people and horses. I enjoy watching John shoe, as he does not let the conversation interfere with his attention to the details of his work any more than he lets the work interfere with a good story. I have Farrier John Hammond. noticed one such detail for years. Once the hoof is ready for the shoe and the shoe for the hoof, Where’s Waldo? Heindel’s observations on the reduction in he arranges two sets of nails neatly between the To the Editors: Quebec’s wood production can be made every- fingers of his hammer hand, readily accessible as Meghan Oliver’s review (Winter 2012) of John where; here in the Adirondacks – or rather, New he sets the shoe. This method is not only efficient Ford’s book Suddenly, the Cider Didn’t Taste So York State generally – we are producing far more and pleasing to the eye of a workman but leaves Good: Adventures of a Game Warden in Maine, wood than can possibly be sold. his mouth uncontaminated with stable germs and recounts a story that took place at Unity Pond in John Sullivan, Chestertown, NY free to continue our conversation. Walden County. Unity Pond is actually in Waldo Thanks for a great magazine; I look forward to County (not Walden), a wonderful place that I had To the Editors: every issue. the great fortune to call home for eight years, two Naomi Heindel’s article on the Cree and Crown was Mark Cowdrey, Andover, NH of which were spent living on Unity Pond, also one of the most interesting Northern Woodlands known as Lake Winnecook. This little known body has published in the many years I have been of water gave me many great memories of bird a subscriber. Congratulations to her and many A Fresh Look at Beech watching, kayaking, fishing, skating, and playing thanks to you. To the Editors: ice horseshoes. Although I missed seeing Ford’s Lou Bregy, Weston, CT The article “Beech Party: How to Promote Beech escapades, I look forward to reading his book, (yes, promote) on Your Woodlot” (Winter 2012) almost as much as I look forward to each issue of was very timely in shaking us up to take a fresh Northern Woodlands. My only complaint about this Natural High look at this species – an amazing change since I publication is that it doesn’t come every month! To the Editors: published a paper in 1955 as part of the Northeast Erin Agius, Caribou, ME The reviewer of New England’s Natural Wonders: Forest Experiment Station’s series on beech An Explorer’s Guide states that Katahdin, “at utilization. At that time, the prevailing sentiment 5,267 feet, is New England’s highest peak” was, “Anything you can do with beech, you can Northern Exposure (Winter 2012). That statement is incorrect do with sugar maple and do it better.” To the Editors: unless we send New Hampshire back to jolly old I was impelled at that time to break into poetry, Naomi Heindel’s piece on the Cree and northern England. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, (with apologies to Gelett Burgess’ poem “I Never Quebec (The Cree and the Crown, Winter 2012) and Madison are all taller than Katahdin. Saw a Purple Cow”): was wonderful, giving those of us in the Southland Matt Stacy, West Topsham, VT a good view of the real world. My wife, Gretchen I seldom see a pure beech stand. McHugh, traveled to that country 20 years ago We love to hear from our readers. Letters intended I hope there’s not a grown one. when Hydro-Quebec was staging the Great Whale for publication in the Summer 2013 issue should But I can tell you this firsthand, – River project. There were temporary delays, but be sent in by April 1. Please limit letters to 400 I’d rather see than own one. the juggernaut of urban demand has continued words. Letters may be edited for length and Larry Hamilton, Charlotte, VT to press on. clarity.

6 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 1,000 words

While on a late-spring hike, photographer Frank Kaczmarek came across a bald- faced hornet nest that had dislodged from a tree. He took out his camera and captured these new adults emerging from their cells, and naturally, soon felt a sharp pain on his left arm as the hornets began to defend their nest.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 7 At Gutchess Lumber͕ǁĞŚĂǀĞϭϱĨŽƌĞƐƚĞƌƐŽŶŽƵƌƐƚĂī with combined experience of more than 200 years. EŽŽƚŚĞƌĮƌŵŝŶŽƵƌƌĞŐŝŽŶ;sd͕ĂƐƚĞƌŶEz͕D͕Θ dͿƌŝǀĂůƐƚŚŝƐůĞǀĞůŽĨĞǆƉĞƌƟƐĞ͘tĞŚĂǀĞƐƵƐƚĂŝŶĂďůǇ ŵĂŶĂŐĞĚŚƵŶĚƌĞĚƐŽĨƚŚŽƵƐĂŶĚƐŽĨĂĐƌĞƐŽĨĨŽƌĞƐƚƐ ĚƵƌŝŶŐƚŚĞƉĂƐƚϭϬϬǇĞĂƌƐ͘

dŚĞƐĞůĂŶĚƐŚĂǀĞďĞĞŶŚĂƌǀĞƐƚĞĚƌĞƉĞĂƚĞĚůǇ͕ ĂƚϭϱͲƚŽͲϯϬǇĞĂƌŝŶƚĞƌǀĂůƐ͕ǇĞƚƚŚĞǇƐƟůůŵĂŝŶƚĂŝŶƚŚĞ ĐůĞĂŶǁĂƚĞƌ͕ŇŽƌĂ͕ĨĂƵŶĂĂŶĚǀŝĞǁƐŚĞĚƐ ǁĞŚĂǀĞĂůǁĂǇƐĐŚĞƌŝƐŚĞĚ͘

tĞƉƌŽǀŝĚĞŐĞŶĞƌĂůĂƐƐŝƐƚĂŶĐĞƚŽĨŽƌĞƐƚůĂŶĚŽǁŶĞƌƐ ŝŶƚŚĞŵĂŶĂŐĞŵĞŶƚŽĨǁĂƚĞƌ͕ǁŝůĚůŝĨĞ͕ĂŶĚǁŽŽĚ͘

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8 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 BIRDS in focus

Story and photo by Bryan Pfeiffer Migration Misfits

Pick your favorite sign of spring: squirrels mating, mud oozing, maples flowering. Mine is a vulture soaring. Change in the air is a naked, ruddy head gliding in on big wings. But more than being a vernal messenger, the turkey vulture is an avian iconoclast. It topples simplistic notions of migration. We can usually predict, within days, the return of many spe- for scarce food resources. In the struggle for existence, males cies from far away, such as Bicknell’s thrush (from the Caribbean), will indeed be aggressive toward females over food. Fatter, larger warbling vireo (from Mexico and Central America), or bobolink males fare better in the cold. (from South America). These are complete migrants; all of them It’s likely that all these explanations fit in one way or another, left us last fall, and they return, predictably, each spring. which brings me to the turkey vulture, a partial migrant whose But a number of species migrate on the cheap. These partial northernmost members retreat south in the fall. I expect to find migrants fly south for winter, but not too far south. Among certain robins, bluebirds, and juncos here in Vermont each winter, but species of partial migrants, some members head south while others rare are turkey vultures in the cold. They winter in southern New move short distances or even remain in the breeding region. England and points south. The eastern bluebird is an example. One of America’s most But around the middle of February, as the sun drags itself elegant songbirds is a mess when it comes to distribution and higher above the horizon each day, before red-winged blackbirds migration. Consider its range map. To be sure, most bluebirds sing “honk-a-ree,” before American woodcocks begin their frenetic left the northern portions of the breeding range last fall. Yet courtship flights, and before eastern phoebes arrive in the yard, a a few hardy individuals regularly pass the winter in places as turkey vulture drifts north on teetering wings and a balmy breeze. cold as Vermont or north of the Great Lakes. The same goes for It isn’t spring. Not yet. But the vulture, searching for some- American robins, red-winged blackbirds, and other “harbingers thing dead, is a reliable emissary for a season’s rebirth. of spring.” Overall, yes, these species migrate. But among them we find mavericks in the cold, particularly during winters with Bryan Pfeiffer is an author, wildlife photographer, guide, and consulting naturalist who abundant food supplies. specializes in birds and insects. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Migration isn’t necessarily an easy option. Falling temperatures CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, AND ENVIRONMENT CANADA. ZACHARY HART. DATA PROVIDED BY NATURESERVE IN COLLABORATION WITH ROBERT RIDGELY, JAMES ZOOK, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY, and dwindling food resources do drive birds southward in fall, but migrating to avoid winter’s hardship is itself risky. Beyond the caloric demands of flying south (and then north again in spring), stopover sites along the way might hold unreliable food or unfamiliar predators. Some migrants lose prime wintering sites altogether – to storms, for example, or commercial development. Imagine yourself on a plane for Brazil, arriving to find that your airport has vanished. N A E But there’s another reason to stay put. It’s a guy thing. Among C O

C I some partial or short-distance migrants, males linger farther T N

L north than females. In winter or early spring, for example, you T A will probably find more males among groups of American robins or dark-eyed juncos. In some species, the relative abundance of Eastern Bluebird Breeding females increases steadily southward. Gulf of Mexico •Year-round A classic explanation for the overabundance of males in winter •Wintering is that turf matters. By migrating short distances, or by never • leaving, northern-residing males get first dibs on the better territory. So, counterbalancing the risk of death in the cold is the benefit of breeding success in spring. And the winners’ offspring might themselves inherit the fitness to stay north next winter. It’s a convenient hypothesis, natural selection in action. But Range maps for partial migrants – like bluebirds – should be taken with a grain is it true? Beware of easy answers. Perhaps males are more of salt, since some bluebirds migrate to warmer areas in winter but some stay abundant in the north simply because they out-compete females in their breeding territory.

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10 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 woods WHYS

By Michael Snyder

Is Soil Scarification Good or Bad for the Woods?

Although the word is related to scarring – something you’d think we’d want to avoid – soil scarification [pronounced scare-ification] is a legitimate silvicultural technique that is sometimes necessary for regenerating native trees. But as with so many aspects of forestry, when misunderstood or poorly applied, soil scarification can indeed be scary, bringing with it a host of unintended consequences. Regeneration – the successful estab- lishment of new seedlings capable of ALLAN SAGANASH growing up to be the future forest – is a forester’s most fundamental responsibility. But it is far from easy; it depends on careful attention to the ecological requirements of each tree species and a firm understanding of how Does this mean that we can best manage for light-seeded to create the right conditions for the species you want to grow. species by driving heavy machinery throughout the woods, Silvicultural soil scarification involves disturbing the crushing plants and rutting and compacting soil with impunity? forest floor in a controlled way. It is used to rearrange some of Hardly. Successful scarification is not automatic and it’s not the leaf litter, mixing it with – and exposing – the mineral soil an excuse to rip up the woods. When misapplied, it can result below. Foresters employ skidders, dozers, tractors, or horses to in soil erosion and compaction, damage to remaining trees, prepare the forest floor, scuffing the ground surface with the the uprooting or damaging of seedlings, unwanted expansions equipment itself or with materials dragged behind – from trees of weeds or invasive plants, the stimulation of unwanted to bedsprings. noncommercial trees, a loss of stored soil carbon, and who Natural (and less controlled) scarification happens when knows what sorts of problems for the little-known world of soil trees are uprooted by wind, when heavy rains or snowmelt microbes and invertebrate animals. carry leaves and needles downslope, or, say, when a flock of Legitimate scarification requires thoughtful planning and turkeys moves through the woods, scratching away leafy debris careful execution under appropriate circumstances. We know in search of insects and seeds to eat. Such disturbances – be that felling large trees and pulling or even carrying them out they natural or manmade – alter the prospects for tree seedling of the woods is disruptive and must be carefully controlled. success in subtle but profoundly important ways. That’s why, on balance, unintended damage during logging is Before the litter layer is scarified, only certain tree seeds can minimized when harvests are conducted in the dormancy of successfully germinate. A relatively large, heavy seed like an acorn winter over snow-covered, frozen terrain. might have enough energy and a strong enough first root to make But in some ground conditions and in some forest types, its way through a mat of decaying leaves and twigs and into the winter logging can present an obstacle for regeneration because more abundant moisture and fertility of the mineral soil below. the very attributes that protect the ground make scarification But small- and light-seeded species such as white pine, paper almost impossible. The forester often has better prospects birch, and hemlock, are notoriously ill-suited for such conditions, for successfully regenerating light-seeded species on summer and their seeds often dry out and die if they land on undisturbed ground, when planned scarification is more likely, especially if leaf litter. Scarification creates highly suitable seedbeds, and when it is thoughtfully applied and well timed to coincide with a good the seeds of birch, pine, and hemlock land on bare mineral soil, crop of newly fallen seeds, ready to grow. their seedlings can outgrow those of other trees. This explains those veritable rivers of pine or birch saplings that so often Michael Snyder, a forester, is Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, colonize old skid trails snaking through the woods. Parks and Recreation.

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12 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 TRACKING tips

By Susan C. Morse

Sap Taps HANNAH LEITHEISER

The transition from late winter to early spring is my favorite time for wildlife photography. The warming snow pack is pock-marked with tracks everywhere; some creatures are seeking mates, some are preparing for new offspring, and others are enjoying new sources of nourishment. I often get busted at this time, too. A busy-body red squirrel invariably discovers me, hidden quietly in my blind, and scolds me with much foot stomping, tail flagging, and churring. There’s little merit in getting up and relocating, however. Usually, the territorial sciurid eventually quits and goes about other business. On one occasion many years ago, I was fascinated to watch a red squirrel travel along the smooth trunk and limbs of a nearby young red maple, periodically stopping to cock its head and bite through the bark into the xylem. Hours SUSAN C. MORSE later, after the sap had leaked through the wounds and then freeze-dried in the chilling evening air, the same squirrel returned and licked at the site of the wound’s now-concentrated nutrients. Maple sap is also being harvested by us at this time, so I naturally deduced that the scores upon scores of squirrel-made “sap taps,” as I have named them, might actually serve the same purpose. Sure enough, Bernd Heinrich, respected biologist and well-known author, SUSAN C. MORSE made a similar observation and systematically sought to prove Top: Squirrel sugarmaker. Bottom: Very it. Heinrich concluded that the large temperature fluctuations fresh sap taps – note incisor grooves. that occur in late fall, during warm spells in winter, and especially in early spring, create an opportunity for squirrels to tap trees for their sugar – especially sugar maple. He observed many dot is a smaller wound created by the squirrel’s upper incisors, squirrels returning to their sap holes to lick the “candied sugar which were inserted into the bark and anchored there, while the streaks” after the sap’s watery contents had evaporated. Heinrich longer dash is caused by the movement of the lower jaw’s meticulously proved that the dried wounds’ exudate had a sugar incisors scraping across the bark. Squirrel tap marks measure content considerably higher than that of the original sap. roughly two millimeters wide for two incisors side by side. It’s While sugar maple is the tree of choice, I’ve discovered red fun to examine fresh sap taps in early spring, for you can readily and gray squirrel taps on 23 species of trees and shrubs, including see the minute grooves that were created by the squirrel’s teeth. all maple species, bitternut hickory, red oak, apple, aspen, bass- Some small maples become covered with hundreds of the wood, witch hazel, and rhododendron, to name just a few of tiny calloused scars resulting from the accumulation of sap the curious varieties involved. A stem or branch simply has to tap wounds over years of time. Occasionally, sugar maples in be smooth and thin-barked, and thus easily wounded. Sugars, particular may become black with the opportunistic growth of as Heinrich proposes, are a sought after nutrient, but I suspect a sooty mold organism, an Ascomycete fungus that is able to minerals may also be key attractants. subsist on sweet nutrients released from the tree’s wounds. Careful inspection of the sap taps shows the dot-dash pattern I’ve described for black bear scent-marking bites. The Susan C. Morse is founder and program director of Keeping Track in Huntington, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 13 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ SKILLS ]

Negotiating a Sugarbush Lease

One could be forgiven for thinking the U.S. work as a consulting forester, I’ve seen more client generally more valuable, as they contain a suf- maple industry is in decline, considering the interest in sugaring; in fact, I received a phone call ficient number of taps to recoup the investment poor sugaring season in 2012 and fears about last year from a realtor who was working with an of infrastructure – the economy of scale. climate change, but the reality on the ground is investor looking to start a 100,000-tap sugaring While maple sugaring evokes the image of that business is booming. The U.S. Department of operation, from scratch, in New England. sap buckets, a horse-drawn gathering tank, and Agriculture estimates that 9.8 million trees were As the maple industry grows and competition for steam rising from a deep-woods sugarhouse, tapped nationwide last spring – up 38 percent available taps increases, tapping leases are becom- modern maple operations are nowhere near as from just 10 years ago. Production is also up, ing an option for landowners looking to generate quaint. The modern sugarmaker relies on miles on average, about 77 percent. While production revenue from their woodland. But as with anything of plastic tubing, stainless steel collection tanks, varies from year to year due to weather, the in life, people should look before they leap. What vacuum pumps, and often large trucks capable of steady increase of maples tapped and syrup follows is a primer on sugarbush leases, designed hauling thousands of gallons of sap at a time. produced appears likely to continue despite stable to give both landowners and sugarmakers a realistic A landowner should be aware of the modern or decreasing prices for bulk syrup. snapshot of what they may be getting into. look of sugaring and know that the sugarmaker Politicians have taken notice of the sugar- will need to do maintenance work during all sea- ing boom and included a Maple Tap Accessing Location, location, location sons. Sugaring occurs during mud season, and Program (TAP) Act in the 2012 Farm Bill (maple- When looking at a prospective sugarbush lease access roads will, in all likelihood, become rutted glazed pork) designed, among other things, to site, the first thing a sugarmaker is going to want and need repairs; expectations about mainte- “help maple farmers access trees that are currently is a suitable number of taps per acre. Ideally, the nance are an important part of any agreement. on private lands.” New York Senator Chuck number will be somewhere between 50 and 100; Tubing installations are generally permanent; Schumer, perhaps the leading maple proponent in generally speaking, a stand with fewer than 50 unless it’s specified in the lease, tubing will stay Congress, sounds like an old-time oil prospector taps per acre is not considered financially viable in place year round. as he extols the virtues of sugaring on his website: South- and east-facing slopes are generally more “They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but with desirable for sugaring than north- and west- Forestry implications millions of trees waiting to be tapped, there may facing slopes. Uniform slopes with easy access to Managing a forest stand for maple sap production be bucketfuls of dollars inside them.” In my own the bottom are most desirable. Larger areas are involves a light cutting of undesirable trees and brush on a periodic basis (generally every 10-15 Good sap collection access is a key component to any sugarbush. years). A year or two before starting a sugarbush lease, it is often advisable to perform an improve- ment cut to remove softwood, hazard trees, and any mature veneer trees that would otherwise not be tapped. This work may be undertaken by the landowner and his or her forester prior to entering into a lease agreement, or by the lessee (working with the owners’ forester) prior to installing lines. In most cases, a thinning for sugarbush improve- ment can be handled as a simple modification to an established forest management plan. Tapping involves drilling a hole in the bottom six to eight feet of a tree. While tap holes normally grow over within two years, these holes will diminish the quality of the butt log for veneer. Tap holes are considered a defect of low to medium impact for sawlogs, therefore you should consider whether veneer trees should be identified and excluded from a maple lease.

Standards Standards and expectations should be clearly out- lined in a written lease defining the area covered, the duration of the lease, payment amount, and

14 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 If the pan doesn’t have lead-solder, and the thermometer doesn’t contain mercury, this rig might just pass inspection.

method of payment. It should also address whether the stand, or portions of it, can be subleased, tree care, and tapping standards. Model standards can be found on the Northern Woodlands website (www.northernwoodlands.org). Standards for sugarbush management should include the size and depth of the tap hole – current best practices recommend holes that are 5/16-inch diameter and no deeper than 2 inches, including bark. Traditional tapping guidelines held that trees over 10 inches in diameter at breast height could get one tap, over 15 inches two taps, over 20 inches three taps, and over 25 inches four taps. Modern best practice guidelines are more conservative, however, and suggest that trees between 10 and 18 inches in diameter should get one tap, and anything larger can have two. Lease payments are generally made annually, based on the number of taps. The rate is negotiated [ TIMES A-CHANGIN’ ] between the landowner and producer and often includes maple syrup as part of the payment. Lease rates depend on such factors as the quality of the Sugarhouse Registration sugarbush, the number of available taps, taps per acre, access, and distance to the sugarhouse. The Rumors have been swirling in sugarmaking circles about government registration of sugar- per-tap rate for maple leases on Vermont State land houses in all the states where maple syrup is produced. We asked Matthew Gordon, the new is determined annually and is set at 25 percent of executive director of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association, to shed some light on this. the average of the per-pound price for Fancy and Gordon told us that the push for registration began in 2002 as part of the Bioterrorism Act, Grade C bulk syrup on May 1 of the preceding year. that regulations were modernized as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, and that In 2012, the rate was $0.67/tap. registration is recommended for anyone who makes and sells syrup. When negotiating a lease, it’s important that a You can register online, which is a two-part process. First you need to set up an account with landowner have an idea of the financial invest- the FDA here: www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Registrationof ment a sugarmaker is making. Tubing costs FoodFacilities/OnlineRegistration/ucm114181.htm an average of $10-$15 per tap. This includes Then you need to submit the registration; this link offers step-by-step instructions: material and labor for the tap, drop line, lateral www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/RegistrationofFoodFacilities/ lines, main lines, and associated fittings. Storage OnlineRegistration/ucm073706.htm capacity of at least one gallon per tap is required, If the online registration is too frustrating, you can download a paper copy here: www.fda.gov/ at a cost of $1-$1.50/gallon; a vacuum system Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/RegistrationofFoodFacilities/ucm073728.htm costs a minimum of $4,000. The cost of setting It’s probably safe to say that all sugarmakers are on board with the idea of doing their part to up a maple lease is therefore substantial. Tapping keep the sap supply safe from an act of terrorism, but they’re also concerned that by involving leases generally run for a minimum of 10 to 15 the FDA and registering their sugarhouse as a “food facility,” they’ll open themselves up to years, in order for the producer to recover his or invasive bureaucratic meddling. Will sugarhouses soon be required to have hot running water her investment. and flush toilets? Will wool caps and Carhartt jackets be replaced by hair nets and aprons? Sugarbush leases have the potential to provide Gordon said that to some extent this is still an open question. The government has determined landowners with annual income, provide sustain- that sugarmaking is a low-risk activity and exempt from the most stringent food safety able forest management, and help perpetuate regulations, but they will be requiring “good manufacturing practices” that were still in the the working landscape in the Northeast. Done proposed/open-to-comment phase at press time. with proper care and clear expectations, leasing While the final regulations will likely fall closer to “annoying” than “truly onerous” on the pain- forest land for maple sap production can result in a in-the-butt scale, it’s probably safe to say that the days of boiling eggs and hot dogs in the front win-win situation for all involved. pan will soon be over. Dave Mance, Jr. NW

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 15 KNOTS & BOLTS CHERYL DORSCHNER

Abby van den Berg, of the Proctor Maple Research Center, gets ready to tap a birch tree. [ BETULA SACCHARUM? ]

New England’s Other Syrup

In Leicester, Vermont, up a rutted driveway off Route 7, Kevin New cobbled soil has dried out, but before leaves have fully emerged. together a sugarhouse out of an old goat barn and plywood. He boiled a lot “Most years, when I’m putting in my birch taps, my neighbors are pulling of sap last spring, long after most sugarhouses had gone dormant. In fact, out their maple taps,” Moore said. he boiled almost up until the leaves came out. For his labors, he points to a It’s not hard to imagine that other ambitious producers will find birch syrup neat double row of mason jars he has for sale along the back window of his attractive. They could wind down their traditional six- or eight-week maple shack. They’re filled with rich, red, birch syrup. season, clean their gear, and head right into birch for another round of two Yes, birch syrup. to three weeks. New is part of a new wave of sugarmakers who are adding birch trees Now you may be asking yourself the same question I was: “What’s the to their sugarbush portfolio. There’s enough promise in the pursuit that stuff taste like?” Before you go hunting for a jar of birch syrup and start whip- Cornell’s Sugar Maple Research and Extension Program and the University ping up your favorite buttermilk batter, consider this: “It’s kind of a waste to of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center have begun doing experiments put it on pancakes,” said one of Moore’s best customers, Evan Mallett. to find out how much sap – and sugar – birch trees produce. Mallett’s the chef at Black Trumpet Bistro in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A handful of producers have been making birch syrup for decades in Still, his warning doesn’t mean birch syrup isn’t tasty. “I’ve thought of myriad Alaska, Canada, and Russia, but researchers want to determine whether, applications for it,” he said. using modern maple syrup equipment like vacuum tubing and reverse Mallett calls it a “dark flavor” and treats it a bit like molasses. His most osmosis machines, birch syrup can be profitable in New England. recent incarnation is a raisin mostarda: a traditional northern Italian condi- The water content of birch sap is a challenge. Typically, 40 to 60 gallons of ment that he likes to serve with cheese to his customers. “The roundness maple sap yield one gallon of syrup. This spring, New averaged 116 gallons of and molasses effect of the birch syrup is great for neutralizing the sharpness birch sap to make one gallon of syrup, which means a lot of time in the sugar- of the mustard seed,” he explained. house, and, for traditional sugarmakers, a mighty big stack of cordwood. Birch “It’s not maple,” said New. Instead, he calls birch syrup spicy and fruity. sap flows more slowly from the tree than maple sap does, and it’s higher in “Some people call it tangy.” fructose than maple sap, which means it scorches more easily when boiled. Bob Rook, the owner of Emack and Bolio’s ice cream in Boston, thinks The reward is in the price. One major Alaskan producer gets $328 a gallon. birch syrup is delicious. Last year, he made a 20-gallon batch of birch-walnut Last year, David Moore, a birch syrup producer in Lee, New Hampshire, ice cream, and his customers liked it. charged $20 for an eight-ounce glass bottle. This year, he’s upped his price “For my taste buds, it was more intense and better in flavor than maple,” to $25 because his season was cut short by 80°F temperatures. Rook said. “The problem with birch syrup is that it’s very, very expensive.” Maple syrup producers rely on a cycle of frosty nights and warmer days If more maple syrup producers hear his message, the laws of syrup supply to create stem pressure in a maple tree. Birch sap is different in that root and ice cream demand might just get the price down to where he’d churn pressure drives a sap run. Birch sugaring season, then, occurs immediately another batch. after maple season, in that brief window after the snow has gone and the Joshua Brown

16 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 [ COMMUNITY ]

Something Sweet in New York

Postal workers have postal routes; milk truck drivers have milk routes. But a maple route? Last spring, The Wild Center, a nonprofit environmental education organization and natural history museum in Tupper Lake, New York, decided to start a maple sugaring operation. All they were missing was a sugarbush. Jen Kretser, director of programs at The Wild Center explained, “We are a science museum, we have about 31 acres of land, but we only have one maple tree.” So the museum offered a free maple workshop, a free pancake breakfast, and a bucket and tap to anyone in the community who wanted to tap their yard maples and donate the sap. They expected about 20 people. More than 80 showed up. Each sap run, Wild Center volunteers drove from house to house and collected sap – in all about 920 gallons, which made around 23 gallons of maple syrup. The finished product was put in mason jars and slapped with a museum-designed label that read, “The Tupper Tappers.” Each participant received 50 percent of the maple syrup produced from their sap. “The most important benefit of this project is that it allows the family that has a maple tree in their yard to experience the whole process and taste real maple syrup,” said Helen Thomas, director of the New York State Maple Producers Association. “Today, so many people have no idea where their food comes from, so this does a great deal to educate them.” This year, the community maple project is expanding. TWC has invested in more tapping supplies and is constructing their own sugar house, complete with a reverse osmosis unit – a fancy filter that removes water from the sap. A dentist in Watertown donated a new 2-by-4 evaporator. Because of 2012’s mediocre sugaring season, the volunteers were able to operate on a learning curve without any obvious setbacks, and prepared themselves for a productive sugaring season and an increase in community participation. Thomas said the appeal of the community maple project is bound to last. “We find that once you have tasted the real thing, it is hard to ever buy anything but.” RICK GODIN Danielle Owczarski

A girl learns about the history of sugaring as part of The Wild Center’s maple sugaring education program.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 17 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ POLICY ] DOWNEAST LAKES LAND TRUST, ASSISTED BY LIGHTHAWK.

Creating Carbon Credit

Well-managed forestland provides a host of benefits to society, from flood mitigation to wildlife habitat to carbon sequestration, and there’s long been talk about finding ways to compensate landowners whose forests provide these benefits. Recent developments in California might be bringing this idea closer to reality. Since January 1, California has operated the nation’s first cap-and-trade scheme for limiting carbon emissions. Under the scheme, which applies to a broad spectrum of California’s manufacturing economy, from cement factories to oil refineries to power plants, companies are required to either reduce their carbon emissions over time (comply with the “cap”) or else purchase pollution credits from other companies that have successfully done so (make use of the “trade”). The state plans to gradually reduce the total number of pollution credits available, with the goal of lowering California’s carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below that by 2050. Of particular relevance to us in the Northeast is a provision that allows companies to mitigate up to eight percent of their emissions by purchasing carbon offsets from anywhere in the country. A power plant near Los Angeles, for example, could purchase a conservation easement on forestland in New Hampshire with the provision that the land be managed in such a way that it will soak up and store enough carbon to offset the emissions in Los Angeles. One such offset project is already in the works: the Downeast Lakes Land – we have no idea what the price for carbon will be in the future, and since Trust in Grand Lake Stream, Maine, has certified that 19,000 of the 34,000 the California program is only certain through 2020, it’s hard to justify the acres in its Farm Cove Community Forest are eligible to be used as offsets under short-term costs and the long-term liabilities of being part of the program.” the California program. If a sale for the carbon rights can be arranged with a Carbon offset payments don’t come cheaply. As a landowner, you need to California company, the group plans to use the proceeds (estimated to be in the count how much carbon is currently on your land, you need to demonstrate neighborhood of $2 million) to purchase and conserve additional lands. how much carbon it will soak up in the future, you need to guarantee that This is exactly what many people have long envisioned – a program where you won’t change your mind later (and cut down the forest instead), and landowners are recognized and compensated for good forest management you need to hire third-party verifiers at every step along the way. All without and where that compensation is then plowed back into more good forest knowing how much money you might make at the end of the day. management. But the California program is still in its infancy, and it’s far from “These projects are very complicated,” said Saligman. “We have a bunch clear that this program will succeed where previous efforts have failed. The of sharp people working on this, and the joke has become, ‘How many PhDs Downeast Lakes project, should it go through, might be more of a special does it take to make a carbon project work?’ There’s the financial piece, the case than a harbinger of things to come. regulatory piece, the forestry piece. You have to find a consultant who thinks Laury Saligman co-founded Conservation Collaboratives LLC in 2006, about this stuff every day, who wakes up in the morning thinking about carbon with the goal of purchasing and conserving forestland using carbon offsets, offsets.” among other funding sources. At present, Conservation Collaboratives owns There are two more uncertainties surrounding the California program: it’s a 1,000-acre parcel in Vermont, and Saligman, along with the Northern presently authorized to run only through 2020, and the auction process for Forest Center in Concord, New Hampshire, started the Northern Forest trading carbon credits began last November, so the long-term value of storing Carbon & Ecosystem Services Network. carbon on forestland has not yet been established. The hypothetical power “We were hoping to generate enough revenue through the carbon offset plant in Los Angeles isn’t going to pay the hypothetical landowner in New program to purchase a permanent easement for the property, but so far it just Hampshire until the company knows what its other options might cost. hasn’t worked out,” said Saligman. “A big problem is long-term uncertainty Meanwhile, the track record for carbon offsets in the United States is

18 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 The Downeast Lakes Land Trust has registered 19,000 acres near Grand Lake Stream, Maine, for the California cap-and-trade program.

In dollars and cents

Let’s say the carbon-offset market takes off in the next few years and that small-time landowners are able to get in on the deal by aggregating their lands with those of their neighbors. How much money are we talking? On average, an acre of middle-aged, well-stocked woodland in the Northeast contains about 90 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in its trees and is capable of soaking up 1 additional metric ton per year. Right now, California carbon credits are selling for about $10 per metric ton, though they are forecasted to rise to as much as $30 per ton as the cap gets lowered. Let’s use $20 per ton as an average, and let’s say you own 100 acres. If your 100 acres is in imminent danger of development, you can claim that the 900 metric tons (90 tons per acre x 100 acres) of carbon that your land is currently storing is going to be released into the atmosphere when the bulldozers arrive. Put a permanent conservation easement on your land and agree to good forestry practices, and you’ll receive a one-time payment of $18,000 for your efforts (900 tons x $20 per ton.) Figure that the aggregators and third-party verifiers will take 20 percent or so, leaving you at around $15K. If your land is in no danger of development but you want to commit to managing your forest primarily for carbon storage (which is to say, working with a certified forester on a plan for not encouraging. The Chicago Climate Exchange collapsed in 2010 after it maximizing forest growth), you can make the case that your for- became clear that the federal government had no immediate plans to regulate est management will allow you to store 2 metric tons of carbon carbon emission, and the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has dioxide per year instead of the baseline 1 ton. You’ll receive defined offset projects narrowly enough (they only apply to projects that turn credit for 100 tons of stored CO2 per year (2 tons stored less the nonforests into forests) that no landowner has yet been able to benefit. 1 ton baseline x 100 acres), which at $20 per ton will earn you a All may not be lost. As the California program gains traction over the payment of $2,000 per year (or more like $1,600 after everyone coming year, the longer-term price of carbon offsets will become clearer. else gets paid.) Meanwhile, the best approach for landowners, especially those with smaller What does all this carbon dioxide add up to? A car driven holdings, might be to join with other landowners to aggregate their carbon 12,000 miles per year, the national average, will emit about offsets into larger projects, whose scale would justify the expense. Similar 5 metric tons of carbon dioxide, so the improved forestry programs already allow landowners to work together to receive green certi- practices on your 100 acres will offset the equivalent of 20 fication from the Forest Stewardship Council, for example. average cars driving for a year. And if you protect your land “Ultimately, aggregation is going to be essential,” Saligman said. “There’s from development and keep the forest intact? You’ve saved the no easy way this can work for the majority of landowners, otherwise. equivalent of 200 cars driving for that year. California has not yet adopted aggregation, but it’s not that they won’t in the The fine print: actual results will vary. These numbers are future.” generalized to cover the region. If you own very high-quality Saligman concluded on an optimistic note. “When you look at the statistics, woodland that’s both well-stocked with big trees and in danger Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are the most forested states in the of being developed for housing, you might beat these numbers nation, and most of our land is privately held. Our forests have a huge handily. If, on the other hand, you own cut-over woodland on potential for helping to address climate change. Maybe it’s not going to be poor soils located far from the nearest proposed subdivision, through the new California market, but maybe California will spur something these numbers will be the stuff of fantasy. As will all of these new to happen here.” numbers if the carbon-offset market doesn’t develop. Chuck Wooster

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 19 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ PRESERVATION ]

More Than a Snapshot: Preserving Historic Film

When David Weiss obtains a canister of old movie grandpa worked in the woods, so there were close Finally, the old film is digitized and transferred film, he gives it the sniff test. ties to big industry here. It was relevant,” he said. to DVD, Blu-Ray, or made into a computer file. In “I pry off the lid, sniff it, and if it doesn’t knock Soon, the film became part of the curriculum order to transfer all that film, though, the original me over with the smell of vinegar, it’s pretty good,” in Maine elementary schools. Copies were given machines needed to play it must be up and run- Weiss said. A whiff of acetic acid – known in the as presents for Father’s Day, Weiss said. It was ning. That means keeping old projectors and the biz as “vinegar syndrome” – indicates advanced shown in nursing homes and at historical societ- now-historical VHS players functioning. deterioration. If the film smells like moth balls, it’s ies. In 2002, the Library of Congress added From Weiss said owners of historical film footage in decent shape. Stump to Ship to the National Film Registry. “The should preserve the film before it’s too late. And if Weiss is the executive director of Northeast success of that film led us to do more,” he said. you do get it transferred to DVD, don’t throw out Historic Film, an organization dedicated to pre- Today, the Northeast Historic Film collection the original film, but store it in a cool, dry place (he serving New England’s heritage by protecting old offers hundreds of documentary films on life in recommends the closet in your guest bedroom). movies. Their Bucksport, Maine, location houses old New England, including such classics as Dead Without the original, he said, transferring moving more than 10 million feet of historical film. The River Rough Cut, a film about two Maine beaver images into whatever future format exists may group works to salvage film in all conditions: trappers, and King Spruce (in one part, when not be possible. burned, scratched, torn, or salad-smelling. dynamite is brought out to clear a logjam, the The historical films Weiss works preserves are Preserving historical films is a way to stay narrator dryly concludes: “very few logs are lost, not all tied to big industry. One of his favorites is a connected to “the reality of the past,” Weiss said. and very few men.”) In Days Gone By: Vermont six-minute film, Cherryfield, 1938. When he began preserving New England’s old Country Ways, includes personal narratives and “It’s really simple,” he said. The film is footage films in the 1980s, his goal was to make histori- footage of chores, harvests, barn raisings, and by a resident of a small town in southeastern cal footage accessible to people hungry for their seasonal rhythms of old time Vermont. Maine during the Depression. “Someone went heritage. In Maine, this heritage was more often The film preservation process includes much around and took shots of everybody in town: than not lumber based, and films ran the gamut in more than adding a narrator or artfully splicing school kids, teachers, shopkeepers, guys cutting content from 1930s’ log driving to 1940s’ training footage. After the initial sniff test, the real work wood. In a very short time, you feel like you’ve films for the pulpwood industry. begins. If the tiny perforations that edge the film are wandered around town and gotten to see who’s The first film Weiss rehabilitated – a 1930s cracked, they must be repaired. If the film is tightly there and what they’re doing,” Weiss explained. logging film shot on a 6-mm camera by the owner coiled around a small reel, the staff transfers the “There’s no plot. But it reveals a very nice portrait of the now defunct Machias Lumber Company in brittle film to a larger reel. Dirty film is run through of a place; that person had a nice eye.” Maine – was made into the movie From Stump to a cleaning machine to remove dust and dirt. The original film is in horrible shape, Weiss Ship. In its original format, the 30-minute film was said. It’s got water damage, scratches, and sec- silent but came with a script for narrators tions spliced out. “The strength of its images to read while the film was playing. In the comes through anyway.” revised version, a Maine resident narrates Meghan Oliver the script as a voiceover in the film. (“Fo uh one hundred and sixty nine consecutive Joe Gardner of Northeast Historic Film. ye ahs, the forests on the Machias Rivah JANE DONNELL have resounded with the sound of the woodsman’s axe.”) The film includes footage of men using two-man crosscut saws, hand tools, sleds, and horses to log in winter. Viewers see the men eating one of their many meals of the day and watch how logging camp cooks prepared beanhole beans (see recipe, next page). In the spring footage, men use peaveys to coax logs down the river, deftly running across moving logs in their spiked boots. When From Stump to Ship had its initial show- ings in 1985, “people flocked to it,” Weiss recalled. “It wasn’t brilliant filmmaking, but we gave MBC DESIGN people something that was important to them – an unvarnished view of that industry. Everybody’s

20 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 [ ESSAY ]

Vermonters and Forests: Beanhole beans A Symbiotic Relationship Beanhole beans were a staple of lumber camp cuisine. You’ll see camp chefs in old logging films Editor’s note: Last winter, the Vermont Woodlands lifting steaming pots of them from the earth. Association partnered with the Vermont Department of According to the Maine Folklife Center, the idea Forests, Parks and Recreation and Northern Woodlands originated with Native Americans. The recipe to sponsor an essay contest for Vermont high school has variations, but in general, New Englanders students. The topic: why working forests matter. Below replaced the maple syrup Native Americans used is the winning essay, selected out of nearly 50 entries. with molasses, and salt pork replaced other meats used by natives. Story has it that in 1773 explorers stood on top of The beans were cooked in cast iron pots that Killington Mountain and bestowed the name Verd-Mont were lowered into pits in the earth several feet – or Green Mountains – on the territory. While this story deep, where hot coals awaited. Beans were sim- may be apocryphal, the beauty of the state is not, and mered anywhere from several hours to several over 200 years later, Vermont’s verdant, forested land- days. Robert Campbell, who died in 2010, was a scape is still mesmerizing. While the splendor of the Mainer renowned for his beanhole beans. Here, trees, particularly in autumn, attracts thousands to our state, the forests also provide wood for building, he shares his way of constructing a bean pit*. fuel to heat homes, and habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna. Such a valuable resource warrants “What I did, I dug a pit about 30 inches deep our stewardship in order to maximize its potential and ensure that it is maintained for posterity. and put a cast iron manhole cover in the bot- Looking back on our relatively short history, it is easy to see the results of not safeguarding this tom. Oh it must weight well over 100 pounds. resource. In the early 1800s, Vermont was a fledgling state, largely populated with small subsistence And then I took two truck wheels, welded them farms. Thousands of wooden homes and outbuildings were being constructed, and wood was the most together, put those in the hole, and then I sur- common type of fuel used for both heat and cooking. In the 1830s, there were over a million sheep in rounded them with roughly 95-100 window-sash Vermont, which led to a great transformation in Vermont’s landscape. It was estimated that around 70 weights around the wheels … rocks off the farm percent of the forest was cleared for grazing sheep, which led to a number of negative consequences, … and finished the top with bricks. Now I can including erosion. Although it has taken nearly two hundred years to recoup from this time of deforesta- fire it up with a couple of basket loads of wood tion, Vermont has recovered and is now approximately 78 percent forest, earning it the title of the fourth for two, two-and-a-half hours, then shovel it [the most forested state in America. coals] out, put the beans in [cover with coals and Looking at our past underscores the importance of sustainable stewardship and what we need to do to dirt to seal] and cook them from 12 to 20 hours insure Vermont will stay the same for future generations. These efforts include selective cutting to maintain and they, so far, come out perfect every time.” the health of the forest. Since there is a great deal of competition for resources within the forest, selective Here’s our house recipe, based on Campbell’s. cutting weeds out the old and defective trees, which can then be used for other purposes, such as firewood. Readers, share your own beanhole bean recipes With these trees gone, there is more space and nutrients for the younger, healthier trees to grow. with us at www.northernwoodlands.org. Having lived for six years on my grandparents’ dairy farm, I’ve seen firsthand the importance of stewardship and how crucial trees are to Vermont and its citizens. During the coldest days of winter, Beanhole beans like many other Vermonters, we throw an extra log on the fire instead of cranking up the thermostat. By 11 pounds yellow-eye beans using wood, which is a renewable resource, we are helping to promote a greener, more ecological state. 5 pounds salt pork Moreover, since my family sells maple syrup, we rely on the maple trees in our sugar bush to provide 2 cups molasses sap that can be processed into syrup. My family is not alone in our reliance on forests. Like many towns 1 cup maple syrup in Vermont, my hometown has a tourist-based economy, which is contingent upon the beauty of our 5 tablespoons dry mustard forests and landscape. Salt and pepper One of the reasons people are drawn to Vermont is because of its connection to nature; when one 5 whole onions drives to school, one can see a flock of turkeys cross the road, or a gangly fawn walking for the first 2 heads of garlic time. It’s a special aspect of Vermont that very few other places have. Water to cover Vermonters and forests have always had a symbiotic relationship. The forests provide us with many resources, including lumber with which to build our homes and firewood to heat them; in return it is Put all ingredients in Dutch oven. Put Dutch oven our duty to keep the forests healthy. Written in our state song is the phrase, “Let us live to protect her in bean pit. Cover with coals and seal with dirt in beauty.” As the next generation of forest stewards, I think we owe it to Vermont to do just that. early morning. Dig up later that night. Eat.

*Excerpt courtesy of the Maine Folklife Center. Kia Amirkiaee is a sophomore at Woodstock Union High School in Woodstock, Vermont. She enjoys spending time at her grandparents’ farm, which has been in her family since the 1830s. She plans to pursue a career in environmental law.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 21 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ THE OUTSIDE STORY ]

Illustrations by Lauren DiBiccari The Annual Frog Symphony

We’re used to tracking spring’s progression through flowers (colt’s foot to purple trillium to columbine) or bird sightings (phoebes to sapsuckers to warblers). Spend time near a wet- Wood frog land and frog song can be used in the same way. Frogs and toads have a distinct calling phenology (and phonology) largely influenced by climatic variables such as humidity and the temperature of air and water. You can think of the anuran (frogs and toads) breeding season as a symphony with three major movements – the onset of each varies depending on location, elevation, and microclimate, but the order of appearance remains the same. The first movement begins in spring with the onset of the first warm rains, when nighttime temperatures remain above 40°F. Out come the wood frogs, whose quacking calls may only last a week or so. Around the same time, spring peepers add their bell-like peeps, continuing nightly for four to six weeks. Where northern leopard frogs occur, their rhythmic, low snores usually peak in late April. The second movement begins with the subtle snoring of pickerel frogs and the prolonged, nasal trill of American toads. As temperatures warm, gray Spring peeper treefrogs add their short, trumpet-like trills, along with a few plunky banjo notes of green frogs. With summer in full swing, a steady chorus of green frogs signifies the onset of the final movement, which also includes the steady bassline “jug-o-rums” of American bullfrogs, and in northernmost areas, the staccato, percussive rapping of mink frogs. By early August, the anuran symphony has been replaced by the crickets, katydids, and cicadas of late summer. Steven D. Faccio

Northern leopard

Pickerel

Editors’ Note: Hear the quacks, snores, trills, and plunks of these amphibians on the Northern Woodlands website.

22 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 This chart shows frog song progression, starting with the quacking wood frog in early April and ending with the rapping mink frog in mid-summer. Green frog

Gray treefrog

American bullfrog

Mink frog

American toad

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 23 A Consulting Forester can help you

Markus Bradley, Ben Machin, Mike Scott 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] NRCS Technical Service Provider www.calfeewoodland.com Haven Neal Forestry Services Fountain Forestry 137 Cates Hill Road, Berlin, NH 03570 7 Green Mountain Drive, Suite 3 Richard Cipperly, CF (603) 752-7107 Montpelier, VT 05602-2708 North Country Forestry [email protected] (802) 223-8644 ext 26 8 Stonehurst DrIve, Queensbury, NY 12804 [email protected] (518) 793-3545 Christopher Prentis, CF Cell: (518) 222-0421 Lower Hudson Forestry Services LandVest Timberland Fax: (518) 798-8896 14 Van Houten Street, Nyack, NY 10960 Management and Marketing [email protected] (845) 270-2071 ME, NH, NY, VT [email protected] 5086 US Route 5, Suite 2, Newport, VT 05855 Swift C. Corwin, Jr. www.lowerhudsonforestry.com (802) 334-8402 Calhoun & Corwin Forestry, LLC www.landvest.com 41 Pine Street, Peterborough, NH 03458 David Senio Swift Corwin: (603) 924-9908 P.O. Box 87, Passumpsic, VT 05861 Long View Forest Management John Calhoun: (603) 357-1236 (802) 748-5241 Andrew Sheere Fax: (603) 924-3171 [email protected] SAF Certified Forester & [email protected] Jeffrey Smith NRCS Technical Service Provider Daniel Cyr Butternut Hollow Forestry Westminster, VT 05158 Bay State Forestry 1153 Tucker Hill Road (802) 428 4050 P.O. Box 205, Francestown, NH 03043 Thetford Center, Vermont 05075 [email protected] (603) 547-8804 802-785-2615 www.longviewforest.com baystateforestry.com Jack Wadsworth, LPF, ME & NH Meadowsend Timberlands Ltd R. Kirby Ellis Brian Reader, LPF, ME & NH Jeremy G. Turner, NHLPF #318 Ellis’ Professional Forester Services Jesse Duplin, LPF, ME & NH serving NH & VT P.O. Box 71, Hudson, ME 04630 Wadsworth Woodlands, Inc. P.O. Box 966, New London, NH 03257 (207) 327-4674 35 Rock Crop Way, Hiram, ME 04041 (603) 526-8686 ellisforestry.com (207) 625-2468 [email protected] [email protected] www.mtlforests.com Charlie Hancock www.wadsworthwoodlands.com North Woods Forestry P.O. Box 405, Montgomery Center, VT 05471 Kenneth L. Williams New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts require foresters (802) 326-2093 Consulting Foresters, LLC to be licensed, and Connecticut requires they be certified. Note that not all consulting foresters are licensed in each [email protected] 959 Co. Hwy. 33, Cooperstown, NY 13326 state. If you have a question about a forester’s licensure or (607) 547-2386 certification status, contact your state’s Board of Licensure. Fax: (607) 547-7497

24 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013

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Britton Lumber Company P. O. Box 389 • 7 Ely Road Fairlee, Vermont 05045 802-333-4388 [email protected] www.brittonlumber.com Manufacturers of Eastern White Pine Lumber Since 1946

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 25 FIELD work

By Kristen Fountain

At Work Building Treehouses with The Treehouse Guys

Like house designers everywhere, James “B’fer” Roth starts The Treehouse Guys, James Roth and Chris Haake (bottom right), work on a treehouse. with the building site. Though unlike most, it’s not the soil or CHRIS DOBSON topography that he studies first. He looks for the right cluster of trees. Roth, 54, is one half of The Treehouse Guys, a two-year-old design-build company based in Warren, Vermont, that con- structs sturdy, whimsical treehouses for all seasons. He is the design half of the equation, while partner Chris “Ka-V” Haake, 36, takes the lead on building. Their treehouses, featured in Treehouses of the World and other books, are as simple as a roofed room reached by a lad- der and as elaborate as a multilevel fortress with windows and door frames, entryways and wide decks. Some are even multiple structures spanned via suspension bridge. Roth and Haake formed their business to bring their distinct style to private backyards. So far, work has been primarily in northern New England. But they also are the go-to firm for making treehouses accessible by wheelchair or walker, a niche within a niche, that takes them around the country. Both men get deep satisfaction from seeing people who have been tethered by illness, age, or other disability set free by the view from among the branches and birds’ nests. In this kind of treehouse, anyone can clamber up and find a perch. The experience leaves first-timers exuberant. “When you see a kid in a chair – or an adult – in a treehouse, the joy meter is off the charts,” Roth said. In many of his designs, the ramps curve and turn around live tree trunks, offering the challenge of an upward climb. “My favorite part is seeing the smiles of the kids who go up it, who have never been off the ground, really,” Haake said. The two men honed their craft while part of Forever Young Treehouses, a now dormant nonprofit started by board members of the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Vermont with one mission: constructing universally accessible treehouses. They contacted Roth about the idea through the Yestermorrow with the first prototype on the grounds at Yestermorrow. The Design Build School in Warren, where he is an instructor. Then, products of their long collaboration, now approaching 40 Roth had a shop in Waitsfield where he designed and built furni- structures in 20 states, can be seen in public parks, camps, ture made from peeled logs and branches. That is where he first hospitals, and schools from coast to coast, including Oakledge met Haake, a New Jersey transplant who stopped by one day in Park in Burlington, Crotched Mountain Center in Greenfield, the late 1990s with a question about securing the top of his yurt. New Hampshire and Pinetree Camp in Rome, Maine. In 2011, Roth’s friends and colleagues knew of his affinity for tree- Paralyzed Veterans of America recognized the men’s work with houses. He built his first one in the early 1980s on friends’ land their Barrier-Free America Award. in Warren, soon after graduating from Johnson State College Costs vary widely. A small backyard treehouse without with a fine arts degree. “I never had one when I was a kid,” said ramps starts at around $12,000. Their most expensive, and Roth. “It turned into a pretty extravagant thing.” The octagonal largest to date, was an accessible treehouse with a winding path structure became his home during warmer months for several and several levels for a public park in Torrance, California. The years. He wooed his wife there, serving dinner on their first date $750,000 project took many years to complete and was funded 20 feet in the air. by the Annenberg Foundation. So Roth embraced the challenge and asked Haake to help These days, The Treehouse Guys tackle three or four tree-

26 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 houses a year, usually booked the year before. In 2012, the whole notion is that it floats,” Roth said. summer brought several backyard projects near their homes in Through the small world of professional treehouse builders, Vermont. In the fall, they spent a month living on a secluded The Treehouse Guys met an Oregon-based civil engineer who property on Lake Winnipesaukee, building a private treehouse specializes in their mechanics. Once a design is complete, Roth overlooking the water. The pair already has three on next year’s hires him to do the calculations on bracket angles and other schedule, all universally accessible – two in Michigan, where support specifics. Roth was raised, and one in Oklahoma City. Despite these details, in many ways a Guys job site isn’t much In Roth’s designs, living trees serve as the building’s primary different than any other kind of small-scale craft construction. support. “The configuration of the trees, that drives the shape Lumber, branches, and other materials are grouped and stacked and design,” he said. He prefers the hardwoods – maple, oak, next to power tools and large, well-stocked toolkits. Reggae tunes and ash – but will also use healthy hemlock and pines. If there from a boombox set a laid-back mood. Haake’s border collie aren’t enough live trees, he looks for sturdy stumps. For auxil- waits in the sun for one of them to throw a cloth Frisbee. And the iary posts, The Guys bring in hand-hewn logs that they bury. partners joke back and forth, speaking their own language. The model rarely calls for cutting down trees. Roth prefers to When Haake is maneuvering a branch that will serve as a incorporate the existing forest as much as possible. As a result, platform brace into position, he listens for Roth to say the word trunks often bolt up through holes in the deck or clip a roof eave. “Larry.” That stands for “Larry Goodnuff,” a sort of patron saint For the frame, they rely on pressure-treated pine to withstand for treehouse builders, which is code for “that will work.” The weathering. But the siding is all live-edge, rough-sawn boards. big bolts that secure the houses are “bombers.” And then there The bark makes squiggly dark lines along the exterior, creating are the nicknames. a playful, rustic feel. Windows, mismatched, sometimes tilted, Roth picked his up in childhood. His middle name is Burton and terraces fenced with an open pattern of hand-stripped and his father – a handy fellow who built the house they lived branches complete their signature look. Wherever they work, in – explained once when Roth was small that his full name was their goal is to rely as much as possible on locally sourced and “James ‘B’ for Burton.” Roth told him he liked the name, except locally milled wood. for the “B’fer” part. His dad cracked up and the name stuck. The enemy of treehouses is wind and bending. To account Haake got his nickname from Roth, who teased his younger for that, supporting floor beams are connected by a bracket to helper by calling him “the caveman” when they first started a collar pounded several inches into a corner tree. A bolt slides working together. Haake had done some basic construction as both through one end of the arm-size bracket and through an a teenager, but he picked up most of his skills from Roth on oblong hole in the side of the collar. The hole is designed to give the job. Early on, his instinct was to use physical force to make the bolts play and allow the house to move with the trees. “The unruly parts fit together. The phrase to describe that quickly became “getting cavey,” which morphed into “Ka-V.” A finished product from The Treehouse Guys. Haake is now a builder with finesse. “He evolved quickly,” Roth said. He now prefers to cut wood by feel using one main tool – a chainsaw. “I actually don’t like conventional building,” Haake said. “If I couldn’t use a chainsaw, I wouldn’t do it.” Both men like the intuition and flexibility needed to bring Roth’s designs to life. The reliance on trees and peeled branches makes small accommodations – a notch here and there – essential. “It’s like a sculpture,” Roth said. “You’re not throwing a flat object against a flat object. There is a serendipity to the flow of work that they enjoy. “The magic of things just finding their way into place is fun,” said Roth. “The cosmic connection, when things work out just the way you hope.”

Kristen Fountain is a writer living in Stowe, Vermont. She reports for the Waterbury Record.

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28 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 29 Text and photos by Tony Donovan

30 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 I’ve been lucky enough to have met a lot of interesting people in my life. I’ve known some wonderful characters in the New York film business, and I’ve traveled the world to meet great people in other countries. Still, the most memorable person I’ve known lived here in Lyme, Connecticut: the woodsman Amos Congdon, who has meant far more to me than the expresidents and their wives, the athletes and coaches, or the movie stars I might have met.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 31 He was born on the first day of spring in 1899. A small man, though he said he’d been “stout,” that is, strong, when he was young; able to lift an anvil into the truck bed when no one else could do it. He had bright blue eyes, snow-white hair, and most often a white beard as well. He wore the cotton shirt and pants uniform of the American working man: the Dickie brand, or sometimes Lee. On days he’d wear all blue, I’d see him as the spirit of the Union. When he wore gray, I’d see him as Confederate. This was in the early ‘70s, when the civil rights battles were being fought, war in Vietnam was raging. When he’d wear blue and gray, which he often did, I’d see him as the spirit of the country, united once again.

32 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 33 A small family-run hardwood mill – a tie mill they called it – for railroad ties, the main product they had starting up. The rectangular shed, 75 feet long and 35 feet wide, is open on three sides. Built on a north-south line with the saw to one side facing west. Two iron rails, 45 feet long, set on cement piers run in front of the saw blade. A carriage pulled by a cable carries the log down the tracks into the saw to make each cut. Reversing direction on the sawyer’s action, it returns to him so he can turn the log and set its next position. The bright aluminum roof has scattered patches of green fiberglass so the light underneath is often a faint green for our work. The front half of the mill has a floor of thick oak planks, dark and twisted over the years, raised high enough off the ground so trucks could be loaded off the front. The back is earthen, bark and wood scraps, lengths of poison ivy vine, broken tools, pieces of chain, plastic kitchen contain- ers for oil and gas, and the oak skids where logs are piled waiting to be sawn. The saw is a bright silver disc after a day of work. It can rust and turn dark overnight.

34 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Left, mill worker Ed Cories, and right, Bob Congdon, Amos’ youngest son.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 35 He climbs up on the rollers with a file in his hand. Two oil rags are thin pads for his knees. He kneels at the saw, still for a second, resting on his heels, then he rises up and leans over the saw blade. Using the file as a bar, he pulls the first tooth to him. All the sawmill’s belts and wheels turn that one portion of the saw’s circle in a soft, quick moan. Holding the file in two hands, he sets it into the curve of the socket. Then he strokes it across the tooth face, once, twice, maybe three times. The sound is surprisingly soft. Amos taps the file on a small iron wheel at his side. It sounds like a bell. He taps it again to clear it of steel filings. And then he might say, “Years ago everything was pure, the rivers, the air, and the soil. Now it isn’t so.” He pulls the next tooth toward him and the mill’s actions turn again, the one small fraction of the saw’s rotation.

36 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Maybe it takes five or six seconds to cut the length of the log, small red pine logs, “bony logs” or “pecker poles,” as they might say. Amos pulls the pine slab away from the saw, waits for the carriage to pass by him, stop at the end of the tracks, reverse direction and return to the sawyer. He lifts the pine with two hands and steps quickly across the tracks, throws the slab up on a pile and turns back toward the saw. Quickly crossing the tracks a step in front of the carriage, he stands at his place by the saw, reaches down to clear the bark and ice off the rollers. The saw blade is turning over 700 times a minute. It’s a hiss and a whir under the noise of the diesel. He’ll take away each piece of wood, and carry each board to its pile. Drop the 4-by-6, 6-by-6 lumber into the pits, hurry back to his place at the saw every time. “Carrying slabs” is what they called it; or “taking away,” “off-carrying.”

There are 50, maybe 60 logs on the skids. It takes only a minute or two to saw out each log, this bony red pine. He has 8, maybe 10 seconds to carry each piece away and return to the saw. He’ll do it five, six times for each log. Three hundred times or more he’ll carry-away before they stop work. Sawing red pine, Amos Congdon, 76 years old.

37 Left, Bob Congdon, Amos’ youngest son, and mill worker Bill Turner.

I know construction of this sawmill in the early ‘70s was the proud accomplishment of a lifetime of hard work, by both himself and his wife, Bertha. His work in the woods, chopping brush with an ax for birch and witch hazel oils, sawing out logs for other men’s mills, hickory for firewood to New York City, cedar poles to net the tobacco around Hartford, mowing hay in the meadows with a scythe and salt hay in the marshes as well. Mrs. Congdon’s hard work in small factories across the river, in Westbrook and Essex, at a steam laun- dry in Old Saybrook. All three sons were sawyers. That seems a great accomplishment to me . . . to teach three sons to saw.

38 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Let me tell you one last story about him. He and his wife had been living together in one room at a nursing home in Essex. He was taking care of her in his mind and she likewise was taking care of him. Mrs. Congdon passed away first. I went to offer my condolences. He was totally distraught. I knew there was really nothing I could do to comfort him. I sat down beside him. He was 92. Cartoons were on the TV in front of us. After a while, a nurse brought his lunch. She put the tray in front of him. “Come on, Amos, you have to eat something,” she said and then left the room. On one side of us was a black woman, a white and black polka-dot bandana on her head, faded man’s white shirt, a ragged blue cardigan sweater; angry, wild eyes, muttering, cursing to herself. On the other side, a middle-aged white man in a wheelchair, dressed in a Perry Como sweater like an insurance salesman from a generation before, a dull silver-blue tie, blue shirt, and gray summer flannels. Brain damaged, ugly, heavy, and silent in his chair. Amos and I sat for a while.

His lunch was cold tomato soup, a piece of bread with margarine, a gray pear, cup of ginger ale, black coffee. I encouraged him to eat. Finally he took the bread in his hands and broke it into pieces. He offered me a piece. Did I want it? He offered some to the empty white man and the muttering black woman as well. Will we share this bread with him? I remember thinking at the time, “What a great presence of mind he has.” Always, you know? A wonderful spirit, good and kind. How proud I was to be with him then. How glad, how thankful I am to have known him.

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Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 41 Protecting Nature. Harvesting Timber. How conservation groups got into managing forestland, and the lessons they’ve learned.

By Joe Rankin

he Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy never planned to get into the forestry business. All it wanted to do was protect the upper St. John River. Born in the northwestern part of the state, the St. John is one of Maine’s iconic rivers and the longest free flowing river in the eastern U.S. In its upper reaches, near the Quebec border, it runs through low hills clothed in maple, birch, and beech; the valleys are draped in spruce. It’s a place of haunt- ing beauty, where the ghostly Canada lynx stalks snowshoe hares and American martens sniff out voles among the spruce. Moose are everywhere. More than a dozen rare plants live here, including the Furbish’s lousewort, livid sedge, Mistassini primrose, and English sundew. There are rare peatlands, 300-year-old spruce forests, and rare spruce bogs. So, when International Paper Co. announced its intention to sell some 185,000 acres of Upper St. John Valley forestland in 1998, the Conservancy teamed up with an anonymous timberland investor to bid $35.1 million for the property, with the conservancy pledging about $3 million of that sum. The Conservancy would get several thousand acres along the river and its tributaries and other lands to establish a forest reserve. The investor would get everything else. The bid came in third. The investor took his money elsewhere. Everyone thought that was that. But a few weeks later, the chapter got a call: the higher

bids had fallen through and the owner was willing to accept the Conservancy’s DOWNEAST LAKES LAND TRUST original bid, if the deal could close in six weeks. “That led us to make a very bold decision to buy the whole thing,” said William Patterson, who oversees management of 225,000 acres for the Maine Chapter. The Nature Conservancy borrowed the entire amount, then mounted a fundraising drive to pay it back. In the meantime, they needed money to pay interest, and there were timber contracts with another year and a half to run. “If the first deal

42 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 The Downeast Lakes Land Trust manages some of its Farm Cove Community Forest land for timber, while some is designated as an eco-reserve. Here, an early successional habitat plot is created.

The Downeast Lakes Land Trust manages some of its Farm Cove Community Forest land for timber, while some is designated as an eco-reserve. Here, an early successional habitat plot is created.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 43 had come together, we probably never would have been practic- being defined here as a parcel over 50,000 acres in size) was ing forestry,” said Patterson. “It’s almost as though we fell into it.” taking place in Maine. Between 1980 and 2006, 1.68 million The deal closed in December 1998: the largest TNC purchase acres were sold in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York in the U.S. up to that time. And it put The Nature Conservancy combined. In Maine, 18.6 million acres changed hands during in an unusual position: here was an organization dedicated that same timeframe, often more than once. Buyers included The to preserving forests, who suddenly found themselves in the Nature Conservancy, who bought the St. John Forest lands in business of harvesting wood. 1998; the Appalachian Mountain Club, who bought 65,500 acres “We just didn’t need to take that much land out of production, in the 100 Mile Wilderness east of Maine’s Moosehead Lake in from a scientific perspective,” said Patterson. Protecting the river 2003 and 2009; and the Downeast Lakes Land Trust, who bought corridors and creating a network of forest reserves would accom- 33,708 acres just west of the town of Grand Lake Stream. plish the same thing, but at much less cost. Phasing out timber harvesting “would have been a hardship on local workers, mills, Different goals and communities,” he said. “It’s just not affordable, either.” So, now that conservation groups find themselves managing forestland, what are they doing different? All say they want to The new land rush continue harvesting timber, in part to contribute to the local Land ownership in the Northern Forest is in a state of flux. economy. But their management goals also include protecting After generations in which ownership hardly changed at all, in sensitive areas, improving wildlife habitat, and encouraging pub- the late 1980s a seismic shift began, the aftershocks of which are lic recreation, even if it means sacrificing some timber income. still being felt. Between 1980 and 2010, more than 23 million After The Nature Conservancy bought the St. John Forest, acres of forestland were sold, from New York to Maine – some of it put nearly 56,000 acres – about 30 percent of the land – into it more than once, according to forest economist Lloyd Irland. forever-wild reserves. According to Patterson, they looked for It was precipitated by a perfect storm of financial factors, said areas with fairly mature forest, where there were few roads and Irland, including the fact that Wall Street investors abandoned more than one forest type. The Conservancy’s management the idea that a paper company needed to own timberland to plan stipulates that in every timber harvest five to eight percent ensure a fiber supply. Energy costs were going up; paper use was of the land is to be permanently untouched in a sort of micro- falling. In the name of bigger is better, paper companies began reserve. The organization also created a 1,000-foot buffer along gobbling up competitors. Many companies disappeared entirely. the main stem of the St. John River, where most of the rare plant Others lived on only as brand names. The “winners,” Irland puts communities – and recreational users – are found. verbal quotes around the word, were left with aging mills and “We operate under a conservation model that suggests that mountains of debt. And their gaze turned to their timberlands. a network of medium-sized forest reserves, scattered across “[Selling the land] was one place a company could raise a the landscape, will be critical to the health of the forest,” said bundle of cash quickly, because no one wanted to buy the mills,” Patterson. The idea is to create older, ecologically stable forests Irland said. Enter the Timberland Investment Management to provide refuges for birds and mammals, such as the pileated Organizations, the Real Estate Investment Trusts, pension woodpecker and the marten, that only thrive in older woods. funds, and institutional investors. Irland said that for decades AMC took a similar approach, voluntarily setting aside a lot of you couldn’t get investors to even look at putting their money operable timberland to be managed in a natural condition. “About in timberland, but this was the roaring 1990s and people had 21,000 acres, or a third of our property, is designated forever-wild money to invest, much of it from burgeoning retirement funds, forest reserve,” said David Publicover, the AMC’s forest ecologist and they were looking to diversify portfolios as a hedge against and assistant director for research. “We believe that there is a need the volatility of stocks. When the John Hancock Life Insurance for more natural areas in the north woods of Maine to provide a Co. and Harvard and Yale universities invested in timberland, range of values that are not provided by the best of the actively people took notice. Of course, many of these new investors managed timberlands. We did it partly for remote backcountry weren’t looking to make money from the trees, but were looking recreational purposes and partly to restore late successional forest instead to split up parcels and resell, or hold for a 10- to 15-year to the area, which is habitat that’s lacking in the region.” period, then turn it over, capitalizing on expected appreciation. As part of its Farm Cove Community Forest, the Downeast Conservation organizations, worried that these new own- Lakes Land Trust set aside 3,560 acres around Fourth Machias ers would liquidate large blocks of intact forestland, soon got Lake as an ecological reserve. The land butts up against other in on this new land rush. The Conservation Fund, The Nature ecological reserves the state of Maine manages, said Director Conservancy, and The Trust for Public Land, among others, Mark Berry. The rest of the land is managed for timber, but all purchased significant acreage in New York, Vermont, and under a plan that gives wildlife habitat, timber production, and New Hampshire – including 300,000 acres of former Champion public recreation equal value. Lands that stretched across all three states. (In many cases the Berry said when the Trust acquired its lands the property had organizations later resold the land to public entities or private been commercial forest, but wasn’t in horrible shape. That being companies, often retaining conservation easements.) said, one objective is to increase the amount of standing timber But the great bulk of the large timberland transaction (“large” to 20 to 22 cords per acre. (By comparison, in 2011, the average

44 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 stocking rate across the eight Maine counties with the largest timberland holdings was 16 cords per acre; for the state as a whole, it was 17.2 cords per acre, according to Ken Laustsen, a biometrician at the Maine Forest Service.) It will take a while to do that, he acknowledged. Other non-profits, too, are trying to increase the amount of standing timber on their woodlands, and the higher stocking

levels they aim for are only one thing that differentiates them DOWNEAST LAKES LAND TRUST from investor-owned timber companies and makes them more like the managers of public lands, such as Maine’s Bureau of Parks and Lands. Private timber management is “much different” than that of nongovernmental organizations, said Publicover. Nonprofit management “is similar to public lands management, but notably different than commercial lands,” he said. “No investment owner aims at 20 to 22 cords per acre.” Lakeside at the Farm Cove Community Forest. There are only so many ways to log, and the nonprofits use many of the same silvicultural techniques that the for-profit timber companies do, whether shelterwood cuts, patch cuts, or A new perspective selection cutting. One of the things the nonprofits agree on is that getting But Publicover points out that there are variations on each of into the business of managing land for timber has given them a those practices. Nonprofits and public land managers are “more whole new perspective. In many ways, it’s been a hard lesson. likely to use longer rotations, maintain higher post-thinning “One thing I’ve learned is how much we are constrained by stocking, and retain more mature trees. We make a tradeoff of the nature of the land, the nature of the stands we’ve inherited,” economic maximization for noneconomic benefits.” said Publicover. “I know there’s a lot of talk about uneven-aged In a standard shelterwood cut, for instance, a stand is logged, management in the northern hardwoods region. I think that but older trees are left to provide partial shade for seedlings and works when you have a lot of sugar maple and yellow birch. It saplings in the understory. Later, when the saplings are well doesn’t work so well when you have stands of beech dying of established, the rest of the overstory is removed, leaving a stand beech bark disease.” of trees that are roughly the same age. Publicover points out that Leaving enough larger trees on those stands to qualify as this perpetuates a cycle of even-aged forest. AMC prefers what an uneven-aged stand would mean leaving diseased beeches he calls “deferred shelterwood,” forgoing the final overstory that won’t survive until the next cut, he said. And the econom- harvest and leaving the oldest trees, which ensures a multi-age ics wouldn’t even cover the cost of having the trees marked. stand and a forest that is more structurally complex. Publicover said there were other ways to meet the AMC’s goals, The Conservancy has done a fair number of shelterwood cuts including shelterwood cuts or overstory removals in areas and multistage removals on the St. John lands, said Patterson. In where the understory was well-established. late 2012, working with University of Maine scientists, the orga- Publicover has been part of the Northern Forest debate for nization even began experimenting with clearcutting on a small years. He was deeply involved in the Northern Forest Lands scale – less than 100 acres – in an area where spruce seedlings Council process. He contributed to the first edition of Good were well established. Forestry in the Granite State, and was a member of the team that “Clearcutting can be a controversial management tool and developed the first regional standards for Forest Stewardship has been badly applied in some instances,” said Patterson. “But Council certification in the Northeast. it is a legitimate forest management technique when done to “I tell people I spent the first 10 years of my career at AMC achieve specific objectives.” In this case, it’s to create habitat for telling other people how we should be doing things. Now that lynx, which prefer young spruce groves as the place to hunt their we own land, I get to find out how much of what I was saying favored prey, the snowshoe hare, and to provide a little age diver- actually made sense,” he joked. sity, since most of the spruce in the area is 20 to 30 years old. The AMC knew from the outset that it was going to be “The difference is not huge,” said Patterson of forestry in the managing its property for timber, said Publicover. First, because St. John Forest. “We cut a respectable amount of wood each year, forest products are a big part of the local economy, and second, a 13-year average of about 20,000 cords per year from 125,000 to cover expenses. “We’ve found that owning land is expensive. acres of land. Many of the forestry techniques we use are not There’s property taxes, road maintenance. We went into it unique to TNC. It is perhaps the combination of the protections and didn’t really know how expensive it is to maintain roads, we have in place and our landscape-level approach to forest especially given the high level of public recreation we are management that is unusual. Like any landowner, we avoid promoting,” he said. harvest prescriptions that are not workable for contractors or In Vermont, the Atlas Timberlands Partnership’s annual that result in a net loss to the Conservancy.” costs run $100,000 to $150,000, including $60,000 in taxes, said

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 45 Changes in Forest Ownership in Northern Maine

1994 TOM SEYMOUR

2009

Ted Shina, consulting forester, shows the harvest of a recent shelterwood cut on land owned by AMC, with softwood on the bottom, hardwood on top.

Traditional ownership types Industry Old-line family Individual/family Tribal Federal Public (state) Nonprofit Other

Emerging ownership types REIT Financial investor Developer Contractor/new timber baron MISTY EDGECOMB/TNC

MAP PROVIDED BY WILDLANDS & WOODLANDS, In 2011, the forestry work of the Maine chapter of The Nature Conservancy REPRINTED FROM LILIEHOLM ET AL. (2010) WITH attracted the attention of the Discovery Channel’s American Loggers reality show. DATA FROM THE JAMES W. SEWALL COMPANY.

46 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Carl Powden, Northern Greens regional director for Vermont them, that’s their best objective.” Land Trust. Generations of high-grading, however, left them Going forward, Irland believes, and others concur, that con- with a forest that will produce mostly pulp for quite a while. In servation easements, not outright purchase, will be the tool of terms of cash flow, “it’s been lean.” choice for protecting large swaths of forestland. “It’s going to take a long time to turn things around. And in “Conservation easements are a more economical way to the meanwhile, no one is going to get rich,” said Powden, who promote sustainable forest management and they’re adequate acknowledged that going into the working forest project, “I thought to prevent land conversion in most places,” said Patterson. it would be challenging, but I didn’t realize how challenging.” “However, for a network of forest reserves, it is necessary to Is it a worthwhile pursuit? “Absolutely. It’s worthwhile to purchase the land outright, including the valuable timber rights keep the land in forest and produce timber products and the needed to establish a reserve.” jobs associated with that. But I think at least equal to that . . . The Downeast Lakes Land Trust is one of the few nonprofits is the learning that’s come from that. The firsthand knowledge still looking to buy. The Trust is focused on raising $24 million that we’ve gained from Atlas is something that goes with me to acquire 22,000 acres between its Farm Cove Community every time I go to talk to a forestland owner who’s thinking Forest to the west and Passamaquoddy tribal lands to the east. about putting a conservation easement on his or her property.” The targeted land surrounds the village of Grand Lake Stream. Patterson had a similar observation: “If we didn’t have this The Trust’s Mark Berry considers it to be a “major gap in the experience ourselves, we might go out and sit across the table conservation landscape down east.” from a large landowner who we’re negotiating an easement with and say, ‘Can’t you do all these items for conservation?’ Future influence? and think that there’s no cost to the landowner. We’ve learned a One question, of course, is whether the new nonprofit lot. Some things we’re able to quantify for ourselves. Others are owners will have a long-term influence on the way forestry is more just a conceptual understanding.” practiced in the North Woods. Some think the answer is yes, All the conservation groups acknowledge that they have an that this more holistic model will give commercial landowners advantage over private commercial forestland owners: donors something to reach for. But AMC’s Dave Publicover doesn’t ponied up money to buy the property so they aren’t stuck with suggest that what AMC does should be a model for commercial paying long-term interest on debt. In the case of the Atlas landowners. Timberlands, the Freeman Foundation donated $5 million of “The goals and constraints are different,” said Publicover. A the $5.5 million purchase price and the John Merck Foundation commercial forestland owner is trying to do right by the land another $250,000. The Nature Conservancy’s St. John Forever while generating an adequate return on the parcel’s timber, a capital campaign raised its entire $35.1 million from donors, preservation-minded owner is trying to establish a wilderness including one donation of over $3 million. AMC and Downeast area untouched by human hands, a conservation organization Lakes Land Trust similarly depended on donors to make their like the AMC is trying to do both things – to promote a model projects happen. for land conservation that bridges the gap between preserve and commercial working forest. Setting a trend? “We’re trying to do something that’s more diverse and more One shouldn’t get the idea that conservation groups are going complex,” said Publicover, though he’s quick to add that it’s been to continue buying up working forest all across the North Woods. done before, most notably in the White Mountain National Irland, the Maine-based forest economist who’s closely fol- Forest. lowed ownership changes in the Northern Forest for decades, “A hundred years ago, the forest was a landscape devastated said these purchases came about as a result of a particular set of by extensive liquidation harvesting and massive forest fires. circumstances, among them the low price of forestland. Since Today, it’s considered one of the most beautiful landscapes in then, timberland values have risen and stumpage prices have the Northeast and the largest expanse of relatively mature for- fallen. est,” Publicover said. “They don’t have the money, and they have pretty much got In his mind’s eye, Publicover can see the Appalachian their hands full taking care of what they’ve got. It’s not their core Mountain Club’s holdings two or three centuries hence: its eco- business. And the threat’s not there right now. One reason for reserves looking like old growth, their legacy of repeated heavy moving into a lot of these things was the perception of threat, of harvesting virtually erased. The managed timberlands are well sprawl and subdivision. That was not an irrational argument at stocked with trees of different ages, many high-quality sawlogs, the time it was made. It’s a harder argument to make right now,” and quite a few venerable giants. Some big trunks lie rotting on said Irland. the ground. From ferns to fungi, salamanders to deer, the forest Plus, he said, not many conservation organizations want has a healthy complement of other life. “100 percent of the forest management job. They want just what they need. What they’re concerned about now is fragmentation Joe Rankin is a former newspaper reporter who lives in Central Maine where he writes and conversion. If they can get that taken care of and get these on forestry topics, keeps 70 hives of bees, does market gardening, and walks his dogs landscapes protected against land subdividers, for many of in his 70-acre woodlot.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 47 Thanks for supporting Northern Woodlands through:

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For more information please contact: Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director Center for Northern Woodlands Education: [email protected] 802.439.6292 PO 471, Corinth, Vermont 05039

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Wednesday – Six concurrent technical sessions: Certiﬁcation, Conservation, Research Review, Resource Measurements and Mapping, Small Woodlot Finance & Planning, and Forest Health

Thursday – Nine ﬁeld trip/workshop options: Western Maine Silviculture, Foresters for the What’s In Birds, I Hate Invasives, Wind Power & Forestry, Your Logs to Boards, Forest Health, Community Forests, Essential Statistics Overview, and GIS Woods? Friday – Six ﬁeld trip/workshop options: Forest Health, SAPPI Westbrook Mill Tour, Androscoggin Headwaters Project, Northeast Fire Science Consortium, Forest Inventory Refresher, and Local Wood Doing Good

Keynote speakers: New England Society of American Foresters Bernd Heinrich, Author, Spring Meeting University of Vermont Professor Emeritus Stephen Fairweather, Ph.D., Sunday River Resort, Newry, Maine President/Biometrician, Mason Bruce & Girard, Inc. May 15 – 17, 2013 for more information:www.nesaf.org

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 49 1 2 3 KATHERINE DAVIS

1 Young porcupines spend their first summer in the mother’s territory. At weaning, young-of-the-year females disperse, whereas weaned males remain loosely associated with their mothers. 2 Male mourning doves present females with several potential nesting sites to choose from, while simultaneously defending said sites from rivals. Once he’s convinced a wandering female to nest in his territory, he’ll gather nesting material for her. Chicks can survive on their own five to nine days after leaving the nest, and most leave the nest area within two to three weeks of fledging. 3 The red eft is the dispersing form of the eastern newt.

50 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 By Kurt Rinehart

ot long ago, as the ice went out on system, the male’s fitness depends upon my local brook, I came across some taking full advantage of a good piece of ground, fresh beaver cuttings and a scent-mound while the female’s depends on picking a good male. in an area that showed sign of having The mammals that have evolved to feature been dammed before. Did the fresh sign female-biased dispersal likely did so as a hedge indicate that beavers had moved back against inbreeding. An alpha male porcupine, for into the drainage? Maybe. But maybe not. Fresh instance, can dominate local breeding for two or sign doesn’t always indicate that an animal has more years, leading to the strong possibility of taken up residence; often, it’s left by transients mating with his own daughter – unless she disperses. just passing through. The mating system is still one of female defense, The dispersal of young animals away from but the tenure of dominance is long. Contrast where they’re born is called “natal” dispersal, this with white-tailed deer, where a male tends to and these youngsters are likely to be transients. dominate breeding for only a year before being d Young beavers move in the spring, most songbirds fly isplaced by a stronger and (because of dispersal) from their natal nesting areas in summer, and young unrelated buck. Ultimately, the pattern of dispersal deer often wander or are chased off to find new reflects the interplay of access to food and mates with the ranges in fall. The timing of the dispersal comes at costs of inbreeding or life as a transient. A slight shift a tipping point between the ability of the young to one way or another determines whether the species be independent and the need of the mother to turn conforms to the common patterns or becomes an exception. her energies toward the next breeding opportunity. Northern Despite the evolutionary benefits of dispersal, it is no picnic cardinals disperse less than two weeks after hatching, and the for individuals. Transients are often too small or inexperienced parents will raise multiple broods in a single year; male white- to compete adequately with residents for food and space. After tailed deer are self-sufficient and tend to disperse around six sometimes violent rejection by their mothers, transients survive months of age; beavers disperse in their third year. in poor habitat unused by others, while under frequent attack

MICHELLE GILDERS The gender of the animal doing the dispersing also varies. One by residents. They often suffer death from hunters, cars, sex is often the primary disperser, either leaving in greater numbers malnutrition, and adults of their species. This is why sightings or traveling farther before settling. Among most mammals, and evidence of mountain lions in New England doesn’t young males disperse and young females stay close to their necessarily mean a resident breeding population. (DNA mothers’ ranges. Coyote packs are typically family groups, with tests on a male mountain lion that was killed by a car in last year’s daughters staying to help mom and dad raise the next Connecticut in 2011 indicate that it made its way from litter. When you see does and yearling deer in the fall woods, the Black Hills region of South Dakota.) Dispersers can be the yearling is most likely a doe fawn from the previous year; pioneers that inhabit (or reinhabit) suitable areas, but a lot of she’ll eventually establish her own range, but it will neighbor and them will die without finding such opportunities. include her mother’s. Yet, in a very real way, the long-term survival of a species The reason that males of most mammal species do the depends on these transients seeking new frontiers. Like seed dispersing is that dominant males monopolize access to breeding banks and doomsday bunkers, it’s a hedge against disaster. The females. Think big, antler-clashing bucks vying for a ready red efts that are seemingly everywhere in the woods all summer doe. Biologists call this female defense polygyny, and in such long are the dispersing form of the eastern newt. After hatching a system, a female’s lifetime reproductive output (i.e., fitness) in still water, a newt larva metamorphoses into an eft and crawls depends on how well she can exploit her home range to care out of the water. Red efts can cover hundreds of meters in a single for herself and her young. Male reproductive output is less summer and can persist in this stage for up to seven years. Many about proper care and feeding and more about competing end up back in their natal waters to breed, but if that pond has successfully for many mates. In such a system, the females failed due to silt buildup or dam failure, the newts’ only insurance stay put, and the males travel far and wide to find them. Even as a species lies in those lonely migrants – those who made it over red-backed salamanders exhibit female defense polygyny the hill and into a new pond, formed behind a dam of shining and male-biased dispersal, albeit on a scale of centimeters. sticks, recently built by a young beaver who had himself just Most birds, on the other hand, exhibit female-biased natal struck out on his own.

PATRICK BARTLETT dispersal. A male establishes and defends a breeding territory around a nest, enticing females to settle and mate with him Kurt Rinehart is a doctoral candidate at the University of Vermont, where he studies in exchange for care and feeding of her and the young. ecology and management of Black Bears. He is the co-author of the Peterson Biologists call this resource-defense breeding, and in this Reference Guide to Behavior of North American Mammals.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 51 4 MARY HOLLAND

4 Young moose are weaned in their first fall but remain with their mothers through their first winter. Calves without mothers don’t typically survive. If the mother has another calf the next spring, she will aggressively repel her yearling and form a protective bond with the new calf. The yearling will keep trying to reconcile, but the mother will have none of it. This casts the young moose adrift, but often yearlings will lurk within their mothers’ home ranges through summer until forced away for good in the rut; the females are now rivals to their mothers and the males to rutting bulls. Most moose disperse only a few kilometers, though males move farther than females. 5 Grouse grow more slowly than songbirds, and don’t reach adult size until late summer or early autumn. When they are about 14 weeks old, they strike out on their own in search of a new home range. The adult males you hear drumming in fall

are reestablishing their territories, and they don’t TANIA SIMPSON tolerate the dispersing youngsters, who are subse- quently driven into poorer habitats and unoccupied territories.

52 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 JOHN CAPINERA 6

6 Natal dispersal among birds is mostly female- biased, and that holds true for osprey. In one study GUSTAV W. VERDERBER from coastal New England, slightly more females dispersed than males and over larger distances – one traveled 325 miles, over 10 times farther than her male counterparts.

7 Insects are animals, too, of course, and those that 8 lack wings have to find creative ways of dispersing. A baby spider builds a silken parachute and uses the wind. To cover long distances, an emerald ash borer might use a stick of firewood and an unsuspecting human. Parasites, like this grasshopper nematode, use hosts to carry them away from their birthplaces. The nematode lays its eggs on a plant, where they’re ingested by a grasshopper. The eggs hatch and begin to eat the grasshopper from the inside out. When it dies, they emerge, crawl into foreign soil, and molt into adults. The adult females lay eggs on a nearby plant, and the lifecycle repeats. 8 When a deer hunter misses a smasher buck, he’ll often let himself off the hook by thinking, “Well, at least he’s out breeding does and contributing to the good antler genetics around camp.” While said dominant buck will indeed be siring does that will grow up to establish home ranges nearby, the deer’s genetically blessed male offspring are likely to leave town when they’re between six months and one year old and set up home ranges that are miles away. Of STEVE CREEK course, in moments of anguish, no one likes a know- it-all, so keep this information to yourself and just nod your head in agreement.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 53 MARY HOLLAND

9 In late summer, fox kits begin long exploratory movements away from their natal areas. In fall, most leave, though when there is an abundant food source, they may stay on through the first winter. Males disperse farther than females. An average from five different regional fox tracking studies showed that the mean dispersal distance for females was 6.8 miles, for males 19.22 miles. One radio-collared male walked 244 miles – roughly the distance from Albany, New York, to Portland, Maine. 10 A typical beaver colony consists of a mated pair of adults, yearlings from the previous year, and kits born in the spring. After two years in the colony, young beavers make way for new kits and disperse, wandering up, down, and across watersheds until finding an unmated resident beaver or unclaimed adequate habitat where they can establish a new territory and colony of their own. Scent mounds, like these that you find on the riverbank in spring, are warning signs to dispersing beavers that this territory is taken. 11 Muskrat dispersal is common in the spring, though in some areas the young of the year leave home to find suitable winter habitat in the fall. In one New York study, the mean dispersal distances for spring muskrats was 716 feet; the most adventurous traveled about a mile. Three times more males than females left. 10

A hearty thanks to all of the people listed below who serve as valuable re sources to the organization.

Mikael Batten, East Orange, VT

s Darby Bradley, Calais, VT

o Robert Bryan, Harpswell, ME

i Fred Burnett, North Clarendon, VT

d Beth Ann Finlay, Chelsea, VT

A Peter Forbes, Waitsfield, VT

f Robert L.V. French, Hopkinton, NH o Richard Hausman, Ryegate, VT

r Jim Hourdequin, Hanover, NH a Sherry Huber, Falmouth, ME

B Charles Johnson, E. Montpelier, VT

’ Eric Johnson, Old Forge, NY

d Brendan Kelly, Rome, NY n Robert Kimber, Temple, ME

a l Barry Schultz King, Ripton, VT

o Warren King, Ripton, VT o Eric Kingsley, Portland, ME

W Charles Levesque, Antrim, NH

r Elisabeth McLane, S. Strafford, VT

e Ross Morgan, Craftsbury Common, VT

h t H. Nicholas Muller III, Essex NY

o Eliot Orton, Weston, VT

N Richard Rachals, Lunenburg, NS

o Bruce Schwaegler, Orford, NH

t Peter Stein, Norwich, VT Charlie Thompson, Pelham, MA Tig Tillinghast, Thetford, VT David Williams, Essex Junction, VT Steve Wright, Craftsbury Common, VT

Thanks Mariko Yamasaki, Durham, NH

54 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 11 MARIE READ

Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine Serving small woodland owners in Maine since 1975

Monthly 16-page newsletter. Licensed forester on staff to help answer woodlot questions. Sponsor more than 50 educational workshops each year. Voice for small woodland owners in Augusta. Land Trust for working forests. Green Certification of small woodlands.

For More Information Contact: SWOAM, P.O. Box 836, Augusta, ME 04332 Tel: 1-877-467-9626 E-mail: [email protected]

SWOAM Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine www.swoam.com

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 55 THE OVERSTORY

Story by Virginia Barlow Illustrations by Adelaide Tyrol

Smooth Serviceberry and Downy Serviceberry Amelanchier laevis, A. arborea

Our house is in a small clearing, formerly a log landing, and every time you turn your back, trees try to reclaim the turf. I fight them with clippers, loppers, a chainsaw, and by ramming the poor lawnmower through blackberry thickets, to try to keep what little sunlight we’ve got. I hardly look to see what species I’m hacking away at and by mistake – not once but twice – I cut down a basswood tree right behind the beehives. But I haven’t made that mistake with any serviceberries: my affection for these trees must run deep. When serviceberries flower early in May, the world is already looking pretty good. Buds of quite a few tree species have just begun to unfurl and the gray woods have washes of green: a fuzzy whitish green on big-toothed aspens, lime green on trembling aspens, and reddish green at the tops of red maples. The beautiful mix of colors changes every day in May but the scenery hits Cedar waxwing a high point when serviceberry flowers come out. Serviceberries sometimes make it into the canopy in the forest, but they do best with a little extra light, such as at the edges of openings. The ones in our yard express their appreciation for being spared every spring, even the young ones, by blooming profusely. Close up, the white, thin-petaled flowers look like little five-bladed helicopters; from afar the flowering trees light up the land. Fortunately, serviceberries are common, especially along roads and streams. Downy serviceberry, one of the two Amelanchier species that reach tree-size, flowers about a week before the other (smooth serviceberry), stretching the all-too-brief flowering time by a few days. They’re in the rose family and, like their relatives, are pollinated by insects seeking pollen and nectar. The serviceberries supply this mostly to a few species of small, early-season bees. One problem with serviceberries is the many names people have for them, both individually and collectively. I teeter between shadbush and serviceberry myself, but you’re likely to hear shadblow or juneberry. In some parts of North America it’s sarvisberry, shadberry, sugar plum, swamp cherry, Indian pear, saskatoon, wild plum, wild sugar pear, or chuckley pear. Smooth serviceberry is just as often called Alleghany serviceberry. The name shadbush came about because its flowering coincides with the arrival of the American shad. These three- to five-pound fish, the largest in the herring family, ascend rivers to spawn all along the eastern seaboard when the water temperature reaches about 65°F, about when serviceberry flowers are coaxed from their buds. Sorting out the many species in the genus Amelanchier challenges botanists who use Latin names, as well as the rest of us. There are about 10 species in New England, all quite similar to begin with, and when they hybridize, which they love to do, identification becomes difficult. And then the fertile hybrids go on to hybridize with one another, making an indecipherable hodgepodge. You can usually tell the two tree-sized ones apart. Downy serviceberry is very downy in the spring; the little leaves are covered in fuzz, as are the twigs and buds. The leaves of smooth serviceberry have no fuzz and

56 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 are coppery red when they first open in the spring. They both have alternate, egg-shaped leaves, from 1½ to 3 inches long, with toothed edges. All the serviceberries have slender twigs, and in winter all the slender buds except the terminal one lie tight against the stem. The buds are like beech buds but smaller. The smooth bark is usually gray to light brown, with darker vertical stripes. On older trees it develops shallow furrows and small ridges. Amelanchiers usually are quite healthy, but they are susceptible to a rust fungus whose alternate host is red cedar. Sometimes the shadbush leafminer insect (Stigmella amelanchierella) makes broad mines in the leaves. The wood of these airy, insubstantial-looking trees, at 49 pounds per cubic foot, is among the heaviest of all North American hardwoods. Both the downy and smooth species typically grow to only six or eight inches in diameter, so uses for the wood are confined to small items such as tool handles and fishing rods. When polished, the reddish-brown wood takes on a satiny finish. It’s hard and tough enough that the Cree used it for arrow shafts. As the name juneberry suggests, the fruits ripen very early, at a time when fruits in general are still scarce. This could explain why they are eaten by so many birds and mammals, but, as it happens, they are nutritious, rich in vitamins, easy to find, and quite digestible. Forty bird species are said to eat the fruits, among them the wild turkey, veery, hermit thrush, gray catbird, cedar waxwing, scarlet tanager, and Baltimore oriole. Beavers, deer, and moose feed on the bark and twigs, and black bears, skunks, foxes, raccoons, red squirrels, gray squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks, and other rodents eat the fruits. Grouse eat the buds in winter. Hare eat the whole shebang: leaves, twigs, bark, and fruits. Long ago, Native Americans mixed serviceberries with meat and fat to make pemmican, which was eaten as a light nutritious trail food during the winter, as it stores well. Serviceberry was also an important medicinal plant; various parts were used to treat a wide range of ailments and some tribes burned areas to promote the growth of Amelanchiers. For a summer snack, try the fruits of smooth serviceberry, as they are juicier than those of downy serviceberry. Both kinds can be dried or used for jam, jelly, or pie. Serviceberry pie is said to rival the best blueberry pie, but I can’t imagine harvesting enough fruit to fill a pie dish. Amelanchiers are among the relatively small number of plants that can reproduce asexually, using a process called apomixis, an ability so sought after by plant breeders that it has been called the “holy grail” of plant propagation. The female cell bypasses the usual reduction in chromosome number, and the egg grows into a clone of the female parent. Instead of having a half set of chromosomes from the mother and half from the father, apomictic plants have a full set of chromosomes from the mother. Except for citrus, apomixis is rare in food crops, but if scientists could get economically important plants such as corn, wheat, or rice to reproduce this way reliably, high yielding hybrids could then replicate themselves indefinitely – bad news for seed companies, good news for farmers who, instead of relying on seed companies for hybrid seeds, could save their own seeds year after year.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 57 FROM FOREST TO FLOOR: THE GYM A COMMUNITY BUILT

58 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Story by Julia Shipley Photos by Harry Miller

his year, when Moderator Ann Wilson raps her gavel, calling the Craftsbury Town Meeting to order in the new Craftsbury Academy Gymnasium, she’ll be standing on a forest of local trees hewn into a luminous floor. Last September, Craftsbury Academy hosted a floor-laying work party, much like an old-fashioned barn raising. Yet instead of a barn to hold one farmer’s hay and animals, they built a floor that will support the weight of this town of 1,300, serving as the foundation for jump shots, diploma handoffs, and residents trampling on their handiwork to dunk meeting day ballots into the birdseye maple ballot box. This project was over a decade in the making, as the bond vote for the new gym failed five times. Five. Times. The Academy’s old gymnasium was officially condemned in 1986 as structurally unsound and unfit to inhabit in winds higher than 30 miles an hour. Though it was a showpiece when it was built in 1947, it had deteriorated to the point where Madame Moderator had to pause during one town meeting when a broken pipe began sputtering liquid from the ceiling. The cost of replacing the gym, however, was exorbitant, and many said it was just too much money. The issue fractured the town and dragged on for more than 12 years before a 1.6-million-dollar bond finally passed. Harry Miller, a local builder, father, and school board member, had an idea that would bring the townspeople back together. Miller, who helps fourth graders build their own rulers as a means of teaching them fractions, thought that with a little hard work, the town could build their own gym floor for considerably less than the $150,000 that was allotted in the budget. “I thought that would be a place where we could save and participate – and we went from there,” he said. An earlier community project to rebuild the fence around the town green provided the prototype for this one: “Have everything laid out ready to go,” Miller said, “and then call in your labor, give everybody a job. It can be done.”

Above: The finished gymnasium floor. Right: Sunday morning work.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 59 Andy Moffatt, Craftsbury August, the lumber was ripped to 2¼ inches, planed to 7/8, and Academy class of 1957, and then sent through the tongue and groove machine. Lathrop’s Earl Kinsey, class of 1970. favorable rate saved the town about $40,000. Miller’s excitement at the arriving material was tempered by Encouraged by Tom anxiety about humidity. “Here we were about to introduce this Lathrop of Lathrop’s bone-dry flooring to an environment with 300 gallons of freshly Mill (who offered to applied paint and sheet rock mud,” Miller said. Tom Hayes of do the millwork for Topnotch Floors in Hardwick told him to “Call Frank.” one dollar per foot), An affiliate of the National Wood Floor Association in Reno, informed by neighbors Nevada, Frank Kroupa talked Miller through a strategy for the Jim and Steve Moffatt of next phase. Using a humidity meter loaned by a neighbor, Miller Moffatt Tree Farm, and waited for a spate of haying weather, and then opened the bags bolstered by impromptu of flooring. Seven days later, when the wood had acclimated, he coffee conferences in and his business partner, Shawn Ecklund, went in, snapped a the Village Store, Miller chalkline, and that night they laid out a two-foot-wide keystone waded into the project strip down the middle of the new gym. by asking, “How many The following morning, upwards of 60 volunteers began trees do we need?” working on either side. A feeder crew brought boards in from His informal advi- the piles; the racking crew dry-laid them; an installation crew sory committee said followed, tucking weed whacker cord temporarily between the they’d need around slats to create a 1/16-inch expansion joint; a nail crew brought 12,000 board feet. But as up the rear, fixing the floor piece by piece. The floor was Jim Moffatt explained, stabilized for the next 100 years at least by $1,000 worth of nails “Of that number, you donated by Donald Blake, a contractor in Morrisville. have to factor in that a portion is unusable, and then you need to By Saturday afternoon, as a small pile of rejects – strips with account for the matching of the lumber. When you start out with knots and defects – amassed near the boiler room, another crew a 3½-inch piece of flooring, then it’s milled down so you’re left emerged to tamp bits of tarpaper then dab quick-drying epoxy with a 2½-inch-wide piece.” The final verdict: “Two truckloads into the 363 tapholes in the flooring – a testament to the number oughta do it,” meaning, two 10-wheelers with a pup trailer. of working sugarbushes in town. When I ask about a blond In June 2012, Jim Moffatt, who has been a member of the section of wood riddled with holes, Miller quizzed me. “What’s Craftsbury Forestry Committee for more than 40 years, began to the number one rule of tapping? Never drill within three inches coordinate the harvest, skidding, and pick-up of donated trees. of last year’s taps, because the cambium around the taps dies.” He mapped out the most economical route and then took his “This just goes to show that sometimes sugarmakers break truck around town. Among the 38 scheduled pick-ups, there were their own rules,” Harry said with a smile, then added: “It may several remarkable trees. Horace Strong offered the best sugar have a few imperfections, but it has character.” maple on his property. Bob Davis, who grew up where Bill and By Monday, the stacks of flooring were gone and they still Judy Bevins live now, convinced them to give up their magnificent had a hundred feet of floor to finish. “With a custom run, you yellow birch. Miller recalled, “It was 48 feet to the first branch.” can’t run out and pick up a few more 7/8-inch pieces,” Miller Moffatt, who attended the Academy, as did his grandmother, said, “so, we started raiding the reject pile.” All those not-good- mother, father, brothers, sister, wife, and son, and whose grand- enough pieces were suddenly vital. Piece by piece, the rejects sons are now in the sixth and eighth grades, also offered up a were reenlisted, and the floor accrued through the out-of-bound special tree. “A favorite of all time,” he said, from back when he zone until the last piece fit in place. Of the two tractor loads of was first sugaring in 1962, with horses and buckets. “This was the logs – all grown within ten miles of the gymnasium – only half tree we always tapped first, a top producer; it was slowly dying, a trash can of waste was left. and within a year or two the lumber wouldn’t be salvageable.” Miller gazed out at the finished 6,400-square-foot floor After Moffatt rounded up the first load, he got permission the day before the sanders came. “I watched fathers and sons, from the town forest to harvest more timber. With the help of stars on the girls’ basketball team, world class skiers from Bob Davis, Rob Libby, and his brother, Andy Moffatt, they cut 30 the Outdoor Center’s racing team, Sterling College students logs from Hatch Brook Road and the Academy Woodlot. Moffatt – people from all over all working together to build this floor. supplemented with his own trees, and a total of 160 sugar maple It’s not just fitting together the pieces of a floor – it’s investment and yellow birch logs went to Lathrop’s Mill in June. in community. These kids are going to remember this and show Tom Lathrop, a fifth-generation sawyer, oversaw the milling. their kids, saying: ‘I built this.’” Over the late summer months, the lumber was sawn extra thick (at 1¼ inches), stickered, and allowed to “relax” for a few Julia Shipley is an independent journalist whose work often centers on trees, rocks, months before spending ten days in the kiln. At the beginning of dirt, water courses, and a sense of place.

60 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 new england wood pellet —by the numbers:

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Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 61 DISCOVERIES

By Todd McLeish

Doing Nothing for Forest Recovery When a stand of trees is blown down in a storm, the typical practice is to salvage as many saleable trees as possible. But a 20- year study in the Harvard Forest found that if you are just considering the health of the forest ecosystem, the best practice is to do nothing. “When a forest is damaged by hurricane winds, even if it is quite a big disturbance and looks catastrophic, there are a lot of surviving structures that allow JOHN HIRSCH the forest to come back and continue functioning,” said Audrey Barker-Plotkin, site and research coordinator at Harvard Audrey Barker-Plotkin (far left) and students conducting a survey of the understory vegetation in a hurricane experiment, Forest and lead author of a study pub- 20 years after the manipulation. lished in the journal Ecology. In 1990, a team of scientists recreated and even fewer invasive species. Most of interior” is disappearing at a much greater the effects of the 1938 hurricane in a two- the shrubs that became established in the rate than total forest acreage, raising con- acre patch of mature oak forest. Eighty first years after the disturbance died as cerns about biodiversity and core habitat. percent of the trees were pulled over with the forest aged. According to Kurt Riitters, a research a winch and cable; half the trees died Measurements of soil nutrient levels ecologist at the U.S. Department of within three years and were left on the before and after the disturbance found Agriculture’s Southern Research Station ground. The scientists closely monitored hardly any difference, and the volume and the lead author of a study published the study area for the next 20 years and of litterfall – a reasonable proxy for in Scientific Reports, forest interior has par- found a remarkable story of recovery. forest productivity – came back to pre- ticularly high conservation value because it “Leaving a damaged forest intact disturbance levels by year six. While the is less likely to be affected by human influ- means the original conditions return basal area is still lagging behind that of a ences and so provides more natural forest more readily,” said David Foster, director control site, it is expected to catch up by function than edge forests. Riitters and of the Harvard Forest. “Forests have been about year 30. his colleague James Wickham examined recovering from natural processes like Despite these results, Barker-Plotkin national land-cover maps to determine windstorms, fire, and ice for millions of said there are perfectly good reasons to do whether forested pixels were surrounded years. What appears to us as devastation salvage logging. “If you’re growing your by other forested pixels, and they found is actually, to a forest, a quite natural and forest for timber and your valuable tim- that while total forest area declined by 1.1 important state of affairs.” ber trees have fallen over, it’s a reasonable LARRY KORHNAK The abundance of seedlings and sap- course of action to carefully recoup the lings that were growing in the forest prior financial value of the forest. But from the to the study form the bulk of the forest perspective of the health of the forest, it canopy today. But the new forest doesn’t doesn’t need us to clean up after a disaster look exactly like the old one. Prior to the like this. The forest is going to be fine.” study, the forest was dominated by red oak and red maple. “We found no red oak that came in as a seedling or sprout Interiors: Disappearing after the disturbance, but we have a few Fast in a Forest Near You scattered surviving gigantic oaks that still anchor the stand,” said Barker-Plotkin. Inventories often report that forested lands “The new cohort is mostly black birch.” across the U.S. and elsewhere are declin- The researchers were surprised that ing, but those studies simply look at the only a few early successional species made total deforested area. A new analysis of an appearance as the forest recovered, forests in the lower 48 found that “forest

62 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 percent from 2001 to 2006, interior forest OSCAR RAMOS-RODRIGUEZ declined by 5.8 percent. More Buzz on Pesticides “In order to understand the impact of and Bees forest loss, we have to look at the pattern The widespread decline of both wild and of where the forest was lost and where it managed bee populations has raised was gained,” said Riitters. “The pattern alarms for more than a decade due to of loss is such that it’s punching holes in the importance of bees as pollinators of what used to be interior forest; it’s taking both agricultural crops and wild plants. interior pixels away. But the pattern of Pesticide exposure has long been con- forest gain isn’t adding interior forest.” sidered a likely culprit, implicated in In a supplemental report, the researchers changes in bee behavior and reduced examined 60 “eco-provinces” around the production by colony queens. A new country and found that the three provinces study by researchers at the University of that cover the Northeast lost interior forest London found that exposure to combi- at lower rates than the national average. nations of pesticides can make worker Two of those regions – the northeastern bees less efficient at collecting pollen and mixed forest in much of New York and reduce a colony’s chances of success. eastern Maine, and the Adirondack-New Richard Gill and Nigel Raine investi- England mixed coniferous forest in the gated social bumblebee species that rely high elevations of northern New England on the collective performance of many – lost interior forest at about twice the rate worker bees for the colony’s success. They of total forest loss, though half of the former wrote in the journal Nature that their region and two-thirds of the latter are study mimicked realistic scenarios in considered forest interior. Surprisingly, the which 40 early-stage bumblebee colonies Eastern Broadleaf Forest, which extends received four-week exposure to two com- from coastal and southern New England mon pesticides. Imidacloprid, the most down the Appalachians, lost interior forest widely used insect neurotoxin in the at a lower rate than its loss of total forest, world, was provided in a sucrose solution perhaps because only one-third of this at levels that could be found in nectar. forest is considered interior. Cyhalothrin, a synthetic insecticide that Noting that rates of decline do not mimics a chemical in chrysanthemums, apply equally, even in individual eco- was used according to label directions for provinces, Riitters made a point of high- field-spraying applications. lighting the Adirondacks as an area where In colonies exposed to a combination virtually no net loss of interior forest was of the pesticides or to only cyhalothrin, detected. “There are always forest gains more than a third of the worker bees and losses, but the Adirondacks always died, compared to just nine percent stand out as being a reservoir of inte- mortality in unexposed colonies. Two rior forests,” he said. “When you analyze colonies exposed to both pesticides failed forest fragmentation, there are few places completely within a week. Using radio that stand out as having a high percentage frequency identification tags to track 259 A worker bee foraging in the grounds of Royal Holloway of forest and a high percentage of interior bees on 8,751 trips to collect pollen, the with an RFID tag on its back. forest, but the Adirondacks is one.” researchers found that bees exposed to The researchers’ analysis could not both pesticides or to Imidacloprid alone ous consequences for the performance of identify the drivers of forest loss in each took longer to collect pollen or gathered the colony as a whole,” said Gill. region, though they noted that in the less pollen per trip. This lower foraging “Policymakers need to consider the western U.S. it is primarily caused by efficiency meant that these colonies had evidence and work together with regula- insects, disease, and fire, while forest loss to send out more bees, many of which tory bodies to minimize the risk to all bees in the East is usually a result of urbaniza- did not return. On average, the number caused by pesticides, not just honeybees,” tion. The next step in their study is to of lost worker bees was 55 percent higher added Raine. “Currently, pesticide usage collect data that will help them identify in colonies exposed to Imidacloprid than is approved based on tests looking at the specific causes of forest fragmentation those not exposed to pesticides. single pesticides. However, our evidence in each region. “The novelty of this study is that we shows that the risk of exposure to multiple show how sublethal pesticide exposure pesticides needs to be considered, as this An interior forest fragmented by a housing development. affects individual bee behavior, with seri- can seriously affect colony success.”

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 63 CLASSIFIED

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64 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 TRICKS of the trade

By Carl Demrow

Saw Sharpening Tips MEGHAN OLIVER Chainsaws, despite their blunt appearance, are precision tools that need to be carefully maintained to work properly. The chain is no exception to the rule. There are two parts to maintain on a saw chain: the depth gauge, which determines the thickness of the chip that will be produced, and the cutting tooth, which hooks fiber with the working corner and slices the wood with both top and side cutting edges. To work properly, these two elements need to be aligned. Filing a cutting tooth requires having your file in exactly the right place in three dimensions. If you are off in any way by even a hundredth of an inch, you will decrease the effectiveness of your chain with each file stroke. You can freehand it, but all but the most practiced are likely to remove metal that will make the chain less effective and will reduce the chain’s life. Unless you’re a pro, use a file guide. There are two types of filing guides. Roller guides fit over the chain and bar Top plate to keep the file at the right height to file the tooth. To get the right roller guide, Cutting tooth you will need to know your chain pitch. Oregon publishes a maintenance and safety manual that has the specs on every chain they sell. It is available at www. Cutting corner oregonproducts.com/maintenance/manual.htm. The flat plate guide is a bit more forgiving in that it works with a variety of top plate angles. It snaps on to Depth gauge your file and has reference marks to guide you. Once you’ve got the appropriate file guide, work on your filing technique. A good filer is a lot like a good crosscut saw operator, but a filer pushes instead of pulls. Practice smooth straight strokes that do not wobble up and down or side Side plate to side. Holding both ends of the file will help. Apply light but steady pressure against the cutting tooth as you file. File all the cutters on one side and then turn the saw around to do the rest. Try to keep all the teeth the same length, although this is a bit of a challenge when you’ve got a tooth or two that’s gotten chipped from hitting a rock. Since the cutting teeth are higher front to back, each sharpening lowers the working surfaces slightly. Over time, this will bring the height of the cutter closer to the height of the depth gauge. Eventually, the saw will not cut no matter how sharp its teeth because the depth gauge will be too high for the cutting tooth to take a bite. A depth-gauge filing plate with the proper setting for your chain will enable

you to take the gauge down with a flat file to the correct depth. A depth gauge MEGHAN OLIVER that is too low results in very aggressive cutting. Northeast Woodland Training, an organization dedicated to teaching safe logging and forestry practices, produced an excellent DVD on saw sharpening. You can buy a copy of The Art and Science of Sawchain Sharpening, taught by safety instructor and professional logger John Adler on their website, www. woodlandtraining.com.

Now see sharpening in action. Head to for a video.

From top to bottom: tools of the trade; standard saw chain; filing cutting tooth with file guide; filing depth gauge with filing plate.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 65 66 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 up COUNTRY

By Robert Kimber

A Visit Down Country

John and I met in kindergarten, and went through school together. watch the show the birds are putting on. In full flight, the tree We’ve been friends for 70 years, though not always in close swallows pick mayflies out of the air and off the water. Going touch. Our lives have taken us to places as far apart as Italy and full blast, they twist, they dive, they climb, each maneuver quick Iowa, Germany and California, but whenever we’ve been within as light. Bank, turn, swoop. Now you see the white belly, now the reach, we do what we’ve always done: go fishing, fool around in blue back, then belly, then back and belly again. the woods. Two kids with white hair and gray beards. Fumbling around among these aerial acrobats are some John has a place in the Catskills now, an eight-hour drive grackles, their greenish iridescent heads gleaming in the sun- from my home in Maine. I go down for a few days in May. Just light. But what clods they are compared with the swallows. They the week before, John told me, he’d taken three nice browns in fly out over the water and hover there like big, galumphing Huey one of his favorite stretches of the Neversink. Prospects, he said, helicopters, wings flapping, feet and tail practically in the water, were good. bills reaching down to pluck spent flies off the surface. Then they The morning after I arrive, we head for the river. John’s dog, chug aloft and head for shore to rest up for the next sortie. Chloe, a collie-German shepherd mix, comes with us. Chloe is A few kingbirds get into the act, but next to the swallows, 13. Her bark is hoarse and windy. Sometimes, when she gets up, even these flycatchers look like the Podunk High basketball her legs collapse under her, but she totters to her feet again. John team up against the Harlem Globetrotters. Sure, the swallows feeds her special geriatric dog food, microwaves chicken breasts are out for a meal, too, but they can clown and play on the job, for her. We take her for a miniwalk; then John helps her up they can twirl the ball on their fingertips, roll it down their into the backseat of the car and settles her on a rug. She’ll sleep backs, and kick it off their heels to a teammate. They hunt peacefully until we come back. “Chloe gets 1,000-dollar-a-day, mayflies with such extravagant exuberance, such unity of mind, round-the-clock assisted living,” John said. nerve, and muscle, genius on the wing. Down at the river, our prospects don’t look so good after all. On the way back home we hit a cloudburst so heavy the It’s been raining for much of the past week, and the Neversink windshield wipers going at full speed can’t keep up, so we pull is swollen and roily, the water up above our waists before we’ve off onto the shoulder and wait it out. Another stop to pick up waded in more than a few feet. A gentle rain sets in. The morning food for dinner: chicken breasts for us and one for Chloe, of passes without so much as a strike. Then the sky opens up for course, potatoes, salad makings. real. Huge raindrops rattle on the surface like double-O buck- We light a small fire in the wood stove to cut the dampness shot. We retreat to a little streamside picnic shelter. and slight chill. We open a bottle of red wine, cook, eat, “This’ll blow over soon,” John said. remember reading Silas Marner in Miss Kerr’s ninth-grade We sit there, talking, laughing, reveling in the thunder rolling English class, fishing for bass and pickerel in Birchwood Lake. long and loud around the hills and the rain pelting down so John remembers things I don’t; I remember what he doesn’t. We hard and fast it bounces back up off the river. fill in each other’s blanks. After 45 minutes with no letup, we head back to the car These last few days have been among the sweetest days of and drive to the Rock Hill Diner for a lunch of mushroom slow fishing I can remember: Chloe living out her last days in soup and fried haddock. When fishing, always eat fish, John’s care; the swallows diving, swooping, soaring; time with even if you haven’t caught any yourself. a good friend of 70 years. An afternoon drive upstream looking for wadeable and fishable water proves futile, and the deluge we Robert Kimber has written often for outdoor and see roaring over the spillway at the Neversink environmental magazines. He lives in Temple, Maine. Reservoir tells us things are not likely to change in that river for the next few days. So the next morning we head for the Beaverkill, where the river is clear and not brimming up in its banks. The sky is still overcast; we get occasional brief showers, but then the sun breaks through. Some mayflies come off the water. John catches a plump, 14-inch rainbow and lets it go. We sit on the river bank in the sun and

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 67 wood LIT

A Field Guide to the Ants Whoever thought this one up should be designing reared believing that nature had long absconded car radios. It is a visual key that illustrates the tragically “over the horizon, or way up north,” of New England body shape, color, and relative size of all of the have been forced to reconsider old assumptions. By Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. Gotelli, species in a genus, along with close-ups of their While Sterba’s work might rightfully be lumped Elizabeth J. Farnsworth, and Gary D. Alpert distinguishing features. with the general fret of American detachment from Yale University Press, 2012 The authors are specialists in entomology the natural world, Nature Wars joins a recent pub- with wide-ranging interests in ecology. Where lishing spate that urges ditching the Disneyesque Authors and publishers of field guides, take expertise could have made them pedantic, they ecosentiment. Such well-intended mawkishness, note: the bar has gone up with A Field Guide to come across instead as personal and passionate. Sterba implies, was a natural excrescence in the the Ants of New England. Elizabeth Farnsworth’s illustrations are exquisite wake of centuries of crippling agricultural prac- Ants? and abundant and must be worth a total of a mil- tices and the febrile slaughter of wildlife and trees, Ants. Lilliputian ants whose entire colony is lion words. Speaking of words, one of the nicest which left a majority of the North Woods a near enclosed in an acorn, ants that parasitize other features is that each Latin name is translated, and lifeless hay field. Sterba traces the morphology of ant species, ant mimics, and other insects that each genus and species is assigned a popular vanished fauna into the cuddly avatars of Thumper find room and board in ant nests. The tiny lives of name based on a distinctive character or behavior. and Teddy, and from there the yearn to prohibit any New England’s 132 species could be the stuff of If you can’t remember Paratrechina, for example, human encroachment on the land whatsoever. As children’s books or action movies. you may recall The Somewhat Hairy Ant, and when a Depression-born farm kid, he watched first with The Guide includes everything you’ve ever you find an ant nesting in a boreal bog, you’ll amusement and then concern as sprawl dwellers wished for in a field guide: unforbidding keys with surely remember The Leptothorax of the Moss, have struggled to accept the wildlife reflooding a an illustration whenever you need one, fascinating and so find your way to Leptothorax sphagnicola. suddenly tree-giddy Northeast. natural history information, a macro-photo and Where have ants been all my life? “The world Rather than the plaintive wards of national parks an illustration of each species, a photo of the is so full of a number of things, I think we should and the Canadian outback, then, wildlife and trees species’ typical habitat, a shorthand indication of all be as happy as kings,” said Robert Louis have again become neighbors; even urbanscapes distinguishing features, and an occasional laugh. Stevenson in A Child’s Garden of Verses. He prob- now host impressive woodlots. Sterba details how The structure of the book works extremely ably would have liked this book. Oh, yes. E.O. this happened, first with the trees then the animals well. Concise, well-written introductory chapters Wilson liked it too. they drew. With a journalism background, he deftly put ants into a landscape context, discuss their Joan Waltermire chronicles the history of forest-to-farm-to-forest, evolution, ecology, and behavior, and explain how followed by twentieth-century efforts to replenish to identify, observe, collect, draw, and photograph Nature Wars: The Incredible Story wildlife, which according to many whom Sterba ants. You’ll need all of these skills because the interviews have passed from heartening endeavor book makes you want to do them all. Its only of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned to disastrous success. Focusing on geese, bears, undesirable characteristic is its weight. However, Backyards into Battlegrounds beavers, deer, and turkeys, the book’s second since it opens a whole new universe right under By Jim Sterba section follows each species from pre-European- your feet and is a pure pleasure to look at, this Crown, 2012 contact plentitude to the collective holocaust that doesn’t seem like an inconvenience. ensues, ending with their current status as sub- There are keys to subfamilies (that’s where I’ll The Northeast has become a hive of ecologi- urban apocalyptics. Even those fluent in natural be starting), genera, and species. They are a joy to cal counter-intuition, at least by the framework history will revel in Sterba’s telling, and likely learn use. Almost every trait is illustrated in the margin of any living memory. According to Jim Sterba’s a great deal in the process. The reason why many (big enough to see, too), and the keys are written Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Canada geese have stopped migrating, for instance, as a sort of reverse glossary. They use simple Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds, or just how close white-tailed deer came to extinc- English descriptors with technical terms in paren- farm abandonment and the slow growth of trees tion, is fascinating. Not everyone, of course, wishes theses, so you don’t need to flip to the back of the are chief culprits, along with the more rapid wean these creatures to revanish, but many people have book every other minute because you’ve forgotten of people from the natural world, even as they’ve become what Sterba coins “species partisans,” exactly what “spatulate” means. In addition to the ebbed from city to exurb. It’s there, where sprawl fighting with litigation and death threats the many standard dichotomous keys, there is a matrix key. meets forest reclamation, that the generations movements to manage wildlife reasonably. As a

68 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 newspaper man, he maintains a mostly objective Hinton’s splendid translations, with an erudite yet Chinese landscaping paintings always have areas eye on this group, but an occasional farmer’s sneer friendly narrator who takes habitual walks that of apparent nothingness, effusions of mist (or sneaks out to tip his bias. become meditations. As in Thoreau’s Walden, time passing?) that appear to be empty space. For This bias towards rational management is most there are chapters named by topic, including Hinton, Hunger Mountain is a span between heav- prevalent in the final section, “Denatured Life,” “Sincerity,” “Friends,” and “Ritual.” Other chap- en and earth, crisscrossed by hawks and continu- where Sterba recounts the rise of manufacturing ters have more elliptical titles: “Dragon Bone,” ally in flux, with leaves sprouting or spreading or and displacement of farming, leading to the indoor “Breath-Seed Home,” “Loom of Origins.” falling. He evokes the mountain’s creation as an life that creates present-day anxiety among con- The phrase Hunger Mountain sounds evoca- upheaval of colliding continents, glacial carving, servationists, exploitative and protectionist alike. tive and figurative: a metaphor for life’s appetites and eons of weathering. The mountain is, and its Happily, he dedicates a chapter to roadkill, the clan- and struggles. But it’s also the name of a spe- cataclysmic change over thousands of centuries destine berserker in modern wildlife management, cific place, a still entirely undeveloped peak near also is, a never-ending occurrence. which most people (biologists included) scarcely Waterbury Center in Vermont, and a steady com- Can we comprehend time and space as insep- think of, only that it’s a “price of transportation, panion in Hinton’s everyday landscape. We climb arable, simultaneous? Not different dimensions in like gasoline or maintenance.” Feral cats, another a mountain or stand at the seacoast or gaze at phenomena but one dwelling? This vision is what rarely thought upon wildlife catastrophe, receive the celestial night sky and feel … smaller, which the old Chinese sages offer. This conception is rough and vital treatment as well. This is an impor- somehow feels … great. At those moments, yes, also what contemporary physicists and cosmolo- tant book. Contrary to the mantras most of us have “The center is elsewhere.” There’s an uncanny gists are asking us to consider. grown up with, and contrary to much of what is relief in the sensation of being less important, less Hinton repeatedly questions whether humans occurring across the globe, flora and fauna have pivotal. Less self-involved. should claim primacy as a species, or place our- recovered remarkably in the Northeast, reconsti- One of Hinton’s fascinations is the artistry of selves at the center of reality. That is too heavy a tuting many a personal paradigm. In entertaining description. How do humans record actuality burden, and the consequences of our presumptu- fashion, Sterba lays out both the frictions this has transpiring, in our minds and around us, near ous actions are too huge. Even so, he wonders created and compelling ways to quell them. and way beyond? His own guides in this quest if the cosmos has evolved a special role for us: Mike Freeman are the poet-sages of China’s faraway past, we’re the means (in language, in the arts, in legendary chroniclers whose poems and prose our sciences, too) by which existence expresses Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to are extremely distilled, with extraordinary brevity awareness. and clarity. In many of the ancient writings he has These are thoughts aroused by a mountain Mind and Landscape hike in the good company of David Hinton. By David Hinton translated, there is no narrating “I,” yet the work Jim Schley Shambhala, 2012 has astonishing immediacy. Hinton wonders whether the pictographic Chinese If you are peering into one of those GPS devices language provides more intimate access to the “ten many people now find indispensable, everything, thousand things” of existence than an alphabetical anywhere, is shown in relation to your own loca- language such as English can yield. Based on pho- tion. With GPS, you’re always at the center of the netics, languages like English convey the sound of In the wind world, and maybe that’s what users like about this a voice, but not visual images as directly. If you walk the same path every day through the woods technology. By contrast, with a conventional map, And Hinton asks a reader to consider the clearing the way in your coming and going before determining routes to destinations you first prelinguistic sensibility of our ancestors, before you know when branches have fallen. Each branch downed need to find yourself. anyone painted the shape of a running deer on a has a trace of the wind of descent vibrating through it. The question of where we’re located, not only cavern wall, or carved some depiction of forest or on the land but also in the cosmos, is central to lake or star on a stone or a bone, thereby mark- In the time between coming and going, David Hinton’s new book. Hunger Mountain: A ing a rupture between human self-awareness in the rain of branches from the understory, Field Guide to Mind and Landscape is a profound and the entirety of everything else. The word you can read the night, the wind, the lack of it, reconsideration of language and consciousness nature betrays that breach, whereby people and what has happened back to happening. and also a series of crisp, alert essays by a everything else are sundered by language with its Vermonter who frequently hikes up the mountain abstractions and categories. The forest is sloughing dead to make room for the sun. for which the book is named to remind himself A prelinguistic mind is difficult to imagine, now And you, bent there to gather branches, that “the center is elsewhere.” that our very thoughts take form as words. Is it have always been walking Hinton is our era’s most prolific translator of possible, even for a moment, to shift the mind to the dark woods children hurry through Chinese poetry and prose, the first writer in more a nonhuman vantage? To be self-forgetful, mean- than a century to translate into English the four while utterly aware? to get where they are going— key texts of ancient Chinese philosophy – Tao Te Long after finishing the book, I found myself yet the forest is the coming and the going. Ching, the Analects of Confucius, and the writings thinking about the Buddhist proposition that pres- LEE SHARKEY, previously published in of Chuang Tzu and Mencius – as well as a dozen ence (all that we encounter, materially) is no more Maine Arts Magazine; from the book collections of Chinese poetry. real than absence (the boundless pregnant laten- Calendars of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2013). Hunger Mountain is more openly personal than cy that everything arises from and dissolves into). Forest information. Professional assistance. And practical advice for your Woodlands. from the Maine Forest Service 1-800-367-0223 toll-free in ME or 207-287-2791 www.maineforestservice.gov

70 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 MILL prices

hese prices are for #1 hardwood logs, at least 8 feet long, with NY VT NH ME three clear faces and a minimum 12-inch top diameter. In the DOLLARS PER THOUSAND BOARD FEET timber world, this is a log of average quality, not a prime sawlog T White Ash NA 325 368 350 and not a poor one. Landowners should remember that the dollar amount here White Birch 306 250 325 375 indicates what is being paid for logs that have been felled, limbed, Yellow Birch 370 425 433 535 skidded, bucked, and delivered to a mill or buyer. The costs of log- Black Cherry 425 400 525 400 ging and trucking need to be subtracted from these figures to arrive at the price paid to the landowner. Because every job is different, Sugar Maple 492 500 483 540 these costs vary widely. Red Maple 275 258 375 250 These data are compiled from interviews with suppliers and buyers Red Oak 363 450 417 375 and from the most recent print and online versions of the Sawlog Bulletin, and are used by permission. For more information on the Logs scaled with the International 1/4-inch Rule. Sawlog Bulletin, call (603) 444-2549 or go to sawlogbulletin.org. Please Prices compiled February 1, 2013. note that many of these prices were reported three months prior to our publication date, and current prices could be higher or lower.

Talking Timber

Red Oak’s Rise and Fall About the same time, our own housing market tanked. U.S. housing starts Oak is the most popular U.S. hardwood lumber species, accounting for doubled from 1991 to 2005, then, in the most dramatic turn in decades, about 40 percent of our annual lumber production. And true to the old fell by 70 percent (not a misprint) in the next six years. When people build axiom, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” its decline in the last fewer houses, they buy less oak furniture, fewer oak cabinets, less oak decade has been dramatic. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, flooring. While the global economic crisis reduced imports of furniture and oak lumber production roughly doubled between 1985 and 1999, but after other hardwood products, it was not enough to save U.S. production from a 1999, production declined, then fell by 50 percent from 2005 to 2010. tragic collapse. By the time the import competition had been reduced, many domestic hardwood producers had gone out of existence altogether. Why? The troubles started with the decline of the furniture market, which is key to many middle- and higher-grade hardwood species – especially As we see in this graph, from the late 1940s to the early 1970s there was oak. Furniture imports from China increased six-fold from 1997 to 2006, little demand for red oak, and inventories in the forest were increasing. which had a major effect on U.S. hardwood production. The upswing for the next 30 years was extraordinary. In Maine, stumpage prices hit a plateau in the early nineties; they peaked in New Hampshire Starting in 2006, troubles in Europe began to affect oak exports from in 1999 and in New York in 2003. From the peaks, we’ve seen severe the U.S., which from the 1990s to the mid-2000s had been booming – a losses. There’s a glimmer of good news: in some states, oak stumpage symptom of tight high-grade hardwood supplies in Europe and changing prices have begun a slow recovery. — LLOYD C. IRLAND tastes. After rising steadily to 2006, U.S. hardwood lumber exports then fell 33 percent by 2011. Lloyd C. Irland is president of The Irland Group, of Wayne, Maine.

RED OAK STUMPAGE PRICES, 1947-2011 STATE FORESTRY AGENCIES Dollars per Mbf $600

$500

$400

$300

$200

$100 • NH • NY 1947 1951 1955 1959 1963 1967 1971 1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011 • ME

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 71 Relationships Matter Most. Thank you to all our suppliers for providing us with top quality raw materials. We appreciate your contributions to Hancock Lumber, the world’s largest exporter of Eastern White Pine and Maine’s 2011 Exporter of the Year.

HancockLumber.com/Logs

Serving Timberland Investors Since 1968 Full Service Forestry Consulting across New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. Timberland Marketing and Investment Analysis Services provided throughout the U.S. and Canada. Foresters and Licensed Real Estate Professionals in 14 Regional Offices Bangor, ME (207) 947-2800 Portland, ME (207)774-8518 Concord, NH (603) 228-2020 Bethel, ME (207) 836-2076 St. Aurélie, ME (418) 593-3426 Kane, PA (814) 561-1018 Clayton Lake, ME (603) 466-7374 Lowville, NY (315) 376-2832 Newport, VT (802) 334-8402 Jackman, ME (207) 668-7777 Tupper Lake, NY (518) 359-2385 Americus, GA (229) 924-8400 W. Stewartstown, NH (603) 246-8800 Eugene, OR (541) 790-2105

72 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 VT Coverts 3-day Woodland Owner Training

Learn how a healthy forest can enhance wildlife habitat, provide recreational and timber benefits! Make connections with resource professionals and other landowners like you. Learn ways to share your acquired knowledge Northern Woodlands, with friends and community members. ƚŚĞDĂƐƐĂĐŚƵƐĞƩƐ&ŽƌĞƐƚ Alliance, and anonymous June 7-9 at Northwoods Stewardship Center, East Charleston, VT September 6-8 at Kehoe Conservation Camp, Castleton, VT donors have teamed up to create a one year program to For information about this training and other workshop opportunities, vtcoverts.org contact: Lisa Sausville, Vermont Coverts Executive Director help schools raise money for (802) 388-3880; [email protected]; or Vermont Coverts, PO Box 81, Middlebury, VT 05753 ĞŶǀŝƌŽŶŵĞŶƚĂůĞĚƵĐĂƟŽŶ͘

dŚĞĐŽŶĐĞƉƚŝƐƐŝŵƉůĞ͘ DĂŝŶĞĂŶĚDĂƐƐĂĐŚƵƐĞƩƐ schools can sell regularly priced orders of Northern Woodlands magazine, and keep $10 per ƐƵďƐĐƌŝƉƟŽŶƐŽůĚ͘

Schools interested in ƉĂƌƟĐŝƉĂƟŶŐƐŚŽƵůĚ send an email to ^ƵďƐĐƌŝƉƟŽŶWƌŽũĞĐƚΛ ŶŽƌƚŚĞƌŶǁŽŽĚůĂŶĚƐ͘ŽƌŐ͕ or call 802-439-6292 ĨŽƌŵŽƌĞŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶ͘

hƉƚŽĮŌǇƐĐŚŽŽůƐƉĞƌƐƚĂƚĞ ĐĂŶƉĂƌƟĐŝƉĂƚĞ͘WůĞĂƐĞƚĞůů your local school about this opportunity!

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SPRIING ’07

AT THE FORESTFOREST OF L OOKI NG ANEWWAY

Discovering the Pre-settlement Forest Pre-settlement Forestrs re Homestea de New Hampshi r ring Show The Woodcock’s Sp rses A Team of D raft Ho ers, rest Salama nd ring Foliage, Fo Sp rrels with Fo resight, $5.00 Squi re and much mo r

Page c1 7:56 PM 2/16/06 R_C1_C4 10306_WOOD_SP

SPRIING ’’06

EST THE F O R K I N G AT AY OF LOO A N E W W

Energy From Wood:ips into Wood Chi Turning Ethanol Heat, and Power, and Pruneerrss for Pickerrss e Laddererss ry Appl eroron Rookeery eennge in a H orresestrryy CChall F ows, CoyoCoyote , Pussy Willows, Wood Shop, orere W and much m Prereddation, a

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 73 Ad Index A. Johnson Co...... 41 Allard Lumber Allard Lumber Company ...... 74 American Forest Foundation ...... 70 Company Bay State Forestry Services ...... 10 Tel: (802) 254-4939 Berry, Dunn, McNeil, & Parker ...... 55 Britton Lumber Co., Inc...... 25 Fax: (802) 254-8492 Cersosimo Lumber Co., Inc...... 78 www.allardlumber.com Cersosimo Mill ...... 72 [email protected] Champlain Hardwoods ...... 78 Main Office & Sawmill Chief River Nursery ...... 10 Celebrating over 39 Years 354 Old Ferry Road Chippers, Inc...... 73 —1974-2013— Brattleboro, VT 05301-9175 Classifieds ...... 64 Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage ...... 28 Columbia Forest Products ...... 48 Serving VT, NH, MA, and NY with: Consulting Foresters ...... 24 • Forest Management Econoburn ...... 61 • Purchasing Standing Timber Farm Credit ...... 25 • Sawlogs and Veneer Forecon, Inc...... 10 Forest Metrix ...... inside front cover “Caring for your timberland like our own” ForesTech Resource Solutions, LLC ...... 12 Fountains Forestry ...... 12 Allard Lumber Supports Many Civic, School, Forest Industry, Fountains Land ...... 29 Gagnon Lumber Inc...... 75 Social and Environmental Organizations Garland Mill Timberframes ...... 29 Gutchess Lumber Co...... 8 Standing Timber & Land Division Hancock Lumber Co...... 72 DAVE CLEMENTS Bradford, VT (802) 222-5367 (home) Hull Forest Products ...... 41 Bennington, VT (802) 379-0395 STEVE PECKHAM Innovative Natural Resource Solutions ...... 61 Itasca Greenhouse ...... 49 Family-owned and Operated by 6th Generation Vermonters L.W. Greenwood ...... 12 Land & Mowing Solutions, LLC ...... 78 CELEBRATING OVER 39 YEARS OF SAWMILL EXCELLENCE LandVest Realty ...... inside back cover LandVest, Inc...... 72 Lyme Timber ...... 28 Maine Forest Service ...... 70 Massachusetts Forest Alliance ...... 8 McNeil Generating ...... 29 Meadowsend ...... 72 N.E.W.T.: Northeast Woodland Training ...... 75 NEFF ...... 40 NENH Conference ...... 74 NESAF Maine Meeting ...... 49 New England Forest Products ...... 49 New England Wood Pellet ...... 61 NJD Publishing ...... 73 Northeastern Logger Assoc. EXPO ...... 75 Northland Forest Products ...... 40 Oesco, Inc...... 8 Ohana Family Camp ...... 40 Sustainable Forestry Initiative ...... 41 SWOAM ...... 55 Syd Lea: A North Country Life ...... 25 Tarm USA, Inc...... 78 The Taylor-Palmer Agency, Inc...... 66 Timberhomes, LLC ...... 66 University of Maine ...... back cover Vermont Coverts ...... 73 Vermont Coverts Welcome Buckets ...... 12 Vermont Woodlands Association ...... 28 VWACCF ...... 66 Watershed Fine Furniture ...... 12 Wells River Savings Bank ...... 70 West Branch Pond Camps ...... 10 Woodwise Land, Inc...... 54

Find all of our advertisers easily online at Northern Woodlands’ current advertisers: northernwoodlands.org/issues/advertising/advertisers

74 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Learn from the Pros!

Professional & Homeowner Game of Logging classes held throughout New England Hands-on safety training for forestry-related equipment. •Chain saw •Skidder •Brush saw •Forwarder •Farm tractor •Harvester www.woodlandtraining.com Northeast Woodland Training ,Inc. 229 Christmas Tree Farm Road Chester, VT 05143 [email protected] Call (802) 681-8249

THE AWARD-WINNING NORTHEASTERN FOREST PRODUCTS EQUIPMENT EXPO HAMBURG, NEW YORK

The region’s best Expo for the hardworking folks in the wood business – loggers and land clearers, tree care professionals and ﬁrewood dealers, sawmillers, truckers, and land owners. Hundreds of exhibitors will be in Hamburg, New York to display the products, tools, and equipment that make hard work more productive and more proﬁtable.

2013 HAMBURG EXPO, MAY 3–4, 2013 THE EVENT CENTER AT THE HAMBURG FAIRGROUNDS – HAMBURG, NEW YORK

For information about attending or exhibiting at the 2013 Hamburg Expo visit us at www.northernlogger.com or call toll-free 800-318-7561 or 315-369-3078.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 75 Complete your collection of Northern Woodlands Every issue provides a fascinating Issue 39: Winter 2003 Issue 57: Summer 2008 Issue 68: Spring 2011 array of stories about all aspects of The Cedar Family Tree Forest Relics The Hope Issue life in the forests of the Northeast. A New Look at Gifford Pinchot Marking a Timber Sale Bobcats on the Comeback The Fisher Diaspora Noel Perrin’s Rural Visa Rebuilding a Trout Stream When the Company Moves to China Identifying Woodland Grasses A Place for Wolf Trees Issues 1–18: Digital Download Only Issues 40 & 41: Issue 58: Autumn 2008 Issue 69: Summer 2011 Issue 19: Winter 1998 Digital Download Only Doing Battle with Invasive Species House Hunting with Honeybees Clearcutting and Habitat Management Circling Scavengers Mike Greason and the Gospel of Silviculture Reforesting Lyndon State Forest Issue 42: Autumn 2004 A Fall Feast for Wildlife Trends in Maine’s Log Prices Zero Cut Controversy Bear Hunting Referendum North Woods Hunting Camps Hemlock Tanneries in Old New York Long Trail Cleanup Wind Power Primer Favorite Places on Public Land Native Lumber Issue 59: Winter 2008 Issues 70 & 71: A Tale of 21 Tails Does Changing Climate Mean a Digital Download Only Issues 20–23: Digital Download Only Changing Forest? Issue 43: Digital Download Only Issue 72: Spring 2012 Issue 24: Spring 2000 The Deep, Dark Woods The Lowdown on Glyphosate Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest The Value of Biomass Issue 44: Spring 2005 Ghost Moose and Winter Ticks Learning to Love Lichens Winter Camping in the Maine Woods Investing in a Woodlot Clouds Up Close Tree Girdling Giant Silk Moths Issue 60: Spring 2009 Crop Tree Release Roadless Designation Spring Wildflowers Certification Comes to Family Forests Appalachian Trail in Canada Issue 73: Summer 2012 Tamarack and Ships’ Knees Growing Your Own Mushrooms Making Sense of Scientific Names Issue 25: Summer 2000 Springtime in the Turkey Woods Issue 45: Summer 2005 A Paper Mill Remembered Adirondack Guide-Boats Can the American Chestnut Come Back? Growing and Selling Veneer No Dry Matter: The Wood-Moisture Relationship Flying Squirrels Loons on the Rebound Issue 61: Summer 2009 Bioluminescent Fungi Tree Biologist Alex Shigo Medicinal Goldthread Wild Bees in Your Woodlot Balsam Fir Pillows Look Who’s Wearing the Chaps Canoeing from the Adirondacks to Maine Learning in the Landscape Issue 46: Autumn 2005 Issue 74: Autumn 2012 A Guide to Plants You Shouldn’t Touch Timber Theft Warming Up with Wood Pellets Issue 26: Autumn 2000 Natural Disturbances and Forestry Moose Rut A History of Fire Towers in the Northeast A Buck Sheds his Velvet Hunters for the Hungry Issue 62: Autumn 2009 Lessons from Last Year’s Foliage Maine’s Forestry Referendum Rare Plants Rediscovered Colorful Dyes from the Forest Trapping in the 21st Century Forestry at Paul Smith’s College Silviculture in Vermont’s National Park Forests, Carbon, and Climate Change Issue 47: Winter 2005 Issue 75: Winter 2012 Bucks and Bulls in Velvet Landowners Learn About Habitat Coexisting with Wolves Cree Tradition & Transition in Northern Canada The Beaver’s Felling Techniques Blue Jays Christmas on the Tree Farm Issues 27–32: Digital Download Only Excellent Forestry Issue 63: Winter 2009 The Man Who Freed a Giant Scouting Cameras Issue 33: Summer 2002 Which Bird Made That Nest? Beech Party on Your Woodlot Markets for Low Grade Wood Issue 48: Spring 2006 A Bygone Industry: Chemicals from Wood A Harlequin (Duck) Romance The Gifts of a Forest Energy from Wood: Chips and Bioethanol How to Make a Holiday Wreath Fire and Granite Apple Ladders Snow Fleas, Deer Yards, Scotch Pine Maine Teacher Tours Logging in a Heron Rookery Issue 64: Spring 2010 Return of the Trout? Issue 49: Digital Download Only Spring Flower Show in the Woods Issue 34: Digital Download Only Why Trees Grow Where They Do Issue 50: Autumn 2006 On the Job with a Biomass Buyer Issue 35: Winter 2002 Maine’s Last Log Drive Forgotten Stump Fences The Forest at Quabbin Reservoir Booms and Busts in Grouse Populations Violins from Spruce and Maple NH Sawmill Uses Every Bit of Sawdust Issue 65: Summer 2010 Liquidation Harvesting in Maine Baffling Beavers Old-Fashioned Bee Lining Mapping Soils Tending a Woodlands Garden Issue 51: Digital Download Only Income Sources from Your Forestland Issue 36: Digital Download Only Which Caterpillar Becomes Which Issue 52: Spring 2007 Butterfly? Issue 37: Summer 2003 Discovering the Presettlement Forest New England Sawmill Bucks the Trend New Hampshire Homesteaders Issue 66: Autumn 2010 Eeek! 370 Species of Mice A Woodcock’s Spring Show Biomass Debate Heats Up The Northern Woodlands Story A Team of Draft Horses Native Invasives on Your Woodlot Secret Life of Soil Habitat for Woodcock Issues 53–55: Digital Download Only The Flow of Wood in the Region Making a Windsor Chair Issue 56: Spring 2008 Issue 38: Autumn 2003 Issue 67: Winter 2010 Lyme Disease Marches North Nature Conservancy’s New Direction Goodbye to an Elm Outdoor Wood Boilers Under Fire Adirondack Baseball Bats How Many White Tails? Visit a Water-Powered Sawmill Efficient Logging A Maine Logging Camp in 1912 Growing up Outdoors Owl Pellets Learning Lumberjack Skills A Different Kind of Diesel

76 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 Prints and posters of select photos are available for Check out our books! purchase. To order, call toll-free (866) 962-1191 or visit NEW: More Than a Woodlot, a Northern Woodlands publication, www.northernwoodlandsprints.org. a comprehensive guide to stewardship for the forest landowner in the Northeast. Includes information on successful timber harvests, wildlife management, consideration of your land’s future, and silviculture, demystified ...... PAPER $19.95

NORTHERN WOODLANDS’ BOOK The Outside Story: Local Writers Explore the Nature of New Hampshire and Vermont, gives readers the inside scoop on local ecology. Local writers, including Northern Woodlands’ staff and regular contributors, explore a broad range of topics, from acid rain to garter snake mating. While the subject is Vermont and New Hampshire, the book appeals to nature enthusiasts across the Northeast...... PAPER $19.95 We’ve got ALL of our archived content online in print format The Tree Identification Book, by George W. D. Symonds. Tree and/or digital downloads (as well as neat merchandise) at leaves, bark, buds, thorns, flowers, and fruit each have a separate our shop: www.northernwoodlands.org/shop section in this book. This book was first published in 1958 and has or use the mail-in order form below for print copies. stood the test of time. Over 1500 black-and-white photographs make the trees of the eastern U.S. easy to nail down. ..PAPER $20.00

The Shrub Identification Book, by George W. D. Symonds. The Please use the order form from the most recent issue: companion to The Tree Identification Book (above). A complete guide to the shrubs and other small woody plants... PAPER $20.00 NAME

SPECIAL: Buy the Tree Identification Book and The Shrub ADDRESS Identification Book together for $36.00!

CITY Mammal Tracks and Scat: Life-Size Tracking Guide,byLynn Levine & Martha Mitchell, is a handy waterproof field guide STATE ZIP designed to be carried through brush, bramble, and snow banks, Method of payment (check one) and emerge unscathed. It uses a novel three-step process to identify tracks & scat of 29 different animals that are commonly QCheck QMasterCard QVisa encountered in the field...... PAPER $19.95

CREDIT CARD NUMBER Trees of New England, by Charles Fergus. Trees are listed alphabet- ically by common name, and Fergus gives a description along with EXPIRATION DATE 3 DIGIT SECURITY CODE range and ecology facts for each one. Information on how wildlife and people use every listed tree is also included...... PAPER $16.95 SIGNATURE Back issues are $6.00 each Reading the Forested Landscape, by Tom Wessels. Bill McKibben wrote, “What a fascinating book. Equal parts Sherlock Holmes and 19 Q 24 Q 25 Q 26 Q 33 Q 35 Q 37 Q Aldo Leopold, it will help thousands of New Englanders answer the 38 Q 39 Q 42 Q 44 Q 45 Q 46 Q 47 Q questions that come to mind as they wander this landscape of stone 48 Q 50 Q 52 Q 56 Q 57 Q 58 Q 59 Q walls, stunted apple trees, and towering hemlocks.” ...PAPER $18.95 60Q 61Q 62Q 63 Q 64 Q 65 Q 66 Q Working with your Woodland: A Landowners’ Guide, by Mollie 67 Q 68 Q 69 Q 72 Q 73 Q 74 Q 75 Q Beattie, Lynn Levine, and Charles Thompson. Assessing your Total number of Issues woodland for various goals, creating a management plan, under- (Vermont residents add 6% sales tax) TOTAL $ standing management techniques, and harvesting – from deciding on a schedule to handling the proceeds – are all covered thoroughly, Please include $5.50 for each domestic shipment of books and merchandise, excluding back issues. Call our office for international shipping rates: (800) 290-5232 with an overall emphasis on carefully tending a forest for the very long term...... PAPER $23.50 Please send to: Northern Woodlands Back Issues, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039

Order books by title, using the magazine’s insert, or check out these and many other books, including kids’ selections: www.northernwoodlands.org/shop. Importers of the highly advanced ® Fröling and HS Tarm wood gasification and automatic wood pellet boilers We Have the Right Wood Boiler for Your Home t "EEPOUPZPVSFYJTUJOHIFBUJOHTZTUFN t 3FEVDFZPVSVTFPGIPNFIFBUJOHPJM t )JHIFďDJFODZDPNCVTUJPOXJUI WJSUVBMMZOPTNPLFPSDSFPTPUF t ćFUJNFJTOPX.BLFBDIBOHFGPSUIF CFUUFSGPSZPV GPSUIFQMBOFU Solo Plus Solo Innova FHG Tarm Biomass | 800-782-9927 | www.woodboilers.com

How easy is it to subscribe? —As easy as mailing a letter, making a call, or going online

Mail: Use the envelope in this magazine Phone: 800-290-5232, M-F, 8-5 EST Web: northernwoodlands.org POB 471; 1776 Center Road, Corinth, Vermont 05039

ersosimo Lumber Co., Inc. Family owned and operated for 61 years! Our experienced Woodlands Staff is available to assist you in achieving your goals in managing your woodlot. Contact our Woodlands office in Brattleboro, VT today for more information.

1103 Vernon Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301 Tel: (802) 254-4508 Fax: (802) 257-1784 Email: [email protected]

78 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 the outdoor PALETTE

Rebecca A. Merrilees, Untitled, 23” x 44”, casein on masonite, mid-1960s.

Many of us are familiar with Rebecca Merrilees’ work from like a head lying on its side, with two eyes, a nose, and a chin. the indispensable field guide Trees of North America, which Has it been here since the last ice age, witnessing this sweeping she illustrated 34 years ago. It is probably on all of our book- scene? Louis Agassiz, the renowned eighteenth century natural shelves, dog-eared and soft with age. During her 75-year career, historian, suggested that, geologically, New England was the Merrilees was a book illustrator, art teacher, and fine artist. Her oldest spot on the Earth’s surface. This painting certainly helps illustrations are scientifically correct and highly realistic, while us contemplate the long, slow passage of time. her fine art often plays with surrealism. Merrilees was a pioneer in commercial art, and she was the Both of these approaches are on display in her untitled first woman to illustrate the cover of Reader’s Digest, in 1961. painting of the Berlin Mountains behind her Vermont home, Her contributions to the natural sciences, to education, and to in which she captured the light, depth, and topography of this the fine arts are many and lasting. Merrilees died in November, grand and rugged vista. The small tundra plants in the fore- 2012, at the age of 90, a few months after a 75-year retrospective ground are meticulously rendered and regionally accurate; the of her work – her first solo show. — Adelaide Tyrol boulder convincingly anchors the vast expanse with its massive weight. At first glance, it is a faithful and objective depiction of Rebecca Merrilees was educated at The American School of Design, Pratt Institute, and an existing landscape. Skowhegan School of Painting. She was a member of the American Society of Botanical But there is a surrealistic flavor to this piece as well. The Artists. Her work can be seen at the The Waskowmium in Burlington, Vermont, and in boulder is odd here – where did it come from? It looks uncannily Northfield, Vermont, at the Brown Public Library and Norwich University.

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

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013 79 A PLACE in mind

John Elder

My five-year-old grandsons, Leo and Dylan, have been reading Holling C. Holling’s Paddle-to-the-Sea with me this winter. They’re entranced by its story of an Ojibwe boy who carves a foot-long canoe with a little paddler in it, then launches it through the circulation of the Great Lakes and out the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. We’ve started making our own canoe – slightly longer at 15 inches, in order to allow room for twin paddlers. I have to confess that I’m wondering whether it might be just as good to glue in a couple of their beloved Playmobil figures, but we have until spring to settle that detail. We enjoy poring over the book’s highly detailed illustrations and maps. But there’s one image that especially speaks to me, depicting the moment when the boy leaves the completed canoe and its passenger atop a thickly drifted bluff to await winter’s end. When the season-ending thaw finally arrives, that snowy slope north of Nipigon will slough down into a vernal brook, carrying the bravely painted craft in and out of a beaver pond and on to a frozen river where it will again wait patiently until ice-out. Leo, Dylan, and I are in no hurry either, as we laminate a couple of clear pine boards together and begin to shape the hull of our own canoe. After all, we’ve got till spring. Ours has been a New England family for 44 years now. Having grown up in northern California, my wife Rita and I have always been amazed by the spectacles of fall and winter around our adopted home. As we have settled more deeply into the rhythms of this landscape, the less resounding transition into spring has become equally galvanizing for us. This is partly so because, over the past 14 years, we’ve been sugaring in the hills of Starksboro, Vermont, with our three grown children and their families, Leo and Dylan now representing the rising generation of sugarmakers. Making maple syrup discloses that the seemingly congealed stasis of mud season is, in truth, a period of continuous fluctuations in the temperature. When the air is above freezing during the daytime, the sap sequestered in each tree will flow down through all the tributaries of the twigs into the river of the trunk. We imagine that tidal turning all winter, gazing up into the leafless woods from beside our sugarhouse. Even as we wait quietly to be pulled out from shore by the currents of spring, we recognize signs of the coming change around us. One of these is the fact that, before the coldest nights have yet arrived, the days have already begun to grow longer. Dwellers in northerly regions have long celebrated the solstice with fire and songs. It marks a watershed of the spirit, flowing on into the golden February light that will bathe the snowy slopes and call forth the spring calls of chickadees and jays. An even earlier harbinger of spring is the appearance of new buds in the fall. The millions of elegant sugar maple leaves that, come April, will unfold in the hills of Starksboro are already fully formed and ready to expand. When they do open, it marks the end of sugaring season, since the sap will simultaneously take on a funky tinge. These small, plump buds thus enfold not only the maples’ leaves but also the larger progression from winter through early spring. Such predictable and overlapping aspects of our seasonal cycle are, as Robert Frost might say, something for hope. Meanwhile, my grandsons and I anticipate the spring with each deliberate phase of our shared project. When we’ve finished carving out and bracing the interior of the canoe, we’ll emulate our forerunner’s design by weighting the bottom of the hull so that it will remain upright in rough water. We’ll affix a small tin rudder at the stern to help it forge straight ahead in a current. With so many locks and such heavy shipping on the major waterways now, I think we may call our own project Paddle-to-the-Lake. The three of us will launch this craft and its two paddlers in the Otter Creek just north of the falls in Vergennes. With the benefit of a few lucky escapes and some friendly interventions like the ones in the book, our canoe may be able to navigate all the way through the Slang and Dead Creek, then float out into the grand mystery of Lake Champlain.

John and Rita Elder live in the village of Bristol, Vermont (when not sugaring in Starksboro), with their sons and their families. Since retiring from Middlebury College in 2010, John has remained active as a writer, a participant in the activities of Vermont Family Forests, and a member of the Bristol Planning Commission.

80 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2013

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