A Year in the Forest

When I started into the woods this afternoon, I was immediately confronted with a big new mushroom right next to my trail.  It was bright orange and looked just like a big batch of morels.  Since I had just started my hike I left them.  I planned on coming back and picking them when my wife got home from work and having them for dinner.  I was elated looking forward to the good meal.  I looked around a little, tried to find some hickory nuts to harvest but found very little of interest.  Besides my mind was filled with visions of chanterelle mushrooms.

When I had almost finished my hike I found a beautiful Amanita mushroom.  Maybe its because they are poisonous, I don’t know but they are always so perfect and unspoiled.  A beauty to behold.

I went in the house and waited for Karen to get home.  When she did I eagerly took her out to harvest the chanterelle and was in for a big disappointment.  When I picked it I noticed that it had gills and was not chanterelle after all.  It was a Jack O Lantern mushroom.   What a disappointment, there was at least a pound of mushroom.

Trying to redeem the situation, I decided to try an experiment.  Jack O Lantern mushrooms are said to glow green in the dark.  I have seen foxfire many times in the woods and thought I would try this.  My son and I went into the basement, closed the doors and waited.  Sure enough after about ten minutes we could both see the green glow.  It was not near as bright as foxfire though.  There are stories of how early settlers found there way by the light of Jack O Lantern mushrooms – the mushrooms would have to be a lot brighter than these to be of any use.  So at least I got to see the green glow of Jack O Lantern mushrooms.

Took a walk through the woods with my wife today.  It really is dry.  A couple weeks ago, it was dry but you could walk through the woods and see leaves filled with dew and other signs of moisture, but not now.  At least the trees have not started to drop leaves as a result of the dryness.  At least it is relatively cool.  Today for the first time I can remember the wind was blowing hard enough that you could feel breezes down in the stream bed.  It did make the walk much more pleasant.

The only new thing I noticed was that the deer appear to like the trails a lot.  It is hard to walk very far at all now without seeing deer scat.  Even on the new segment, I just completed a couple of days ago, deer scat is already starting to appear.  Its nice to know I am making it easier on the wildlife.  I will admit that my trail layout took advantage of existing deer trails, but they have become much more heavily used since I cleared them.

After completing the layout and clearing of the last trail segment this past weekend, I walked the complete main trail loop today.  The trail starts out on the top of the ridge in a nice open area.    This picture is pretty typical of the upland areas.  Just as I was starting to go down into the stream area I encountered the biggest two-color bolete I have ever seen.  It was about 4 1/2 inches across the top of the cap and a full 3/4 inch thick.  I, of course, harvested it and took it back to the house and cooked it for a pre-dinner snack.  But before I did that I continued on down into the stream bed.  Here is a picture of the stream bed.    You will notice how much darker the stream area is even during bright sun.  I have often gotten down there and began to wonder if night was falling.  The reason for the darkness is that the under story of paw paw trees is so thick here that little light gets down to ground level.  Continuing on down the stream I took a detour to snap a picture of some deer bones.  This deer died and was scavenged by the local animals, probably mainly fox and coyote.  The bones are spread over quite an area but here is the backbone, ribs and skull.    The deer carcass started out further up the hill and I have found hind quarters bones up there.  The main carcass was dragged down into the bottoms and leg and pelvic bones are spread out in the area.  The bones are spread out through rugged terrain for over 1500 feet.

On the way back to the house I picked up a couple dozen black walnuts and laid them on the driveway to dry in the sun.  In the past, I have never thought black walnuts were worth the trouble, but hope springs eternal.

I got up and headed out into the forest early.  It is very hot and humid and I wanted to get the final trail segment cleared.  With it cleared I have one trail that basically goes around the perimeter of my property.  It covers about 1 mile of ground and over 100 feet of elevation change.  It would be considered a rugged trail.  This is the trail I hope to walk every day for the next year.  At the very least, I should be in better physical shape when the year is done. 

The first thing that greeted me when I entered the forest was the sound of walnuts falling to the ground.  The ground is fairly steep here falling into a little ravine between two ridges.  The bottom of the ravine is on bedrock.  It makes a nice walkway at this time of year since there is not enough ground water to make a flow.  There are several pools where frogs live and wildlife come to drink.  The thing I noticed today, however, is that ravine acts like a natural trough collecting the falling walnuts.  I found one depression that had ot have 100 walnuts in it.  While I was there I could hear more walnuts falling and see them rolling into this natural collection point.  I am sure the squirrels love this place.  I will come back in the next couple of days and bag up some of the walnuts for myself.

While Karen, my wife, and I were walking through the stream area we began looking for the paw-paw fruit.  The area is full of paw-paw trees.  Paw-Paw trees are understory trees fond of stream beds and have the largest native fruit of the continent.  Looking around we found them – 20 feet in the air!  I guess we will have to be here when they fall to collect any.  Coons, fox, opossum and other woodland creatures like paw-paw also and I am sure they are watching for the harvest too.

When I entered the forest this evening, I came upon a deer.  There is nothing quite like having a deer snort at you and run off.  This deer was not really afraid of me and stopped after its show of strength and turned around and looked at me.  We looked at each other for a few minutes and I started to slowly continue my entry into the forest.  At this point, the deer turned and ran down to the bottom of the stream bed.  When I started moving again it bounded down the stream bed and crashed off into the woods on the other side.  They are really noisy when they are running like that.

Finally when the deer had gotten out of ear shot I began to notice that it sounded like big rain drops falling.  I followed the noise until I was directly under it.  And it was raining alright, raining nut hulls.  Apparently the black walnut were ripe the the squirrels were busy de-hulling them.  I just stood there and watched and listened as the hulls rained down around me.  I have been in oak nut showers before but never a walnut shower.  It was rather interesting.  I looked around and noticed several piles of walnut hulls where the squirrels had apparently found a nut on the ground and hulled it there.

I usually just were sandals when I am out hiking but the last couple of days I have come back with my ankles on fire, so I wore a pair of socks this time.  It worked except where the socks didn’t cover.  Next time I will try bug spray.  I am not sure if its bugs biting or green brier scratching me that is causing the discomfort.  The woods are really dry – its been dry and hot lately.  I hope for rain soon to soften things up.