Author: JLfromNH

Up in the small patch of woods in back of my house is a large granite boulder that has been there for as long as I can recall.

It’s roughly a little under five feet tall by five to seven feet in width depending on where you measure it. As children, my siblings and I dubbed it ‘Big Rock’ and needless to say it was quite the kid magnet. We routinely played around and on top of it without anybody scolding us about how ‘dangerous’ it was. I don’t recall that any of us or the neighborhood kids who joined in, ever suffered any serious injury, unless you count the occasional skinned knee.

Noting other smaller rocks in the vicinity, we proceeded to name them Little Rock, Baby Rock, etc, but none of them had the charisma of Big Rock itself. Unfortunately I never asked my parents who built their house on the property if Big Rock was there to begin with or if it was dug up during construction. Given its size, resembling a beached whale, I suspect it was there all along while the forest grew up around it.

New England is filled with an abundance of rocks, stones and boulders of varying size and heft, causing annoyance to any one attempting to clear the land, creating challenges for hikers and food for thought to geologists. Large boulders like Big Rock are often referred to as glacial erratics , stones moved from their point of origin by glaciers. Depending on how the ice flowed, they may have traveled a great distance or only a short jaunt from the ledge they were torn off. Madison Boulder, one of the largest erratics located here in New Hampshire, is thought to have originated from the Whitten or White ledges located 12 and 4 miles respectively to the northwest. At 83 by 23 feet in size, it is thought to weigh in at 5000 tons so it gives an idea of the power of the ice sheets that came grinding down across our state during the Laurentide.

Countless other erratics can be found throughout the state, some with odd ball histories such as Boise Rock. This large boulder earned its name during the 1800’s after Thomas Boise, a teamster, was trying to make his way through Franconia Notch when he was caught in a fierce blizzard. According to local folklore, in order to avoid freezing to death he unsentimentally killed and skinned the horse he had been riding and used its hide to protect himself while hiding under the rock now bearing his name. His ploy paid off and searchers found him alive when hunting for him the next day.

Glaciers have left their mark everywhere here in New Hampshire. Crawford Notch shows the classic U-shape characteristic of valleys ground down by ice rather than eroded by a river. Glacial striations are visible in many places where ledge was exposed to the relentless scrapping of the Laurentide Ice sheet.

Other features such as moraines, kettles, potholes and cirques can be found scattered throughout the White Mountains. A good example of a natural pothole is the Basin, located in Franconia Notch. Rushing mountains waters that originate from Profile Lake and form the beginnings of the Pemigewasset River, wash out pebbles and sand which over the millennia have scoured an area of the local granite forming a beautiful natural basin 30 feet in diameter and 15 feet deep. Its polished appearance looks like the product of some sculptor but in reality it is Mother Nature’s work. Mount Washington’s Tuckerman Ravine, a popular magnet for adventurous skiers is a classic example of an old glacier cirque. Its classic bowl shape is the result of a local alpine glacier which formed during The Pleistocene age.

But above all else it is the glacial erratics strewn everywhere that are the main characteristic of New Hampshire and other New England states, adding expense to construction projects when they have to be moved, or aggravating farmers trying to plow their fields. But while we may curse their ubiquity, that hasn’t stopped us from making use of them, either as objects of interest for tourists or just as building materials to make a familiar sight in our state.

While weather reports are focused on the latest hurricane churning around off the US coast and where it may be headed next, it’s worth taking a look at an earlier storm that hit New England back in September of 1938. Back in those days, hurricanes were not named but the intensity of the storm and its devastating effect on an area not accustomed to hurricanes earned it such nick-names as The Great New England Hurricane or the Long Island Express.

The storm formed as most hurricanes do off the coast of Africa and made its way across the Atlantic, tracked by ships since at this time there were no weather satellites or radar to monitor it. It strengthened to a category five though by the time it reached the Virginia coast it had weakened to a category 3. Most forecasters predicted it would curve out to sea though a lone researcher forecasted it would stay on a northerly course.

Regrettably he was overruled by more senior meteorologists and as a result no warning went out to the East Coast. Squeezed between two weather systems, the storm shot like a bullet northwards, reaching nearly 70 miles per hour on its forward motion, the highest forward velocity ever recorded in the annals of hurricanes. Since this kept it from losing its strength when it passed over the cooler waters around New England, it hit as a category 3 when it made landfall on Long Island.

With no warning and no time to prepare, locals were caught by surprise and the effects were devastating. Photos can only capture a fraction of the destruction that occurred and left such a long lasting impression on New Englanders.

One of these New Englanders was my mother. She was living in Concord New Hampshire with her family at the time and had just turned eighteen the month before. To her, the high winds were what frightened her the most. Afterwards she described visiting the park and seeing the huge pine trees there with their tops snapped off and scattered on the ground. She told me that she and one of her brothers made their way from one side of the park to the other by walking on top of the fallen trunks, jumping about from one tree to the next, not daring to get down on the ground as the trees had been so big that she didn’t think they would be able to climb back up onto them. Since my mother was about five feet tall, that gives you an idea of how big the trees had been before they were toppled. She found it heartbreaking to see so many beautiful old trees destroyed.

The fear caused by the storm stayed with her for many years afterward. I can recall as a child seeing her anxiety whenever weather reports indicated a hurricane might be coming up the coast. She got a map from the National Hurricane Center which allowed her to closely track the course of any storm that formed in the Atlantic. She bought hurricane lamps and candles as a precaution against long power outages and fretted about the trees growing up around our house.

One of her cousins lived with her retired husband George in Sarasota Florida. George had been a weatherman and whenever a storm drew near to the coast of the eastern US, my mother would call them up wanting to speak with George. Apparently she considered him a far better authority on what to expect than the weatherman on TV. George would reassure her about the storm’s track and occasionally take the opportunity to complain about the new-fangled custom of giving names to tropical storms as well as hurricanes, which he thought was a waste of names.

With the sophisticated weather satellites and Doppler radar to track weather movements, we are far better off than in my mother’s youth in detecting the approach of threatening weather, though when it actually strikes, we are still just as helpless. At least we can flee or take shelter, or stock up on goods in case of shortages, knowing what’s on the way.

What’s more open to question is whether any of this hi-tech can be maintained as resources in the future become more constrained due to economic contraction and equipment harder to replace as a result. A significant Carrington Event would fry satellites and knock out power systems here on earth, leaving us blind to developing weather systems which could threaten us. Replacing all this expensive gear is apt to be difficult. We may have to get used to relying more on the reports from ships for sea storms and ham radio operators for information about approaching storms and their severity than on the high maintenance high tech we have become so accustomed to over the past few decades. This is certainly going to be a tough pill to swallow for many who are enamored of the concept of eternal progress. But it’s just simply doesn’t make sense to pour money into extravagant systems that break down if you look at them cross-eyed, when less complex, more maintainable methods will do.

As the post-oil world bears down on us, it’s worth our time to sit down and decide what’s sustainable and what isn’t. When we finally learn to make do with less, we may be surprised to find that it is not the same as doing without.

Many years ago, I witnessed an unusual incident while in my front yard. It was during the summer and I happened to hear a raven croaking. Looking up, I saw two ravens flying directly to one of the tall white pine trees surrounding the house. They were being pursued by several crows, who were vocalizing anxiously. The ravens flew into the treetop with the crows right behind. The branches hid what was going on but I could hear a terrible struggle break out with the sound of wings flapping, the ravens croaking and the crows beginning to shriek at the top of their voices. I thought possibly a nest was under attack. The screaming of the crows attracted every crow within hearing distance and it wasn’t long before I had fifty or more crows circling around all cawing hysterically. Finally the ravens departed, flying back the way they had come. The crows continued circling and screaming for nearly three quarters of an hour afterwards before they finally began settling down.

I inspected the base of the tree to see if anything had fallen but there was nothing to indicate if nestlings had been killed or even if there was a nest at all. All in all, the incident was quite mystifying. The most likely explanation was that the ravens were destroying a crow’s nest. But the motivation behind it was unknown. It’s not a good idea to attribute human purposes to something that isn’t human as this can cause us to misinterpret what we are seeing. Still, it was hard not suspecting some sort of pay-back was involved.

Crows and ravens are noted for their exceptional intelligence, problem solving abilities, and surprisingly complex social behavior. So the question arises, are they capable of vengeance as we understand it?

Revenge, at least in human terms, is usually defined as a form of primitive justice, an effort to right a perceived wrong by the person taking revenge. This usually occurs when ordinary justice is seen as having failed the injured party and they take it upon themselves to get satisfaction. It requires a sense of self (seeing oneself has having been offended) as well as the ability to plan and carry out the act of revenge (restoring a sense of balance).

Can animals plan ahead? Studies of chimpanzees seem to suggest that the capability to visualize a future event and make plans based on that visualization is shared with our closest relative. But what about birds? Studies of scrub jays as well as other birds seem to indicate that they are capable of planning as well. Tests involved determining the bird’s ability to abstract a general rule when solving a certain task and then transfer that learned rule to new tasks. When faced with a novel situation, the birds could adapt previous experience to apply to the new problem. Corvids seem especially good at this as opposed to such birds as pigeons who tend to be rote learners.

But do crows and ravens have a sense of justice as humans do? To perceive injustice and attempt to right it is something we humans are hardwired for as the desire to take revenge appears universal among humans no matter what culture or time they belong to. Even small children will complain when they experience what they regard as injustice (“It’s not fair!). I can still recall an incident that occurred when I was perhaps four or five years old. I was following my mother through a field and we stepped over a large rock. She crossed over without incident, but when I stepped over the rock, an irate wasp appeared and stung me on the knee. My main reaction was not anguish over the pain of the sting but bewilderment over the perceived injustice of having been stung while my mother had crossed the rock unscathed. Why couldn’t I have crossed the rock without incident? Though it’s been well over half a century since that happened, my outrage over the unfairness of it is still very vivid to me.

We humans are complex creatures with equally complex societies. Our sense of justice is likely an outgrowth of our social structures, a way to ensure that interpersonal conflicts do not escalate out of control and disrupt the group. Without a way to ‘balance the scales’, what often occurs is a chaotic endless cycle of revenge and pay-back (much like we see in the Middle East). Crows and ravens have much simpler social lives, crows living in extended family groups while ravens are less gregarious, living as pairs raising their young. But the need to maintain order between and within groups is still there though likely in a more rudimentary form.

So was what I saw all those years ago an example of corvid revenge? Or something else entirely? Our inability to answer this question reveals how much we still need to overcome our arrogant assumption that only we humans are capable of thinking and planning and all the other wonderful things we blithely believe only we can do. That we are not particularly special in that regard can be humbling but it can also open our eyes to what we have in common with our fellow earthlings.

“People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.”

Voltaire