Cedars

I took a couple of hikes which turned out to be an exploration of cedars.

Douglas state forest has a tiny swamp, that is mostly cedars.

The structure is water at the bottom, then a layer of a riot of moss which is somehow forming a layer on top of the roots

Then the trunks pop out of that.

The swamp is about 100 yd x 100 yd, but feels completely isolated, like a bubble, from the surrounding world. The air is 10 degrees cooler. Everything is quite - though nothing was noisy before entering the swamp. The aromas are rejuvenating, with that high vibration cedar smell, but also luscious with the moss & mud. I have never been in a mangrove swamp, but have seen them, and there is clearly something like that going on here. I think Nature has a special idea with these layers of water and moss and tree roots that are also trunks.

You can kind of see in the photo with the plank path that many of the trunks are bent in one direction. It’s more than that - the trunks all come out of the water at a low angle, which then in a few feet turns up to towards the vertical - though still tilted. I have no idea what was going on with that.

Of course the ENTIRE state of Massachusetts was clear cut in that orgy of resource gathering in the 1800’s. Douglas state park is large - I walked two hours to get to the swamp, and was not half way through. And no where did I see a tree over 100 years old. The oldest trees in the swamp were probably 50 years old. Back in 1820 many of the trees were no doubt 200 years old. Where did they all go? To build ships, homes, bridges?

Then Mount Watatic

The cedars did a much better job of re-populating the hundreds of acres of this little hill-mountain.

Running all up and down, covering a couple of miles, is a typical New England stone fence,

Two families of farmers saw fit to divide the mountain in half, and pile up stones. Farm this land? What? I grew up in Midwest farm country where where you can just go ahead and plow & plant, so I still feel viscerally the efforts made by these earlier New England farmers. The soil here must be 6 inches at best! Why are you even trying to farm here? And you wanted so badly to farm here that you moved 100,000 rocks, most of which I cannot lift, and you did this after manually cutting down and hauling out trees that must have been 3 feet in diameter and 100 feet tall. All for 6” of soil.

I wonder if Nature produces men & women who are particularly strong, when such work is needed. Or maybe all of us have that strength in us potentially, and the epigenetics kicks in.

It being wet & warm, many of the acorns were splitting.

I have cut open plenty of acorns, even experimenting to eat them, but never in the spring. I do not recall such a vivid red color just inside the shell. Makes me think that some very complex biochemistry is happening as the germ starts to activate. These are all from last fall - they have been sitting on the ground, waiting for the Spring to come. Or maybe the red color signals to creatures, “come eat me, I am particularly tasty right about now.”

The cedars here on the mountain slopes have created a similar little world, like the feeling in the swamp. The air is cool. The moss vibrant.

Getting close to the summit, the soil all drops away. The rock has the look of just recently freezing, I can almost feel the violent up-welling of plastic granite,

I spent a few summers in the Rockies studying geology. I came to the conclusion that most of our ideas of how mountains form are only half correct. I am not saying I know the full correct model - I am just saying I have a certain knack for smelling out which parts of a scientific description are based upon actual observation, and which parts are speculation. I know what the textbooks say about the mountain range running up the East Coast of America. But I also think there’s much we do not know. Or maybe I am just directly sensing the rock beneath my feet right now, and sense that it is living, feel that it is flowing, though at a timescale I do not usually perceive directly.

And of course the required shots from the summit - and with these I will sign out.