My guy doesn’t make it easy to come up with birthday or Christmas gifts, but one thing I’ve learned over the years, and it’s taken me many years to figure such out, is that he loves a challenge. Especially when we’re hiking. So . . . there was the Amazing Race–our style and the Bear to Beer Possibilities and now . . . a birthday list of geocaching finds to seek. Or is it seek to find?
His birthday may have been almost a month ago, but we didn’t start our latest quest until today, a day that started and ended cold and blustery, but began in a place where a few Tamaracks shone of their autumn foliage. Why do I love these trees so? Perhaps because each time I see one I am taken by surprise.
Perhaps because they can’t decide who they are: deciduous or coniferous or a deciduous conifer? It’s the latter, for sure. What I appreciate most is the fact that it represents both. It rather reminds me of my brain where left and right meet on a Myers Briggs test and encompass the best (and sometimes worst) of both worlds.
But I digress, and so back to the trail. We followed two today, and one of our first finds was that tree we always covet. A bear-claw tree, this one a favorite and oft visited given the claw marks that decorated it.
Of course, as things go in the natural world, or any world for that matter, where one finds delight, there is also something not so delightful taking place. In this case, Beech Bark Disease that begins with many Beech scale insects feeding on the tree’s sap while they form a covering of white wooly wax over their body. The scales create wounds in the trunk that allow the nectria fungus to enter bark, cambial layer, and sapwood, thus producing cankers, or raised blisters and calluses.
As if that isn’t bad enough, because eventually it will kill the tree, tarry red spots ooze from the cankers like blood from wounds.
It would be so easy to spend our day looking for all the bad in the woods, but we chose to focus on better things as we moved forth and so to a wetland did we arrive.
Standing there in silence, the sky kept changing while the wind gusted to at least 20 miles per hour and snow flakes fell.
Across the wetland, it was obvious that some had been preparing for temps such as today’s for the beaver lodge appeared to be well mudded and winter decorations set, only in need of holiday lights.
And speaking of Christmas, a surprise gift appeared under the beaver lodge trees . . . in the form of a male Hooded Merganser.
He moved to the right and then the left while the snowflakes fell and what struck me was how the reflection of his hooded crest resembled the surrounding birch trees.
From that place we drove to another for our quest continued. And it was in the second place that we smiled at the discovery of a neighborhood library.
But it was the water flowing behind the wee library that quickly diverted our attention. While we appreciated the structure over which it flowed, we didn’t realize its true significance until we traveled further down the trail.
Faded interpretive signs told the story of the past, but I only skimmed those. What I did learn was that the foundation upon which I stood had once been a powerhouse, thus the importance of the water flowing from above for saw mills, grist mills and such. And as I stood there, I noted the structures that once supported a penstock and then the location of a turbine that must have been situated within the powerhouse and I gave thanks to my friend Sue Black (RIP Sue) who long ago helped me gain a better understanding of these structures along Stevens Brook Trail in Bridgton, Maine. As serendipity would have it, her son, Andrew, had contacted me only a few hours earlier about an unusual natural sighting he’d made.
Climbing down to the penstock, it was well worth the effort to gaze toward the powerhouse below . . .
and flow from the dam above.
Around another bend south of the powerhouse, the water calmly mirrored its surroundings.
Oh yeah, the surroundings. We were supposed to be searching. And we did. Successfully, I might add. Actually, it was my guy’s thing to search and he was well rewarded.
Today, thanks to geocaching.com, he scored two discoveries, including this well-hidden micro. We still can’t believe the creative hide or the fact that we found it, though to be honest, we looked for a bit, thought about clues, went back to the truck to eat lunch and reconsider our strategy, and then headed out again. I was about ready to give up, when suddenly I heard him exclaim, “I found it.” I did have to explain to him about Muggles and the proper way to quietly announce a find a few minutes and feet away from making such a discovery.
As I suspected, he was hooked and is already talking about our next adventure. For both of us, we treasured the hunt and the finds we each made.
wondermyway 
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