beech – In the Woods

hemlock bluffs

As many of my readers know, I grew up surrounded by hemlock trees in Connecticut and miss having them in my life very much. I heard of this place not long after we moved down here but Tim & I never managed to visit it. So, while my sister and her husband were here for eleven days over the holidays a good day arrived, we packed a lunch, and then headed out to see these remarkable hemlock trees.

galax (aka beetleweed, wand flower), an Appalachian mountain native

Hemlock Bluffs is a special place because the north-facing bluffs combine with cool air from a creek below to create a “mountain” microclimate which the hemlocks favor. Sadly, here too they are plagued by the hemlock wooly adelgid but they are being monitored and treated for this insect pest here in this protected preserve.

We headed for East Hemlock Bluffs first and soon found ourselves descending from the top of the bluff over 100 boardwalk steps down to the level of Swift Creek. It was exciting seeing the trees from different elevations, and reminded me of the way the trees looked as I was climbing them in my childhood.

evergreen Christmas fern also loves the moist shaded slopes of woodlands along streams

the most I could capture of a whole hemlock tree

After climbing back up those 100+ stairs we headed over to West Hemlock Bluffs. There weren’t as many steps going down this bluff, but the descent was steeper.

a portion of the steps at West Hemlock Bluff

We were surprised to see a huge holly tree down below. I was amazed to be eye-level with the crown and took a few pictures with the zoom lens. I wondered if this was an American holly which is common here, or a mountain holly, since we were in that microclimate. But I learned that mountain hollies are deciduous so it’s probably an American holly, and probably was about 60 feet tall.

Beech Tree Cove was at the bottom of this end of the bluff and there we noticed a huge fallen beech tree. (below) I also learned that older beech trees do lose their leaves in the winter; it’s the younger ones that keep them in the cold months.

a beech grove, the younger ones save their leaves over winter

Back at the park entrance and the Stevens Nature Center they had three hemlock trees in the courtyard, some with those tiny cones I adored as a child. And, while Beverly & John were still inside looking at the center’s exhibits, I waited outside for them.

That’s when a friendly squirrel approached me with a message from Tim. He stayed with me for a few minutes, looking at me intently, and then, comforting tidings delivered, took off.

It was wonderful having my sister with me for so many days. We took three very long walks, hosted three holiday gatherings, and even went to the movies and saw Hamnet. Of course, there were tears of grief at times, and it was good sharing those, too.

returning and going farther

The last time Tim & I walked here was in October, eleven days before he died. We had finally got our hands on a good map of the maze of trails in Carolina North Forest and were excited to be more sure of the names of them. The leaves were still green. (see here: suspended)

This time my sister and her husband were my companions, but I walked a little ahead of them on this leg of Tripp Farm Trail, quietly talking with Tim, telling him how much I missed him and how sad I was that we missed seeing the autumn colors together in November as we had anticipated.

When we got to the place where Tim & I had turned around to retrace our steps, the three of us decided to continue following the trail. Much to my surprise, we eventually reached an intersection with the OWASA Corridor at the same bridge I came to with my friends back in November. (see here: remains of a colonial gristmill)

And now I’ve learned that the path I often follow in the woods along Bolin Creek near my home is called the OWASA (Orange Water & Sewer Authority) Corridor. Well, we learn something new every day.

Bolin Creek view downstream from the bridge

Instead of going to see the colonial gristmill ruins we decided to take another route. We took the Glade Spur, which connects Tripp Farm Trail and Maytag Trail, which we followed back to the main road and the car. The three trails essentially made a big loop.

A couple of years ago, in November 2023, Tim & I found a little pumpkin sitting on a stone on the Wormhole Spur. (see here: moderate drought in the woods) I bet the same person placed another one here in this branch crook on the Glade Spur.

While on the Glade Spur a couple coming from the opposite direction said they had just seen a pileated woodpecker. It’s so hard to see so high up in these trees but a few minutes later I did hear one and then spotted it. The picture I got is cropped and basically a silhouette, but it will have to do.

Not sure how far we walked but we were gone for a couple of hours. We were exhausted when we got back to the car and wound up staying in to recuperate the next day, which turned out to be a gloomy day anyway.

overcast

“I’ve never seen this before!” exclaimed my sister Beverly, the geologist. It didn’t look like much to me but she was clearly excited by this apparently remarkable formation (above) she noticed here on her first walk in North Carolina with me. She explained to us that it is a pallid zone with a saprolite layer underneath it.

sweetgum branches and twigs under a covering of gray clouds

It was the day after Christmas, which had been “hot” with record temperatures in the 70s. But on this day it was back down in the 50s and very gray, raw and chilly. I took Beverly and her husband John down to walk at length up Bolin Creek.

the essence of marcescence (beech leaves)

I rarely find a bird to photograph on this walk because they are singing way far up in the tall trees. So I was very surprised to come across a feral muscovy duck sitting on a log in the creek, watching the world go by. He kept an eye on me, but didn’t move, as I photographed him from three different spots along the creek bank.

I haven’t seen too many squirrels this fall and winter and have been wondering why that is. This one was the only one I saw sitting still, although just a couple of others were later seen racing up the trees.

We went on to discover fungi, lichens, and unusual burls. (There are no loblolly pines in New England.)

unusual circular burl on a loblolly pine

on retracing our steps we found the muscovy duck in the water

beard lichen with apothecia
(a cup-shaped or saucer-like fungal fruiting body)

beard lichen growing with greenshield lichen (?) on a fallen branch

It was good getting out for some fresh air and a good long walk, and having the chance to show my nature-loving sister and brother-in-law a little bit of the different world down south here.

to drift into a brown study

On Saturday my son-in-law came to my rescue and figured out how to get pictures from my camera onto my laptop, and then patiently taught me how to do it myself. My daughter spent most of her weekend organizing and updating my important papers, accounts and digital information, for which I am grateful because I am so brain-numb and overwhelmed these days.

On Sunday my friends came over for another long walk and this time I brought my camera along. Naturally I forgot to bring an extra battery but I did get a few pictures before the battery in the camera ran out. It’s a start. I’ll get the hang of things again eventually.

The change of the landscape’s prevailing tint from green to brown is not a cheerful one. Look wheresoever one may, he is pretty sure, in November, to drift into a brown study, and this is seldom exhilarating.
~ Charles Conrad Abbott
(Days Out of Doors)

I never noticed before this old abandoned car a little way off the trail. (above) It’s been completely filled with rocks. We wondered how long it’s been there.

beech leaves turning from green to yellow to brown

Also on Saturday my granddaughter and I took a walk and she found three broken-off beech twigs with yellow leaves intact. She brought them home and put them in a vase for me.

rocky water path

2.4.25 ~ Confluence Natural Area, Hillsborough, North Carolina

The first thing to catch my eye as we started down Rocky Water Path was a patch of Christmas ferns (above) growing down the edges of a gully, hanging like drapes. They usually grow up in a fountain-like shape.

And then there was a large group of boulders, not something we’re used to seeing in the woods in these parts. Our trail was leading us sharply downhill to the West Fork Eno River. But just before we reached the river we encountered a box of walking sticks.

Need a stick?
Take a stick.
Return the stick for
another to use.

The sign on the box (above) and the sign next to it (below) had us scratching our heads. Why would we need a stick? We already knew what path we were on, why a sign in the middle of it? Why was there a lost and found, also in the middle of nowhere?

We soon learned why we might need a stick! Turning around towards the river we saw a sign for another trail, pointing across the river. But how to get across? Checking the map we found our location and noted that we were at the “River Crossing.” Hmmm…

We sat down to rest on a conveniently placed bench and after some time figured out that there were some stones going in a straight line across the river. (below) Apparently that was the river crossing. The stones were far enough part that we would not have dared to cross, even with two sticks in hand! Maybe if we were 20 years younger, but it’s hard to remember what having that sort of confidence feels like…

From studying the map it looks like there is no other way to get to Poplar Bend Loop. But if you crossed back over from that trail and happened to forget how you got there, at least you would find the sign and know you had made it back to the Rocky Water Path and could choose to follow it in either direction. As for us, we passed by the crossing and continued on our way along Rocky Water Path. Niste:kmani:hątkóx, means Rocky Water Path in Yesnechi, the language of one of the Sioux tribes who first lived in this area.

holly tree growing over the river
(a bit of green to go with the Christmas fern seen earlier)

Rocky Water Path along West Fork Eno River

Fresh air is as good for the mind as for the body. Nature always seems trying to talk to us as if she had some great secret to tell. And so she has.
~ John Lubbock
(The Use of Life)

As we were leaving we disturbed a flock of robins foraging for food on the trail. One of them was standing his ground, keeping a close eye on us.

I’m not sure if we’ll come back to this wonderful nature preserve because the cell phone reception wasn’t good. (Tim’s walking app wouldn’t connect to the cell phone towers.) It was remote enough that we were concerned about calling for help in an emergency. But I imagine it must be quite beautiful here in the spring.

southern light, a hawk, groundhog shadows

2.2.25 ~ Bolin Forest, Groundhog Day
(no shadows at first)

On Groundhog Day last year we took our groundhogs, Basil & Oregano, to the botanical garden to check on their shadows, so this year we decided to take them out into the woods. Our friend Susan joined us for a nice long walk down by our neighborhood’s Bolin Creek.

The weather was chilly, cloudy, damp and gray. It had been raining recently so there was plenty of mud along the path, making for some dicey footing. Susan spotted a red-shouldered hawk who visited a couple of trees before settling on one where I could get a picture.

Only the beech trees and their marcescent leaves, looking like sand or wheat, bring light to such dark, wet woods, standing out vividly among the dark-gray oak and hickory trunks and the cyanine green of the cedars. A few of our beech trees are large and well spread out, but many more are saplings, six to twelve feet high, present and proud and serving as fine, multifaceted reflectors.
~ Bland Simpson
(Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir)

A funny thing happened after a couple of joggers passed by us. Apparently it took them some time to realize what their eyes had just seen. (A grown man carrying two stuffed groundhogs.) They stopped running, looked back around and one called out to us, “Wait a minute! Is it Groundhog Day?” We all had a good laugh.

Tim, Oregano & Basil bird-watching together

Bolin Creek was gurgling away, pleasantly full of water and sounding so very soothing.

The sky was so gray, but then, as we started heading back home, the sun made an effort to break through, lighting up the beech leaves…

… and making the creek’s water sparkle in a few spots. So we had Oregano & Basil pose for a second Groundhog Day photo.

Looking at pictures of our groundhogs’ shadows back in Connecticut I happened to notice that they were a lot longer than the ones down here.

2.2.19 ~ Eastern Point Beach
Groton, Connecticut

AI Overview tells me that “shadows are generally longer in the winter, especially in locations further north, because during winter the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, causing the sun to appear lower in the sky and cast longer shadows; the further north you go, the more pronounced this effect will be.”
I find this so fascinating!

ragged-edged beech leaves

Stop and listen to the ragged-edged beech leaves, pale specters of the winter forest. They are chattering ghosts, clattering amid the bare branches of the other hardwoods. Wan light pours through their evanescence and burnishes them to gleaming. Deep in the gray, sleeping forest, whole beech trees flare up into whispering creatures made of trembling gold.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)

12.20.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

A week ago I made a quick trip to the botanical garden to take a final picture for my four seasons photo hunt, and added it the post, which had become an eight season collection. It was a chilly, gray day but I was tempted to linger and see what other kinds of pictures could be taken in the very dim light of midwinter. One beech tree was full of marcescent leaves. A single leaf was dangling from another one.

Finally, I got pictures of one of the white-throated sparrows foraging under the bird feeders, where there is a little less brush for them to hide under. There is stark beauty to be found in the winter garden, when seedheads are left naturally for the birds to eat.

It still amazes me how pansies are winter flowers down south here! Imagine – pansies outside in December! Even though the temperature was in the low 50s that day, it felt cold and raw to me, in spite of my extra sweater, winter jacket, hat and gloves. I could have used my thermal underware but I didn’t think it would feel that cold out there.

One of the many things I do miss about being a young person is what was my tolerance for the cold. I used to love winter, being a January baby, and have many more fond childhood memories of playing outside in that season than in the others. (No bugs!) My sister and I spent countless hours ice skating in the frozen swamp in the woods behind our house. It was fun gliding across the (sometimes lumpy) icy hollows between the hummocks. A challenging obstacle course. And not a pansy in sight until April!

green woods laughing with joy

Six months ago, in the autumn, we visited this gorgeous nature preserve for the first time. It turned out to be equally enchanting in the springtime. It was so green! We started at the other end of Robin’s Trail. It was cold out, however. After days in the 80s on this morning I was back in my winter coat and wore my gloves the whole time.

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by
~ William Blake
(Laughing Song)

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
~ John Muir
(The Wilderness Essays)

wildflowers and orbs at the forest’s edge

As it was last time we visited, a very pleasant spring morning ramble along the creek and in the woods. 🍃

joyful and without regret

3.29.24 ~ Bolin Forest ~ red-shouldered hawk

It seemed like a good day to take a walk in our neighborhood woods to see what it looks like early in the spring. Recent storms had left us with over two inches of rain so we thought the creek might be nice and full. As we walked down the path towards the creek a hawk kept calling out, flying to and from its nest. Other birds were singing, too.

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.

~ Wendell Berry
(The Mad Farmer Poems)

old beech leaf, finally pushed off the tree and floating downstream
(the ending of marcescence)

a bluet poking through the moss
(my favorite childhood flower)

Finding that little bluet made my day! I wonder if there will be more of them as the season progresses. I’m used to seeing them in small clumps. Now we’re starting to see a few bugs flying around. Pretty soon it will be time to get the bug repellent out of the closet and leave it out next to the camera!