Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/20/2020 – Walk in the Forest
/Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
The unique activity for yesterday was a very pleasant walk in the forest behind our house all the way down to the river (a winding path of at least 1/3 mile down…and then back up the same way.
We entered the forest at the back of our yard on a path made by deer between a black walnut – just beginning to leaf out - and a large tuple poplar. There were many violets on both sides of the narrow path. I had tucked my pants into my socks to make a barrier to ticks.
The forest floor seemed to be covered with garlic mustard (invasive) with a few spring beauties where it wasn’t so dense. A large tree had fallen recently with dirt still clinging to the roots. The red maple in our yard keeps me from seeing the area from my office window.
There were several dogwoods just beginning to bloom.
We joined a trail used by horses from a nearby stable…wider than the deer trail. Spice bush is the most prevalent understory tree.
Flowers were blooming, there were sounds of moving water, and a few bugs were around too. We heard two different woodpecker sounds.
There were several different kinds of ferns. I always like to photograph fiddleheads!
And then the small stream we had been following joined the river. It was quite different from the last time we had been there more than a decade ago. Two trees had fallen recently (one still had green leaves on it). The trunks spanned the river. The trees had made what had been a riverside path into a cliff. There were some alternative places down to the water level but not in the immediate vicinity. We took a few pictures of flowers and headed back up the hill.
Along the way, I noticed that there was a stand of hemlock that appeared to be healthy – no wooly adelgid. The hemlocks that we had been able to see from our house when we first moved to the area 25 years ago died years ago.
I also stopped for every jack-in-the-pulpit I noticed on the hike uphill. There didn’t seem to be as many of them as there should be. Probably the overgrowth of invasives like garlic mustard makes it harder for them to propagate.
We got back to our yard and I took a picture of the samaras on our red maple…closer to being ripe.
I saw what I thought was a spider web in the grass but when I took a closer look, I realized it was dandelion seeds! My husband probably mowed it yesterday….dispersing the seeds.
I’m glad we took advantage of the great weather since rainy days are forecast….but we’ll take more hikes into the forest as the weather warms. I’ll use insect repellent next time since there were a few flying/biting insects even at the relatively pleasant 60 degrees. It’s great to have a forest to hike into from our own back yard!
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
