Fall, buck teeth, and leaves

Fall, and an old man's fancy turns to leaves in all their glory - that is, when he's not enjoying the dazzling Australian birds photographed by Dom and Daphne and pictured in the entry right after this one. But I was talking about leaves and color and thinking about how they become such a cliche in New England I'm afraid I sometimes sleepwalk past them. But last week Bren and I decided to head a little north and west purely on a color-hunting binge and we discovered a couple of interesting things along the way.

First, swamp maples really are the first to change and put on a dazzling display along the highway. Their splashes of color, however, also coincide with the terrain around the highway. Going up Rte 24 we noticed that where there was color, the highway was built up from the surrounding area, a veritable mini-causeway trhough the swamp. Then when the color gave out, we noticed that the highway was more a sunken road, with it's embankments climbing up several feet from the level of the pavement to the surrounding woods.

OK, so that's why they call swamp maples, swamp maples. I know this isn't rocket science, but hey, it was fun to look ahead, see a splash of color a mile off, and be able to predict that when we reached that point the sides of the road would be dropping down. Some days it just doesn't take a whole lot to entertain me ;-)

Then there was the other puzzling swamp up near Princeton, MA. That one was barren with nothing but dead trees sticking up in it. We wondered what had caused it. Can fire go through a swamp? At first glance it looked like the result of a fire, but on closer examination none of the trees looked burnt. Well, we had no answer until we arrived at Wachusetts Meadows and this is what we saw from just above the parking lot:

Surprised? Of course, not. Unless like us you had been there four years ago when, from the same vantage point, you saw no swamp. The swamp was there. In fact one of the major features of this sanctuary is a board walk through the swamp. But in 1999 we could hardly see it. Now it looked just like the one we had passed earlier. So we asked the resident naturalist. (This is an Audubon sancturary.)

The answer? Beavers! Who would have thunk it? Well, if you didn't and you're a New Englander, that's understandable because we New England types drove all the beaver out of here more than 200 years ago. They make great, water-proof hats, you know. But now they're making a come back. And in some places they're driving folks a little crazy, for their engineering skills are more than a match for our own, at least in the dam building department. And that's what they have done here. Damned up the stream that drained the swamp. The swamp got too much water in it. The trees died from the excess water, though I might add that later we saw plenty of evidence of beavers eating some. Boy their teeth must be like chisels! We were both surprised at the size of the chomp marks. (Look closely at the photo at the top of this entry.)

Which is straying a little bit from fall color. Wachusetts Meadows is beautiful. And besides the swamp there's a nice little mountain. (Well, any where else it would be called a "hill" but in most of Massachusetts real mountains are rare.) This particular mountain, says the naturalist, is well placed for the hawk migration. OK. Maybe next year we'll give it a try. It's just a tad south of Mount Wachusetts, not much of a hike to the crest, and we would certainly avoid the crowds. The dozens of birders can be fun - but the motorcyclists, ham radio operators, and tourists who have either driven to the top or taken the ski lift, can be a distraction.

Meanwhile, here's a little slide show if you would like a better idea of what this sanctuary looks like in early October. (If this gives you a broken image symbol, just click on the arrow control at the bottom right. That should take you to the first image. This script is new to me and I can't quite figure out how to get rid of that default image thingee. )

Posted by Greg Stone at October 19, 2003 11:11 AM