Thursday Hikers

Cold, gray weather today but wearing all that Hunters Orange kept us warm, and filled the forest with color. We had three hiking guests today: Tony’s friends from Alaska: Sam, a geologist, and his wife Tako, an Arctic botanist and local Rema, an artist and writer. We found a stump sprouted tree so huge at the base it seemed as large as a redwood. Crossing over a moss covered stone bridge built in the 1830s, Sam checked out its footings from the stream that ran beneath it. The trail is very steep for a while, then runs along the ridge with views as far as Mt. Monandock. Because there is no interesting/distracting plant life anymore (well of course there’s always mosses, fungi, and lichens) we just started finding all sorts of other things such as a Pin Oak with galls visible way up in its canopy. We found a fallen branch with galls and examined it closely; a huge old stump that we thought might have been an American Chestnut, but was more likely a very very old Oak; flowing tree sap that had frozen as it seeped out and that’s Sam and Tako with their improvised Hunter Orange “vests”. We tromped on a lot of “needle ice”. It’s always fun to see. (And stomp.) At hike’s end, Lissa, Conrad and myself found a tree stump with slices cut resembling a big jig saw puzzle. We took some time to reconstruct if just for the sheer fun of it. It helped that Conrad happens to be an engineer:) Huge surprise! Deb and Annie met us as we were just ending the hike. Deb joined us for lunch at Elmer’s Store. Good eats! I had the Grilled cheddar with caramelized onions and apples on Rye. We drank many pitchers of ice water and just sat around enjoying each others company. Next week: Mineral Springs! Love, Penny