Damage from the snow

Downed red oak

Who would have thought that 10 inches of snow could disappear so quickly? Oh, it’s not all gone, but it’s mostly gone. Only patches remain. And the debris.

I have been picking up what feels like truckloads of broken trees, downed branches, downed twigs and leaves. The forest will not look as it did before the storm for a long time, I am sure of that. Not all of the damage is on the ground, either. Many, many trees are broken, with the branches still partially attached to the trees, sometimes hanging precariously to the trunk. Now, when I look out my north window, I see an open vista, where before I saw a tangle of trunks and branches. And what will happen over the next year or so? Likely, some of the trees will become infested with something and end up not surviving over the long term.

I couldn’t help but notice the species of the branches I am picking up. Two of them were not a surprise to me, though the third was until I thought about it a bit. Tulip poplar is one of the species I am picking up a lot. This one is not a surprise. Tulip poplar is a soft wood, a tree with notoriously shallow roots. And it has large leaves, which makes it even more likely to break when those leaves are covered with wet snow. The second unsurprising species is the American beech. I have several in my front forest. They are a beautiful, gray-barked tree, notorious for being “dirty” as I’ve heard them described by people who have them on their properties. Dirty simply means that the trees drop their lower branches regularly.

The third species of tree I’m seeing during this clean-up (and the one pictured in my photo today) is the one that surprised me. It’s the red oak, a lovely hardwood tree, perhaps second only to its cousin the white oak in size and stateliness. So why was such a strong and hardy tree one of the ones to break the most?

Though both are hardwoods, white oaks have a stronger and harder wood than the faster-growing red oak. The ship “old Ironsides” was made of white oak, which is waterproof. Red oaks are less dense and not waterproof and the wood is used in furniture or other primarily indoor uses. White oak wood is often used in fence posts or for other things that will be used outdoors. Red oaks produce acorns every other year, while white oaks produce them every year. This year the red oaks are heavy with acorns.

I believe the lesser density of the red oak wood, combined with it being the year for lots of acorns, were the main factors in causing more damage to this species than to the white oaks or even hickories around the mountain. How this damage will affect the diversity and even the composition of the forest itself over the next years has yet to be determined, but is something I will keep an eye on.

Got acorns? Mostly no

Roundtop Mtn. has that pre-snowfall, post-November gloomy look to it this morning. Clouds darken the sky and everything has that same flat shade of bark brown. Four deer stood among the trees this morning just off the road, and I almost didn’t see them. They were exactly the same shade of brown as the trees.

Locally, I’ve heard a sudden concern over a lack of acorns. So far, biologists are just starting to realize that this isn’t a local event but something that’s being seen pretty commonly throughout many areas of the country. No one seems to know what is causing it. Some say a wet spring is the culprit. Some say it’s just a normal low-end of the acorn cycle. Some fear climate change.

I don’t have many acorns either, though I had some. I do know that oaks, even when they drop acorns, don’t commonly produce viable seedlings from those acorns. It can be 15-20 years, I’ve read, before you reach a season that results in many new oak seedlings.

Some people are worried the squirrels will starve to death. I can’t see that happening here. I see squirrels every day carrying huge walnuts from one side of the road to the other. They seem to be finding plenty of those. I haven’t seen many hickory nuts this year, which in my part of the woods seems even more noticeable than the lack of acorns.

Deer rely heavily on such nuts during winter, and if any animal is going to be hurt by the lack of nuts, I expect it will be the deer. This would be especially true if the winter turns out to be a severe one, which I’m still thinking is a possibility. With no moderating influences from El Nino or La Nina this year, a severe or at least a normal winter wouldn’t surprise me. And in fact, both the summer and fall here have tended toward cooler rather than warmer temperatures.

In any event, for the moment, noticing the lack of acorns and other nuts is the first step towards finding out what there aren’t many. This is something I expect we will learn more about as more people investigate. For now, the squirrels are busy emptying my bird feeders, and the deer are enjoying the apples I throw out for them. I’m doing my part to see they make it through the winter, acorns or no.

The Textures of the Forest

This week, perhaps because spring’s progress has stalled a bit, I’m taken with exploring the texture of bark on the trees of the forest around the cabin. This one is white oak. It’s a good-sized tree, likely 75 years old or more, one of many of a similar size around my door.

Each tree species has its own particular bark pattern. I know most tree species by their leaves but I’m still learning the bark patterns. As with anything, the most distinctive ones are the easiest to learn. The bark of the American beech is smooth and gray in a sea of brown. The bark of the wild cherry has horizontal stripes. The name shagbark hickory is a good description of that tree’s bark.

In the evenings, after dark and when I’m not outside, I’ve been rereading a bit of John Muir lately. I’ve read him before, of course, but it’s been a while since I’ve read Range of Light. Muir’s writing is so magical so frequently that he’s a bit like nature itself. Every time I read his works, I’m struck by something, but it’s always a different something than what I’ve noticed before. Today, I came across this paragraph that has particularly resonated with me:

"As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near to the heart of the world as I can."

And perhaps that’s what I’m trying to do, though without the poetry of Muir’s words. When I first moved to my cabin in the woods, I saw what most jumped out at me—birds, mostly. Later, I learned what tree species were in front of my door, and I learned their leaves. Now, I am going deeper, learning the trees by their bark and flowering plants by their leaves before they flower. I am getting closer to the heart of the forest.

Every day, there is something new to see, something new to investigate and learn about. What I learned last year or the year before that is no longer good enough or deep enough or even just enough. And knowing that I will never reach the end of what there is to learn is somehow very rewarding and comforting to me. A lifetime will not be enough, nor would 12 lifetimes, but that’s okay.