Part 2 of Two Hikes on a Spring Trail

Last week I took you on a hike in Roaring Brook WMA and as promised, here is the same hike along the same trail on the same afternoon in March. To my thoughts, Wayne's objective for this particular hike remains obscure; but the dogs and I were more than happy to tag along.

This is the VAST trail that connects the Vernon Town Forest to RBWMA . It descends Huckle Hill to Vermont Woods Studio, crosses Huckle Hill road and continues through the Village. 

We've hiked up and down this way many times. Ginny and Luna know the way well.

Wayne looking to satisfy a curiosity about a trail he thought branched off from here. 

While Ginny was more interested in taking her first swim of the season.

 Luna hikes the same trail time and time again with her nose in the lead. To Luna, this trail changes with every hike. Without her long lead attached, she would be off chasing bears.

As for me?  Sometimes Wayne grows impatient with my inquiries into nature. 

He follows his path and I follow mine.

Until something captures both of our attentions and gives us pause. We see this practice often in the RBWMA. One mature seed tree in a stand of saplings.

Even though this trail is well worn and straight forward, this upturned tree on the trail is a landmark for me. I have no sense of direction whatsoever and so coming upon it brings with it a sense of place. Someday, as it should be, this tree will be reclaimed and I will have no choice but to move on from its comfort.

We find ourselves walking atop of last year's bounty. Last year lays on top of the year before, which has turned into soil from which new growth comes. It takes about two years for oak leaves to decompose.

Here is where Wayne went off script and reclaimed his hike from me. We had arrived at the steep hill snowmobile sign and he decided that we had missed the elusive branch in the trail he was in search of.

 

He walked right through what only can be described as a paper birch graveyard and past what looked to be an old cellar hole. Wayne had heard rushing water and decided to find it.

Streams forming several paths intersected at this one place even though our maps didn't show any in this area. Wayne chose one and we followed it.

All new paths seem to go uphill.

One last look at the remains of winter flowing down into the valley awakening all that it touches.

We decided to follow the stream up to its headwaters. 

What we found was a catch basin surrounded by hills and ledge.

A horseshoe formed of stone.

Wayne once again waiting for me as I made connections,

at the place where the water sprang up from the earth and where water flowed down the rock to fill the basin on it's way down to the pools and river. 

Then rejoining Wayne,

to discover that we were at yet another place just steps from the main trail. A place where nature repeats her message on another canvas. Two hikes on the same day, on the same trail, at the same time. -Norma Manning

Two Hikes on a Spring trail

 I follow two groups on social media Horse Plus Humane Society and Help Alberta Wildies Society.  Horse Plus is dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming of discarded horses destined for the slaughterhouses in Mexico and, in the face of intense competition for grazing land, HAWS is committed to sustaining a population of wild horses in Alberta Canada.

I'm not someone who is likely to select "follow" on social media, I currently live on a one acre lot and I have never owned a horse, so as anyone can plainly see, I am an unlikely candidate to be a consumer of these particular causes. But, I am a heavy consumer of hope, the people who have it and the people who are willing to work for it. My groupie status makes perfect sense once you understand that these are my people. So it is with unabridged enthusiasm that I carry on one sided conversations with Wayne about how the theme is Spring when naming the latest rescues, even as Wayne has reached his limit with mournful songs paired with neglected animals on tv commercials. 

Ahhh Spring Break, that time of year when Vermonters join the rest of New England in mass exodus of the last gasps of winter in order to cheat the system!  Social media fills with hordes of photographs of sun thirsty friends with colorful beverages on exotic beaches. It's not unlike I imagine, the scene above where gazillions of insects on cue emerge from the frozen land, swarming on the water in hopes of meeting like minded individuals. As for those of us left behind in the thawing north? We are gardeners. We have started our seeds and can't possibly risk losing them now. I don't mean to brag in the face of beach umbrellas in the sand, but I have two daffodils and a handful of crocuses in bloom right now.

I'm not saying that I have never gamed the system and bought a bouquet of tulips, forced forsythia or gone in search of an early spring. That doesn't make me any less of a sower of seeds, we have an entire maple industry after all, that depends on that perfect niche where winter is exiting and spring is entering. This industry is tapping the sugar bush long before the rest of us have hung up our jiggers.

 And so it was with all of this in mind, that Wayne and I went on a walk in the waning weeks of March, I in search of spring and Wayne in search of some obscure trail that branched off of the one that we have hiked many times before.

I hadn't intended on writing a blog about this, but did you notice the blue sign? Not only is it the only blue sign that we encountered on the trail, it is also repurposed and posted upside down in order for the arrow to point us travelers the right direction! So there you have it, wrong color, upside down, correct direction...isn't exploration fun?

It was glaringly apparent that the trail that the blue sign was pointing us towards, was riddled with copious amounts of mud and water.

Now don't lose hope just yet of me taking you along on our hike, I'm just not going to do so today. Beth once asked me why I spent so much time in the woods. A fatal error asked of someone who finds it difficult to get directly to the point. Within my answer, I said to her that there are so many kinds of moss in the Vernon Town Forest and Roaring Brook and I don't know a single name for any of them.

Think about that for a moment. All of those verities of  beautiful, various shades of green moss waiting beneath the snow for spring to arrive. And when spring does finally arrive, they collectively go to work absorbing up to 20 times their own weight in water, preventing erosion and aiding in the nutrient cycle...and I haven't a clue as to what they are called. 

Did you also notice that on the tree behind the blue sign and on the rocks pictured above are lichen? "Lichen are a complex life form that is a symbiotic partnership of two separate organisms, a fungus and an alga" (USDA Forest Service). Of course! how could I forget to toss in fungi whose function is the decomposition of plant material to aid in nutrient uptake? 

Put this all together, and now you've got a spring break in the forest worth attending! And so I did. I pressed my hand deep into a mound of forest green moss and watched the water rise up between my fingers. I aimed my camera at water seeping from the earth then dripping from moss covered rocks before gathering on the forest floor. I even slipped on one such rock leaving me with a colorful souvenir on my ribs. This is the hike that I am taking you on today. We'll take a look at Wayne's hike perhaps next week.

A colony thriving within the boundaries of another colony.

Stay with us, you may be surprised at what you find to be beautiful.

This one reminds me of ferns and that may be exactly what it is. But I will include it here as it causes me wonder about how it is that we could ever  think of March as a barren condition in need of escape.

So many shapes and colors, so many intricate details make up the whole of the early spring woods!

With each aspect serving to fulfill a function within the whole. There is hope if we take the time and energy to sustain and appreciate it. 

Examine more closely the sign illustrated by the unknown artist that I discovered while walking in a building filled with signs of hope. These are my people and Vernon is my town. -Norma Manning