bug season...

in western maine--headnet recommended! i fastened my front fork to the mount in the back of the truck and made a quick check to be sure i had packed my bike shoes. the last time i drove off for a ride i had to turn around and fetch them. all in, i set off for kevin's over in west brownfield maine. what i didn't notice, were bugs. a couple hours later as i pulled into kevin and mariel's driveway, a cloud of black flies wafted through the window and gathered about my head. i had to close the window to even attempt to gather things for the dash inside.

mariel was home mixing up a wheelbarrow full of potting soil and moo-doo to start dividing her transplants. it was pretty obvious that working outside was going to be way too buggy without a headnet. so, like any dedicated maine gardener, she filled a five gallon bucket with her mix, headed inside, and emptied half of it into the kitchen sink! "...we'll have to clean this up before kevin gets home to make dinner..." with an attitude like that, how could i not pitch in and help.

we were basically ready and a pizza dinner was prepped, cooked, and set on the table in fine fashion. i got in a visit with 4/5 of the feider-sullivans, all save for seamus, who lives and works out in san francisco. owen has grown two or three feet since i saw him at popham beach last july. clayton has found a yurt to live in while he works landscaping and plans his next long trek--he has now finished both the appalachian trail and pacific crest trail--that's just shy of 5000 miles, on foot! mariel is growing plants like mad and wants to actually set up a nursery in a green house. kevin is working three days a week at a bike shop in n. conway. life seems pretty good.

friday morning, the dishes done and our panniers packed, kevin and i set off to pedal to the amc cold river camp up in chatham new hampshire. we headed north towards fryeburg where we would pick up 113 and continue north towards evan's notch. the road actually crosses back and forth from maine into new hampshire several times as it winds its way toward gilead me on rt 2, just east of shelburne nh. it was a great day to be riding, with little wind and somewhere in the 60's temperature wise. i tried to keep up kevin's faster cadence, but for some reason found myself pushing higher gears at lower rpms most of the way. old habits die hard--i just hope my knees don't give out early.

we pulled into the amc camp about twenty five miles and two hours after leaving kevin's. after arranging for a cabin kevin and i pitched right in to helping schlep dinning hall tables and chairs. the whole reason we were there was to open the camp for the season. moving everything out of storage, scrubbing walls, clearing paths, putting up fixtures--even a play structure--gave us plenty to do for right through sat, about 2 o'clock. there was a bit of time for fun and the pinkham crew took advantage of it, atop some of the bikes we rolled out of the rec center...

after working in the sun for a bit of the afternoon, three of us took off down to the cold river for a dip. i snapped a picture of billy buffum resting up on a rock.

after a bit of rest we decided to hike up to the ledges on little deer hill just east of the river. i forgot i had my camera until after we passed a really cool stone wall climbing up along the ledge trail. we stopped to look out once and i got an expanded 'selfie'...

the smiles on our faces are genuine and attest to billy's talk as we hiked about the 'being present in the moment' philosophy of eckhart tolle.  some moments in life remind me how privileged i am to have dear friends, my health, all the stuff that makes for moments like these. i have been reading joe kurmaskie's biking book riding outside the lines and keep coming back to one particular story, "you make your own luck". my friend ken and i talked about this just the other day and he is convinced, as kurmaskie comes to be, that this is not at all the case. in fact he finishes the story with the line "luck's what happens when god has his back turned." the story is a good one. so was this hike.

not that you can tell, but the trail was quite steep, complete with signs 'not recommended for decent'. i got a sweet vision of a foot of snow on the ground making for one hell of a fine ski run! maybe i was just lamenting the lack of skiing this past season. seriously though, there seemed to be some hot potential, if we just got lots of snow. that is possible in the north country, and when that happens i told kevin i would pick him up and we would give it a shot. it was in the plan for last winter for us to ski the 4000 footers in new hampshire--maybe next year...i can only hope.







we got to bed at a decent hour after hanging out on the porch and reminiscing about our pinkham days and life after. one of the reasons we came to cold river was to surprise ed parson's--the fourth 'pinkham weenie' from back in '75. ed had spent sometime in nepal and showed a slide show of his trip to the pinkham crowd. billy had seen those pictures and decided he needed to see the beauty for himself. he ended spending 10 years in nepal and 5 more in bhutan--ed had changed his life. on a sadder note, the guy running this cold river opening, bill waste, was the brother of connie who had also been on our pinkham crew. connie died in october '75 of a heart complication while the crew had been playing touch football down at the auto road. ed had been playing that day and i had gotten the news when i came back to pinkham to wash my clothes (i used the hobart--once a week whether i needed it or not). it was a reunion packed with quite a few emotional memories as well as work.

true to form for me, i woke very early, probably because it was raining and i was puzzling how i could get kevin home without getting wet. i tried to get back to sleep but didn't have much luck. around 4:30 i got out of bed and started packing. turns out both kevin and billy were awake too. when i greeted them a bit too enthusiastically for the hour, kevin pegged the moment, "it's like christmas, only it's raining!" we packed and wheeled the bikes over to the lodge, turned on the lights and raided the kitchen for breakfast. billy came with us and ed showed up after my second bowl of cereal and cup of tea. it had been a celebration of friends and i wish i had a better camera...nancy, ed's friend, took a final shot as we prepared to head down the road. (in a sweet coincidence, nancy also took the picture of ed and i up in tuckerman ravine when MOC met them over our annual april vacation trip!)

somehow it stopped raining as we pedaled away from our friends and ed 'rang us out.' at before six in the am a porch bell can be pretty loud in a quiet place. bill waste told me later that indeed he had "heard it!" we made it back to kevin's mostly dry and very happy to have shared the weekend. as i drove back to canaan to meet another set of dear friends for lunch and another hike, i wondered if like joe kurmaskie noted, "god had his back turned."

volunteer trail crew...

patrolling with MOC... having passed my introductory trail maintenance instruction hike, craig sanborn gave us our first assignment, to cruise the skyland trail and clear the winter debris from south ridge of cardigan, over orange, brown, and church mtn.s, to the trailhead on the alexandria end. first craig helped me spot a vehicle on the far side and soon after we made it back to the summer parking lot on cardigan, students started to show.

we ended up with four students: olivia, ben, haily, and julia, plus skip and eben (the oldest pendleton boy and an early MOC alum). after an introduction to the tools craig was loaning us--folks, meet loppers, bow saw, and hand clippers--we took a traditional picture, loaded bags, and headed up the trail.

it was a lively bunch and i had a big smile listening to eben talking the "old days" when he was at mascoma, comparing that with what the others were telling him was going on now. it always amazes me that while things do change, they also stay the same.

some debris here and there, but basically things were clean. i started putting a stepping stone here and there in wet spots where i hypothesized things might dry out eventually, but not anytime soon. we crossed a couple extended in-trail pools that skip declared ripe for a "bog bridge"! constructing a good bog bridge is a lot of work, but when done right, where needed, just what the doctor ordered. the twist for this trail is that it is not hiked all that much and hours spent here don't 'pay back' as well as on other trails. i put it on my mental inventory to run by craig.

passing over the bald lookouts on orange mtn we decided to stop for lunch and take in the view. things being totally socked-in, i gave a lichen lecture with the two samples i found back on the trail and stuck in my pocket. as mentioned in an earlier post, Usnea and Evernia are similar Genera of foliose lichen, both growing in the tops of dead or dying firs.

a break on the trail...having lopped a bit of brush here and there, cut and moved only three or four blowdowns, hiking went pretty quickly. after orange mtn the trail is even less traveled. it winds along a ridge of sorts, over grafton's knob, crane mtn, brown mtn, and finally church mtn before dropping down to the trail head on a steep back road, church hill road, just north of alexandria four corners. it is a good path and in the early spring, very open, even in a thick fog. as you near the eastern end--in alexandria--there are some interesting features.



first, one sees a fair bit of old logging scars, mainly ruts and stumps, off to the sides of the trail. at some point in the past, a lot of trees were removed from this area

second, on a fairly flat area near the end, we came across a long abandoned log cabin with a collapsed roof about twenty meters off to the side of the trail. the group did a bit of exploring and i snapped a photo.

wet and happy...

about two inches of rain over the last two weeks. rode into hanover saturday, last day of april--also last full, bright sunny day-until today. my memory is probably 'clouded', but it does seem like there has been more cool and precip than warm and sun lately--like the april showers that were supposed to bring may flowers were a month late. wednesday i rode to canaan elementary in the barest of drizzles. but, coming home was downright wet. hiking with alan thursday he announced, totally serious, "if it starts to rain any harder, i'm bailing." with MOC saturday somebody who wasn't going out with us, commented, "looks like you'll be in the clouds and drizzle all day." with pam sunday morning i reminded her of last week, "hey, it's raining, let's go hiking." i could go on but you might think i was whining!

that ride into hanover was the swan song for long-er rides taken on my dear old pearl izumi saddle. last fall, about ohio, i started noticing toward the end of somedays my penis would be numb. i could still pee but it felt really weird. long story short, i got a new saddle with a cut out to relieve pressure on the perineum... sawyer had suggested this particular model, a brooks cambium 17, and i went for it. now it is on and i am happy so far, but don't have the long miles on it yet to tell if it will actually do the trick. one side benefit right out of the box was it is weather proof! brooks is legendary for its leather bike saddles which don't always appreciate getting wet. the cambium is rubber, cotton, "enhanced by a thin layer of structural textile"! in the week i have had it on it has been rained on three times.

one of those rainy rides was last wednesday. as i mentioned earlier, it was only drizzling on my way to the regular 3rd grade gig. an hour later going away, it was raining fairly hard and i actually turned into our road rather than go the extra mile and a half down to the high school for my it job. i parked the bike and grabbed the truck. i got into work, my jacket and tights pretty much soaked and wondered why i didn't go in the house and change?

the next day, i pedaled off wearing a rain coat. i was heading over to the lower shaker wildlife management area to hike a newer trail with al. he met me with his declaration of leaving if it started raining. i added, "you mean harder?" i threw in the standard dig about you won't melt. he just smiled and mentioned something about being old and a fair-weather hiker. i doubted we would stay dry on this jaunt as it was more than five miles and we always stopped to look at moss, lichen, and such. i kept my rain jacket on...

about a mile up the trail i lost the rain jacket and despite the constant drops of fairly cool rain on the bare arms, it was much more comfortable. looking at the map above, from the parking, follow a solid line heading west, away from the lake, until you get to the dotted line, about a mile up hill. the dotted line runs somewhat north-ish for a couple of miles until it hits another solid white line. we stayed to the right when it forked again and ended back at the top of the upper field and finally t-ed into the main trail headed down and back to the parking area. it is mixed hiking and both alan and i thought it would be a good 'long' loop for the shaker snowshoe fest!

http://www.vernalpool.org/images/105-2YS-egg.jpg

 along our merry way, we veered off-
 trail a bunch. a couple of those times  we went after vernal pools, checking  for salamander eggs. there were  blueish-grey blobs in both looked at, which  made alan quite happy.

where the west side dotted line is bisected by the solid white trail, alan took me off the trail again and showed me a beech with a bear's claws had scarred the bark going up and down it. you can tell the down ones by the lengthy skid marks.
(i will get a better picture soon.)









we were toward the far side of trail, when we came upon a fir that stood out from its neighbors. it actually looked like it had pom-poms at the end of large sticks attached to the trunk instead of uniformly needled branches. pam and i had run across a tree just like this up behind our house on town hill. smaller needled branches littered the ground below both that tree and this one. i picked up a couple and was able to see they had been snipped off--probably with teeth...porcupine(s)! being a fairly heavy animal, they are limited as to how far out onto a branch they can feed. the needle bunches left at the ends of branches clearly showed that. it looked pretty bizarre.

double 'stump' in middle--
one fallen top in foreground...

one last foray off-trail ledus by what i took to be the tree that fell in the woods (a month or so back--scroll down in the "april fools" post) and definitely made a sound as i was there to hear it. about a 100 yards down the hill from where i originally heard it, we found two large downed tops. a double trunk, broken off about thirty feet up, stood a fair ways off, but that made sense as it was really windy that day they fell. the picture i got is not that great, but it shows one of the tops and you can see the trunks in the background.

we got back to al's truck and my bike about four hours after we started. and even though it rained or drizzled most of the way, alan never "bailed". as i rolled down to 4-A, i was already planning to bring pam out on the weekend.

turns out it was raining saturday and sunday. saturday the MOC trail crew, with skip and eben, did our first patrol. we hiked up the south ridge on cardigan and turned south on the skyland trail. i am planning to write something on that day alone--a grand day out deserves its own post!

not that these other days are less grand, in fact sunday was even wetter--how great is that! being mothers' day and having been invited down to sadie's and otavio's for a mid-day dinner, we left the house early and made it onto the trail about 9:30. that may not sound all that early for some, but considering that pam is often just getting out of bed at that time, at least on the weekends, it was for us. and yes, it was raining. nothing a raincoat couldn't handle, but fairly steady. i took her the short, direct way up to find the 'bear claw tree'. (most of these trails have names but i can't remember them.) we snapped a few pictures of that and one of a pileated woodpecker project. the huge pile of chips below the ten foot stump made me laugh, that bird was busy! turned out we watched the movie 'concussion' that night and dr. omalu--brilliantly acted by will smith--mentioned how woodpeckers' tongues wrapped around their brain and acted as shock absorbers. the shock absorption is still up for debate, but they do have air pockets about the brain which help them limit the impact. it was an interesting connection...

and speaking of interesting, we followed the same loop heading north alan and i had, looking for a really ancient sugar house complete with pieces of the evaporator. al and i had taken it out of the duff and set it up on the stone foundation where the trail passed. it looked really cool and you can still read the company name. i tried researching it on the web but didn't find much beyond the mention of the pat. given to the "hartford sorgum machine co." manufacturers of "cory's sugar evaporator"

the rain seemed to be coming down harder and we figured it was about time to turn back, get home, and clean up some. pam was also pretty excited to show me her little "moss mouse house" she had spotted a ways back. it was indeed cute, but looking at the picture we realized, things are just better when you see them 'live'!

"just better...live" does have its limits though. sadie and otavio, sawyer and hannah, gave pam a wonderful mother's day but when we tried to go outdoors to have our cake and eat it too, it started raining. oh well, the company was excellent--it was live after all, inside or out.

trailology 101...

...prepping to take MOC out to work on the mascoma side of the cardigan trails.





hiking with craig sanborn, might not be fast, but it is definitely rich: in trail work history, "we put those rocks there in 1985...that water bar in 2000...those four steps in 2015...", in trail work jargon: "that's a rbdd, rock bermed drainage dip...that rock spine is 'cake'...that one is 'toast'...", and in wit "i could be a professor of trailology--i may not have an endowed chair, but there are plenty of seats up in the mountains!" the chief of the cardigan higlanders volunteer trail crew took me out cruising today for a lesson on how he approaches trail work.




and indeed, work it is: from spring patrolling cutting out blowdowns and trimming new growth, building water bars or drainage dips, putting in steps, laying barricades or scree, to the regular cleaning of drainage. knowing how to use a shovel, mattock, and rake is basic. learning how to fell, peel, and saw trees to size, not to mention moving them, gets more involved. then learning to move and set stone, without wrecking anything--like your back--is yet another critical skill set. all these things, and more, take putting in solid hours; hiking the system, seeing what needs to be done, and doing it makes for good trails. i am looking forward to bringing MOC out and learning the art!

it was a fine day to be on the mountain, a day after our latest snow. it has been such a funny winter and now spring. we get a few days, a week, of warm--warm enough to get a first planting of peas and some greens in--then it dips down below twenty or snows. yesterday we got 3-5 inches of wet snow. it cleared overnight, the temperature dropped, and today at 1 o'clock when i pulled into the summer parking lot, i got this picture at the trailhead:

craig and i hiked and talked, talked and hiked, to just below the cascades, what i have referred to as the waterfall section in previous posts. a former student and MOC member, emily, stopped and chatted a bit when she passed us headed up. three other groups passed us both on their way up and then down. (like i mentioned earlier, we were not fast!) we had a final little discussion at our high point and arranged to meet next, soon, for a bit of paper work. i continued up and craig turned down. soon enough i ran into emily. she was ruddy cheeked from both the temp and the wind up on the bare rock. i got up there soon enough and snapped this picture of the west side of the tower:

the ice/snow was still fairly thick in the trees whereever the sun was not hitting it. i figured it was about 4 o'clock when i headed down myself. with all the snow i decided to take the upper ski trail and risk the underlying ice rather than slush puddles i slogged through after the upper bridge--i think craig called it clifford's bridge. the snow gave me footing for the most part though i did just 'go for it' at the bulge pictured below along with a shot on the left, of the upper section that leads to it:




if skip had been with me, he would have wanted his skis--i can hear him now, "best skiing ever!" well maybe he wouldn't have gone that far--maybe--but not having much to ski on this winter, it was fun to slide fast down this.

i did not slow much the rest of the way either. only once, when i passed a lone hiker resting atop a rock on her way up, fiddling with her earbuds. running downhill has one trick, which is really two, keep your lead foot in front of you and headed for something fairly solid. as i get older i suppose i am also limiting more the vertical i am willing to drop in a single bound. i have gotten good at just touching briefly with one foot on those big drops before switching quickly to the other foot--essentially speeding up until you can slow using your whole body rather than just your legs. it is invigorating, but don't fall--it hurts.

i made it down to the parking lot and saw craig still there, reading in his car. i thanked him again for my lesson and snapped a 5 o'clock picture of the trailhead, in the sun now and sans snow:

as i drove off mtn. i dreamed of future trail work days...that and dinner--i am always hungry.

a rolling stone...

supposedly gathers no moss. al strickland took a few of us out saturday for a hike around the bicknell brook loop over in enfield and showed us a bunch of it--moss that is! armed with field magnifying loupes, an atomizer for hydrating the moss, and al's passion for the miniature non-vascular plants, six of us set off into the woods. the first thing i noticed was that the black flies were out! not in force or biting--yet--but definitely more than a few. black flies 'hatch' in moving water and it being fairly dry so far this spring, i had hopes that this wouldn't be such a bad season. we shall see.

the dry was in evidence on our first couple of stops and al gave the examples a good spritzing as we started examining our first species. at one point, not too long after the start, we took off into the woods headed toward some pink flagging tape. it got swampier and swampier, with blow downs crisscrossing everywhere as we pulled up to a large birch (i think) covered in moss all around. there were two main species that i actually remember and pam took photos of: shingle and frizzy hook. at another off trail spot we saw a third, easier to identify larger species covering a boulder: stair step.

stair step moss

shingle moss

frizzy hook moss

the four-tooth moss is another common moss often found on tree stumps. without a fair amount of practice, mosses in general are not easy to distinguish without magnification. but a few of the species have characteristics that make them apparent even to the naked eye. (i love that expression...!) all mosses grow in wetter areas. some, like the peat mosses, grow in really wet areas. we saw one, spikey peat, in a constant wet spot next to a stream. surprisingly, there is a common moss that grows right in the stream: keeled water moss, sometimes refered to as greater water moss, maybe because it grows up to 15cm long. moss is usually much shorter as it has to get, and retain, nearly all its water through the leaves. right next to the bicknell brook, we found the last two species that i thought were easy to remember, palm tree and wavy starburst.

various moss species, a fern frond, some dead leaves, the bicknell brook...

it is worth noting that we also looked at three or four species of liverworts and the same amount of lichen. one 'leafy' liverwort, bazzania, looks very much like a moss. it has a very distinctive y-branching pattern to its stalks. i showed the group the two common lichen Genera that grow high up in dying or dead fir trees: Usnea and Evernia. the first is the one with an elastic thread of fungus covered by the algae. it is highly sensitive to air pollution carried on blowing winds. the second is a flatter, maybe thicker version, with a fungus that breaks easily and leaves fuzzy ends rather than the thread of Usnea. Evernia is fairly tolerant of air pollution.

we got back to the cars around five-ish with enough moss info swirling around our brains to keep us busy for a while. i will have to pick up the common mosses guide that al's moss mentor helped author with her father and two others. being out in the woods was a great cap stone atop the mornings' work at the ces garden/outdoor classroom. being out-side is always preferable to in-, especially with good people.

speaking of good people, the MOC moonrise sunset hike was taken in by six of us, and one dog, on thursday evening. we left the parking lot around 6:30 realizing that the usual crowd were away at a track meet and waiting around wouldn't grow our group any bigger. the hiking trail was nearly ice free with nothing that couldn't be safely navigated with just shoes or boots. it was cool enough to make hiking along at a fairly quick, youthful rate comfortable. nobody was sweating--too much. just as we topped out and dropped our packs we spotted the moon starting to peak above the eastern haze.

on the western front, the cloud bank was much bigger and i snapped the picture with our band silhouetted against the sun sandwiched between two layers just before it disappeared.

just three other hikers besides MOC were up enjoying the views. we started down when the sun dropped behind the lowest cloud line. it was a very pleasant descent with enough light from the moon that only one headlamp came out, and then only for one particularly 'shaded' gully. a lone car--the other three people on top--remained as we motored off satisfied with april's moon-sun 'ablution'.

a ton and a half more cars greeted pam and i today when we pulled into the parking lot this morning. it was sunday, not too cool, with plenty of blue sky, so i imagined the people with those cars--from all across new england, including new york state--were looking for an outdoor church experience.

folks were fairly spread out along the various trails. we took a few of the ski trail loops to keep that feeling. up at the connector over to hurricane gap and the amc alexandria lodge side there were a few icy spots that were really sketchy. i stepped to the side to let a woman go by and schwoop she skidded off her feet onto her butt. her mother came running up all worried and schwoop, followed her daughter down. i stepped away but remembered that spot for the way down. we made one other stop to take a picture of three younger hikers perched above 'turn around rock' and then made it to the top. i saw an old student--graduated in '97--and got his son to read the anemometer i keep in my pack: 15-20mph.

we ate a snack bar and headed down. just below the waterfall zone, we ran across a hiker that had passed us on the way up and then started the descent before we did. he was clearly concerned and stopped us to report, "we lost an engagement ring somewhere on the trail..." i didn't hold out too much hope for finding it, but i hiked back up a ways and then down again with my eyes glued to the ground. (another eye expression that paints a great image.) no luck, but i left an email address just in case i ran across it later. i ran off to try and catch pam who had kept hiking and caught her on the last ski trail section. long story short, we got home, ate a bit of lunch, and sat down to an email from the couple--"WE FOUND THE RING!!!" that was amazing and made another great end to a fine day.

life is good...!