Accessing Autumn: Part Three

 "To advise, foster and sustain a community wide vision that Vernon's natural resources are an integral part of who we are and what we seek to conserve, restore and improve upon for the mutual benefit of all its inhabitants."- Vernon Conservation Committee mission statement: (Ratified 10/ 26/2021).

This is the third part in the series that includes "Hunting for Autumn" and "In Search of Autumn." I previously discussed the work of the Vernon Trailbreakers Snowmobile Club's efforts to maintain and establish trails within Vernon's borders and the Vernon Recreation Department's initiative to develop a master plan that in part aims to improve and extend to Vernon residents a connection to a town wide trail system. In this edition (as promised) I will bring you on an Autumn picture walk on a portion of Vernon VAST trail 1 which traverses VT state lands in the Roaring Brook Wildlife Management Area.

For reference purposes, I do not recommend that motorists attempt to access the trail from the end of West Rd as this route bisects the driveway of a horse farm and a small scale logging operation. Additionally, the resident dogs are wholly unappreciative of automobiles.

Not far from the posted yellow state sign, we came upon a familiar gate harkening back to our April adventure, From Miller Farm to Maynard J Town Forest. We had first found this gate after a long hike which began with us parking at the Vernon Town Hall. We were surprised by the quick access to VAST trail 1 from the top of West Rd.

One quick picture of Autumn leaves resting on an Eastern Hemlock sapling,

and we were upon the powerlines, a view of NH mountains and the Connecticut River Valley.

Though we had achieved our goal in short order, Wayne decided that we should continue south to the Roaring Brook Extension trail.

We never made it to the extension as I voted to take an unmarked trail heading west.

Well perhaps not so much as a trail as an adventure.

Many seasonal pools remain due to a wet summer

Power lines to the east of us

Power lines to the west of us

We decided on the east trail.

Though still on her long lead, Luna felt the need to blaze her own trail.

We found ourselves above the vista on the VAST 1 trail. VY can be seen from here.

I spent some time performing an "archaeological" dig. 

I was pretty proud of my pottery reclamation, though I'm not entirely sure of what it was.

 Another look at the view

and it was time to head back.

How could I resist one more picture?

A while back Don Rosinski made a request of Vernon residents that we pen letters to the state in an effort to persuade them that Lillis Pasture (on the north side of RBWMA / off of Tyler Hill Rd) be purchased and added to the the Roaring Brook Wildlife Management Area. I along with many others obliged in this request. This land acquisition is now completed. I believe that in cooperation with the state of VT, the Vernon Selectboard, Vernon Planning Commission, Vernon Recreation Department, Trailbreakers Snowmobile Club and the newly formed Vernon Conservation Committee, this could be the ideal opportunity to locate parking on the north end of the RBWMA. Parking combined with intentionally developing / improving equitable access to the trail system and our natural resources for persons of all abilities, in my estimation should be a community and state priority. -Norma Manning

Reconnecting with Vernon

"I wouldn't say really good I just enjoy being in the woods " -Michael D Root

Some statements really resonate with me. They prompt me to form connections, then they start to form sentences which eventually turn into an entire blog. 

Wayne and I decided to be dedicated Candlepin bowlers pre covid pandemic, not because we initially loved the sport; but because we were in search of a thing to connect with. Truth be told, I was terrible at bowling and I never seemed to get any better with our weekly games. I looked forward to people watching, patting the owner's dogs, eating doughy pizza and laughing like a kid when our feet slid out from under us. So when our adult children visited, we brought them along for the whole experience, not just the stiff competition.

 I'm a firm believer in finding a reason to love something (or someone), perhaps this is why one of my all time favorite songs is R.E.M.'s Stand. 

When our kids were small, back in the days when we were chronically exhausted and we didn't have any money in the budget for entertainment, we used to pack them up along with a red and black checkered blanket to attend area concerts in the park. I'll never forget the one time I took the kids on my own and was happily watching them twirl and dance to the music, when a stranger with a baby in her arms walked over and sat down next to me on that blanket. Just like that I met a kindred spirit. 

Friends of Vernon Center hosted a community gathering last weekend at the Governor Hunt House as a way to celebrate what I think of as an initiative to rebuild connectedness. This is what small towns are all about. Though I think that when times and situations are tough small towns are at their best, there is important reason to gather without any other purpose than to talk with friends and meet new ones. Small towns after all, seem to be filled with old family history deserving to be told and those neighbors longing to begin their family's history in them. 

The band played music from an older generation but it felt like going home to me

I enjoy Donald's drive by conversations in the neighborhood. Once my hound quiets down I have just about one to three minutes to grasp some of the best updates with regards to nature doings in town. Don's a hunter, a dedicated Vernon Trail Breakers member and a quiet champion of conservation. If I could only learn to keep my own mouth shut once that truck window goes down, I'd know a lot more about Vernon than I do. On this day, I came away with his sentiment that neighbors don't seem to be outside this summer. I'm wondering Don, if that doesn't have something to do with these man eating mosquitos? But Don has a point, here we are almost at the start of school year and the neighborhood is quiet. 

Kids sent outdoors on long summer days often discover that the best toys are those they find when their imagination connects with nature.

Wayne and I have hiked the town forest trails together many times. I'm a bit of a slow hiker and so I am shy of joining others when venturing out. Wayne says that I am slow because I am always stopping to look at things and I suspect that he is partly right. I never seem to get tired of walking the familiar trails and taking the opportunity to get acquainted with something (okay, everything) I find along the way. 

One day Sandy, a coworker of mine at Vernon Elementary School, asked if I would be willing to show her around the J. Maynard Miller Town Forest; and before we knew it, an informal group of us had a budding tradition on our hands. Now I'm as eager as the next person to put my work life aside come summer; but this has become something of a truly special gathering of coworkers. At first I had thought that the point of the venture was to hike as much of the forest as possible in a couple of  hours. I soon became aware that my friends were falling further and further behind which is a position that I practically never find myself in. A quick refocus on my part and I discovered that they were talking about everything, and none of it had to do with hiking. On our subsequent ventures, I came less prepared for hiking and more prepared for reconnecting with good people in a place that I love.

Cheryl telling us the story about how the hawk she rescued from a treacherously busy road took off the moment she and Peter released it.

Jill shares pictures from her vacation out west.

Jill and Helen take a minute to catch up. 

On the day that it was announced that the Vernon Recreation Department's new nine hole Disk Golf course was ready to go, without asking Wayne, I purchased a beginner disk set for each of us. When the sets arrived, Wayne and I walked over to the course where I learned that I am worse at Disk Golf than I am at Candlepin Bowling. Soon, I began to lament that someone had mistakenly wrote "par 3" where they actually meant to write par 10! The course begins in the open ball field which can be looked at in two ways. On the one hand the disks were safe from being lost as they sailed in the complete opposite direction at which I was throwing them. On the other hand, there I was with the whole town having an unobstructed view of my "skills." It was with some relief that we entered the woods in spite of the mosquitoes feasting upon us and the poor trees taking on a good battering from my disks. 

Somewhere along the course we discovered a Geo Cache box and after I had posted about it on the Vernon Vermont Facebook Group, I fell into a conversation with Michael D Root from where the beginning quote in this entry came. My readers can only guess how relieved I am to connect with another resident who joins in on games because of some other more poetic reason than being a pro at it.

I stopped counting on the first hole, but still I felt like a champion when it went in!

Now how did this picture of me and Jen winning the silver medal in Cornhole get here? -Norma Manning

The Accidental Science Project

 Wayne and I spent the heat of the summer fixing up an old gazebo that we probably won't spend a lot of time in now that the fall  is upon us. As part of that restoration we installed a fish pond which promptly turned a murky dark green- how charming. I had never considered that area to be sunny as there is a Bradford Pear tree not five feet from the pond with branches that reach over the gazebo. The stubborn rise in algae proved that I should have planted sun loving Bee Balm there instead of Cinnamon Fern.

 "The Accidental Farmer Cafe" is a business in South Hero VT, whose name I am fond of as it rings truth in how many of my pastimes came to be. My mother being allergic to fur bearing animals presented me with my first pet around the age on nine. While I dreamt of a German Shepard or perhaps a Mustang, I embraced my new goldfish companion.  My goldfish bowl eventually lead to a ten then twenty gallon aquarium. At one point we had two twenty gallon tanks then a fifty, a tiny fish pond and finally (I say with some certainty), a fifty gallon fish pond in the summer with the 50 gallon aquarium being their winter home. My tank is in the dark basement for the same reasons that I should have found a more suitable spot for my pond. 

Wayne "wondered" out loud and in my direction, if we had any fish at all left in the pond as he could no longer see them. He suggested that I add second fountain pump but with a filter, so I relocated the one from our original (now fishless) pond out front. When this failed to clear things up, I tossed a Plecostomus  (an algae eating fish) into the mix. Wayne also informed me that the problem was too much food and so I cut back on that. Eventually I resorted to partial water change every three days and added a pond algicide. Imagine my surprise this week when I not only discovered that I still had fish, but also a frog! To recap; this pond is 50 gallons, has nine fish that are fed, no plants, is in direct sunlight part of the day and has two pumps one of which has a filter.

Not to be outdone, our 15 to 20 gallon pond out front acquired a rather portly toad who happily takes a dip in its crystal clear water; but mostly it just sits in the spot that the duck fountain splashes the water over the edge. To recap: the clear pond has no fish, no fish food, no plants, no direct sunlight, a super cute toad and a non filtering duck fountain.

A curiosity took over me and soon I was making pit stops in the usual places for an unusual reason. I tend to file conversations in the back of my head like a camera stores photographs in the cloud. This accidental science project (I use science loosely here) opened my conversation files and out came Ian Deyo who wanted to learn more about the thick mats of gunk that float to the surface of Lily pond around the end of July. Ian stated that he couldn't remember there being a problem with them while growing up. I believe that the mats are algae and my best guess is Philamentous; but given there are 30,000 species of algae, some of which are toxic, it would be best to send a sample to a lab. Wayne and I walked to the pond a couple of Saturdays ago to get a closer look at the algae, only to discover that our moderate drought had separated us from the pond water by a stretch of bad smelling mud, goose prints and decaying lily pads.

I thought that it would be best to redirect our efforts again to a more controlled environment. With chlorine and fresh water no longer being added, the filters no longer operating and the children dispersed back into the community, I thought for sure that the town pool would no longer be its usual pristine self. What we found there however, tempted me to scale the fence to take a dip. So I flagged Seth Deyo down to answer a few questions. Seth confirmed that the pool was closed and when it was open they used chlorine that  maintains the pool's ph around 7.4. He suggested that I go back to check things out as they had drained the water down and things were starting to get green. To recap: When filled and operating the pool is clear. Shortly after turning things off the pool is clear, one week later without operating systems and with significantly less water in the pool it is green with algae. Direct sunlight all day, no fish, no plants, no added nutrients, temperatures had dropped into the 50's at night and the 70's during the day. 

I was seriously beginning to think that there was no rhyme or reason for why some bodies of water turn green while others don't! I wanted to give it one last observation before tossing in the towel and that involved actually getting into the petri dish if you will. I had been trying to visit the Vernon Dam fish ladder all spring and summer but found it closed each attempt. So this weekend we took a trip up to the Bellows Falls fish ladder. There we were greeted by the Nature Museum Environmental Education Intern Tristan Hayes. After a thorough introduction to what awaited us, we entered the exhibit. Wayne of course thoughtfully viewed it all while I bolted down the stairs to the observation area in search of green.

Before racing back to have another chat with Tristan, I followed Waynes' example and stopped to read a chart titled, "Benthic Macroinvertebrates as Water Quality Indicators" I mention this because a wide variety and high number of these aquatic animals and insects (without backbones), points to good water quality; and yet clearly several kinds of algae were present. Also, it seemed that some of these creatures were feeding on the algae. Tristan added to this information, explaining that when the fish ladder opened to the public in the spring during a long cool period, the glass was clear. Then on July 4th with  unseasonably high temperatures, the fish migration seemed to stall and the glass became heavily covered with algae. Recap: Swiftly moving, uncontained and aerated river water when cool was associated with fish migration and little algae growth. A prolonged period of high air temperature was associated with algae, Macroninvertebrates indicates good water quality, September presented with diminishing algae in both brown and green colors and a variety of algae types. 

While I know that it seems that we are no closer to solving our mystery, I will have to take up the trail in my next installment. Until then, If it is in the water, has an odor and / or  is blue-green, keep yourself and your pets away.- Norma Manning

Small Farm Pond at the South End of Pond Road

Planktonic Algae -Penn State

How to Identify Different Algae Types -SePro Corporation

What is Algae? -Department of Environmental Conservation