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Conservation Commission

Conservation and More

              by Bruce B. Beckley

Issue #133, January, 2003
The Nature of Winter

A red pea-sized dot in a snowy depression beside the trail stopped our descent. Red as the ribbon on a holiday wreath, it was truly blood red. The depression in the snow, about three handfuls in size wasn’t scooped out, it was blown out by the force of an owl striking its red squirrel dinner.

Hardly any tracks were present this morning on the 14 inches of snow that had fallen, snow on snow. Here though, there were unmistakable tracks telling the story of predator and victim, the hunter and the hunted. The tracks told a short but violent story, one taking only seconds to play out.

The big owl was perched on a broken limb of an old yellow birch overhanging the ski trail 20 feet below. Silently it sat, like a bump on a branch scarred years ago by another winter’s ice. It waited and watched. The red squirrel had crossed the trail once before going from one hollow tree to another. His tracks recorded the successful round trip. Perhaps these tracks were what first caught the owl’s attention. Then Red tried once again to reach his larder of beechnuts and maple seeds. Kerwhap!

The owl’s yellow eyes, equally effective in daylight as under a starlit sky, spotted the bounding squirrel. Down plunged the owl. The talons made contact. The powerful wings, over two feet in span, beat down leaving the snow etched by each feather. The owl never stopped. One more wing beat registered in the snow as the boreal hunter took its prey to a warm, nourishing dinner leaving only one red dot on the pristine snow.

Another Trail – Another Day

It’s been three days since that heavy snow but nightly dustings have given each twig and needle a white highlighting. The scenery at every turn is a virtual re-creation of a Drury print for a Currier and Ives lithograph.

The trail we follow today in the state’s largest protected area leads up to Mad River Notch, away from the Spandex and slim skis of the valley. It’s a relief to find that a few others have already broken trail. In years past we opened the way with younger legs. Mountains memorializing Native American leaders watch as we pass: Techumseh, a Shawnee; Osceola, chief of the Seminoles; and finally hoary Kancamagus, chieftan of the Penacooks standing on our right.

The sun has long been cut off by the shoulder of East Peak but the light reflected from the frost and snow covered balsams and spruce on the slopes above keeps the narrow valley softly lighted. The river beside us barely speaks, its voice and flow locked under two feet of ice and snow. The same snow caps the room-sized erratics plucked 15,000 years ago from Osceola’s cliffs by the ice sheet. The lichens and polypody ferns that cover the granite are bedded down ‘til spring.

Overhead, a few chickadees have been dissecting the birch catkins and red squirrels seek the seeds hidden within the evergreen cones. Today it is cold so that the cone and catkin detritus littering the trail does not stick to the wax, but wait until the day when klister becomes necessary. Ugh!

The forest critters were on the move last night as hunger drives them to search for food in this white world. The varying hare moves about, seemingly effortlessly, nibbling the young birch and maple shoots in an area logged five years ago. The tracks display the flotation his broad furry feet provide. Another snowshoer on modern shoes walking nearby sank eight inches into the powder, but the hare can launch itself six feet and leave tracks less than two inches deep.

Tracks of fox and a solitary deer come to an opening in the river’s ice for water. A few smaller tracks can be seen by the water, possibly those of a mink.. And smallest of all are the dainty mouse tracks, less than an inch apart with the trace of its long tail leaving a pencil line between the footprints, scampering to regain cover across the trail before fox, owl or fisher can intervene.

It’s wonderful the story the frozen pages of winter can tell. How fortunate we are to have the forests to visit, to find familiar trees and critters even in strange settings, to have had our eyes opened by some teacher in years past, to have a warm bed and meal to return to after a day of exploration. Would that all could be so endowed.

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