practice audio

 

4:30PM

5:50PM

Losing the Forest for a Tree

I arrived today to again be greeted by the singularly grey sky.  It was a high thirty degree day and I noticed that the parking lot had more fallen leaves covering it than the week before.  It was clear now that summer truly had left.  On the twenty-second of September autumn officially began, but most of it had been punctuated with beautiful and warm days harkening back to summer.  This time, autumn finally had the bite of winter.

The Stetson Parking lot woods reflected that difference.  The entirety of the interior, and much of the exterior of the Stetson Parking lot woods was covered in a layer of loose fallen leaves.  The maple, black locust, birch and cottonwood leaves all provided an easy way for me to hear where all the small animals moved.   As a result I could hear almost every squirrel and chipmunk as they walked on the ground.  Next, as a surprise to me, I saw three red squirrels.  I almost mistook the first red squirrel for a grey juvenile at first, but after seeing a second climbing down a cottonwood I realized I’d just seen my first red squirrel on campus. Keeping tally for the next fifteen minutes, I spotted eight gray squirrels, eleven chipmunks but no more red squirrels.

During that time, all animal activity was high.  I also heard a number of different birdcalls bouncing from tree to tree.  I identified one as the yellow bellied sap sucker’s trademark falling call, and the other as the Least flycatcher.  The final birdcall I could identify was a simple crow’s caw.   Until 5:10 all of the animals were very loud and then suddenly all of the chirping and movement in the wood ended.

After the animals stopped, I set off in search of plants.  Many of the trees on the Southwestern side of the woods are of this one species I am currently incapable of accurately identifying.  This is thing I noticed was a type of tree I’ve been unable to identify due to the strange shape of the tree’s leaf.  I have been unable to find a similar leaf anywhere in the Audubon field guide or online.  It is a compound leaf, made up of three to seven leaves and they are oppositely arranged.  Strangely, however, each of the leaves appears to be shaped differently.  On the tree, the leaves appear to be afflicted with a small fungus which pokes many small holes in its surface.

Today, only four different trees in the Stetson Parking lot woods had colored leaves.  Each one of the three sugar maples and had turned a nice bright yellow.  The last tree, a Norway maple was had turned very deep reds and purples, and at some points remained green.  Upon closer examination, I realized that a branch had broken off.  The large broken arm of the tree looked very strange with red leaves.  The Norway maple does not belong with red leaves.

Interestingly, as the branches of this tree reach out, the bark on the trunk quickly becomes similar to that of the wild raspberry bush.  Where the branches thin out at the ends, they darken in color and gain a white waxy coating that may be rubbed off.   The bark on the larger trees does not have a waxy coating, but rather a thick, shallowly furrowed outside with a stippled surface.

When I finally had to leave, I suddenly realized that I had spent a high amount of my time absolutely fixated on discovering the identity of one tree in my site.  I could not believe that I had suddenly become a walking talking embodiment of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

 

Edit: (I’m pretty sure this is White Ash now)

Thursday, October 15, 2009 – Syndicate Road Woods – 10:00 AM

As I walked down Syndicate Road to my site this morning I noticed the usual signs of autumn, the yellow and bare trees, and the New York aster that had by now almost completely shriveled up.  At the intersection with Baxter Road, however, I was greeted by two deer about 75 yards east of me.  They seemed to be females because of their lack of horns and medium stature.  One had a few white dots near its stomach, and I assumed it was younger than the other.  Instead of lifting their tails and running away, the deer stopped, stared at me for a few seconds and then began to slowly walk closer.  I continued on, not wishing to engage in a standoff with the deer.  I also noticed a large puddle south of Baxter Road that was at least 8 feet in length and width and showed the effects of the recent rain.  Many song birds chirped loudly as I entered the Syndicate Road woods, and even though the sky was quite overcast, the woods were lighter than usual because the taller trees had lost many of their leaves.  The leaves that did remain on the taller trees, however, had turned a medium yellow, aside from one coniferous pine tree and a tall maple, whose leaves remained green for no apparent reason to me.  The smaller trees and shrubs were still a green color, and I imagined this pattern could be attributed to the same reason why trees lose their leaves from the top first.  The ferns have now dried completely and have turned a light brown color.  It is hard to imagine the floor of the wood as it was in September when the foliage was green and in full bloom.  There is a constant crackle of drying branches and falling leaves due to the soft wind as I make my way over closer to the stream.

Because of the recent precipitation, the stream looks more like an actual stream now rather than a series of puddles, as it had appeared in previous weeks.  It is noisy and bustling by the culvert which emerges from the intersection of Syndicate and Baxter Roads, but then gets quieter and much stiller as it weaves northward.  Because of this new movement, I now realized that the water was indeed very clear and clean, but only appeared murky because of the muddy, rocky basin.  The tree with the magenta leaves that I identified last week as sumac has lost some of its vibrant color and many of its leaves.  I see a bush that appears to be honeysuckle, whose leaves have turned a light yellow color but whose berries are still juicy and ripe, and I wonder if this is the natural progression for honeysuckle plants.

I hear a woodpecker poking at a tree trunk with short, quick pecks as I wander southeast towards the large indent of land that I had discovered a few weeks ago.  The foliage here is much greener than in the other sections of the woods and the trees appear much leafier.  Although this area of the woods has a slightly higher elevation than the others, I do not think I can attribute its coloring to this fact.  I wonder if it is because the trees surrounding the indent are smaller and shorter than in the eastern section of the woods.  Here I stumble upon a small weedy plant that is still green.  It has twigs growing in an opposite pattern yet only a few leaves grow from the top.  I will try to identify it before returning to the woods.

This week I wished to focus on the touch and feeling of many of the natural objects around me.  Even by getting closer to trees and leaves in order to touch them I discovered new sights that I had not noticed before.  The bark of a tall beech tree was groovy and had moss growing on its southern side.  A dead vine that seemed to grow from the ground leant up against the beech, and I could tell it had been dead for a few years.  A fungus grew on the vine, brown and leafy on one side but rough and with small black dots that appeared almost like stitches on the other.  The stones in the creek were cold and smooth and only some of the larger ones had moss growing on their top sides.  I wondered if the fact that some of the rocks did not have moss growing on them was due to their rock type, because the quartzite stone did not have any moss, while the rock that appeared to be phyllite was almost completely green.  I spotted another vine which was also covered in hairy green moss.  I further study if different fungus or moss types grow on different types of trees.

On the 21^st of October, there was a drastic decrease in temperature within the Berkshire area. This drop in temperature had a great affect on the plant life within Williams Town, including Tyler House Woods. On the night of October 21^st, the temperature dropped to twenty seven degrees Fahrenheit, while previously it had been in the forties.

The next day on the 22^nd of October, we observed that the trees within and around Williams College that had once been green before, were now rapidly changing color, some even losing their leaves entirely. The extreme cold triggered the trees to lose their leaves. Therefore, we saw a great number of trees whose top leaves were beginning to change color and fall to the ground.

In my own site, I found that the ground was covered with even more dry, yellow leaves. Most of the trees were turning a bright yellow color. There were also some bushes turning a reddish color, but the predominant color was yellow. For the most part, the trees were beginning to turn color at the tops of their branches before any color change occurred on the lower branches.

The leaves that had fallen also revealed some of the animals that had once remained hidden. As I walked through the woods, I spotted at least four grey squirrels and three chipmunks. I could hear the high pitched squeal of the chipmunks as they raced across the fallen logs and up the sides of the maples. One was even rummaging through the leaves as it attempted to bury one of the nuts it had found on the forest floor.

While approaching my site, I noticed that there was a lot of activity from both the wildlife and people within the area. I could hear crickets in the nearby field, two squirrels ran about one of the nearby trees, a man and his dog played fetch not too far off, and two cars made their way up to Tyler House. It seemed that there was more activity near my site than usual. I usually arrive at Tyler Woods around 4:00 or 5:00 o’clock. Is it possible that an hour or two could change the amount of activity in Tyler? I may, in the future, try to arrive at my site at different times in order to determine whether or not time has a significant impact on the amount of activity within Tyler Woods.

Besides the maple trees, the pine trees within my site were also losing some of their needles, remnants of which could be seen discarded around the base of their trunks. The needles were mostly gone from the lower branches. There were also more cones on the ground than there were before. This may have been the reason for why there were so many squirrels and chipmunks in my site today.

Although a large number of trees were changing color, there were still many trees which were still holding on to their green leaves. I wonder why these trees have not changed color. Will they begin to change color, or will the leaves drop before hand?

From observing my site after the sudden drop in temperature, I have seen how changes in temperature can affect when a tree decides to shed its leaves. It will be interesting to see how the trees will continue to change as the temperature continues to drop. How long will it take and at what temperature will it be when the other trees begin to lose their leaves?

Field Journal Blog 4

It was Monday, October 19^th, 2009 around 9:30 a.m. It was sunny, but cold about 1^O C. In the past week it was cold with a large amount of precipitation, followed by a dry but frigid (mountain day and) weekend. I had my first observed snow in the purple Valley on Friday at 6:30 a.m. We had no accumulation of snow. There was a moderate amount of wind that would blow intermittently.

There was frost on the flower boxes on the bridge leading into the cemetery. It was relatively thick. I left my finger on the frost for a few seconds and did not fully thaw the wood I had touched. There was also some frost on the roofs of several of the buildings in the cemetery and in select patches of grass that were particularly well shaded. By the time that I had left, there was no longer any visible frost in the cemetery area.

I heard a chattering noise, which was not a bird, as I had originally thought, but a small red squirrel. I also saw a blue jay fly across the cemetery, along with some black capped chickadees. This is drastically less animal life than what I had seen a week before at the same time. In part, this is probably due to some staff mowing the cemetery lawn with a large sit-on mower towards the end of my visit, which was very loud and could have scared off animals. However, this does not explain the difference, as there were few animals before any mowing. The weather could be at fault, but it does seem early for most of these species to leave the area. Perhaps the cold temperature this morning deterred too much animal activity.

The weather has had a noticeable effect upon the plants in the area as well. The butternut, formerly misidentified as black walnut, had lost all of its leaves and nuts. The leaves were still green and often still attached to a branch while lying on the ground below the tree. The leaves were wet and soggy, unlike the crisp maple leaves that blanket the ground within the woods. The Norway Maple is still green, and still has most of its seeds attached to its branches. The seeds are brown and have a dry, brittle and ribbed texture along the wing, and a smooth texture along the seed, itself. The pokeweed’s leaves were dead, but still attached to the plant. They lazily dangled, soggy, and wet. They were still green, but darker than the living leaves. The berries were all gone. Elsewhere in the cemetery, there were large pokeweed plants that still had living leaves and even some unripe green berries. The dramatic difference in timing seems strange, given the close proximity.

The sumac, which had fuzzy branches and fuzzier red fruits, still had a few leaves. Unlike the other plants, the leaves that were still on the tree were furthest out along the branches, near the fruits. This happens because the leaves closer to the center are shaded from the outer lying leaves. Since the shade provides warmth, rather than cold, the lower leaves change color later. This temperature does not explain the phenomenon, I suspect that this might have to do with attracting birds to the fruits or the amount of sunlight reaching the leaves, as both could explain why the leaves at the ends of the branches would turn last.

The honeysuckle that dominates large portions of the woods, still had green leaves that had a rough texture, and shriveled red or orange fruits. Buckthorn also had green leaves, but still had lots of black berries that looked very ripe. Grape had lost its leaves, but had some shriveled small grapes. The white snake root had seeds where its flowers used to exist, which had soft and scratchy white flowers.

The winged euonymus’ leaves were still green, which seemed strange because I have seen these plants with bright red leaves in town, along in the area outside of pine cobble. Due to the warmer climate at pine cobble, I would expect that the plants there would change later than those on campus.

Stephen Maier

17 October 2009

This morning, Saturday, October 17, 2009, I visited the West Clark Woods with a friend. I wanted to share the beauty I have been hoarding to myself within these grounds with someone else; therefore, I asked my roommate if he wanted to join me in nature. He accepted my invitation and we entered at 11:15 a.m. on this clear, 40°F morning.

Our focus this morning was on touch and textures in nature and we wasted no time feeling everything in sight. We picked up sticks, rocks, downed trees, leaves, and anything else in sight. The sticks were dry and lifeless, which was expected, considering they were broken branches on the ground. The rocks were as cold as ice. I picked one up and juggled it in my hands before I had to drop it due to its frigidity. The tree trunks on the ground were saturated with water leading me to believe that some form of heavy moisture soaked this wood. What could be responsible since it hadn’t rained in two days? Perhaps the rain was so forceful all week that the wood was drenched and did not have sufficient time to dry out. Or maybe the dew, which is now turning to frost, seeped into the wood and never evaporated. Complicating my suppositions is the canopy situation. The canopy overhead has thinned with time allowing more sunlight to reach the wood and dry it out, leading me to believe the dampness must be from recent moisture, not the rain showers. However, the lack of canopy also facilitates the penetration of precipitation into the forest, which coaxes me into thinking that the rain may have reached the wood without resistance, therefore saturating it with water that cannot be released over two days. I can’t be sure of really happened.

As soon as we stepped foot in the woods, we noticed the carpet of leaves on the forest floor. If I hadn’t been here before, I would not have been able to tell you what the ground looked like. The birch trees were almost completely leafless. Approximately 75% of all the deciduous trees’ leaves had been shed and created a colorful layer on top of the ground. I picked up a fallen leaf and then extracted a living leaf from a nearby tree of the same species to compare the two. Though the leaves maintain the same shape, their differences are noticeable. The fallen leaf is brownish-orange. It is paper-like in texture and has no friction when I run my fingers along it. On the contrary, the living leaf is green and has prominent veins that can be easily felt. It also has a moist, oil-like texture. Though the two leaves look the same, excluding color, they are very different when inspected with touch.

Our analysis of texture reached its climax when my roommate discovered a shedding paper birch tree. Together we scrutinized the finding. The tree was twenty-five feet tall and had the white, paper-like bark, characteristic of paper birches, on its upper half. Its lower half was intriguing. There was a distinct line where the bark ended and it became a layer of wood that surrounded the trunk. Half of this layer was a dark brown color and the other half was divided between a fiery red color and a saffron color. At the bottom of the tree, the trunk was exposed which helped us determine that the middle layer was neither bark nor tree trunk. Upon this finding, my roommate detached the middle layer from the trunk. He removed it in one piece in shell-like form. We were both in awe. We felt as if we were disassembling a tree, deforming nature. It was a fascinating feeling.

But avoiding our sentiment, the red portion of this layer was soaked while the saffron part was dry. I was curious of two things at this point. Why is some of this layer wet and some of it dry? And why is it divided into several different colors? I had, and still have, no credible speculation for either question. Perhaps the middle layer was only attached to the tree at the dark brown end and the tree was still providing moisture to it, but the water did not travel throughout the entire layer of wood and left half of it dry. But that doesn’t consider an explanation for the color. I am eager to consult someone of higher knowledge to understand what is occurring on this birch.

Update            By: Claudia Corona            10/20/09

Naked. If I had to describe the forestry surrounding Ford Glen Brook today, naked is the word I would use to describe it. It’s been a week since I last came to observe my site, and already I feel as if I’ve missed out on big changes. It feels as if everything has gone away.

I’m not walking into the trail, I am tramping all over it. The ground floor is covered in about 2 inches of leaf litter and as I go down the path, my boots can’t help but make noise, “Crunch, crunch”. It’s incredible noisy for such a calm environment, so I stop. I crouch down and pick up a leaf on the ground. It feels rough, brittle and dry. I look ahead, farther into the Ford Glen Brook trail, and notice that the leaves no longer form a carpet of red and gold, but of pale brown cover, which, according to my boots, are cantankerous.

I kick off the leaves in one spot of the trail, and dig with my fingers into the dirt. I rummage and rummage until I feel I’ve gotten about 3 inches deep, and then take that chunk of soil out. The soil is a very dark brown, almost black in color. It’s definitely moist, but not damp enough to stain my fingers with mud or grime. I never noticed before that soil contained more than dirt. This soil had small twigs, leaves, and rocks the size of very small pebbles. It was bumpy and soft, and smelled of pine sap. Briefly, I wondered what the soil by the brook might feel like, and I decided to go and find out.

On my way to the brook, I look around and notice lots of Christmas ferns and Lady ferns, more than usual. But then I also notice that most of the other plants that were around last week, like the Jack in the pulpit and Dame’s rocket, are not there. The death of many plants that can’t handle the 30 degree weather amplifies the presence of all the plants that are still alive, and can trick one into believing that those still alive are reproducing quickly, when really, they are just the only plants still alive. I can easily discern many of the red maples have begun to turn, or turned fully, The Japanese Barberry on the Ford Glen Brook trail is no longer its dark green color, but now an orange-yellowish color and it still has its red, oval-shaped berries.

As I was jumping over fallen logs and rotten trees, I saw something I had never seen before, a pine cone! But it wasn’t an ordinary sight, all of the pine cones I saw had blotches of what looked like white paint on them. I really couldn’t believe that there were so many pine cones here, so I picked one up. It was about 6 inches high, an inch in diameter,  with all that “paint”. I touched the white “paint” and it was very sticky and smelled strongly of something minty. I finally recognized it as pine sap oozing from the pine cone when I broke the pine cone in half, but I don’t know what tree the pine cones were falling from.

I finally made it down to the brook and dug deep into a steep slope that had some soil exposed. The soil a few feet from the brook was significantly smoother and wetter. It was muddy, and when I rubbed the soil in my hand, it stained my fingers. There were very few twigs in the soil, and almost no rocks. It was much softer and squishier, vaguely reminding me of clay. But this wasn’t surprising, being so close to the brook meant the soil here is more exposed to the water, and whenever the brook gets lots of rain, it probably gets high enough to drown the soil in water, which would explain its constant muddy-like state.

Streaks of light penetrated the top of the trees while I was walking back on the trail. I’d never seen sunlight penetrate the tree tops in my site before. That’s when I looked up and realized that there WERE no tree tops! All of the leaves that had once soaked up the sunlight had fallen onto the path and enabled the sun to brighten up the forest. Everything looked so bare, and yet so full; of leaves, sunlight, and in a few weeks, of snow.

At 9:37 pm I hopped in my car and made the drive out to Wall’s Pond for a nighttime visit. It was cold, about 30 degrees, and utterly windless. The sky was clear; I knew there was a sliver of moon up there somewhere but could never find it. The stars were magnificent.
I got out of my car and approached the pond slowly. There was some sodium glare from the parking lot streetlights to guide the way and lights still burned in the conservation building. Fort Hoosac, the huge brick house where the first-year art history graduate students live, was ablaze with electric light and it cast long shadows from the eastern side. I switched on my headlamp as I walked through the gates, heading at once under the big sugar maple to investigate the tilting white pine I had noticed on my last visit.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but there appeared to be no change. I poked around the southern edge of the pond, careful not to tread too close to the edge which I have learned is not always a clear boundary between turf and water. The stillness was crushing. The only sounds around the pond were my own footfalls and I quickly leapt out of the thicket at the southern end to take a turn around the outside of the pond.
I walked back to the entrance and turned north, walking up the western side of the pond and switching my headlamp into wide-angle mode. I had gotten about halfway up that western edge, when I heard a rustling in the strip of ash and beech behind the western cow fence. I whipped my head in the direction of the disturbance and pulled out my backup flashlight, flooding the tree line with sharp white light. Nothing. I waded into the bushes a bit, but still saw nothing. I switched off both my lights and stood for a moment, softening my auditory focus and tuning in for any sound at all. Nothing. Not a cricket to be heard, not a rustling of leaf or shrub. A faint mechanical hum from the conservation building. But from nature herself, nothing. The sense of intense stillness and solitude hit me again, though where it had unnerved me first, under the maple, now became a comfort. There was a certain measure of safety in the tranquility now and I continued my rounds.
As I rounded the northwest corner I swung my light out, scanning the pond’s whole surface from the highest elevation I could get. The lily pads were sitting on the surface, I saw no blossoms at all, and the water itself was absolutely placid. Again I strained for any sound at all. Something dropped from the top boughs of a white pine at the south end of the pond. No other noise at all. Just then, the college bells pealed out 10 o’clock. The man-made sound roused me and I continued my walk.
My light fell on the grasses at the edge of the water. In the still, thick air they were completely immobile, every single leaf was frozen in place. The harshness of my headlamp’s light cast a strange, clinical feeling over the motionless shrubs, heightening their stillness. It was as though the pond itself was an elaborate sculpture, a glass masterpiece, part of the museum, a work of art in which all the choices had been made and were now frozen in perpetuity. I probed the darkness around me for some contradiction to the freakish, empty silence. I walked quickly down the eastern edge, I even ventured off into the hemlock grove off the southeastern corner looking for something, anything to report. It was empty.
I walked back around the southern end of the pond to the entrance, moving quickly through the thick, dense air. I paused under the big maple again to listen and jot some notes. I looked up through the branches and noticed (finally!) the leaves nodding ever so slightly in the meager breath of breeze that had just sprung up. I watched them for as long as the puff held out, until they returned to stillness. Soupy, still nights like this are common in a New England fall, as are wild, windy ones. I’ll come back soon for an audio recording to capture the silence, because, in all truth, it’s well worth hearing.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/19/09

Field Journal #4

When I went to my site at about 2:30 pm last week on Thursday, the weather was partially cloudy, and reasonably chilly. While it was not threatening to snow while I was there, there had been a hard frost the previous night and there was a short period of snowfall the next morning. As such there were many changes in my site that I noticed while I investigated parts of my site though touch.

The first change that I noticed before I had even entered my site was that the sensitive ferns were completely gone. In their place were large clumps of brown, dry and brittle stalks that crumbled at a light touch. Interestingly, now that the sensitive ferns are no longer obscuring the view, some bracken ferns were visible in the patch where the sensitive ferns had been. While these brackens are dying, they are not as of yet dead, still retaining some moisture and pale green color.

Another plant that seems to have been a completely destroyed by the frost was the Virginia creeper. The vines on trees are now completely bare, and the leaves of the shoots on the ground are brown and shriveled. The leaves, though they seem dead, are surprisingly not dry and brittle in the way the sensitive ferns were, but still seem reasonably moist.

Among the ground vegetation that was still green, an interesting pattern became visible. The garlic mustard (which I had known would last the winter) and the goutweed both felt waxy to the touch. Additionally, another plant similar to goutweed had many small hairs on the surface of its leaves. I connect these attributes because I recognize them as strategies that low water area plants use to retain moisture. It struck me that they could also help in winter conditions: the waxy coating which in deserts limits transpiration could in winter help insulate and retain the limited amount of liquid water the plant receives. The hairs, which in deserts served the same purpose as the wax, could hold heat in their microenvironment in the same way that human hairs retain heat when stood on end.

Deeper into the grove I began to look at the trees. The Norway spruce trees are still quite healthy looking; their needles were still dark green and supple. Also, on the ground surrounding these trees I did not see any of the short flat needles, which led me to believe that either the Norway spruce does not shed needles (which I doubted), or it shed its needles earlier in the season, in which case the needles are now buried under a thick layer of white pine needles. Interestingly, 10 minutes of Internet research seemed to point to the first option that they do not shed needles under normal circumstances.

The white pine tree still looks quite healthy, and the ground in a large radius of the tree has thousands of brown and brittle needles covering it. These needles have been there for some time: the tree is quite large and therefore shed its needles early on in the season.

The maples in my site and around it are now all easily identifiable by color: all are sugar maples in various stages of leaf loss. One large sugar maple on the east edge of the site has lost nearly all its leaves, and those that remain are very yellow. The leaves on the ground, while dry, are not brittle. The silver maple, on the other hand, did not change color before its leaves shriveled up brown and dropped in large numbers. They, like the fern, crumble at a touch.

Near the end of my visit, a hawk flew in and landed on a tree not 5 feet from me. It had a curved black beak, a mostly white belly with some brown feathers mixed in, and a brown back. It looked at me casually as I slowly approached, and preened itself almost arrogantly as it ignored me. Unfortunately, some people on the path began to shout at each other and it flew off, but not before I had seen its red tail. At this point I assumed that it was a red tailed hawk, which I later confirmed.

Eric Outterson

Professor Hank Art

October 9, 2009

3:00 PM

4:10 PM

55ÂşF

The Familiar

I arrived at Stetson Woods today knowing exactly how to be prepared.  I quickly greeted a breeze-free mist and my ever faithful stratus companion. I told him, “I almost thought you wouldn’t come this week!”  Seattle’s weather seems to enjoy excursions to Stetson Woods exactly when I do.  Ignoring my anything but fair-weather friend, I stepped down into the damp soil where I encountered another acquaintance, a mosquito.  After making sure that there would be no bad blood between us I moved along, confident that I knew the neighborhood well.

An unfamiliar chipmunk, however, greeted me with a quiet “cheep” and quickly darted under one of the many large schist rocks that sit on the hillside near Thompson Chapel.

Eager to be better acquainted with this shy personality, I lowered a stick into his hiding spot, only to hear “cheep” from an adjacent rock.  He quickly darted out from under this rock and under scurried another.  I searched hard, but had no luck finding him. I followed the central swath of rocks and realized that for every visible surface rock, there were at least three or four concealed beneath thin leaf and soil cover. I could see why the chipmunk could escape from me so well.

With my friend gone, I had choice but to listen to see where he would turn up.  Unfortunately, all I could hear at first were noises caused by people; cars started up and passing pedestrians talked about missing Mountain Day.  Strangely, there wasn’t even a light breeze to ruffle the leaves in the trees.  For the next ten minutes the woods failed to produce sound.

I decided to take the time to dig in the dirt around the site.  I encountered many asymmetric leaves that appear to slippery elm, but I can’t seem to pinpoint the tree.  In combing the bramble for evidence of the tree location, however, I unearthed more signs of human influence.  Mosses and leaves had helped a large block of cement masquerade as another piece of schist.  I wondered if the Stetson woods were ever a drop site for used construction materials.

Suddenly, two successive bird calls interrupted those thoughts.  The first called from high in the canopy (with a quality of sound I thought similar to a crow) that started high and then dropped in pitch “Bee-ooo.”  The other had a similar falling sound made a “tcheeew, tcheeew” sound.  I thought I heard a third, but it was the familiar and (subjectively) cute “cheep” from a chipmunk I’d stepped near.

Aha!  I saw where he was this, time and I wasn’t going to let him get away without getting his picture!  Unfortunately, auto-focus only caught pictures of branches in his front before he disappeared by a tree stump.  Examining where he had disappeared I realized that the six to eight inch schist and decaying root system provided a perfect cover for the small mammal.  Using a small stick, I could reach straight easily two feet into a tunnel system..

Brushing off leaf cover in an 8 foot radius I was able to spot 3 different escape routes the chipmunk could have chosen.  The most prominent emerged beneath the roots of red maple on the southern edge of the site.  The hole initially appeared to be a modest two inches wide, as many leaves and thin roots obscured entrance.  Brushing them aside revealed a burrow 12-14 inches in diameter and at least 2 feet in depth with a few pill bugs, millipedes, and ants.

Suddenly, my ears ring from the four o’clock chapel chimes. I was ready to give up on this chipmunk when suddenly four crossed my path.  Two stopped face to face inches apart with the other two looking on.  As the chapel bells began to play an unfamiliar song, one fell, exposing its large white belly and then began to wiggle upright.  The upright chipmunk leaped onto the recently fallen one and three or four seconds later, they and their two companions scurry off.

As everything quieted down again, I was stunned.  My visit had begun with great predictability and quiet but ended with orchestrated scene.  The seemingly familiar Stetson Woods still has a lot left to show me.