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Conservation Commission

Conservation and More

              by Bruce B. Beckley

Issue #47, May 12, 1998
A Walk in Joe English Reservation

Let’s take a walk. This will be a walk to tune eyes and ears to the erupting sights and sounds of nature’s spring-tide rebirth. It is not to cover ground or to be an aerobic experience. The narrative is based on a casual meandering I enjoyed on April 30. It is time-dated. Nature doesn’t wait for me to write or our publisher to put this in your hands. But she does give us new enjoyments every day. So, let’s go.

The relocated Hammond Brook trail, now marked with blue blazes, leaves the Joe English Reservation parking area following a former logging road. In 300 feet we come to a seasonal stream. Just to the left a venerable white oak stands with its roots sipping from the stream and its trunk protected from the logger’s saw by the stone wall. This tree is typical of several oaks in the reservation, all about 150 years old, growing out of stone walls and providing nest cavities where limbs have rotted away. Note the freshly clawed bark around the knothole about 30 feet up. Whose home is that?

Around the bend in the trail we come to the first of several trail improvements made by Eagle Scout candidate Jon Hills and friends using materials donated by Wilkins Lumber Company. The crew also relocated and improved the beginning of the Bicentennial Trail which we now pass on the left.

In a short distance, another logging road remnant forks left to the edge of Hammond Brook. See how waters from rain and the rapid snow melt rose over the banks in March and swept away the leaves more effectively (and more quietly) than a team of leaf blowers. Today mosses and Canada mayflower are creating an emerald carpet bespeckled with the blossoms of dwarf genseng, wood anemone, jacks in the pulpit, bell flower, gold thread, gaywings and clintonia. Rising above them are the fiddleheads of many fern species and higher yet the blossoming shadbush and highbush blueberry begin a season which will produce bird food by late summer. Dainty yellow clusters of yellow blossoms decorate the spicebush branches reaching over the brook.

In earlier years, I would enjoy working my way down a stream, pulling out branches and leaf dams to release one pool into another creating a crescendo of sound and flow. I’ve stopped doing that even though I still enjoy it. I’ve come to realize that these pools hold back for a slower release decaying organic matter which becomes food for downstream feeders in the food chain. It’s interesting to reflect that detritus from Hammond Brook may have a part in feeding the off-shore fishery.

Back on the trail away from the brook we see a less varied species composition. Although moist today, these woods soon will be drier and shaded by the high maple - oak canopy. On the left, just before the orange-blazed wood road branches right, is a former log landing. About 25 years ago this opening was used to introduce several species of plants and shrubs. Today, we can still find rhododendron, rhodora, winterberry (a native holly), and mandrake which is blossoming now. I don’t know what else may have been introduced. Young hemlock and white pine will soon recapture the former clearing overshadowing the shrubs. Question: should we let nature take her course or maintain the man-made opening?

One hundred feet beyond the intersection with the orange trail look across the brook to the left. Jumbles of granite blocks like this occur naturally in many locations on the reservation creating favorable den sites for porcupines. These rocks are no exception. Although unoccupied now (no visible scat or trail), the heavily pruned hemlocks on the south side of the outcropping show that porky once used them for a handy kitchen garden.

Going back to the orange trail, take that trail with open ears and eyes for a return to old Brook Road and views of the beaver family’s engineering. Someday we can walk again. I look forward to your company.

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